Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning: The Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence

by Howard Greene, Matthew W Greene

Overview

Completely revised and updated with a dozen new colleges and universities, the essential guide students need to help them choose and gain admission to the outstanding schools that fit them best.

Based on Howard and Matthew Greene’s years of counseling experience and research, The Hidden Ivies is an invaluable, in-depth look inside sixty-three renowned academic institutions. These private colleges and universities offer students a broad liberal arts education that will help them build a strong foundation for the rest of their lives. The Greenes help families understand what makes an Ivy League college so desirable, and why these Hidden Ivies (some less well-known than others) offer an educational and personal experience to rival that found on Ivy campuses.

In this fully revised and updated edition—featuring new institutions, including Dickinson College, Fordham University, and Southern Methodist University—the premier educational consultants and authors of Making It Into a Top College take you school-by-school, revealing:

• Why these are unique institutions of exceptional merit
• What criteria to use in evaluating different programs
• The admissions requirements for each selective school
• How to approach the selective college admissions process today
• Student perspectives on their college experiences
• The value of pursuing a liberal arts education

Choosing a college is one of the most important decisions every student—and their parents—will ever make. With costs rising and so many to choose from—and the competition for acceptance more intense than ever before—The Hidden Ivies offers invaluable insights and advice to help every student choose and apply to the right school: the place where they will thrive, academically, socially, and personally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060953621
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	07/25/2000
Series:	Greene's Guides
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	7.38(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.84(d)

About the Author

Howard Greene, M.A., M.Ed., is the president of Howard Greene & Associates, the nation's leading independent educational consulting company, and is a former Princeton University admissions officer and member of the Faculty Board of Advisors. Howard has counseled thousands of students for almost forty years and has been a consultant for numerous schools, colleges, and corporations. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he holds master's degrees from Harvard and New York University. He lives in Wilton, Connecticut.

Matthew W. Greene, Ph.D., is Educational Director of Howard Greene & Associates. Matthew has consulted with families for a dozen years and often writes and speaks on educational planning and college admissions issues. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Matthew has taught and advised students at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he earned his doctorate in public policy. He lives in Wilton, Connecticut.

Read an Excerpt

"A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning."

--Benjamin Disraeli

Our mission in writing this book for students and parents is to create greater awareness of the small, distinctive cluster of colleges and universities of excellence that are available to gifted college-bound students. We would be surprised, indeed, to encounter a student or parent throughout the country or outside the United States who has not heard of the exclusive band of elite institutions known as the Ivy League. They have become, in our modern economic universe of marketing, the ultimate brand name for quality education and prestige. It is a challenge not to become intoxicated with the thought of graduating from one of these famous schools. Each year these eight institutions'Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania'are flooded with applications from thousands of fully qualified individuals who, despite the fact that they have done everything one could ask of them as students, will not be invited to enroll in any of these schools. Other universities such as Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Virginia, Duke, Georgetown, and the group historically known as “the Little Ivies” (including Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, and Williams) have scaled the heights of prestige and selectivity and also turn away thousands of our best and brightest young men and women. This is the present situation, and it is one that will be with us for a number of years down the road.

Parents can prepare for their role of supporter and guide to their children as early as junior high school, since numeroussurveys have revealed that they are the number-one influence in their children's choice of college. The more you are armed with information on the breadth of top college choices to aim for and what is required for admission, the better able you will be to serve your son or daughter. Students can profit by reading'in the early years of high school'about the factors that make for an outstanding college and which ones might match up best for them. If they then follow the essential steps we outline, they will better their odds of being accepted to the college of their choice.

Let's go directly to the heart of the matter: There are two dynamics at work that have combined to intensify the competition for admission to the best colleges. The number of high school graduates of exceptional ability and motivation who have set their sights on gaining the very best college education they can have is rising dramatically each year, as is the cost of receiving such an opportunity. Admissions deans at the selective colleges are shaking their heads in astonishment at the academic and other achievements of applicants to their schools. Never before have they seen so many young men and women who have attained such outstanding records in their high schools, performed at such high levels on the SAT and ACT, and garnered so many awards for their artistic, athletic, and intellectual capabilities. They worry, just as parents do, about the constant rise in tuition, fees, and room-and-board expenses. It has become an ongoing contest of increasing financial aid in order to stay ahead of the annual increases in the cost of a selective college education, which, at the top end, is now in the $33,000-per-year range.

In 1999, 1.3 million students took the SAT and another 1.2 sat for the ACT. Over 250,000 applications were received by the thirty Hidden Ivies and the eight Ivy League institutions alone in 1998. A great many of the best students are seeking guidance on identifying the best colleges and how to get into them. We have written this book to guide you on both counts. Parents and students are in a continual frenzy over the preparation for and admission to a top college today. The cost factor and the perception that the prestige factor will determine the quality of life their children will achieve has turned them into their own research-and-guidance teams who seek information from every source. The Hidden Ivies fills a large gap in the college admissions literature by providing the thoughtful researcher with descriptive, responsible, and insightful discussions of an exciting group of colleges and universities toward which many families are increasingly turning.

Both students and parents are greatly concerned about fulfilling the dream of attending a top college or university. As the number of outstanding candidates to the most selective schools continues to escalate, the competition for admission becomes more intense since the number of available places has not increased over time. To make matters worse, in the past several years virtually all of the Ivies and their counterparts have experienced a higher yield'the percentage of admitted students who choose to enroll'of accepted candidates than anticipated, which leass to overenrollment and which drives down the number of applicants who can be accepted in subsequent years! This is, in fact, one of the virtues of the top colleges: their determination to retain their historic enrollment in order to deliver outstanding teaching and a sense of community that has much to do with the learning experience.

Every day in the offices of Howard Greene and Associates, we meet with families who are embarking on the search for the best college for their children. One of the very first questions we are asked by many parents concerns the odds of their son or daughter getting into one of the Ivies. The next question, invariably, concerns what other top colleges to consider if this is either an unrealistic or uncertain goal. As the cost of a college degree continues its relentless climb, the name recognition of an institution becomes extremely important to the educational consumer, both to certify that the benefits of such a program are worth the high sticker price and to assure acceptance to graduate school and a good job at a later date. A commonly heard refrain of concerned parents is that they have so little real knowledge of, let alone insight into, the top colleges beyond the prestigious ones. Here is the point at which thousands of ambitious students need direction to these other great institutions, as well as greater understanding of their particular styles of teaching, the areas of academic and faculty strengths, and the predominant social and learning environments.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Chapter One:
The Liberal Arts: What Is a Liberal Arts Education and Why Is it Important Today?

Chapter Two:
What Makes an Ivy an Ivy?(And a Hidden Ivy?)

Chapter Three:
Individual College Descriptions

Chapter Four:
Words of Wisdom for Parents and Students(From Parents to Parents)

Appendices
The Hidden Ivies
Other Colleges and Universities of Excellence
Institutional Leaders Questionnaire
Student Questionnaire

Index

What People are Saying About This

Tina Segalla Grant

“Greenes’ Guides have always been a source of great information and timely advice, and these new editions are no exception.”

Editorial Reviews

Greenes’ Guides have always been a source of great information and timely advice, and these new editions are no exception.” — Tina Segalla Grant, Director of College Counseling, Choate Rosemary Hall School

From the Publisher

Greenes’ Guides have always been a source of great information and timely advice, and these new editions are no exception.

Tina Segalla Grant