Best-value American Universities
I recently had the pleasure of visiting Hillsdale College and meeting Dr Rahe.
It was a thrilling experience to be among an entire community of people who see the world as I do! My student guide was an impressive young man, and filled me with hope for the young generation. I'd love to send my daughter there, but there is no way she is going to want to attend Hillsdale. She has always lived in The Big City and can't imagine being out in the sticks for four years, and is not at all averse to schools dominated by liberalism. She'll major in a hard science anyway.
I'm starting this conversation to try to find out what alternatives to Hillsdale the Ricochet members have to recommend. And I mean 'best-value' in both senses - - - the cost of attendance and also whether the core values of the USA are taught at all.
Living in Japan, we've sort of made up our minds that Stanford (travel convenience for us and reputation) is the only college we would be willing to borrow a lot of money for our child to attend. If she doesn't get accepted there, we'll go for the best financial aid package weighed against the academic rep.
What schools did you or will you encourage your children to consider?
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Aug '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
If your daughter would like a big-city university experience, have you considered looking south to Hong Kong?
My daughter's only nine, but my wife and I are already considering the question of college. I've lived here in HK for 20 years, and my wife's a native, so we'd be delighted for our daughter to be able to attend Hong Kong University or the HK University of Science and Technology (our MIT, if you will; it's extremely good), which both teach in English. Chinese University of Hong Kong is equally excellent, but more of its classes are taught in Chinese, as the name implies, although they do accept overseas/non-Chinese-speaking students, too.
Universities here are increasingly interested in attracting overseas students, and HK is the urban experience par excellence -- and for us parents, it's also comforting to know it's one of the world's safest and most orderly cities.
Anyway, best wishes, and keep us posted on your progress!
May '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
"Bite your tongue, Dukie." I am sure I am the only Duke grad who bleeds black and gold in basketball. I did a residency at Wake and love the school but they accept political correctness and promote grade inflation almost as much as my alma mater which leads the pack in those areas.
Jan '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
Here's the link to the Forbes' list: http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelnoer/2011/08/03/americas-top-colleges/
And have you thought about Simon Fraser University or Univ. of British Columbia?
Apr '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
Nice to hear you had a good experience at Hilllsdale. We're keeping Hillsdale at the top of our list for our high school freshman. We're a zero debt family and Hillsdale's values align with our own.
ETA: I attended a hippy-dippy deep blue college, Macalester in Minnesota. It was almost singularly responsible for turning me into a Conservative. ;-)
Edited on August 9, 2011 at 5:28amOct '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
I would have to give a second or is it a third to Harvey Mudd. You have the advantages of a small college and a larger combined campus that includes Claremont McKenna College.
For my oldest daughter it was a combination of the schools that accepted her and the financial packages that were offered. She received a scholarship from Notre Dame and graduated from there with a Bachelor of Science degree. It has held her in good stead since.
Oct '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
Jun '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
iWc: I am a contrarian, and my children share this trait. We just don't do things merely because others are doing them.
So I am not worried about the environment of any given school as much as most people should be. · Aug 8 at 4:43pm
But that is exactly why you should find a school where the environment suits your kids. If they were mindless sheep, any school would do because they would be content to follow right along with the crowd. If they are independent thinkers with a spine, they'll want to find a peer group of interesting, thoughtful kids to bounce their ideas off.
May '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
Why not join the Coast Guard?
Jun '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
Southern Pessimist: She would say that a junior college degree can be the best value in American education if you know what you want to do with it. · Aug 8 at 4:50pm
Edited on Aug 08 at 04:56 pm
I know several wildly succesful people who started at community colleges. It sounds crazy, but when I graduated from high school, some classmates chose to attend community college over Rutgers because the tuition was $300 vs. $600. That's per year, not per credit. Money was tight & many of the kids had 5+ siblings & their families were still shelling out tuition for Catholic high schools on blue collar salaries. Pennies were pinched wherever possible.
Jun '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
Dave:
For my oldest daughter it was a combination of the schools that accepted her and the financial packages that were offered. She received a scholarship from Notre Dame and graduated from there with a Bachelor of Science degree. It has held her in good stead since. · Aug 8 at 6:11pm
Today Notre Dame costs over $55K per year. Only 20 scholarships are awarded, and they cover $25K of the year's expenses. If you don't qualify for need based aid, ND is out of reach for many students. I'd put them firmly in the category of "merit is a dirty word" schools. As they've climbed in the rankings, ND has moved away from their core loyal feeder schools of middle class and blue collar Catholics. Those people can no longer afford ND. I'm talking about the cop married to the RN. That couple is considered rich by today's financial aid standards and would be ineligible for any need-based aid. They are expected to pull a quarter million out of their pockets and many are just saying no.
Apr '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
Yes, Washington is her 'safety' school. It's where she'll go unless she gets a full ride at a more prestigious institution. And UW has a 'sister school' relationship with Kobe University, my wife's alma mater, and has a one-year direct exchange program through which UW students attend on an equal basis with Kobe U students, studying in native Japanese, which my daughter can handle. She's just as Japanese as she is American, quite a marvel, and that makes the UW exchange program the best we've learned about so far.
Apr '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
Very important points to consider, thanks! My daughter is bilingual and bicultural, both Japanese and American in equal measure. My wife, though, is a junior high school homeroom teacher and predictably liberal. Growing up mainly in Japan, my conservative/libertarian voice is the only one she has heard in her life, and despite my eloquence, erudition, and passion (not to mention modesty), I'm afraid she has grown up hating political debate and takes refuge in apolitical "science", where people don't yell at each other. When I mentioned to her last week that she will be eligible to vote in Nov '12, so she'd better know what the issues are . . . never mind; you don't want to know. King Prawn, I trust you are right, that she'll be able to draw upon the values I've preached to her when she will need to.
Apr '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
Western Chauvinist:
I also want to second Instugator's plug for the USAF Academy. I didn't attend, but was fortunate enough to have instructors from there teach a few of my engineering classes at CU Colorado Springs. They were the best.
Yes, I recommended Air Force to her. She already knew about it due to a male classmate's interest.
Apr '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
Ricochet comes through! Thanks to everyone for the comments, and for the personal nature of many of them. I should perhaps mention that my daughter lives with my brother in Bellevue, WA, so that she can attend one of that city's superb public schools. Education in Japan starts out magnificently in elementary school then gets progressively worse right through to the disgraceful university system, excepting the top schools' hard sciences and engineering. Our daughter loves Japan and her friends she grew up with, but even her Japanese teachers encouraged her to take advantage of her chance to study in America.
Apr '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
I've taught English in Japanese high schools and universities, and our family is in complete agreement that US secondary and higher education is far superior, except in citizenship training.
One thing I don't like about Japanese universities is that students apply for and enter a specific department, and changing one's major or transferring is quite difficult. Another bad point is that Medicine, Law, and Dentistry all begin in the undergrad years, right out of high school.
The worst thing, though, is that entrance is determined solely by test scores (SAT subject tests-equivalent), then the admitted students are deemed to have the 'right' to graduate, and they hardly study. Cramming for the entrance exams ruins their chances for a normal childhood.
Mar '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
As a two-time graduate of the University of Illinois, I cannot more highly recommend a Big Ten education. As the finest collection of publicly-financed schools in the nation, not enough praise can be heaped upon the cross-promotional research capabilities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. If your daughter wants to focus on hard science, then she can receive a top-flight scientific curriculum, virtually untainted by political correctness. Upon graduation it will be helpful to have a degree from a school, which business recruiters value, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Edited on August 9, 2011 at 6:06amMay '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
I'm going to agree with Southern Pessimist. Unless she needs to get a Ricochet internship (I think those are all for Dartmouth and Yale students who worked on the alternative conservative paper) to succeed in life, if actual education and economic sense are more important than networking to get jobs as 25 year old pundits in Washington or NY, the undergrad degree is only the prelude to grad school. And you can get a solid education anywhere that the PC idiots have not completely taken over. In fact, you are better off in the middle of the country, the less august the institution name, the better, all too often.
Rubber Duckie and I got married when she was a 19 year old nursing school dropout, and we had two daughters. She went back to school at age 32 one night class at a time at Northern Virginia Community College (Sterling, in Loudon County), and finished her accounting degree more than a decade later at Metro State U in St. Paul; she has had a quite successful career. (more)
May '10
Re: Best-value American Universities
Both of our daughters went to community college for two years on the Minnesota options program and transferred to non-elite state universities after high school, one as a second semester sophomore, the other as a junior. One took hard science, the other majored in English and History. They each graduated with no loans or debt, and got graduate fellowships, competing against the applicants from Brown and Berkeley.
One got her doctorate at Minnesota, the other at Georgetown- with no student loans- they are both professors (engineering and history), one at a world famous English university, the other at a fast-rising East Coast university.
The message is that community colleges are fine, state universities are fine, what you get out of it is what you put in, not the name of the school. Unless your purpose is to network. Don't get caught up in the names of the schools. I'd rather take Econ classes from Russ Roberts at George Mason any day than Paul Krugman at Princeton. You'll actually learn something from Dr. Roberts.
Mar '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
I would like to suggest a smaller university with teachers who teach instead of research only and where undergraduates get a larger chance to be involved in research and advanced projects. So many undergrads at large universities never see the great professor.
As an example, not necessarily a recomendation, I attended, and my nephew attended the hard sciences at what is now known as Point Loma Nazarene University ( I in Chemistry and he in Biology). Both of us (25 years apart) published research and got into medical school from there.
In hard sciences it is graduate school that matters and better graduate openings come from broader experience often not available to an undergrad at a major research university.
As far as PLNU specifically, it is a "Christian" University but I wouldn't have known a Nazarene from a Catholic at that time and found it remarkably safe place to live and absolutely gorgeous on the coast of Southern California overlooking the main Navy Seal base. I do not think any of my peers in medical school had better preparation. The undergraduate research is so important in any hard science as it prepares you for graduate school very well.
Apr '11
Re: Best-value American Universities
Duane Oyen: each graduated with no loans or debt, and got graduate fellowships, competing against the applicants from Brown and Berkeley.
The message is that community colleges are fine, state universities are fine, what you get out of it is what you put in, not the name of the school. Unless your purpose is to network. Don't get caught up in the names of the schools.
Your points are well taken, but here is the different perspective my family has.
It is just as likely that my daughter will choose to live in Japan as a Japanese citizen as it is that she'll be an American, or even in a third country representing a Japanese company or organization. Japan is often summed up in the term "gakureki-shakai", which means "a society in which one's success depends on the brand-name prestige of the schools attended". On her American side, I am alone in actively guiding her to believe in American exceptionalism and therefore be interested in a classical-liberal arts education and subsequently be able to live a just and fruitful life. [continued below]