<p>Has anybody noticed how college confidential posters can be ridiculously brutal sometimes in their devotion to a strict cc “pc-ness”? I’ll give you a few examples of what I mean:</p>
<li>A student asks about prestige and is automatically attacked for being a “prestige whore.”</li>
<li>A student is ONLY applying to ivy league schools, or HYPMS, or the elite, in conjunction with safeties and matches. Again, people accuse that student of being a “prestige whore” who doesn’t know what he/she wants and is merely trying to become a pretentious ■■■■■■■ of some sort, giving them some preachy ******** along the lines of: “you should apply to schools because you like them and not because of their name as an ivy.”</li>
<li>Someone posts asking about the merits/job potential for certain humanities related majors (Ie. what can you do with a history major? philosophy major? etc.) and people belittle his/her intelligence, while pointing out that there’s more to life than money. </li>
</ol>
<p>My responses to the above 3:
- Why shouldn’t students want to inquire about prestige? Could it possibly be that when students think about colleges that they’re not trying to necessarily show off to their peers but merely assessing the how much weight the name of the school gives them towards prospects such as grad school and the job market? Also, is it not very possible that a poster is asking about prestige in addition to a variety of other factors such as location, student population, and program quality? At last, isn’t it entirely possible that prestige does matter, that it is important and people should have the right to then ask about it?
- If a poster has made up his or her mind to apply to an ivy league school (or all ivies for that matter), then I’m sure, provided he/she is somewhat intelligent, he/she has done the research for the schools and knows a good deal about their postive characteristics and differences, and is applying to them not solely on name (As I’ve said before, prestige should at least matter a little bit). And in that case, it is entirely possible that the person feels relatively flexible about school atmosphere and location. I, for example, am fairly flexible about what kind of school environment I want. I don’t really mind going to a rural school like dartmouth, nor would I feel displeased about going to an urban school like Columbia. In that case, given the ivies do share a great amount of excellence in many fields of study, I’m sure the student has found enough similarity in all the schools to have good reason to apply to all of them. Besides, applying to a school doesn’t imply the automatic guarantee of acceptance or enrollment. Let the student apply to as many ivy league schools as he/she wishes and I’m sure when he/she has received a wide selection that he/she will narrow down the choices and choose the one he/she likes most, and provided prestige is fairly evenly distributed among the ivies, the reason for the choice will be genuine.
- A poster has every right to ask about money and job potential for a certain major. Just because there’s more to life than money doesn’t mean a student shouldn’t be concerned about it. After-all, would you want to be making a stagnant 50,000 american (with some incremental pay-raises) as, say, a highschool history teacher after getting 4 years of education in undergrad and a few more years in teachers college, having paid the enormous tuition for those years of schooling, and still needing to pay off debt? Besides, people ask about job potential for a major because they want the reassurance that there are some clear-cut choices for their schooling. Most people want economic and financial stability and freedom, and it doesn’t allay their concerns when they know they can’t actually do anything directly with a philosophy or art history major that could effectively pay the bills, provide for a family, and allow for a life of some moderate comfort.</p>