Are the Ivies worth all the bother?

College Search & Selection
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<p>I quite agree with you csdad. The big exception here appears to be California, which sends students across the entire country to the Ivies in numbers roughly proportional to its weight in the nation’s population.</p>

<p>You can break these figures down even further and show that the market skews even more local. Within the Northeast, Maine and New Hampshire send far more students to Dartmouth than to any other Ivy; Vermonters seem to prefer Cornell, or at least more end up there. Massachusetts sends three times as many students to Harvard as it does to Yale, while Connecticut sends twice as many to Yale as to Harvard. There are more Rhode Island residents at Brown than at all the other Ivies combined. New York sends 3 times as many students to Cornell–over a thousand–as to its nearest competitor among the Ivies, Penn, which is roughly an hour train ride away from New York City. Columbia, naturally, is a close third for New Yorkers. Pennsylvanians overwhelmingly prefer Penn. And so on.</p>

<p>Which just proves my point. Even at this level, the market is far more local and regional than many people on CC suppose.</p>

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<p>^^Without any supporting evidence (nice work, BTW, bclintonk), I’d speculate that the California kids on average are wealthier than those from the Northeast. The travel costs alone would be several thousand dollars a year for most students and their families. I’d be curious to see whether the students of CA origin are also more likely to attend Ivies with the intention of pursuing high-paying careers like finance. </p>

<p>Also, I agree with Canuckguy: “I don’t see why it is so bad to admit that prestige is your thing. We tell ourselves we [choose Ivies] for the education while there is no good empirical evidence to support such a claim; we tell ourselves we love diversity but have no intention of living in diversity; we tell ourselves we want to be surrounded by the brightest yet I do not see math and physics departments bursting at the seam.”</p>

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There’s a simple explanation for this: the most academically qualified students in the country are located in the Northeast corridor, the DC metro area, and in California. If Harvard were to admit like 40 students from Utah and 30 from Arkansas, it would have to severely lower its academic standards and punish the high-achieving kids in NYC/CA.</p>

<p>You’re making the faulty assumption that all states have an equal proportion of qualified candidates for the elite schools.</p>

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<p>bclintonk-</p>

<p>Would you have time to possibly run a geographical distribution list on some of the private Universities outside the NE (Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Rice, Emory, Wash U, Northwestern, Chicago, Tulane, Hopkins, USC, Case, Carnegie Mellon, etc) to see what the geographic distributions look like? There are some that will be skewed a bit by regional issues (eg IIRC Rice had reasons to remain a largely Texan population) but the demographics would be interesting to see.</p>

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<p>D has been amused that apparently some of the girls at her Boston-area LAC think that she must live amongst the cornfields because she’s from suburban Chicago. No, you provincial little things, really, suburban Chicago looks pretty much like suburban Boston; blink your eyes and you really wouldn’t know the difference between Wellesley, MA and Winnetka, IL.</p>

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<p>No. You don’t get it. The most academically qualified students in the middle of the country are often happy with / perfectly fine with their flagship state u. Plenty of Illinois valedictorians head off to U of I and don’t think twice. Why should they? Unless they want to go into investment banking, U of I will take them pretty much anyplace they want to go - and for a lower price tag than most elite private schools. That doesn’t happen in the northeast to the same extent. I know you drool over private elite schools - and personally I do too - but it is not a sentiment shared everywhere in the country.</p>

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<p>@Pizzagirl I’d also suspect that midwestern high schools produce more engineers, but I’d want the data to back it up. Most of the valedictorians in my class went to Ohio State or other strong engineering schools - We only produced one Ivy student (she wasn’t even valedictorian) out of our class of 650, and our HS is supposed to be pretty good. There were a couple Northwestern and Vanderbilt kids as well.</p>

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<p>"Unless they want to go into investment banking, U of I will take them pretty much anyplace they want to go "</p>

<p>Actually, I know a few people that graduated from U of I that have worked as investment banking analysts at Goldman. In fact, one guy is now a managing director of their NYC office.</p>

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<p>From goldenboy: "There’s a simple explanation for this: the most academically qualified students in the country are located in the Northeast corridor, the DC metro area, and in California. If Harvard were to admit like 40 students from Utah and 30 from Arkansas, it would have to severely lower its academic standards and punish the high-achieving kids in NYC/CA.</p>

<p>You’re making the faulty assumption that all states have an equal proportion of qualified candidates for the elite schools."</p>

<p>Wow. And you’re making the assumption that they don’t.</p>

<p>[Education</a> Week: Quality Counts 2012 - State Report Cards](<a href=“http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2012/16src.h31.html]Education”>Quality Counts 2012 - State Report Cards)</p>

<p>Arkansas is in the top five states for overall educational quality, only two spots behind NY and significantly above CT, PA, RI, ME, DE…AND CA). It’s also #1 (tied with MD and seven spots above NY, 12 above CA) for college readiness (see “Transitions & Alignment”).</p>

<p>As I said in an earlier post, it really gets me when people make specious generalizations…</p>

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<p>Is it possible that you and Goldenboy are talking about entirely different subjects? For instance, I fail to see the relevance of the Education Week Scores to a discussion about admissions at highly selective or elite schools. </p>

<p>On the other hand, and perhaps through a naive and non-expert eye, I would speculate that the number of students who put together a competitive application for Harvard and its handful of peers does not follow an equal distribution among all states. </p>

<p>But again, someone adept at playing with statistics could come up with some proportional representation by controlling all criteria until the desired outcome is achieved. </p>

<p>In the meantime, if someone wants to convince me that Arkansas is among the best ten percent of education in the United States, I am all hears. Actually I happen to think that, when it comes to the analysis the** real** data of our education system, some of the very best scholars have moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Might be lifting everyone’s academic lifeboat.</p>

<p>As far as specious generalizations … that line is getting as old as the attempt to find something worth attacking through that old Mr. Straw Man.</p>

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Many of them seem to go to Rose Hulman.</p>

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<p>Yep. Rose Hulman, Purdue, Case Western, University of Illinois, and OSU seem to be the main culprits.</p>

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<p>xiggi, goldenboy is using geography as the basis of his distinctions, and his claims are the very definition of “specious.” I don’t care if you like the word or not. He is asserting that kids from Arkansas (never mind Utah for now) are not academically qualified to attend Harvard. I am simply refuting his claim with data that demonstrates otherwise. Feel free to find your own sources to counter what I have presented. What makes you so prejudiced against Arkansas’ education system? Do you have anything other than stereotypes to inform your point of view? And why would a national survey that ranks states’ K-12 schools on the basis of “college readiness” not be relevant to this discussion?</p>

<p>To me this is at the heart of the debate about the Ivies…there is a large group of people who are from the “right” places and have done the “right” things and feel entitled to go there as a result. As some of the comments here demonstrate, they are also not very open-minded or accepting of those who are not like them–nor do they trade in facts.</p>

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<p>Arkansas’ public schools may be inferior to that of some other state, but in terms of raw distribution of smarts, why wouldn’t the distribution of smarts be the same everywhere? YK, I bet there are quite a few Walmart-executive kids who are legacies at top schools, live lifestyles pretty darn indistinguishable from upper middle class kids elsewhere, and look pretty darn competitive to top schools.</p>

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<p>The issue isn’t whether all states have an equal proportion of qualified candidates. There is no a priori reason to think that people in state A are “smarter” than people in state B. The issue is whether all states are represented in proportion to their population in the APPLICANT pool. </p>

<p>Numbers made up for hypothetical purposes:
If Massachusetts represents 4% of the pop of the US, but Mass applicants represent 12% of the pool of Harvard applicants, and 8% of the pool of Harvard acceptees - did Harvard overrepresent or underrepresent Mass?</p>

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<p>Ok, Sally, I will play! </p>

<p>First of all, here is an example. You write, “What makes you so prejudiced against Arkansas’ education system?” Where in the world do YOU elevate anything I wrote about Arkansas that would make me prejudiced? And I assume, negatively! </p>

<p>Here’s what I wrote … verbatim:</p>

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<p>Fwiw, the same report you quoted listed THIS fact: K-12 Achievement: D (66.3) Status: F (55.4.) How does Arkansas perform on the NAEP? </p>

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<p>This is not the first time you are using similar words! You are simply throwing vitriol at anyone who seems to have an OPINION different from yours. This is a discussion forum, and not a debating society. This is also not a forum where one needs to bludgeon others with data (usually selective) to support opinions. And, you should not assume people do not have the “facts” to back up their positions. </p>

<p>Perhaps you should tone down the aggressivity level, and more importantly, make an effort to read what other actually DO write a tad more critically.</p>

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<p>xiggi, you will have to show me some examples of “discussion” versus “debate,” because it all looks pretty much the same to me here. Everyone else posts data to support their opinions, and theirs is undoubtedly every bit as “selective” as mine…In any case, I’m sorry if I am coming across as aggressive or vitriolic–that is not my intention. </p>

<p>Having said that, I did find goldenboy’s comments pretty offensive and was surprised they were allowed to go unchecked. He says, “If Harvard were to admit like 40 students from Utah and 30 from Arkansas, it would have to severely lower its academic standards and punish the high-achieving kids in NYC/CA.” SEVERELY LOWER? He is saying there are not 70 students total from these two states who meet the admission standards for Harvard? Just…wow.</p>

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<p>This is mostly just regionally biased nonsense, but I’ll admit there’s a grain of truth to it based in demographics. SAT scores correlate positively with income and it’s generally true that in higher-income parts of the country—which would include most of New Jersey and Connecticut, most of Westchester County and parts of Long Island in New York, suburban Boston, suburban Philadelphia, suburban DC, parts of the LA area, and parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. But it would also include much of suburban Chicago, and suburban Minneapolis-St-Paul, and suburban Atlanta, and suburban Dallas, and suburban Houston, and suburban Denver, and suburban Seattle. Those areas will also have kids attending the best public and private schools, and engaging in the kinds of ECs that Ivies like. Now it may be that there’s a slightly higher concentration of those high-income areas and high-income households in the Northeast Corridor and coastal California, but I’m not even certain about that, because there are also huge areas of poverty in those places, and many more areas where incomes and schools are pretty middling. But any higher concentration is nowhere near the 6-to-1 ratio by which Northeasterners out-Ivy Midwesterners, Southerners, and Westerners (other than Californians).</p>

<p>We can do some pairwise comparison of states to get at this. Texas and New York are roughly similar in population; actually Texas is about 30% bigger now, but roughly similar numbers take the SAT, 166,000 in Texas and 163,000 in New York. Mean scores are almost identical, 981 CR+M in Texas and 984 in New York, Median scores are also similar: 50% median is 960 in TX and 980 in NY, and the 75th percentile median is 1120 in TX and 1140 in NY. Obviously even the 75th percentile is nowhere near Ivy-level in either state. New York does pull away a little in scores in the 700-800 range: 6,376 hit that mark in CR and 8,696 in M, compared to Texas’ 5,118 in CR and 6,998 in Math. So that’s just under 25% more scorers in the 700-800 range on each section in New York than in Texas, despite essentially identical numbers taking the SAT and pretty similar mean, 50th percentile, and 75th percentile scores. So that’s partial confirmation of your hypothesis, probably explainable by demographic factors–more kids in affluent families and attending better schools in New York, maybe as much as 25% more.</p>

<p>But it’s weak confirmation, and it doesn’t come close to explaining the fact that New York sent 2,534 kids to the Ivies in 2010, while Texas sent 473, or less than 1/5 the number. Here’s the biggest difference: In New York, 29,894 kids took 74,845 SAT Subject Tests. In Texas, 10,046 kids took 26,000 SAT Subject Tests. So, we have 25% more New Yorkers scoring in the 700-800 range in the SAT Reasoning Test, and 3 times as many New Yorkers taking SAT Subject Tests. Why? Well, generally you don’t take Subject Tests if you’re not planning to apply to a college that requires them. Like an Ivy.</p>

<p>And how did they do on those subject tests? Well, to take some of the more popular ones, on Lit, 515 New Yorkers and 303 Texans scored in the 750-800 range; more New Yorkers did extremely well, but as a percentage of those who took the test the Texans actually did slightly better (9.1% of Texans who took that test scored 750 or better, compared to 7.3% of New Yorkers). US History 1,770 New Yorkers and 660 Texans scored in the 750-800 range; proportionally, again the Texans did a little better (13.6% of New Yorkers and 16.7% of Texans scored 750+). Math Level 2, 3,165 New Yorkers and 2,063 Texans scored 750-800 (equal to 31.1% of New Yorkers and 36.3% of Texans who took the test). Physics, 734 New Yorkers and 372 Texans scored 750-800 (equal to 18.2% of New Yorkers and 18.3% of Texans). So there were definitely more New Yorkers in that top-stats pool, but mainly because so many fewer Texans elected to take SAT Subject Tests–because they had no intention of applying to Ivies or other elite schools that require subject tests. But even after that, if we say, “Fine, the Texans shot themselves in the foot by not taking the Subject tests, so more New Yorkers were in the Ivy-eligible pool”–well, it’s still less than twice as many New Yorkers as Texans in that pool; not 5 times as many.</p>

<p>We don’t know how many applied, but only 473 Texans enrolled in Ivies in 2010. We do know that 2,449 Texans sent SAT scores (Reasoning Test and/or subject Tests) to Harvard, the most popular Ivy among Texans. That’s fewer than the 2,909 who sent scores to Stanford, and the 7,837 who sent scores to Rice, and the 33,007 who sent scores to UT Austin. And not surprisingly, 80 Texans enrolled at Stanford (roughly as many as enrolled at Harvard, 81). And 85 enrolled at Duke; 99 enrolled at Emory; 104 enrolled at WUSTL;112 enrolled at Vanderbilt; 129 enrolled at USC; 444 Texans enrolled at Rice, and 6,409 enrolled at UT-Austin. Do you get the regional pattern?</p>

<p>And where did the New Yorkers go? Well, 1,034 went to Cornell, 324 to Penn (an hour by train away for many), 301 to Columbia, 202 to Harvard, 199 to Yale, 196 to Brown, 166 to Dartmouth, and (this surprised me a little) only 112 to Princeton–but that’s still more than any Ivy got out of Texas. Quite a few did stray as far south as Duke (154), Vanderbilt (131) and Emory (113); Rice not so much (28), Stanford only a little better (69, or about half the least-popular Ivy among New Yorkers).</p>

<p>This correlate pretty well with where the New Yorkers sent SAT scores: 3,440 to Brown, 3,673 to Penn, 5,635 to Columbia, and 8,703 to Cornell–all much bigger numbers than for Texas, where potential Ivy interest topped out at 2,449 who sent scores to Harvard. </p>

<p>As I said, it’s regional. Get it?</p>

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The distribution of ACT scores at Harvard looks like this (25%ile - 75%ile)
English: 32-35
Math: 31-35</p>

<p>In Utah: 1,026 students scored at least 33 on the English section, and 485 scored at least 33 on math. <a href=“pg%2015”>url=http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2011/pdf/profile/Utah.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>In Arkansas: 828 students scored at least 33 on the English section, and 274 scored at least 33 on math. <a href=“pg%2015”>url=http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2011/pdf/profile/Arkansas.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Harvard admits ~2,000 undergrads in a given year. In order to exactly match the overall U.S. population distribution, it would have to admit:</p>

<p>2000 * (2,937,979 / 311,591,917) ~ 19 Arkansans
2000 * (2,817,222 / 311,591,917) ~ 18 Utahns</p>

<p>(Population data from the U.S. Census Bureau)</p>

<p>The kind of student with a) the academic qualifications, b) the extracurricular qualifications, and c) the inclination to apply to Harvard is probably concentrated in a few regions of the country. But let’s not pretend that this is about rigorous academic standards alone.</p>

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<p>Yes. Well stated. I don’t think those on the east coast on CC truly understand that the Ivies are not seen as the be-all-end-all of education in most other parts of the country (except in certain upper middle class pockets). Which isn’t a reflection on the schools; they’re all terrific schools, of course. But the burning-desire-that-one’s-education-culminate-in-an-Ivy-degree is regional in nature.</p>