Sam Ditmer picks the Y

Sam Ditmer picks the Y
(full story here)

My eldest son Edward sent me the press release about Sam Ditmer who would be no different from the other 5,000 freshmen admitted to BYU this fall except that Sam is the national high school math champion this year and received admission letters from MIT and Stanford as well as from BYU. Edward asked, "Did Sam make a good choice?"

This brings up the question of what a "good choice" is. BYU has a good undergraduate program in math. From the press release it sounds to me like Sam is already looking elsewhere for his graduate education so yes, it probably was a good choice. Of course, we don't know what kind of scholarship BYU gave Sam or what portion of his total expenses would be covered by scholarships for any of the three universities where he was accepted. Our second son Lee was also accepted into MIT but the financial costs were simply too high for Lee or our family to bear. Sam might have the same problem.