<p>Wow, you are all early risers, or live in the UK!</p>
<p>Leisure Studies is in fact, a college major. I do not use it as a proxy for anything- and certainly not for non-Stem majors since I have a degree in what many consider to be a particularly “useless” part of the humanities world. And I think I “use” my degree/training virtually every day of my professional career. Even though it required me to study several dead languages.</p>
<p>My point was not to avoid the humanities- certainly not. But I see a creeping tendency on behalf of undergrads to take something “vocational” in the hopes of making them marketable. If you love numbers and accounting and want to be an accountant- great. But if you love art history or French literature, major in that and do well. Take a few econ courses along the way, or take a statistics sequence and a programming course. But don’t put together some lame major that sounds like it prepares you for a corporate job (I use Leisure Studies- sorry) which it won’t.</p>
<p>Kid in my neighborhood who majored in Sports Management and who wonders why ESPN and the NFL don’t respond to his resume. The last job he applied for at ESPN was for a financial analyst. I asked him, “Do you know the difference between a balance sheet and an income statement” and he looked at me blankly. So if you love sports- but aren’t about to be drafted to play-- well, you get my point.</p>
<p>Mini- it would be so nice if from my little corner of corporate America I could right all the wrongs of the world. But you write with such authority about how prestige and family connections matter- and other posters read your posts and conclude that if they can’t afford to send their kid to Williams their child is doomed to some gritty underclass forever. Maybe I would be less reactive to your posts if you would be less apocalyptic. I don’t recruit at Harvard because I’m trying to perpetuate the entrenched class system in America. I recruit at Harvard because I can interview 100 kids and know that virtually all of them can pass the math/analytical reasoning test (directly correlated to their SAT scores- sorry- I can’t worry about the fact that family income means that a rich kid with an 800 SAT in math is the same as a poor kid with a 550). It would be so wonderful if I could change the world by hiring kids who can’t read a bar chart or take a 30 page exhibit of data and write a two page executive summary. It would be nice to be able to hire kids who can’t write a grammatical paragraph and teach them what they should have learned in the 4th grade. My company spends millions on training boot camps and the like- maybe we should spend billions and teach fractions and gerunds.</p>
<p>My point is that your comments about the Morgan Stanley’s of the world suggest that a kid who goes to Binghamton and does well can’t get hired there because the kids from Harvard have taken all the jobs. Which isn’t true. And the Summa from Binghamton has great career prospects. And the billionaires kid who ends up at Harvard is likely not interested in Morgan Stanley anyway- why work 80 hours a week in the finance industry’s equivalent of a sweat shop if you don’t have to?</p>
<p>But I’m waiting for your longitudinal study on Pell grant students and where they end up professionally.</p>
<p>This is the second time I paid attention to that employers pay attention to SAT scores, and here is a valid reason imo. There is a link between SAT scores and family income and perhaps more strongly to many other things I guess.</p>
<p>I would be stunned if there weren’t plenty of Pell Grant recipients at Bain or Morgan Stanley. I know a couple of kids recently hired by Bain. I don’t think either was a Pell Grant recipient, but one is the child of a philosophy professor at a non-prestigious public university and an intermittently-employed social activist, and the other is the child of a professional photographer, so they are not exactly to the manor born. One of my daughter’s high school classmates who went to Harvard may or may not have been Pell Grant eligible – he was probably close to the line either way, based on what I know – is working at a private equity fund of similar prestige and compensation level now. </p>
<p>I don’t disagree with mini that wealth and family connections matter. They matter, as he says, in myriad ways. But they don’t matter absolutely. The Establishment has lots of places in it for unhooked talents.</p>
<p>In fairness, blossom, do you think the Leisure Studies majors are applying to corporate America? They’re applying to parks and recreation programs, therapy programs associated with hospitals, fitness center management, that type of thing. There’s a place for Leisure Studies just like there is for everything else. Someone’s got to manage the fitness center at the park district. Seriously.</p>
<p>"Mini- it would be so nice if from my little corner of corporate America I could right all the wrongs of the world. But you write with such authority about how prestige and family connections matter- '</p>
<p>prestige and family connections matter. Given human nature, imperfect info, etc, etc, there is NO way, IMHO, to eliminate that by reforming hiring practices, changing the structure of higher ed, etc. What we CAN do is try to make the tangible consequences of differing life outcomes smaller, by improving our social safety net, at least keeping the tax system from getting any less progressive, etc. </p>
<p>Some studies say you can tell which students will be successful largely by just looking at the child’s mother–is she intelligent, educated and motivated? If not, the child already has two strikes against them. Sad but true. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions.</p>
<p>Harvard graduates are high quality. Of course they were already high quality when they ARRIVED at Harvard. These kids were high quality when they went to kindergarten. If they also happen to be hard workers with strong motivation, the sky is the limit.</p>
<p>Back to the question. Whether it is worth paying 200,000+ for a LAC or any other school, for me, depends on whether it is a school you really really want, or just an also-ran that made it onto the list. If you’ve got the money, I do honestly believe you can find certain schools at which your particular child can have a more satisfying experience.</p>
<p>And, I think blossom is spot-on, but then I almost always do. :-)</p>
<p>Pizzagirl- you would be surprised. There aren’t enough jobs managing fitness centers for all the leisure studies folks. My own town has cut its recreation department to the bone and I’ll bet yours has as well. State Parks are furloughing personnel; I suspect the Federal government will stop or slow down hiring as well. Our local hospital ran a well regarded program for seniors under a contract with the State- it’s just been cut. I don’t know where those recreational counselors and the manager, director, etc. will land. So yes- I see plenty of resumes from kids who graduated in 2008 and 2009 who have been working in hourly jobs who are now trying to retool themselves and their overly vocational majors. (What do you think happened to all the E-commerce majors in 2001 when the internet boom collapsed?) And I pick on Leisure Studies just because the curriculum is so thin- and the requirements so fluid. I’m sure you have your own favorite “lite” major.</p>
<p>Again- it’s fantastic for a kid whose aspirations are in that area. But to push a kid into an “employable major” ? Dubious value IMHO.</p>
<p>Yesterday I put a resume of the son of someone famous in the reject pile. His scores were too low for the college he went to; his GPA was mediocre. His internships were clearly resulting from parental involvement or other family connections. There was no evidence on the resume of any initiative or gumption. I don’t need the aggravation. He can go work for Mini :)</p>
<p>"I recruit at Harvard because I can interview 100 kids and know that virtually all of them can pass the math/analytical reasoning test (directly correlated to their SAT scores- sorry- I can’t worry about the fact that family income means that a rich kid with an 800 SAT in math is the same as a poor kid with a 550). It would be so wonderful if I could change the world by hiring kids who can’t read a bar chart or take a 30 page exhibit of data and write a two page executive summary. It would be nice to be able to hire kids who can’t write a grammatical paragraph and teach them what they should have learned in the 4th grade. My company spends millions on training boot camps and the like- maybe we should spend billions and teach fractions and gerunds.</p>
<p>I am probably no longer employable…so maybe this isn’t unexpected…but wth are gerunds?</p>
<p>I just have this idea that because of the size of Harvard compared to other universities…a recruiter can find 100 students that can pass math and reasoning tests at quite a bit of schools…</p>
<p>Maybe I’m wrong…I thought I read that if a student scores a 650 on each SAT test…a student can do the work at Harvard. Do the employers want higher scores than these?</p>
<p>dstark, we are getting old. Remember back in the day when we use to diagram sentences?
There are probably a lot of high school kids today who don’t know what a gerund is if asked to pick it out in a sentence.</p>
<p>I was on full FA, and did work at one of those white shoe firms few years out of college, but it was my second job in banking. I didn´t go to HYPS, or anything close. I don´t think where I went to school mattered. I was hired because of my analytical ability, and later my specific product knowledge. Back then, many of those firms were hungary for quants (I specifically did not go into investment banking because they wouldn´t have hired me due to my background). I think today it is different. There are a lot more students who are interested in finance and consultanting firms, so the competition is a lot more fierce. With so many students applying, those firms have a lot more choices. If one of those applicants is a graduate of a right school with good enough grades, AND happens to be a friend´s son or daughter, that applicant is going to get a special look. It is no different than the college application process. Top students, doesn´t matter what their personal background is, could still get admitted to top tier schools, but legacies, applicants with personal connections with someone important at a school, kids of big donors, they will get extra look. On the other hand, if they are clearly not qualified, those special hooks are not going to help either.</p>
<p>People- get a grip. I don’t care if you know what a gerund is. I care if you can write an error free sentence that has one in it. Jeez. Calm down.</p>
<p>I’m sure there are plenty of billionaires who need someone proof-reading their emails because their literacy is so abysmal that they can’t communicate. Show me one.</p>
<p>^ I highly doubt the Donald is an actual billionaire. I know he claims to be one, but I wonder (if I cared) what his real net worth is, if scrutinized.</p>
<p>His daughter transferred from Georgetown to Wharton. This interests me more. Did she think she was going to go the Foreign Service route then decided to do business, instead. Anybody know what prompted the switch?</p>
<p>I knew what a gerund was (before the definition was posted). Somehow, I remember it from high school English or foreign language courses (probably the latter, as the teacher or book may have used it to describe how to make the gerund form of regular and irregular verbs or something like that). I was not a foreign language or linguistics major in university.</p>
<p>But it is entirely possible that many people have forgotten the name of the gerund, even though they use it properly in daily life. Probably only those who extensively studied a foreign language or linguistics would have that word reinforced into their memory.</p>
<p>Writing an error free sentence becomes more difficult for some of us as we age, if we don’t have careers -(where) (that require) (which require) (in which)- we write daily. I have no idea what is correct. :)</p>