I don’t think Michelle Obama “hated Princeton.” Her experiences at Princeton were quite typical of any ethnic minorities have experienced and still today – perhaps to a lesser extent – are experiencing at places like HYP: fear, intimidation, marginalization, constant need for validation, racism and bias, pain and resentment, and most of all, loneliness and isolation.
In 1992, I happened to read a proof edition of this book by Ruben Navarrette, Jr. entitled, “A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicago,” which was then published the following year. In this book you’ll find all the experiential description I listed above, and I’m sure that’s how Michelle Obama must have experienced at Princeton. If she had gone to H or Y instead of P, I’m sure her description and her feeling for the place wouldn’t have changed. If a young person’s experiences at a place like P or H or Y for four years were primarily that of painful struggles, it’s perfectly understandable that they can’t look back at such institutions so fondly. I’m sure that Malia Obama’s Harvard today is quite different from Harvard in the '80s and that her own recollection of Harvard a few decades after her graduation will not be similar to her mom’s.
I believe Mrs. Obama is still undergoing healing from those years and will perhaps for the rest of her life. But I’m sure there’s a part in her, just as there was for Ruben Navarrette, a sense of appreciation for the institutions that also opened up opportunities for them.
Kids with parental star power sufficient to get them into any school on earth will almost always opt for prestige. It takes a special kind of kid to be unmoved by the allure of HYPS, and the kid needs also to want the very thing the less brand-worthy school provides. Young Rory Gates must have been that kind of kid, but not many are. Also, it might have seemed a little like regressing for a kid who went to the Lab School to return to the old neighborhood and even to the senior version of the institution she attended as a really little kid. Then there’s that unkillable “fun comes to die” trope, standing guard against any but the true believers.
“where fun comes to die” still a thing, according to a class of 2022 student who was at our house for Thanksgiving.
Agreed. Said kid may not be interested in the heavy core curriculum at UChicago, or has relatively lesser quant skills, among many other considerations.
Gee, @TiggerDad, I certainly think a menu of experiences which might be boiled down to “fear, intimidation, marginalization, constant need for validation, racism and bias, pain and resentment, and most of all, loneliness and isolation,” could leave one with a taste in the mouth which has one, overall, feeling that they hated the experience.
That being said, “hate” could also be determined to be less than the full and final descriptor of one’s experiences even where all the others are true and present.
I imagine one could remember mostly hating how one felt being in such a place, and know and appreciate the cache and benefit which comes from being associated with that place.
But what a sad state of affairs to think that such might be a similar environment into which our kids are stepping into today.
Presumably, attending college as the child of a former president is a bit less “under the microscope” than the child of a sitting president. But AFAIK, she never said specifically why she chose to defer. Nor does she owe us an explanation.
Although there are conspiracy theories, it seems most plausible she did a gap year to coincide with dad leaving office, so less of a microscope on her/surrounding circus. Seems very sensible…
@itsgettingreal17 got it right. It’s the prestige factor that often overrides personal concerns at places like HYP. When I was reading the aforementioned book by Ruben Navarrette Jr.'s, I couldn’t help thinking to myself at that time, “if you’re so bitter about attending Harvard, then why go there?” Well, you know the answer to that. Likewise, if Mrs. Obama so “hated” Princeton, she had her choice to transfer out to, say, Howard U, but she didn’t. For good reasons.
There are other considerations to be examined and laid alongside answers to the question of ‘why go there?’
Students lose financial aid/scholarships when they leave universities and transfer to others. This can be the difference between getting an education (in the time frame one has set out for one’s self) or not.
Students from many families are designated a vaunted place in the family and/or community when they are accepted into university…and when accepted to prestigious universities, that place is tantamount to a mantel. It can be very difficult to think one has failed, or lost position in the eyes of, family. (Then there is the student’s own ideas of what his/her potential is and the failure to achieve what one has set out to do because one “ran away”.)
Many times the hurtful experiences are hardly the only experiences one has at a place where one interacts with others both in the classroom and socially. The hurtful experiences may be the blanket experience in summation, but living through those times is achieved by the moments of camaraderie and acceptance, personal achievement and recognition among one’s peers and in the classroom, and ability to find areas on the campus or in the area where one takes solace or participates in activities central to the cultural practices of a student.
Overall, there is no simple answer to why one stays (especially where one is doing well in class), and, I would posit, certainly not as delimiting or shallow as “prestige”. Not saying that element is not there, but that is really not all there is to it.
It didn’t surprise me at all that Malia Obama didn’t put Chicago on the list of colleges to consider.
First, both of her parents went to colleges that were completely different from where they had grown up. Most people like to look for college close to home, but some want to look for college anywhere but close to home, and I think there’s a better chance of that if, like Malia, that’s what your parents did.
Neither of my kids ever considered Penn, Swarthmore, or Haverford – all schools we would have been happy to send them to (though no happier than to send them to Chicago). They lived near Penn when they were very young, but essentially grew up and went to K-12 school in a very different part of the city. Nevertheless, Penn seemed the essence of familiarity. My older child had 40 kids who had been her classmates at the two high school she attended go to Penn, not to mention dozens of kids in other classes or whom she met in other contexts. She knew faculty members who were in our social circle. She had been on the campus many times. (Malia had been on the Chicago campus daily until her father was elected President.) Penn and the others just didn’t register for my kids as the same kind of growth opportunity they could get at a little more distance.
Second, when the Obamas were looking for a school for their daughters, it emerged pretty quickly that some of the schools in DC had a lot more experience than others accommodating and protecting celebrity students. Any number of schools would have done backflips for Malia and Sasha, but only two or three schools already knew exactly what backflips were necessary, and could document their experience at doing them. I suspect the same seemed true looking at colleges. I’m sure Chicago will do a great job for Rory Gates, but he’s really a first there, at least in the contemporary age. Harvard has a rich, incident-free recent history of educating the children of world leaders.
One thing you all forgot to mention is the advantage of going to college where your parents are not - especially for kids who feel cooped up due to family circumstances or upbringing. Its a chance for freedom, and independence, and just to try new things without the parental units hovering around.
If I were Malia, I would have gone to Oxford. That would have been just about far enough.
(So that rules out DC, Chicago and Hawaii. Maybe even ruling out Oregon where Michelle’s brother is.)
My mother only had 2nd grade education. She was pulled out of her elementary school in order to contribute to make a living post-Korean war. She once told me she had to steal food at times just to survive. My father barely graduated from high school. He was conscripted by the Japanese military to the front line during the war and miraculously survived. His shin was bashed in with the butt of a rifle by his Japanese superior. I never had the luxury of attending anything that was associated with my parents. Going far away from the parent’s college just for the sake of…? Our American kids have no idea what kind of luxurious life they all lead…
And for that I’m glad. My parents too, were able to escape the atrocities during the war in China (mommy called the Japanese ‘barbarians.’) I wouldn’t want my son anywhere near what they had to endure, nor will I judge my son for taking his own path because his grandparents were able to come to the US to give us a wonderful life.
Sure, my son knows all of their stories first hand, and probably the last of this generation to hear those stories as the grandparents and all who went through war atrocities during world war 2 in Asia are elderly and dying.
My son has his own life, and the path he takes need not be mine.
“still interesting information for people interested in world of college admissions” Michelle’s position at Chicago gives no insight into admissions.
And didn’t we already discuss, on another htread, the misinterpretation of her “hating” Princeton and clear that up? Was that the same OP?
Why in the world do we care that Malia didn’t choose to apply to Chicago? Why this assumption she either had to, because she had lived there, or that something’s wrong? She visited plenty of colleges and just wasn’t interested in applying to Chicago.
I understand she has plenty of freedom at H and in Cambridge.
I believe my kids have a pretty accurate idea of what kind of luxurious life they lead. They understood perfectly well that being able to choose paying a zillion dollars to go 700 miles away from home for a specific kind of platinum-plated education was an unbelievable luxury. They were appropriately grateful for it.
A good working mental apparatus is something almost everyone associated with this board got at birth. That’s the true luxury, not material goods. Figuring out how to use that native endowment is the challenge. It is one that many fail abysmally, with or without advantages. A good education could be part of the story, if assisted by the classic virtues, especially courage, diligence and fortitude. They will be needed because life will surely deliver the human constants of pain, adversity, struggle, failure and deprivation. If you can keep your head through all that, you have a chance of becoming a thoughtful, considering, articulate human being, as Aristotle taught in your HUM class.