^Correction noted.
@PurpleTitan
“Um, no. I’m saying that some people will not make assumptions of intelligence just because you graduated from those schools. That was what the OP was concerned about, remember?”
I don’t want to get into a debate about perceived intelligence when my intent on this thread was to help the OP. I will agree with EyeVee’s statement that if OP wants THE MOST people to assume he/she is intelligent then go to an Ivy or Stanford. So yes, that may exclude ‘people in the know’ such as yourself but I highly doubt OP will lose sleep over that.
Just FYI, normal standards for non hooked Ivy applicants apply for admissions. Ivies don’t lower their standards for everyone, just hooked applicants. And even for athletic recruits (the equivalency sport athletes) their standards for admission must be within one standard deviation of the accepted class’ AI score. You seem to think the standards are much lower than it is for the majority of athletes.
Have a good day 
“Ivies don’t lower their standards for everyone, just hooked applicants.”
Which is around half the student body at an Ivy these days.
“And even for athletic recruits (the equivalency sport athletes) their standards for admission must be within one standard deviation of the accepted class’ AI score.”
Actually, it depends on what band they fall into.
@PurpleTitan, AI enables student athletes to gain admission to Ivies with much lower scores than would be possible at the most selective LAC’s - a 31/32 ACT at an highly selective LAC only needs to be a 28/29 at an Ivy.
Gee, and yet with all those blockhead jocks and ditzy legacies Harvard, Columbia and Princeton are somehow ranked #4th for highest ACT scores. Go figure.
That shouldn’t be all that hard to figure, @Sue22, considering that those figures are averages or medians and while some hooked enrollees have high stats, some do not (and no matter how much some people like to believe otherwise, there are plenty of people out there who would evaluate holistically and not simply assume that all Ivy grads are smart).
Now if that was something difficult for you to figure out, then I’m afraid that you’d just set yourself up as an example for why a presumption of intelligence in an Ivy grad isn’t justified. 
@Sue22, aside from the greater flexibility of AI, with a smaller percentage of student athletes at Ivies the score erosion is less.
@PurpleTitan, as a proud graduate of a fine LAC I understand statistics. Of course some recruited athletes and other special cases have lower than average scores, as is the case at LACs as well. I was simply pointing out how badly I felt you and Chembiodad were overstating your case.
I challenge you to find a LAC other than Harvey Mudd with a larger percentage of incoming students with an ACT of 32+ or SAT of 700+. than is found in Harvard’s incoming class.
Everyone knows that one dull underachiever from Harvard or Stanford or Princeton or Williams. It doesn’t mean there’s a statistically significant number of such cases at top schools.
unkversities derive their prestige and name recognition mainly from their graduate schools and research influence and fame/success of their alumni base. This is why amongst the general population top LACs are not seen as prestigious/well known as the ivies and other top research universities. Of course the undergrad education offered at top LACs is just as good or prob better than that at the ivies, but still every year you have more students turning down spots at top LACs for ivies or transferring into ivies.
@Sue22: The OP was concerned with a perception of intelligence.
Ultimately, that comes down to a judgement call. Do you presume intelligence because the vast majority of students at a school are or do you not presume because you know that under holistic admissions, there is really no minimum baseline*?
I think you know where I stand.
- And yes, MIT, Caltech, and Mudd are holistic as well (though Caltech least of all), though they also don't seem to lower their academic standards a lot for anyone, which is not as true at other American schools. Likely because their curriculum is challenging. Even if you major in something easier at those schools (and not econ at MIT, heh), their gen ed requirements are difficult enough.
LOL! I guess not everyone got the joke. Knowledge IS good!
Yes @PurpleTitan nice comeback!
In terms of social science on the topic, this study arrives at a remarkable conclusion. Though the authors use conservative wording, they do appear to strongly suggest that for maximal cognitive progression, it’s imperative – given a realistic choice – to select a liberal arts college:
How the Instructional and Learning Environments of Liberal Arts Colleges Enhance Cognitive Development
Pascarella, Wong, Trolian and Blaich. *Higher Education/i.
@Penn95 wrote:
That is certainly the conventional wisdom which tends to corroborate this widely quoted 2014 New Republic article:
https://newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere
And to follow-up on @merc81, it’s hard to imagine that the guidance being provided by some of the leading edge minds of our times should be discounted -
These college majors are the most robot-resistant http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/21/these-college-majors-are-the-most-robot-resistant.html
I don’t know if you’ve run into this, but more and more I hear about LAC students double majoring. Not so much at the ivies. From talking to administrators at one LAC in the Northeast it gave me the impression that more and more, the major requirements are becoming less and less to allow students at LACs to double major. This makes them more appealing and competitive with ivy students for top graduate school spots.
How many of us still remember that when someone double majored, we all ooed and ahhed, because quite frankly, it’s tough to meet double requirements. “That person must be smart,” we all said pointing assuredly.
The other thing I noticed is that LACs have always allowed for multidisciplinary majors and allow students to pull together disparate courses and find a common thread to call a major. This is appealing to a lot of students who want to jump right off studying what they like instead of a core curriculum (like Columbia). Likewise, on the other side of the fence, the ivies are getting better, take Brown for instance, at allowing students to do just this in an effort to attract the best talent.
When push comes to shove, people are known to be smart at top elite LACS and ivies. As stated before, those in the know, know. I do think this 'gaming" of reducing major requirements to give their own students any edge is unnecessary.
Mark wasn’t advocating attending a LAC, only that liberal arts majors such as philosophy, sociology, etc., may be more beneficial than others in the future. His views aren’t new.
Harvard, as do most top universities, has an excellent philosophy dept.
[quote]
Psychology is thinking in slow motion
@preppedparent - you raise an interesting question about double majors.
I feel a lot of it comes from the pressures placed on kids to be employable. Everyone assumes that a STEM major is a step towards having a job when they graduate, yet there are other interests that students want to explore more deeply. I would suggest that a lot of double majors I know are half practical / half personal (studying something they enjoy).
I agree 100% with the @Chembiodad post on LAC’s and the future of work. Automation / machine learning is just starting to chip away at fields folks have always thought required professionals. Engineering and accounting always assumed people were safe, yet the basic activities in the field are now being automated. Problem solving, working with others, and communication skills are going to be more important than ever. Broad knowledge and intelligence will become more valued (versus the last few decades of specialization). [man steps off soapbox]
I don’t know that LAC’s are changing to cater to this, or if the focus of LAC’s enabled this trend. I just finished discussing which language my freshman daughter should take (as a requirement). 6 years of Chinese is enough…so Italian seems to be the front-runner. A chem requirement and a math requirement also have my intended English major wondering (slightly) about the choice of college. I think there is a lot of value downstream in such requirements…but time will tell.
The other child is trying to figure out if art history should be a major or minor…to go along with the Engineering degree.
I don’t think double majors are a LAC vs U thing. Amherst doesn’t allow minors, so it’s double or single (or in a handful of cases, triple) - and no gen ed reqs makes that easier to do. Not the case at many LACs though where minors are available.
Presumably you mean compared to smaller schools (like LACs), where a given number of athletes consumes a large percentage of the student population. Giant state universities may be more egregious in lowering academic standards for recruited athletes, but the number of athletes to fill their teams is a much smaller percentage of their larger student populations. Of course, some giant state universities may not be much more selective than the NCAA minimum to begin with, so they may not have to bend their admission standards much, or at all (e.g. Ole Miss automatically admits in-state applicants who meet the NCAA minimum, even if they are not athletes: http://admissions.olemiss.edu/applying-to-ole-miss/freshmen/ ).
@preppedparent, agree, one should not get fooled by the study what you want idea at LAC’s as many of the areas of concentration, in particular anything STEM, is very, very prescriptive - my daughter who is pursuing STEM at Hamilton with either a major in neuroscience or molecular biology and a minor in either CS or math saw that very quickly; that said as minors, and in many cases minors which are far afield of one’s major, are also a part of a signature LAC experience, and I believe attending an LAC will much more easily facilitate that - I attended a high ranked state flagship and would have been gawked at if I attended classes outside of my business school…