Replies

V's wife,

I'll give you a little background on myself, and then share the conclusions I've reached. I was admitted to Notre Dame and went there straight out of high school turning down a full ride at an in-state university figuring that the name of a well known school on the resume would be worth something. I did graduate in four years with a double major in the early 90's, but I had to finish some credits in the summer to pull it off. After working for a while, I'm back at school (this time at a small local private college with around 2000 students) a few miles down the road from where I live to pick up some credits before applying to grad school. If I had to do it all over again, I would have come here to earn my bachelors and skipped Notre Dame altogether.

Speaking as someone who has done it, I would strongly advise against turning down a full ride at one school to go to another school where I had to pay tuition. Four-year degrees are simply too numerous these days to have much value without going to grad school, and while brand name universities make a lot of grandiose claims, they are awfully hard to quantify. I suppose that if I was interested in a career in politics, law, or finance in the northeast corridor, I'd try and go to Harvard or Yale...but that would be more for the contacts that I could develop while there. There's nothing about the educational experience at those schools that makes them worth choosing. Also, grade inflation in the nonsciences is known to be widespread at the undergraduate level and so GPA has become a sort of absolute measure of performance that exists apart from the name on your sheepskin.

My advice would be to pick a smaller, rural university at the division II or III level. For the most part, high profile and very large universities should be avoided for undergraduate work. Classes at smaller schools are taught by real professors speaking English, not foreign grad assistants who don't have a handle on the language. If you need questions answered outside of class, finding the professor during office hours isn't a problem. The administrations of most small schools are much better at customer service than those at large universities, and classes aren't difficult to get into.

When it comes to evaluating the political leanings of schools, there's a college guide out that helps quite a bit. I don't recall it's name, but I believe that Bill Bennett is the author. I'd find it and read it. When I refer to small vs. large schools here, consider an arbitrary cutoff of around 5,000 students as the number i use to differntiate the two.

Finally, there are other things to consider: which school is going to have better housing facilities? Since your son is going to be in NROTC, which program's officers does he seem to get along with better? Which school is closer to home? Since it's likely that he is going to meet the woman he ends up marrying during his college years, what is the male/female ratio at the school? What sorts of kids go there (working class, spoiled brats, etc)? How big a role do fraternities and sororities play in campus life (for instance, at Duke, they dominate campus social life...one of my reasons for turning down that school...)?

Good luck as you make your decision.

applemac_g4 makes some very good points, especially the social stuff, which most people don't talk about beyond 'is it a party/frat/sorority school?' and are the dorms nice.

A large number of people do indeed meet their spouse in college, and very often the sort of people with whom you are friends in college are the sort of people you will be friends with throughout life. Class is a factor in America, though one not much discussed. If you are typically middle or upper-middle class in background, you are unlikely to be comfortable at a school in which most of the students come from working class backgrounds. Likewise, if you are a strong Catholic, you might not be comfortable at an evangelical Protestant school or a rabidly leftist or Jewish school (e.g. Brandeis), or vice versa.

The only way to get a good feel about these sorts of issues is to (1) visit when students are around, preferably for an overnight visit, and (2) if possible, see who from which schools (and prep schools) in your area is currently at XYZ college, that could be very indicative of the class orientation of the school.