<p>"History suggests that, all other things being equal, a society prospers in proportion to its ability to prevent parents from influencing their children's success directly. It's a fine thing for parents to help their children indirectlyfor example, by helping them to become smarter or more disciplined, which then makes them more successful. The problem comes when parents use direct methods: when they are able to use their own wealth or power as a substitute for their children's qualities."</p>
<p>The only thing that might come out of a parent financially helping their kid to success is their kid getting wealthier, faster. If that's what they're looking for, that's nice, but the kid won't learn anything in the process.</p>
<p>The problem is that, as we enter the new Obama Era, we are embarking on a new age of state capitalism where the government will determine which companies and industries will be the winners and losers in the new economic climate. Will this work? We won't know for a decade or two. But the sad truth is that the tone of this administration is set by the man at the the top, and he is a guy who flaunts his credentials at every turn. He is also appointing men and women around him who are festooned with Ivy League degrees. So the allure of a brand name degree will only increase. Unfortunately, what we really need to break this country out of the doldrums is more people like Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and Bill Gates who never completed college and created entirely new industries by thinking outside the box.</p>
<p>Not to get political and I know that I'll ruffle a few feathers here but our current president is a prime example of this legacy admissions and getting by through family connections and wealth. Just because you coast by with a C average at an Ivy league and graduated doesn't mean that you ever got that education in the first place.</p>
<p>staying quite apolitical actually, I am finding one potential flaw in this argument.</p>
<p>the article states that cram schools pop up to cheat the system when the stakes are high and the breadth of the material is not great. another example offered is the SAT prep courses found in the USA.
however, the article also assumes that the SAT is perceived as being significantly less important than it used to be, because we would think the high percentage figures offered by the South Korean parent are archaic.
it seems to me that even if it is not really worth more in the admissions process, the SAT emphasized much more by parents and students today. most adults I've spoken with say that they did little to no formal preparation for the SAT. they went through the standard English and math courses at their high schools, and then one day they got up, went to school and took a test they needed for college. these adults have now received fine educations (including some PhDs.) today, when anyone paying half attention knows that (allowing for variation among colleges) GPAs and essays are also very critical parts of the application, students and their allies are focusing much more time on the SAT previous generations did.</p>
<p>very interesting article though. I've always wanted to focus on skills, particularly my woeful lack of them currently. holding a diploma doesn't demonstrate ability, and I'm concerned someone's going to notice. (right now I should probably just focus on obtaining the diploma...but I am trying to purposely cultivate a skill set along the way!)</p>
<p>Very interesting article. I took away something else from it, though. I think a time will come, or at least needs to come, when the consumers of higher education start evaluating colleges on their performance rather than their credentials. </p>
<p>There is no doubt Harvard and Yale are great schools. But are they doing a great job today? Are we selecting them because they are truly the best, or are we just using their credentials as a predictor for how they will perform in the task of educating our children? I have worried about this a lot. I want to send my child to a school that will actually do the best job for her. Not just bestow her (or me) with bragging rights.</p>
<p>Not everyone who goes to cram schools gets into an elite university. Students get sifted at those schools too and in fact the cram schools TEST FOR PERFORMANCE. Attention, hard work, singlemindedness, deferred gratification, smarts, reaction time, etc etc etc are necessary for superb performance and these qualities are both developed and tested in cram schools.</p>
<p>To let everyone become a surgeon and then weed out the ones whose patients die in large numbers is the logical conclusion of the article's performance based ethos. That would be a stupid way to go. Tests introduce predictive measures and these exist for efficiency. Bill Gates's credentials, admission to Havard (and high evals by his profs there) predicted his performance.</p>
<p>Should everyone be allowed into the Marine Corps and then we weed out the ones with heart disease and skeletal problems or do we test beforehand?</p>
<p>Back in high school, Steven Chu constructed a pendulum to measure gravity. He later developed a method to trap atoms with laser light, which earned him a share of the Nobel Prize in physics. And as head of one of the U.S. national laboratories, he encouraged work on climate change and renewable energy.
On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama formally announced he would nominate this 60-year-old scientist to become the nation's next energy secretary.
Rejected by the Ivy League schools for what he called his "lackluster A-" average in high school, Chu attended the University of Rochester. There he was exposed to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's writings, which Chu found "mesmerizing and inspirational."
Chu earned degrees in physics and mathematics. He then earned a doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley.</p>
<p>I think in any downturn in the economy, people with some get-up-and-go will get ahead, whether or not they manage to get into or graduate from an Ivy.</p>
<p>The Ivies select for performance. Excelling at a start up is performance, so is excelling in sports, SATs, APs, ECs, grades, etc. We all emit behaviors that reflect performance. The ones who did not get into the Ivies will play sour grapes and question college admissions. In fact, Ivy admissions does a good job of selecting future high performers. Re Chu, etc, let us not argue by exception.</p>
<p>"Goodness, you are not considered a failure if you don't attend HYP2BDC2MS.</p>
<p>Some people are not meant to attend these schools."</p>
<p>I agree completely.
I know many who had grades above ivy averages, essays that were beyond poignant, 2250+/34, and didn't get into ivies. So I think saying that Ivies are anywhere near perfect at being "selective" is a large generalization.</p>
<p>True, they do a good job. True, most people who go to ivies had extremely had performance in high school. But the assumption then, is that if you DIDN'T get in to an ivy, that you weren't high performing. This assumption is baseless and untrue.</p>
<p>Great article - last week, during one of her application "breaks", D told me about some of the students she had met during an overnight visit recently, and she said "Mom - I have no idea how some of those people got IN!!" So I gave her the big "connections" talk, along with the moral that life isn't always fair and the best or most qualified aren't always the ones that come out on top. You think you'll see it applying for undergrad?? Just wait until you apply to med school.......</p>
<p>I don't agree with the idea that the (many) poor performers in top colleges (or med schools) are necessarily the ones who got in because of 'big connections'. The bigger reason IMO is that it is simply very difficult to identify those who will do well from those who won't. </p>
<p>Med school admissions is particularly ineffective because the criteria (GPA, MCAT scores) have no demonstrated correlation with the answer to the question: Will this person make a good doctor? But that may be a topic for another discussion...</p>
<p>tenisghs, I never said or implied that someone who did not go to an Ivy is a failure. Pajkaj, I never said that the Ivies are perfect at selection, I never said that those who did not get in were therefore not high performers.</p>
<p>A statement that this orange tastes good does not mean that the other orange does not taste good, nor does it mean all oranges taste good nor does it mean oranges are the only fruit that tastes good, nor does it mean that this is the only orange that tastes good nor does it mean that good taste resides only in oranges.</p>
<p>I think a large problem, especially seen in CC, is mentality. Too much emphasis is put on attending an elite private school, while public universities are made to cater to all ranges of kids, from athletes to musicians to scholars. I still am yet to find a definite reason, outside of prestige of course, that makes a private research university largely greater than a public school. Personally, I think when kids start looking into specific programs and professors that teach at schools, and trust me, they'll realize that many top notch academics work at public universities. This idea that only an Ivy League school has the atmosphere and challenge for me is preposterous. You're never going to meet every single student at most universities, and you can affiliate yourself with the right crowd that fits your "atmosphere," Why can't people accept that OOS public universities can cost tens of thousands less than private universities, and actually allow you to work freely with the professors (or graduate students) who share your interests?</p>
<p>As an example, one which is bias, my father attended public universities his entire life, as an undergraduate to a resident. He was able to rely on his parents to pay for medical school instead of a lavish undergraduate education. Nowadays, I've read that applicants need more often need higher degrees to get jobs which once only required an undergraduate education. Maybe it isn't for every CCer, but there are enough intelligent students to consider life after college, whether in higher education or starting businesses. I think the credit crisis will only speed the process where students are open to community colleges, and these behemoth schools in New England will loose a large percentage of their students to inexpensive and equally challenging public honors programs.</p>
<p>^^^ You make a very good point. As a current student in a public school I couldn't agree more. Esp. on this site, it seems like the only active boards are the Ivys' and other elite private schools. </p>
<p>There's too much emphasis placed on name recognition that people tend to forget the real point of college is education. Public schools can also offer a lot if you are open to it.</p>