College-bound students, the Ivy League schools are great institutions of learning. They provide world-class education and open up career opportunities for graduates. And they confer bumper-sticker bragging rights to the families of the students enrolled in them.
Stay away from the Ivies.
That’s the advice of Cathy Copeland Titus, co-founder of CollegeHero, a firm that guides students and their families through the process of selecting and applying to institutions of higher learning. Titus recently presented this caution and other surprising takes on the college application dance during her webinar “College Choices: Public vs. Private vs. Prestigious” and a follow-up conversation with spoke with Rethinking65.
The landscape has changed significantly since the parents of today’s high school students attended college, according to Copeland Titus. “It is more expensive than ever,” she said, and more competitive than it has ever been — particularly for the top 30, 40, 50 schools in the prestige category.
“It’s a real formula for potential disaster,” she warned.
Copeland Titus is a skeptic of the “prestige” schools, including the Ivy League. While she acknowledges they are great, she emphasizes they are not appropriate or attainable for most students and may not be worth their exorbitant cost. Two huge barriers stand in the way for most students — the high cost and high academic standards. They are a different breed from other schools, with different rules, she said.
The elite schools can be very generous to students who meet their criteria for financial aid, Copeland Titus notes. “They typically meet 100% of your needs. But there’s always the caveat, that you actually have to get in and be accepted,” she said. “Typically, this is few and far between.”
It’s well known that the seven Ivy League institutions and other elite universities — schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Cornell — are notoriously difficult to get into, with acceptance rates typically well below 10%. And students who don’t qualify for financial aid need to be able to pay the astronomically high tuition, according to Copeland Titus.
“Unless a student fits one of two categories, the Ivies are out of their range anyway,” she said, referring to families with low income and those who are wealthy. While elite schools’ very high academic standards are the primary reason for their low acceptance rates, their cachet is also a contributor.
“Part of the reason why there is such low acceptance rate is because so many people are applying to the same top 20 colleges, and so it’s an inflated sense of their worth, in some ways. But people are very impacted by brand allure,” she said.
Two attendees left the webinar the moment Copeland Titus told her audience, “Maybe you thought you were going to learn how to get into an Ivy. Hopefully I have convinced you to at least think about broadening your horizons and looking at colleges that are best for you.”
Where to Find Tuition ‘Discounts’
Copeland Titus then turned to the financial piece. “If you’re fortunate enough to be able to spend $95,000 a year to go to Vanderbilt and you can get in there,” she said, “I ask you, even so, do you think it’s worth it? What is the return on investment?”
“Vanderbilt is a great school, and I would never disparage it as a university, but is it worth that much more? Because there are really terrific schools that are more in the $70,000-a-year range,” she said.
And unlike those top-tier schools, which offer only need-based aid, these other colleges and universities offer merit scholarships based on academic performance and other criteria that can bring the annual cost down “to 40 or 50 based on your prowess,” she said.
“We actually refer to merit aid as tuition discounting, and that’s a very common phrase in the industry,” she said. “It has to do with, how desirable is that student? Are they a top-quartile student, or are they going to be in the top of the class? Because it’s a gamble that they’re going to do well, they’re going to thrive, they’re going to become good alumni and continue to support the endowment.”
Seeking the Essential but Elusive ‘Personal Fit’
While some metrics of the college application process are easily quantifiable, like grade-point averages and SAT scores (for determining a student’s academic fit) and tuition and financial aid (for measuring financial fit), Copeland Titus also noted that another equally important but hard-to-quantify factor must be weighed: personal fit.
“Are they going to thrive?” she asked. “Are they going to find their people and feel they are fitting in, and they’re happy? Because it could be a real house of cards. If the personal fit is off and they’re unhappy, it’s going to impact their academics.”
The effects of students’ inability to fit in at their school are real and increasing, she said. Across the county, completion rates are slipping, meaning more and more college students are taking more than four years to earn an undergraduate degree.
“There’s a freshman to sophomore attrition rate, meaning they didn’t find their right personal fit, or they are overwhelmed financially,” said Copeland Titus. The result is some students transfer schools, stretching out their time in college, she explained.
“Personal fit is one of the most ambiguous things, because most 17- to 18-year-olds aren’t 100% clear on what they want,” Copeland Titus said. One of the best ways to get a feel for a student’s potential fit at a candidate school is to visit there before applying, she said. “I always recommend that students visit during session so they’re actually seeing college kids on campus, moving around between all the facilities,” she advised.
“But it’s also about getting the physicality. Where are the dorms? Where are the classrooms? How far is the walk? Does it feel safe? Do you like the vibe? Are you comfortable in the environment?”
Visit Twice
Copeland Titus encourages families to visit schools a second time, if possible, before making a final decision. While visiting, parents should let their child roam the campus on their own to get a feel for it. She followed her own advice with some trepidation when her daughter toured the campus of New York University, she said.
“She wanted New York City in the worst way, and it was very hard for me to just sit back and let her walk around Manhattan by herself at 16,” Copeland Titus recalled. “But it was the only way for her to really understand what kind of environment she was going to be in. And thank God for cell phones.”
Study, Study, Study … the Schools You Apply to
Students should do a lot more to prepare for college than tour campuses, though. They need to make themselves competitive by optimizing various factors. “Grades, of course,” Copeland Titus said. “Curriculum strength. That means that you choose the more aggressive honors or AP courses, if it’s available to you,” she said, referring to Advanced Placement, or college-credit studies.
“Your scores do play a role, your extracurricular activities, your sports, your clubs, any special awards. Maybe your character, reflected through your essays, is an important piece of the puzzle. And then, do you have a job?” These are the factors that the colleges are looking at, she said.
Students who fail to learn about the colleges they apply to are at a disadvantage. “A lot of students are so busy that they don’t take the time to do the research,” Copeland Titus said, adding that they can end up applying to too many schools. “I typically promote 10 to 12 at the most, and that can include an Ivy. I like to tell my students to prove to me why you should apply here. Why are you a good candidate for this school? They need to dig in and do their research on any school that they applied to, because I’m a believer in the philosophy of, ‘Let’s focus on best for the student and every school they apply to.’ I want to see them be absolutely thrilled.”
“The best college is not what a magazine or a website tells you is best. College is a very, very personal term, and how you determine best is through an evaluative process.”
— Cathy Copeland Titus
“The best college is not what a magazine or a website tells you is best,” she said. “College is a very, very personal term, and how you determine best is through an evaluative process.”
Financial Fit is Key
But the best personal fit is meaningless if the student and family cannot afford the school, Copeland Titus cautioned.
“One of my mantras that I have always built my business on is that I will not put schools on a student’s list that they can get into that the parents can’t afford,” she said, adding that families need to look at the financial picture holistically.
“We talk about cost of tuition, but cost of attendance is the metric most families should look at. That includes tuition, but it also includes room and board. It includes travel. It includes books — how quaint is that, but we do still see people buy books — or computers,” she said. “It’s the entire nut that everything costs, and that’s the metric that people should be looking at, including debt service if they take loans.”
Most importantly, she added, “Is the family going to be able to afford it all four years and not disrupt their retirement, overburden their cash flow or short-change younger siblings?”
Ed Prince is a writer for Rethinking65. In a four-decade career in journalism, he has served as an editor with many of New Jersey’s leading newspapers, including the Star-Ledger, Asbury Park Press and Home News Tribune. Read more of his articles here.
