Now for the Education and Brand pieces.

Brand.

Ithaca > UMass > Mass Bay, certainly, according to our cultural intuition. But how important is this for transferring? Admissions are more lenient for transfer students, and it is not clear that the intuitive difference actually turns out to be very important.

For this, I have sent an email to my friend Will’s mother, Mary, who is an admissions officer at Brown University (an Ivy League school). I’m waiting to hear back.

Education.

What does Liza need? She needs deep material, good teachers, good classmates, and help with focus. Some of these things interact.

Deep Material + Help with Focus

Ithaca is a liberal arts school, and will have the best education; no one is arguing this point. But exactly how good? For freshman year, no school is going to get very deep into academics (even at the Ivy Leagues). However, education level will still vary. There will be more variety of options at Ithaca, but it does not guarantee a better experience, as in the end she will only take as many classes as will fit in a semester. Newton South had a very high level of education, and this did not result in good grades, which will be a big problem if she is looking to transfer. Special programs that may be helpful at Mass Bay include the Honors Program and the Learning Communities program.

Good Teachers.

There are going to be good and bad teachers everywhere, so it’s pretty hard to compare that. Wherever she ends up, she should sit in each class and choose the classes based on the professors (learned that lesson the hard way too many times). My friend Alex Reissig went to UMass Boston for her freshman year and my friend Sarah Higgins is right now at Mass Bay (and going to transfer) and they both said they felt their professors cared a lot about their work and challenged them.

Good Classmates.

Again, most likely going to be Ithaca > UMass > Mass Bay, but that is based on preconceived notions. There is no really good way to tell, but at least in Boston she will have a support network and other friends who are around. According to the plan, the best friends/connections will be made at the school she transfers to anyway.

For all of these, it is important to remember we are talking about Freshman year, and then transferring. These things are the most important aspects of a college, and Liza wants to do even better than Ithaca. And she can, if she does well (which will be easier to do at an easier school) and transfers out.

Missing Pieces.

1. How easy is it to transfer from each?
2. How much/which credits transfer?

P.S.

Student Loans are a big problem, and it’s gotten worse and worse (so Lyza’s experience does not necessarily transfer):

My original loan amount was $46,200 and I am now at $57,168, having paid $2,390. It’s not a good place to start a life and career from. I was told I can’t go to school in California where I was accepted and was dying to go because it cost too much, that I should go to UMass, and take out the maximum amount, and that my dad would help me pay them after I graduated. Note that the reputation of UC Santa Cruz is pretty much equivalent to the reputation of Ithaca College.

I did, (and my master’s degree doubled the amount, which was worth it because of the connections I made and branding I got, not the education). My dad is now begrudgingly paying for the smallest of these loans (not included in the above numbers), and the amount I owe is unreasonable and growing.

And now this year my sister is being told to not go the the cheaper school, and is being offered $20,000 (25k tuition after FAFSA minus the 5k max that she is able to take out as loans) to go to a school of a good-not-pretty-good reputation that she doesn’t want to go to.

This seems confusing to me.

This doesn’t mean I’m trying to give bad advice because I am bitter. I am looking at this puzzle with all of my experience, and I believe that the best move is to go to Mass Bay (maybe UMass Boston) and transfer to a better school, unless the chances of transferring are bad, which is not true according to my understanding, but I’m looking into it more. I am in effect saying “you were right to make me go to UMass instead of a costly school of slightly higher caliber.” If the discrepancy between the “advice” for me and for Liza can be explained to me, that’s a bonus.