<p>“Since I can’t get in, I might as well just run it down to make myself feel better”
Lol, there certainly has been a lot of those type of comments on this thread! Good luck to your son performersmom! Hope he gets in to CT!</p>
<p>I don’t think that sour grapes are being crushed into whines about the universities being discussed here. Disputing the validity of rankings is not disputing the academic prowess of of Caltech, HYP, etc. Even the criticism of “elite” education by the former Yale prof focuses more on attitudes, pre professionalism, and conformity than a lack of academic substance in the various chosen fields. </p>
<p>The criticisms mainly address the effort to perpetuate the myth that only students at elite universities have a real chance to become someone of significance in society, and that if you get in you have arrived and are set for life. I view it as a noteworthy honor for someone to be admitted to any of the best colleges and universities, and particularly the most competitive ones, and have no doubt that most students once admitted to such schools work hard enough to receive fine educations. There are certainly advantages for recruitment to big financial firms if that is what you want to do, and opportunities for research for the best and the brightest. However, students who do not get in, or who choose not to go, are not necessarily relegated to subservient positions in life just as admitted students are not necessarily destined to be masters of the universe.</p>
<p>Good summation, Bogney.
I am, of course LOL, interested in the criteria in these ranking and what results come of using them- it is a bit of a sport to follow all this stuff.
It is also most fascinating to hear others’ reactions, analysis, refutations, clarifications, including those of alums and profs and students of the ranked schools.</p>
<p>We were throwing around a few quips above!!!
'Cuz, well, umm, we’re all humans with a few silly foibles that crop up now 'n then… even us!</p>
<p>Do you think that having Caltech at #1 symbolizes a real thirst for innovation? A higher level of pre-professionalism these days??? Even a preference for things computer and numbers-related???</p>
<p>Performer’s Mom:</p>
<p>It is hard to tell what is serious, what is humorous, or sometimes what is what in small excerpts without benefit of inflection, visual cues, etc., and while I occasionally use emoticons for clarity, I really don’t like them. As for foibles, I have my share - as a recent pop song goes, “We’re all just taller children.” Good luck on S’s application to Cal Tech - to be in the ball park for consideration there suggests that he will go somewhere excellent. I really do admire the brain-power and will-power required for admission to the top universities.</p>
<p>I don’t see sour grapes in this discussion (although they are not unknown on CC). I do see a sort of reverse snobbery in some of the comments (and in Deresiewicz’ piece)–the idea that other schools are not only just as good, but in fact are better than the more selective schools, because they teach better values, or attract students who aren’t lazy and entitled, etc. This is not unusual–we often like to think that the food at the little local restaurant we love is actually better than the food at the fancy restaurant where everybody is trying to get a reservation, or that the (relatively) inexpensive car we have is actually better engineered than the other guy’s Jaguar that breaks down all the time. And there’s always some truth to it–but the big truth behind all of this is “different strokes for different folks.”</p>
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<p>Not exactly, but close. Other schools are just as good because they attract students who, if they put forth the effort required, will get educations every bit as good as the students at the hyper-selective colleges, some of whom are indeed lazy and entitled - and who are allowed to graduate anyway, whereas at the less-prestigious schools the lazy and entitled don’t get degrees.</p>
<p>^ It can’t possibly be true that the lazy and entitled don’t get degrees at the less-prestigious schools. How else do so many really lazy students (you know, the ones that did next to no homework in high school because they took the regular level Mickey Mouse classes) not only get admitted to, but graduate from state schools after spending their college years partying their heads off? Well, I guess they do tend to take an extra year or two to graduate, though, which I suppose gives them time to re-take all the classes they supposedly fail depite the existence of massive remedial programs paid for by the taxpayers.</p>
<p>And what about all those colleges where the kids swear the work is much easier than it was at their high schools? Towson, for example, is well known around these parts (NJ) for being that sort of school. Based on posts D has seen on FB, paying people to do your homework is pretty popular there, so I guess that’s another reason they can party constantly and still pass.</p>
<p>Yup, Towson is every bit as good as Yale. Gag.</p>
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<p>They for the most part don’t. They’re in the 50% or more who don’t graduate, even in six years, from the less-selective schools.</p>
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<p>That’s certainly a solid source.</p>
<p>Well, there aren’t exactly reliable sources out there outlining the schools where it’s easiest to graduate without doing much work. Students depend on word-of-mouth for that. Most of what is on CC is word-of-mouth too and no more solid. It’s not like we ever verify people’s credentials to determine if they or their children visited or attended a particular school and thus have some credibility to speak.</p>
<p>And yes, plenty of lazy kids do graduate from the state schools near me. I know people whose job it is to make sure they do. They pull their hair out from the stress, lol.</p>
<p>“I don’t think that sour grapes are being crushed into whines about the universities being discussed here. Disputing the validity of rankings is not disputing the academic prowess of of Caltech, HYP, etc”</p>
<p>I think they are really, really good schools. And I think, from first and close secondhand experience that, in terms of the quality of education received by the majority of students attending, (with the possible exception of Caltech), there are at least 20 undergraduate institutions that are better. </p>
<p>It’s not an act of reverse snobbery. I know what I got from my Williams degree, my Oxford degree, and what my students got at UChicago. I know what my d. received at Smith, and what the undergrads get at Princeton (from her and others). Nor do I deny that in certain, especially eastern U.S. circles, some schools carry more prestige than others, much as I can’t deny that many of those same degrees DON’T carry much in the way of usable prestige where I live.</p>
<p>The schools you mention above are all prestigious, at least in their region, aren’t they? And one would assume also, given the commitment to undergrad teaching, that their students are well-supported (perhaps even coddled) towards graduation. Furthermore, considering the price tag, there wouldn’t be fewer entitled kids there than at HYP. If someone asserted that the teaching at a place like Swarthmore is better than at a university like Harvard, I wouldn’t argue. </p>
<p>But to claim that at your average public institution lazy, entitled students can’t graduate is ridiculous. Furthermore, unless your daddy is a generous billionaire, it is pretty darn hard to be simultaneously lazy and the type of student who gets into a top 20 school. They don’t suddenly become lazy people when they walk through the college gate. They tend to keep studying, working, striving, organizing and leading.</p>
<p>Let’s unpack this idea that students at schools like Yale can cruise through with no work and graduate. Can they do this in the hard sciences, or on a pre-med track? I don’t think so. Can they start in the sciences, and then drop to an easier major, and then graduate? They probably can, to some extent. i question whether there is any major at Yale in which you could do well without putting in signfificant work, especially in the higher level classes. Maybe you could get Cs with minimal work. But I’ll tell you this–a person graduating from Yale with a lot of Cs on the transcript is not going to do very well in terms of law schools, med schools, graduate schools, or jobs. All those people know what the grade distribution at Yale is like. (They also know what it’s like at Princeton, where they mean something a little different.)</p>
<p>As to where you can and cannot get as good an education as at Harvard–I think it’s true that there are many, many colleges where you can get a top-notch education if you apply yourself and choose your courses wisely. But there is a spectrum, and there are schools where you simply can’t get a top-notch education because the student body just isn’t strong enough to support high-level teaching. You can probably still get a decent education there–you can get a decent education at the local community college–but the teachers simply won’t be able to teach the way they would if they had a class full of highly accomplished students.</p>
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<p>I have now read Deresiewicz’s article Disadvantages of an Elite Education several times. [The</a> American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - William Deresiewicz](<a href=“http://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/]The”>The American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - <a href='https://theamericanscholar.org/author/william-deresiewicz/'>William Deresiewicz</a>)
Unfortunately I am not a very close reader or analytic thinker, but don’t find anywhere he discusses laziness. What am I missing?</p>
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<p>^^This doesn’t sound lazy.</p>
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Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they’re exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven. But others end up there because they have a more independent spirit. They didn’t get straight A’s because they couldn’t be bothered to give everything in every class. They concentrated on the ones that meant the most to them or on a single strong extracurricular passion or on projects that had nothing to do with school or even with looking good on a college application. Maybe they just sat in their room, reading a lot and writing in their journal. These are the kinds of kids who are likely, once they get to college, to be more interested in the human spirit than in school spirit, and to think about leaving college bearing questions, not resum</p>
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<p>I agree this is the major difference. Reading this thread I’ve been thinking about the scene in Mona Lisa Smile where Julia Roberts, a young Art History Professor, encounters a class that already knows everything she had planned to teach that semester. They have already seen all the art and read all the course materials. </p>
<p>Of course, that was not at HYP ;)</p>
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I actually think this idea is pernicious–I’ve encountered plenty of kids, both in real life and on CC, who had this attitude that they “couldn’t be bothered” to do homework or assignments that they considered boring or useless. These are generally not leaders or innovators, but people who think they are smarter than their teachers (and later, employers). They tend to be failures. I’m sure there are kids who spend so much time on their passions that their other activities suffer–but the “couldn’t be bothered” phrase is a giant red flag.</p>
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<p>Does he use the word “lazy?” Nope. But consider this:</p>
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<p>A-, not C</p>
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<p>Do you have an example of such a place? With evidence that it doesn’t “support high-level teaching?”</p>
<p>An alternative explanation might be that the high-level teaching that occurs causes those who cannot or will not respond to it to leave, voluntarily or otherwise. Which is one feasible explanation as to why the graduation rates at these places are not very high.</p>
<p>Hey mini - was wondering about something. Were you with Oxford with Bill and did you inhale?</p>
<p>If you’re going to base your views of Yale on what one former faculty member has (supposedly) “heard of,” then obviously nothing I say will convince you. But in fact, mediocrity doesn’t get you A- at Yale.</p>
<p>There are plenty of colleges that can’t support high-level teaching. That doesn’t mean they are bad schools. But they are populated by students who received middling grades in high school and have standardized test scores in the 500s, not the 700s. Don’t confuse “good” teaching with “high-level” teaching. In a first-year English course at Yale, students will be asked to read and write commentaries on the Iliad (if they’re non-majors) or Chaucer (if they’re English majors). They will be expected to already know how to do literary analysis and to write reasonably well. That’s because almost all of them will have taken AP or IB English, or at least honors, and will have done very well in those classes. At other colleges, students will have taken “regular” high school English–and may not have done all that well in those classes. It’s not just ability, but also preparation, that makes it impossible for teachers at many colleges to teach at a high level.</p>
<p>To add: reasonable minds can disagree about how far down the college pecking order one can still find high-level teaching. I wouldn’t argue, for example, that students at Virginia Tech don’t get high-level teaching in science and engineering–I believe they do. But I’m pretty sure that the calculus teacher at the community college has to focus on getting kids up to speed as opposed to challenging already-accomplished students. That’s not an insult to the teacher or the students.</p>
<p>annasdad: At some schools, unless professors adjust their teaching to the class right in front of them, it is possible everyone will flunk out. In the real world if all your students flunk out you don’t have a job. Different levels of teaching do exist at different schools. That doesn’t mean that some motivated students can’t find appropriate professors to work with at almost any school. But different levels of classroom instruction do exist based on what the students previous educational background has been. And it isn’t something always easy to determine by looking at a course handbook or even the syllabus.</p>
<p>Have you been doing campus tours with your daughter? I think it might be interesting for you to pick the same basic class and visit it at a community college, a branch of the state college system, a flagship state university, a LAC, HYP. I am not trying to be snarky. Some people responding to you have probably had all these different experiences. Maybe you have had all these experiences and you are basing your argument on first hand knowledge? If not, it isn’t exactly something you can cite a source to prove and I encourage you to give it a try and come back and tell us your impressions. I am sincerely interested in what you would decide. It is an interesting question. It is very interesting to me if people reading this board think an introductory class in most subjects is the same class at a community college or a small satellite state college and at Swarthmore or Yale.</p>
<p>edit: Hunt said it better, as always :)</p>
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<p>Forgive me if I give more weight to the opinion of somebody who taught there for 10 years and is a respected writer and critic than I do to an anonymous poster on the Internet.</p>
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<p>And I suspect many of them can’t handle the challenge, and don’t return for their sophomore years. And I suspect many of them can - often with a lot of hard work and struggle - and do manage to succeed.</p>