haha.....you have to be kidding me. If he is admitted as a physics major, I'm guessing he is gunning for grad school as well. Where you get you go for undergrad weighs in a lot for PhD and then post doc.
That's simply not true from a networking, instructional or mentoring standpoint; or even the subconscious motivation of being in a learning environment with that many high achievers that early into adulthood: when in most college environments, a lot of students are just living out their high school-aged notions of the "best years of their life." To their credit, though; Ivies would be out of his reach on pure test scores, and I think they actually try to gauge maturity and potential leadership skills in their admissions process.
As was mentioned above, waiting to get into an ivy league or other top school would really help him when he's applying for grad school, which it seems he wants to do.
I don't know what all the fuss is about. When I was in the 7th grade (12 years old) they offered to let us take the SAT just for practice. Probably half the class scored at least 1800. The kid is smart no doubt, but a genius? Lol.
Ivies don't amount to **** in the first two years of undergrad. It should be considered a sunk cost to avoid the potential risks of transferring. The only benefit is the personal and networking experience mentioned later. If the kid somehow needed a piece of rolled up paper in order to work, best minimal move would be to transfer to a higher tier college in two years. Since he'd likely get a grad degree, staying at TCU for the full 4 doesn't matter in the long run provided his GPA is high. As he's a kid, I'm not sure how much the competition would influence him, but the strength of a good college lies in the direct networking and communication between your fellow peers. Some of that comes through direct facilitation. Others through the self starting ethic of the individual students. You push and challenge each other to become better as opposed to someone who doesn't have that by taking free online courses of comparable content rigor and quality.
The "C student at Harvard" part of the hypothetical discussion is really a crimson herring (har). They have some of the worst grade inflation in the country, so we're really talking about a lame student being a B+ or A- student. Same with Stanford.
Yeah, stop talking out of your ass. That test is the PSAT and its scored on different parameters than the actual SAT. From helping countless students prepare for the SAT i can say the average is about 1100 for most public schools and most "smart" kids score about 1600 on their first try. I have seen a few kids score in the 1800-2100 range on their first tries but if you look at the volume of kids taking these exams vs. how many actually score in these ranges the numbers are pretty small. In these days a solid 1950-2050 is good enough to get you into the upper echelon universities.
