- had a scholarship offer from a third school (UW, although it wasnt as good as yours)
- had two other less-prestigious but still good options around this point in time (BU with a small scholarship, and... extremely embarrassingly i do not remember the other one 💀)
- parents could pay for yale but not at all comfortably
...
1. dont take the uchi waitlist to heart. to some degree "it's all random" but also what they look for in early and RD pools is pretty different. (not cope, just rationalism.)
2. i agree with Jessie in that it is definitely very possible to go from a less prestigious school to a more prestigious MA and then PhD program in many fields. idk anything about pure math or philosophy specifically.
3. however, i agree with Gabriel in that **connections are king.**
i think i didn't realize before college how much connections matter. and they matter *specifically* *most* in this period of our lives (undergrad). connections are what get people the jobs they actually want to have. connections are what get people into the grad programs they want to be in. it REALLY matters in almost every field of academia who your thesis advisor and DUS are. it also REALLY matters who your peers are. and who your friends are. and who your friends of friends are.
i don't know anything about the pure math or phil programs at fordham or michigan. it's totally possible fordham is home to two of the world's leading pure mathematicians, and that would make a big difference. (i dont know anything about yale pure math, but i do know their philosophy program is very, very good.)
there's also a really, unexpectedly-perceptible difference in the ambitions each school cultivates (or doesn't). cities by paul graham is really applicable to college life. even if it is true that you will find the same small group of friends anywhere - and honestly, i don't know if i believe this - they will still have different ambitions depending on where they are, it will still be more or less difficult to find them, and it's not just your three closest friends who matter, but maybe even more importantly, it's your friends-of-friends and "friendly"s.
not to sound too "sparkly people and where to find them", but i think you will not find as many interesting and ambitious people at fordham or st. john's as you will at yale or uchicago (and i've already given you my thoughts on that divide).
in my own life: my best friends from high school went (one each) to MIT, NYU, Princeton, Cornell, and some Swiss medical school. from visiting them and hearing about their experiences, there was a clear and sharp divide: myself and my friends at Princeton and MIT found cool, interesting, ambitious, etc. friends quickly and easily. my friends at NYU, Cornell, and the Swiss medical school did not, were/are depressed at the lack of ambition/interestingness/whateverness in the people around them, and still don't really have the same kind of close-knit friends that myself and my friends at MIT and Princeton have. (altho i think the tides may be currently turning for my Cornell friend.)
(i think this will also significantly impact your - specifically you - quality of life.)
also, the sheer resources of a school matter a lot. is the school going to throw you money to use every summer for research or art or writing a book? does the school have partner programs on other continents? what is the actual campus of the school like? what physical resources do they have? who comes to speak at events, and gets asked questions afterwards, and might just present you with a really cool opportunity? who can your professors put you in touch with? does the school have a vast alumni network?
all of this goes to say: you can try to be a big fish in a small pond, but then you won't be able to meet other big fish. and what group of fish will you swim out with? (this applies to both older fish and younger fish.)
another anecdote: my best friend of 9 years waited to decide on yale vs MIT until *literally* the last hour. he kept flip-flopping between them during the last week (it was pretty emotionally exhausting for me having already committed to yale, lol). in his mind - he's a child math prodigy - it was a big-fish-small-pond (yale) vs small-fish-big-pond (MIT) decision. he went to MIT and is pretty confident that he made the right choice.
...imo connections are the most important part of college by a vast margin. if you're smart and resourceful enough you can basically learn anything anywhere. you're not paying for classes. you're paying for professor time, grad student time, future-superstar/collaborator/person-who-will-get-you-your-dream-job time, and school resources.
(these are all factors i considered when i had a very similar choice, so i have a lot to say, lol. ty once again for reading through a mountain of text. that being said, me and you are different people in slightly different situations, so you definitely don't have to make the same decision as me. and honestly a lot of these things i didn't even consider at the time. but i know them now!)
one last thing: i think AI radically changing the landscape will make either (a) make connections much, much more important, specifically peer-level connections, or (b) benefit/kill everyone anyway so who cares :)
Shocked at how closely our situations line up... I really appreciate you writing it all out, and will be keeping the "connections+++" conclusion in mind. I think that's one where I trust your experience (having gone to/being at the connections+++ place) somewhat more than others who can only speculate on what it might be like.
Also definitely counting the "(i think this will also significantly impact your - specifically you - quality of life.)" for a lot...
The bit about forming connections is right, but I want to say something about that, which is misunderstood by many... Introductions aren't free of liability – how does your "connection in high places" know you'll deliver on the promise? I absolutely abhor incidental connections or "networking" in the traditional business school / fraternity sense. What ends up being important in the early stages of life is working on interesting and/or hard problems with other people, who can actually see for themselves how you behave under pressure, who can see specific examples of your problem-solving ability, who experience the support or initiative or endurance you have in working on things. And usually, the higher the quality of the team, the higher the quality of the problem you can tackle, and the further you can push the solution. Which then unlocks qualitatively different situations and levels of achievement. Ideally. So, later on, when your former peers / teammates end up in various leadership positions, they can think back to the time you worked together and say: "yeah, so-and-so was quite good in this type of situation / with this type of problem" and make the appropriate connection / introduction. That you're more likely to deliver on, and continue the virtuous cycle. Again, ideally.
Wow, small world... I really love the "here's a list of sentences in [language you've never heard of], and here are some of those sentences in English. Match them up then write a new one."
In the Open Round, I remember a question with ten place names in Armenian, and having to decipher them... absolutely incredible. (I started with "cAnAdA," and it all flowed from there!)
good choice good choice. ive always liked those best as well. some of my NACLO friends masochistically like the writing system and number system questions the best and i will use this as a weapon in my long-standing war against them.
Re: college choices - what's your plan with academia, and what field are you going into? For instance, if you're going into nursing, I'd pick the full ride, since prestige isn't as much of an advantage in the nursing sector. But if you plan to get a PhD in chemical engineering, I strongly suspect Yale's superior labs and prestige will be a great help in grad school applications. The financials are also complicated by factors like how much support you're getting from your parents and eg. how willing you are to eat rice and beans every other day for a few years.
Basically, my folks can pay (but it's obviously still a ton of money), I love eating rice and beans, and I think the PhD is much closer to right than nursing. Yale is certainly a better option, but is it $400k better??
Your choice should be between Yale and Michigan. Given your PhD aspirations, St. John’s and Fordham will set you up considerably worse than either Yale or Michigan. I think it’s also worth considering that you will have somewhat better connections at Yale, and you should think about how much the additional money means to you (how well off is your family, etc.)—if it’s a lot (I know this is vague), probably go to Michigan; otherwise, Yale. For math or physics grad school, Michigan and Yale will put you in similar positions if and only if you work hard to get faculty attention at Michigan where there will be more competition. For philosophy, Yale will give you a better education and seriously better connections. You’ll have a significantly better shot at top Phil departments.
Thanks, this is helpful. St. John's and Fordham both feel like they'd be significantly more enjoyable experiences for me than Michigan (which is both huge and where I've already lived my whole life), but it's possible I'm way overupdating on that.
I don't know much about pure math. But you mention philosophy as your secondmost interest, and I can speak a bit more to that. Philosophy students from less prestigious undergraduate institutions who nevertheless do well in their studies can pursue a funded MA (this would look fairly similar to the Fordham situation, where they pay you a sum of money that covers tuition + living expenses in exchange for a bit of TA work) at a reputable program. So, to use a very loose example, you can try to get the best of both worlds by pursuing a full ride undergraduate at Fordham, then getting into a well-known terminal MA program, for example at Virginia Tech or Texas Tech. These kinds of programs have a good track record at placing MA graduates into great PhD programs (including Yale!) which will fund you well, and if you go down that route, you'd be able to get a full ride for all three legs of your university journey (undergraduate, Masters, PhD).
Of course, this turns on your ability to get into a good, funded MA program from Fordham. You will, after all, be competing against students who *did* go to Yale, and that might be a scary prospect. But grad school admissions tend to care most about your writing sample, so if you're confident in your ability to write philosophy, then you stand a solid chance. The lack of prestige coming from an undergraduate in Fordham doesn't help, but it also doesn't hurt as much as you might think - a lot of students go to MA programs specifically to improve the prestige of their institution when applying to PhD programs. So MA programs aren't as likely to look down on an unprestigious undergrad as PhD programs are.
If you do end up wanting to pursue a philosophy PhD, that is probably the route that imposes the least financial strain but still gives you a great PhD. If you want a bit more safety, you can also consider going to Ann Arbor - its philosophy department has an excellent reputation, meaning that if you stand out as an undergraduate, you might be able to get letters of recommendation from some really well-known philosophers. And it's the second cheapest school on your list of options.
Some people make a public promise of doing something, as a commitment device. My own experience has been the opposite — I somehow end up feeling like I’m being told what to do, and then get oppositional / defiant / reluctant to do it… Weird.
Very curious to see what the internet suggests for college choices! 👻
You should lowkey not go to Yale because you’d be miserable the entire four years, and it would be a waste of a large and important portion of your developmental life. The only reason you’d go it’s cause “oh it’s Yale is so cool” but in your heart of hearts, it would be terrible, you would be sad, and your love of academic things would be destroyed.
re college as someone who also:
- got into yale early
- was then waitlisted frm uchi
- had a scholarship offer from a third school (UW, although it wasnt as good as yours)
- had two other less-prestigious but still good options around this point in time (BU with a small scholarship, and... extremely embarrassingly i do not remember the other one 💀)
- parents could pay for yale but not at all comfortably
...
1. dont take the uchi waitlist to heart. to some degree "it's all random" but also what they look for in early and RD pools is pretty different. (not cope, just rationalism.)
2. i agree with Jessie in that it is definitely very possible to go from a less prestigious school to a more prestigious MA and then PhD program in many fields. idk anything about pure math or philosophy specifically.
3. however, i agree with Gabriel in that **connections are king.**
i think i didn't realize before college how much connections matter. and they matter *specifically* *most* in this period of our lives (undergrad). connections are what get people the jobs they actually want to have. connections are what get people into the grad programs they want to be in. it REALLY matters in almost every field of academia who your thesis advisor and DUS are. it also REALLY matters who your peers are. and who your friends are. and who your friends of friends are.
i don't know anything about the pure math or phil programs at fordham or michigan. it's totally possible fordham is home to two of the world's leading pure mathematicians, and that would make a big difference. (i dont know anything about yale pure math, but i do know their philosophy program is very, very good.)
there's also a really, unexpectedly-perceptible difference in the ambitions each school cultivates (or doesn't). cities by paul graham is really applicable to college life. even if it is true that you will find the same small group of friends anywhere - and honestly, i don't know if i believe this - they will still have different ambitions depending on where they are, it will still be more or less difficult to find them, and it's not just your three closest friends who matter, but maybe even more importantly, it's your friends-of-friends and "friendly"s.
not to sound too "sparkly people and where to find them", but i think you will not find as many interesting and ambitious people at fordham or st. john's as you will at yale or uchicago (and i've already given you my thoughts on that divide).
in my own life: my best friends from high school went (one each) to MIT, NYU, Princeton, Cornell, and some Swiss medical school. from visiting them and hearing about their experiences, there was a clear and sharp divide: myself and my friends at Princeton and MIT found cool, interesting, ambitious, etc. friends quickly and easily. my friends at NYU, Cornell, and the Swiss medical school did not, were/are depressed at the lack of ambition/interestingness/whateverness in the people around them, and still don't really have the same kind of close-knit friends that myself and my friends at MIT and Princeton have. (altho i think the tides may be currently turning for my Cornell friend.)
(i think this will also significantly impact your - specifically you - quality of life.)
also, the sheer resources of a school matter a lot. is the school going to throw you money to use every summer for research or art or writing a book? does the school have partner programs on other continents? what is the actual campus of the school like? what physical resources do they have? who comes to speak at events, and gets asked questions afterwards, and might just present you with a really cool opportunity? who can your professors put you in touch with? does the school have a vast alumni network?
all of this goes to say: you can try to be a big fish in a small pond, but then you won't be able to meet other big fish. and what group of fish will you swim out with? (this applies to both older fish and younger fish.)
another anecdote: my best friend of 9 years waited to decide on yale vs MIT until *literally* the last hour. he kept flip-flopping between them during the last week (it was pretty emotionally exhausting for me having already committed to yale, lol). in his mind - he's a child math prodigy - it was a big-fish-small-pond (yale) vs small-fish-big-pond (MIT) decision. he went to MIT and is pretty confident that he made the right choice.
...imo connections are the most important part of college by a vast margin. if you're smart and resourceful enough you can basically learn anything anywhere. you're not paying for classes. you're paying for professor time, grad student time, future-superstar/collaborator/person-who-will-get-you-your-dream-job time, and school resources.
(these are all factors i considered when i had a very similar choice, so i have a lot to say, lol. ty once again for reading through a mountain of text. that being said, me and you are different people in slightly different situations, so you definitely don't have to make the same decision as me. and honestly a lot of these things i didn't even consider at the time. but i know them now!)
one last thing: i think AI radically changing the landscape will make either (a) make connections much, much more important, specifically peer-level connections, or (b) benefit/kill everyone anyway so who cares :)
This is incredibly helpful, thanks!
Shocked at how closely our situations line up... I really appreciate you writing it all out, and will be keeping the "connections+++" conclusion in mind. I think that's one where I trust your experience (having gone to/being at the connections+++ place) somewhat more than others who can only speculate on what it might be like.
Also definitely counting the "(i think this will also significantly impact your - specifically you - quality of life.)" for a lot...
The bit about forming connections is right, but I want to say something about that, which is misunderstood by many... Introductions aren't free of liability – how does your "connection in high places" know you'll deliver on the promise? I absolutely abhor incidental connections or "networking" in the traditional business school / fraternity sense. What ends up being important in the early stages of life is working on interesting and/or hard problems with other people, who can actually see for themselves how you behave under pressure, who can see specific examples of your problem-solving ability, who experience the support or initiative or endurance you have in working on things. And usually, the higher the quality of the team, the higher the quality of the problem you can tackle, and the further you can push the solution. Which then unlocks qualitatively different situations and levels of achievement. Ideally. So, later on, when your former peers / teammates end up in various leadership positions, they can think back to the time you worked together and say: "yeah, so-and-so was quite good in this type of situation / with this type of problem" and make the appropriate connection / introduction. That you're more likely to deliver on, and continue the virtuous cycle. Again, ideally.
re NACLO as a past participant and current runner of test sites: congrats and good luck!! what are your favorite question types?
Wow, small world... I really love the "here's a list of sentences in [language you've never heard of], and here are some of those sentences in English. Match them up then write a new one."
In the Open Round, I remember a question with ten place names in Armenian, and having to decipher them... absolutely incredible. (I started with "cAnAdA," and it all flowed from there!)
good choice good choice. ive always liked those best as well. some of my NACLO friends masochistically like the writing system and number system questions the best and i will use this as a weapon in my long-standing war against them.
Re: college choices - what's your plan with academia, and what field are you going into? For instance, if you're going into nursing, I'd pick the full ride, since prestige isn't as much of an advantage in the nursing sector. But if you plan to get a PhD in chemical engineering, I strongly suspect Yale's superior labs and prestige will be a great help in grad school applications. The financials are also complicated by factors like how much support you're getting from your parents and eg. how willing you are to eat rice and beans every other day for a few years.
Made a comment on the ACX Open Thread with more details: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-373/comment/101170393
Basically, my folks can pay (but it's obviously still a ton of money), I love eating rice and beans, and I think the PhD is much closer to right than nursing. Yale is certainly a better option, but is it $400k better??
Your choice should be between Yale and Michigan. Given your PhD aspirations, St. John’s and Fordham will set you up considerably worse than either Yale or Michigan. I think it’s also worth considering that you will have somewhat better connections at Yale, and you should think about how much the additional money means to you (how well off is your family, etc.)—if it’s a lot (I know this is vague), probably go to Michigan; otherwise, Yale. For math or physics grad school, Michigan and Yale will put you in similar positions if and only if you work hard to get faculty attention at Michigan where there will be more competition. For philosophy, Yale will give you a better education and seriously better connections. You’ll have a significantly better shot at top Phil departments.
Thanks, this is helpful. St. John's and Fordham both feel like they'd be significantly more enjoyable experiences for me than Michigan (which is both huge and where I've already lived my whole life), but it's possible I'm way overupdating on that.
I don't know much about pure math. But you mention philosophy as your secondmost interest, and I can speak a bit more to that. Philosophy students from less prestigious undergraduate institutions who nevertheless do well in their studies can pursue a funded MA (this would look fairly similar to the Fordham situation, where they pay you a sum of money that covers tuition + living expenses in exchange for a bit of TA work) at a reputable program. So, to use a very loose example, you can try to get the best of both worlds by pursuing a full ride undergraduate at Fordham, then getting into a well-known terminal MA program, for example at Virginia Tech or Texas Tech. These kinds of programs have a good track record at placing MA graduates into great PhD programs (including Yale!) which will fund you well, and if you go down that route, you'd be able to get a full ride for all three legs of your university journey (undergraduate, Masters, PhD).
Of course, this turns on your ability to get into a good, funded MA program from Fordham. You will, after all, be competing against students who *did* go to Yale, and that might be a scary prospect. But grad school admissions tend to care most about your writing sample, so if you're confident in your ability to write philosophy, then you stand a solid chance. The lack of prestige coming from an undergraduate in Fordham doesn't help, but it also doesn't hurt as much as you might think - a lot of students go to MA programs specifically to improve the prestige of their institution when applying to PhD programs. So MA programs aren't as likely to look down on an unprestigious undergrad as PhD programs are.
If you do end up wanting to pursue a philosophy PhD, that is probably the route that imposes the least financial strain but still gives you a great PhD. If you want a bit more safety, you can also consider going to Ann Arbor - its philosophy department has an excellent reputation, meaning that if you stand out as an undergraduate, you might be able to get letters of recommendation from some really well-known philosophers. And it's the second cheapest school on your list of options.
Some people make a public promise of doing something, as a commitment device. My own experience has been the opposite — I somehow end up feeling like I’m being told what to do, and then get oppositional / defiant / reluctant to do it… Weird.
Very curious to see what the internet suggests for college choices! 👻
You should lowkey not go to Yale because you’d be miserable the entire four years, and it would be a waste of a large and important portion of your developmental life. The only reason you’d go it’s cause “oh it’s Yale is so cool” but in your heart of hearts, it would be terrible, you would be sad, and your love of academic things would be destroyed.