<p>^ ^Wow, sounds like the Ivy League of your imagination.</p>
<p>“Once people find out that you’ve attended one of the Ivies, you are branded. You will be seen and treated differently from that point forward. People will expect you to know things and have answers.”</p>
<p>Greenzen, that could be said about anyone perceived to be “smart.” You don’t think MIT graduates get the same reaction? Alumni of Stanford? Northwestern? Duke? University of Chicago? Berkeley? Michigan? Or, taking it a step further, don’t you think people identified as “smart” or “brilliant” in real life can generally be counted on for intelligent answers to questions, no matter what they did from age 18-22?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl is right–everything is local. Here in Wisconsin, people are more likely to think you are a genius if you attended UW-Madison than if you attended any of the five “lesser” Ivies. (I will grant you that HYP have a lot of name recognition–the others, not so much.) And there’s also the reverse side of the prestige coin, which is elitism and “otherness.” Coming across as a snob is a sure way to alienate people in many social and professional environments.</p>
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<p>Oh please. There are plenty of “connections” made at Ole Miss and SMU and TAMU and so forth. Connections are connections. They are just different connections. If we could pretend for one minute that there are actually universes outside of Wall Street/investment banking/management consulting - and gasp, some of those universes are full of bright, interesting, engaging, successful people!</p>
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<p>There’s a real lack of sophistication apparent when people don’t realize that everything is local, and that the brand power of some of the colleges they think are SO GRAND and BRAND YOU FOR LIFE really deteriorate once you get a few hundred miles away. Which doesn’t make those schools not excellent schools, of course - but not because of the “branding.” I’d send my kids to Brown or Dartmouth if they were so inclined because those are excellent schools, but not because I think that they’d get gasps of amazement at cocktail parties. I send my daughter to a top LAC that is certainly not well known at all among the general public except for vague associations with highly placed alumna. This continued belief that at cocktail parties, people bow and scrape and think “ohmygod what a genius!” is laughable, honestly.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl is right. Here in TN I am asked why my son went “out of state” to Penn and was it for their great football team (back a few years). Leaving the SEC is viewed as a questionable decision.</p>
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I think what’s changed is that the kids at the most selective schools are truly gifted and driven to work hard to achieve their goals. Cruising to top grades and scores isn’t enough to even get in to the most selective schools.</p>
<p>^^Agree–it’s the combination of intellectual gifts, fierce ambition and, in many cases, significant outside support (college coaching, tutoring, access to “things that look good” for ECs) that gets kids into the most selective schools. And because kids are, well, kids when they apply to college, the Ivies favor those who have started preparing early–say, age 14 or 15. Late bloomers, brilliant slackers, nonconformists or those who don’t find their passions till they are well into college or beyond are not likely to be in great supply in the Ivies.</p>
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<p>And the late bloomers and the those who don’t find their passions til later still do OK in life, which is kind of the point. It’s possible to value the selective college experience highly (as I personally do) and also acknowledge that it’s not the be-all-end-all.</p>
<p>“Once people find out that you’ve attended one of the Ivies, you are branded. You will be seen and treated differently from that point forward. People will expect you to know things and have answers.”</p>
<p>Ha ha - not past your first job, you won’t be. Either you perform in your job, or you don’t.</p>
<p>I think that Ivies are only worth it if u make it worth it, take classes that are likely to benefit u once u leave the university. A business or law degree from an ivy can put u in successful places, but some people that are english or philosophy majors end up wasting lots of money and go nowhere. On the other hand, if u enjoy the academic rigor and intellectual environment, then regardless of the major or class choice u will have a good experience</p>
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<p>You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Nobody majors in law as an undergraduate, at the Ivies or elsewhere.</p>
<p>Most of the Ivies do not offer undergraduate business degrees. In fact, only two of the eight Ivies do.</p>
<p>Did you read the question? “Is it worth it”? Of course connections can be made anywhere. Obviously, you don’t recruit for a living. I did. And yes, pizza woman…the Ivies go to the top more often than others, ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL. But it is only a door opener. Doesn’t mean if you don’t go to an Ivy that you are SOL. I didn’t and I did better than most. It’s all about playing the odds. BTW, local connections are one thing. Have you noticed that folks are having to relocate for jobs now? Who do you think employers recognize more in say, Chicago, LA or NYC…SMU or Yale??? SMU or Harvard? SMU or (fill in the blank).</p>
<p>Listen and learn.</p>
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But for many (I think most) of these kids, “preparing” is not the right word. They don’t start preparing for college admissions at a young age–rather, they start preforming at a high level at a young age–often, it’s in elementary school. They develop interests early and pursue them at a level that gets them recognition.</p>
<p>Are there some kids who start SAT prep at age 14 and look for ECs that “look good?” Sure. I don’t think they do as well in admissions to highly selective schools as one might think. I do agree that it helps to have lots of opportunities.</p>
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<p>I agree with this last part; kids who work really hard at manufacturing an impressive-looking set of ECs and accomplishments often don’t do all that well in college admissions. Their motivation is often just too transparent and they come across as inauthentic. Which, in a way, they are. No doubt some slip through, but many end up with applications that look like a zillion other cookie-cutter, check-all-the-boxes applications.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I don’t think all the high performers are just budding little geniuses who figured it all out on their own. Kids whose parents attended highly selective colleges have a tremendous advantage, in that the parents set Ivy-appropriate (or other elite college-appropriate) academic and extracurricular expectations early on. Having been there, the parents know what expectations to set, what budding interests to cultivate, what activities to support. They generally go with the child’s interests, but they do so in a way that encourages and rewards high performance of a kind that will ultimately win recognition at college admission time. In short, they start building their child’s Ivy resume from early childhood, all the while telling the child, their friends and family, and themselves that it’s all coming from the child. Which in a certain sense it is, but the parent is the one who knows how to encourage the child’s interest and mold it into something that’s going to look like Ivy-caliber accomplishment by the time the kid is in HS. Those who start trying to manufacture interests and accomplishments in HS are really just trying to play catch-up.</p>
<p>Most students aren’t in either of those camps. Fact is, most don’t have the native smarts or the other talents to play that game in any event. But I also think there are many extremely smart and talented kids out there who are just never exposed to the rules of the game, because no one they know has ever gone to an elite college or university. In many cases, no one in their family has ever attended any college at any level, let alone a highly selective one. Their teachers didn’t attend elite colleges, their GCs didn’t attend elite colleges, and their schools aren’t geared toward sending kids to elite colleges. And so they may find themselves toward the latter part of HS with good grades and excellent test scores and some teachers who really believe in them, but it’s too late at that point even to do a plausible job of manufacturing ECs and impressive accomplishments.</p>
<p>It reminds me of something former Texas Governor Ann Richards once said about George H.W. Bush: “He was born on third base, and thought he got a triple.” To extend the metaphor, the kids of elite college alums are (by and large) born on third base, and not only do they all think they got triples, but their parents are all loudly congratulating them on getting triples, and making sure all the world hears it. Meanwhile some equally smart and talented kid is being led into the batter’s box for the first time and is handed a bat, without the rules of the game ever having been explained to him, and gets a quick two strikes before the umpire explains that there’s a strike zone and he’s supposed to try to hit the ball if it’s in the strike zone, but that he has just one strike left because he let the first two go by. That kid’s chances of getting to first base are slim; his chances of making it home are virtually none.</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way, the umpires have stipulated in advance that in the event of a close play, the benefit of the doubt goes to the kid born on third base.</p>
<p>@bclintonk: I think I was lucky to get that home run then! (first generation student to attend college) I liked that baseball analogy, it’s very much true. </p>
<p>In regards to the question, ivies are worth it because they give need based aid (to those who qualify) and I’m sure a lot of people have mentioned the connections that can be made. It really depends on the student and how he or she will use the plethora of resources available but in the end, it’s up to each individual. A person with a desire to succeed and who is willing to work hard will most likely do so at any state school or ivy.</p>
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<p>Layman’s terms and a fitting example.</p>
<p>I too love the baseball analogy. One of the sharpest posters on CC once said:</p>
<p>*It is public information, as recently as MITChris’ posting in this forum of the 2014 MIT admission statistics, that all the elite universities (other than Caltech) admit approximately the top 10-15 percent of the class purely on academic criteria, using terms like “academic stars” or “potential summa cum laude graduates”. *</p>
<p>His position seems to dovetail with that of Vernon Smith, economist and Nobel Laureate, who said the following:</p>
<p>*I was majoring in physics, but switched to electrical engineering, which was in the same division (Mathematics, Physics and EE) as a senior. In this way I did not have to take the dreaded “Smyth’s course,” required for physics majors, but not EE, and received my BS on schedule in 1949.</p>
<p>For micro I supplemented with courses Samuelson taught down the Charles River at MIT. After Caltech, Harvard seemed easy, and I got virtually straight A’s. …Graduate school is an endurance test, but was not that demanding for me after having survived the undergraduate meat grinder.</p>
<p>… the difference between Harvard and Caltech: “At Harvard they believe they are the best in the world; at Caltech they know they are the best in the world.”
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<p>The difference is in what I call manufactured brilliance vs. true brilliance. Since few of us are truly brilliant, the best we can do is to have a certificate telling us and the world that we really are. I suspect the reason most folks want people to judge them by the school they attend, and not by their major are similar to the reason why most of my friends prefer backgammon over chess. In the former they can get lucky; in the latter they know better.</p>
<p>Excellent posts by bclintonk and Canuckguy.</p>
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There’s a lot of truth to this, and I think it’s more true now than ever. My parents were both college-educated, but neither they nor my school knew anything about the game of getting into top schools. But this was over 30 years ago–I got into Yale, but I don’t think a student with my resume would get in today. As you suggest, my kids had a big advantage (in addition to being legacies) in the kinds of opportunities we were able to provide for them. And we did push them to excel–not because it would look good for college, but because we always thought they should excel. I don’t think we pushed them in terms of their choices of ECs though.,indeed, what they chose to do wasn’t always what we would have chosen, or what was most likely to “look good.”</p>
<p>I agree with a lot of what Hunt has to say. I think a lot of brilliant kids get overlooked because of a lack of guidance.</p>
<p>However, I still want to challenge the assumption some have that there always has to be a lot of strategy or prepping. Just to share our experience… My son did not “prep” to get into an ivy. He got involved in some ECs and accelerated in school because of a desperate need on his part for academic stimulation. It wasn’t strategy to impress anyone or to succeed. </p>
<p>As parents, we weren’t thinking about college planning. In many ways, I wish we had thought about it sooner. For example, he was a national merit scholar, but he never studied for the test. He could have easily missed out on that. He went to a public school, his GC was clueless, and as parents, we never went to any kind of exceptional college. We never thought about what ECs would look good on a resume, how to fill his Summers strategically, what volunteer work looks good, etc. We didn’t start thinking about all of this until 11th grade, which is too late to do much. However, his desire for learning and passion for his interests most likely came through, as he got accepted in at least a few ivies, and most of the other schools to which he applied. Yes, he had some exceptional accomplishments, performed well on SATs, class rank and all of that stuff, but this all came naturally and out of pure interest - not to impress people. He struggled most at the end of the application process, where he had to actually try to impress adcoms on his essays, conform to what was expected and battle procrastination!</p>
<p>There are many paths to the ivy leagues, and is can seem like a mystery at times why some kids are accepted and some are not. I just want to point out that the journey is not always so jaded and pre-planned. Some kids who really want to learn, who want to do more than just build their resumes, actually can get in.</p>