Would you transfer?

[Goodgood]

I don't know if any of the Ivy leagues are worth the money. Not that they are not very good institutes, just not worth the money they take you for.

Kind of like a Lamborghini, a really cool car, and if you can afford it, hey it's your money, but do you really need to pay that much to get from point A to point B? Kinda overkill. Just never considered overkill a great investment. On the other hand I was neither wealthy enough or smart enough to get into one anyway....so my opinion really doesn't matter too much.

Some of them are among the most expensive, but most are the same as the other private schools.

America's 20 most expensive colleges

 

[Ozzie Nelson]

I am a happy man with my sons. Harvard and Dartmouth serve them well. Many here know stuff I am unaware of, so I bow out. Irony intended.

 

[CocoHusky]

I think the rationale for most of those kids was pretty simple: they realized they wouldn't get playing time at UConn. Samarie Walker was an odd one. Not sure what was really going on with her.

But most of these kids to reasonably well on decent, but not great, teams, and get the playing time they sought.

Just sad for Courtney, because I think she regressed from her junior year in high school to her time at UConn. Just didn't see the brilliance that made her into a top All American in high school.

But perhaps she'll shine again in Arizona. We all wish her the best.

Courtney never achieved All American status in HS. She was however Arizona Gatorade player of the year as a HS Junior.

 

[BobbyJ]

[

What Courtney explained to me is that she is allocated a "budget" that more than covers her team "needs" & there is a process for requesting more for situations like worthy walkons . At that time 2008 she was two years into the Princeton job???. I think that still qualifies as "need based".
The NCAA regulates the number of scholarships at a school can give out by sport. So somewhere along the line the NCAA must be translating Ivy League aide $$ into Scholarship $$. Does anyone know how that actually works?

I would think the school probably gives the coach an amount of grant money that's available each year for use with the incoming class but it's still need based. The Ivy League is very strict about their so called "packages". They include grants in aid and a combination of loans that do cover most of the costs for the less well-to-do kids but there are still a lot of low interest loans in there. And as Ozzie says, it is solely based on need and the financial status forms that the parents provide. Unless it's been altered in the last few years, the big equalizer is that once a school processes and offers that "package" no other Ivy school can exceed it, they can only match it. That eliminates the inevitable effort of coaches to try to entice the better players with a higher grant. They probably like getting a few kids who can really play that have wealthy parents to avoid having to use up much of their budgeted grant money but I'm sure they still try to get the most talented kids they can. My daughter eventually chose Dartmouth over Harvard and Princeton but the packages were identical.

 

[billnaples]

I'd rather be a starter at Harvard, Princeton or Stanford if they accept me than sitting on the bench cheering for my teammates to win a championship at UConn.

Had you left this at Harvard and Princeton I was with you. While Stanford is generally a highly regarded academic institution if you look at the track record of their women's team and their coach they are a lot closer to UConn than any of the Ivys.

 

[billnaples]

Courtney never achieved All American status in HS. She was however Arizona Gatorade player of the year as a HS Junior.

I think her injury put quite a damper on both her real progress and maybe even more crept into her confidence. As I recall she was recruited as a "shooter" and that level never showed at UConn.

 

[Carnac]

Yes. No. Sitting on a bench for four years and contributing little if anything to a Championship team!!! I would get no personal gratification out of that. I have always joined a team to play, not ride the pine. I get my fulfillment from playing the sport with my team and not as much out of winning. That may sound crazy to some, just like riding the bench for four years sounds crazy to me.

I hear ya Tony. Ol Carnac is a PLAYA!!!! At the end of the game, I want my uniform to be sweaty, wrinkled and dirty.

 

[UcMiami]

I don't know if any of the Ivy leagues are worth the money. Not that they are not very good institutes, just not worth the money they take you for.

Kind of like a Lamborghini, a really cool car, and if you can afford it, hey it's your money, but do you really need to pay that much to get from point A to point B? Kinda overkill. Just never considered overkill a great investment. On the other hand I was neither wealthy enough or smart enough to get into one anyway....so my opinion really doesn't matter too much.

Part of what you get out of an Ivy league school is the connections you make with fellow students, the faculty, and beyond the immediate campus. I actually started at an Ivy and finished at another private school in the middle ranks.

One of the most shocking experiences at that other school was walking out of an interesting class discussion with a friend and continuing the discussion at which point he turned and said, yeah, whatever, I'm not that interested. We were both in the same major, for which this course was a part of the requirement, and there was this lack of curiosity. The better school you go to, the more likely it is that you are going to be surrounded by more motivated, more curious peers, and the more peer pressure there will be to be equally motivated and curious. Some people are very self motivated, most respond to their surroundings to some degree. It is true in sports and it is true in academics.

Because of my time at an Ivy, ten years later I went into business with one of my friends from there and we did well enough to allow me to retire a few years early. The chance of you peers going on to be successful/influential as professionals goes up, the better the school you attend. Doesn't mean that you and your friends will not be just as successful or more so at State U, or anywhere else, but the odds just get longer. In my case, I got a very good return on my (my parents) investment in an Ivy.

And I actually grew up in Storrs so went to EO Smith the local HS, and part of what made the Ivy possible for me was that about 2/3 of that student body was Uconn connected and the peer pressure I experienced was to succeed academically - I didn't want to be the screw-up amongst my friends which was more motivating for me, than anything I personally brought to the table.

I think if all you are looking at is the academic course work and the faculty, with a completely self motivated kid, you are right - an Ivy is probably not worth it. But like the chances of success for the 'average kid' growing up in a college town vs. an inner city are very different, so too are the chances for success for a college kid based on the surroundings.

 

[BigBird]

...Kind of like a Lamborghini, a really cool car, and if you can afford it, hey it's your money, but do you really need to pay that much to get from point A to point B? Kinda overkill. Just never considered overkill a great investment.

Sometimes, it's hard to measure that specific point at which overkill begins. I had my pick of new sports cars under 150k. I went with the Stingray, not because is was the best in every metric, but because it gave me more bang for the buck than does the (love 'em) Porsche that costs exactly double. But an outsider might ask, why not get a Chevy Cruze instead of the Vette, and pocket the 50k difference? That only makes sense to someone who has owned neither ride.

On the other hand, I turned down an academic scholarship to a Big Ten school in preference for attending Illinois State without any scholarship support. What seemed fiscally foolish at the time was, in fact, the best decision I made in my young life, fiscally and otherwise.

My Ivy league friends aren't special because of their education choice. They are special to me for very many reasons that are merely amplified by their education choices. I still wouldn't say that any of them made a poor choice.

I will say that if more people (especially parents) knew how good some community colleges are, there would be one heck of a lot less student loan debt. The perception of inferiority has been a burden those schools have born at length. But here, almost half of students ranked first or second academically in their high school class choose the local community college. The juco grads transfer-to 4-year school of choice is the U. Of Illinois, even with it's lofty admissions standards. Statistically, these transferring students will do as well or better after transfer than students who started at UI as freshmen. Let that one sink in.

It's like shoes: It doesn't matter how well they fit the shoe salesman. They need to fit you.

 

[ScarlettB]

I would give myself two years to become a starter or at least a first off the bench player. After my first year of riding the pine, I would ask myself if I had done everything I could to earn a starting position. If I had and was still not starting, I would transfer to a program where I felt I could contribute and earn significant playing time. If I hadn't, I would reassess my commitment to playing D1 basketball.