Should you go to a good or an excellent school?

I think your son should wherever he'd feel more comfortable and/or happy studying.

Welcome to A2K!

Parents always want the best for their children. One of the finest things that they can do is show him/her the respect of an adult. If your son is has already graduated from college, I would assume that he is in his early twenties.

Is HE conflicted about his choice? If not, and he has not asked for your advice, I would suggest that you back off. He is not a child, and needs to make his own decisions.

A's r A's wherever ugo

Hi, thank you for your welcome.

My son hasn't decided yet, and he has the same concerns as mine. That's why I want to look for advice. Of course, ultimately the choice is his.

To give another example, my friend told me about someone of her acquaintance. This man studied his master's degree at a less than desirable school - it was cheaper. At first, his friends thought it was a bad decision. But in this atmosphere with people from all walks of life, the guy found it fairly easy to become one of the best students in the class. He attracted the attention of his supervisor, who then helped him with a PhD scholarship. It turned out that his study decision was not bad at all.

go the wank school i did pluperfect

fantasyvn- Do you know what I do when I have two conflicting choices, and am indecisive? I make two columns.........pros and cons.Then I list. Often, seeing something in black and white makes a decision much, much easier. The list often will point out any emotional biases I may have towards or against one decision or another.

Its interesting that, when you look at the faculties of the elites, they have a good cross section of faculty folks from many "Non-elite"universities and therefore, points of view.
In my field, most elites dont offer the heavy "applied science" programs because they want their output to be more "recycled". I regularly teach at an elite and a state university as adjunct faculty. The program I teach at the elite is daubbed in the overarching research programs of continental plate tectonics, while at the state school, its economic geology (Mining). Guess where the "hot" careers are now (hint: buy a hard hat and metal toed boots and a real good Brunton kiddies)

Since this is a graduate program for your son - will he be living on campus? For me - the choice of school would be about 50/50 in terms of faculty and the type of student it would attract.

If he's living on campus and will be sleeping, eating, socializing with his fellow students - that's an important consideration.

I went to sort of an alternative school for college - although I'd been accepted into some name schools - having gone to highschool in a high pressure-filled, largely impersonal (my graduating class had 800 students) and somewhat elitist atmosphere- I wanted the opposite for college.

So I went to a very small college - located on a working farm in the middle of the most beautiful valley in the blue ridge mountains you can imagine. It had a wonderul faculty - I majored in English and three out of the four professors I had had previously taught at Yale.

So I got the best of both worlds - for me at least. Small, intimate seminar-like classes- with really top notch teachers who were able to give each person a lot of attention. I don't think I ever had a class with more than thirty people.
We called our professors by their first names - they knew us inside and outside of the classroom.

My graduate school experience was the opposite - but it didn't matter to me at that point. I just wanted the degree - I'd already had my wonderful college experience. I took the classes and went home. I didn't really even think about making friends with the professors - which was a good thing - because I doubt they even knew my name (there I was just a number in a sea of faces in a lecture hall).

I don't know if it's better to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond - I guess that depends on what career he's interested in pursuing.
I just know that atmosphere and environment are everything for me - and that would play a big part in whether I could hang in and/or succeed and be happy enough to even make it through- much less benefit from the name of the institution on the degree at the end of the whole thing.

No way...

At the graduate level, one should look more at the quality of the relevant department rather than the overall reputation of the school. If you were pursuing a degree in modern poetry, for example, and had to choose between Harvard or the University of Iowa, there wouldn't be many good reasons to choose the former over the latter. This is especially the case if the degree is the kind that will likely lead to a career in academia. Harvard is an impressive name to have on a c.v., no doubt about it, but a scholar of modern poetry who can say he or she studied at Iowa will really grab the attention of other academics who know the reputation of the Iowa writers.

Fantasyvn,

Welcome to A2K!

I feel very strongly that it should be your son who makes the choice--and that he bases his choice, if at all possible, on an overnight stay, and some classroom visits, at both institutions. On such stays, he can get something of the vibe of the places--which is extremely important for his comfort as a person, and, therefore, his level of academic pleasure.

There are some assumptions you seem to make about elite schools that are much too general, in my opinion: "competition is much fiercer" and the atmosphere is "less friendly and warm." You also--perhaps based on these assumptions--seem to have decided that your son might not thrive at an elite school.

I attended so-called elite schools as an undergraduate (Yale) and a graduate student (Georgetown). I found that the only respect in which competition among students was fierce (but not face to face!) was in admission to such schools. Once you were there, IF you found the general atmosphere to be what your research had suggested, you'd find good teachers (in the sense of good for you) and good classmates (same sense) as well as good courses. I really liked the atmosphere at both Yale and Georgetown. My teachers were approachable, friendly, and more than willing to spend extra time just chatting with me about their subjects. My classmates--some of whom were considerably more adept than me at certain subjects--never were cut-throat; in fact, most were willing to help me when I couldn't "see" a concept. For me, Yale and Georgetown were decidedly "friendly and warm."

HOWEVER--and this is a big "however"--at both elite schools I saw students who were unhappy and couldn't wait to try to transfer. They suffered problems, not just with a roommate--that can happen to anyone; you simply put in for a change--but with room design, the food, the accents (!) people had. Once you decide you hate a place, you're not going to like anything about it--and your mind is not apt to change. I would go to classes I loved, and I'd discover that a classmate couldn't stand the same class, same day. This is why I feel so strongly that your son should look over his two options in person. His enjoyment of a school probably will have nothing to do with whether it is considered elite or less-well-known. His enjoyment will come from his sense of how well he fits into the feel of a place.

I have discovered over the years that some people have stereotyped elite schools as cold places, full of self-centered people, fighting for the top. In my experience, as a student, and as a visitor to other such schools, this is a false stereotype. One of my favorite high-school students was accepted at Dartmouth Medical School (a very tough admission) because his interviewer told him he was deeply impressed with how sincerely the young man wanted to make life better for the poor and the sick. Can you imagine how many applicants had, directly or indirectly, told the interviewer the same thing?! But he wanted Aubrey, my former student, because he knew Aubrey had a great heart. If the interviewer had simply wanted a brilliant student, he could have chosen from many who had staggeringly good MCATs, etc. In his four years at DMS, Aubrey was treated with kindness and generosity while he did some very hard work. He is now a highly effective physician in San Francisco.

Please encourage your son to find out for himself where he feels he can feel at home and enjoy the atmosphere in which he can do his best. He may hate the elite school or he may love it; the same goes for the less-well-known university.