Classic CC thread: Child picked MSU over elites. People freak out.

[blue147]

It’s not the parent’s disappointment that’s worrying - that’s understandable - but the posters who made the initial problem into a “He won’t be challenging himself and talking about continental philosophy with equally brilliant kids!” like responses that is the real worry.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1772882-disappointed-in-your-childs-college-decision-p1.html

[TheSpartan]

Yeah, I saw that thread and was unfortunately not surprised by many of the comments. This board tends to be dominated by east coast helicopter parents who are more concerned about how impressive their kid’s school sounds to their miserable friends at the next cocktail party.

The quality of your education depends on what you put into it. MSU (and other large state schools) have the resources and opportunities that should allow a student like the one in that thread to receive an excellent education and a complete college experience if they take advantage of it.

[Beaudreau]

I can’t tell you how many Doctors and Attorneys have told me that no one cares where they went to college, just where they went to medical school or law school. If a smart kid works hard at MSU or any other decent state school, then scores well on the MCAT or LSAT, he or she will be able to get into the top professional schools. Getting an MBA is pretty much the same deal. And engineering courses are pretty much same everywhere. A kid who graduates from no-name “U” with an engineering degree may not have the benefit of big career fairs and super placement offices, but good jobs are still available. I was talking to a dad whose kid graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Northern Arizona (ranked 63rd in engineering among schools that do not offer PhDs). Flagstaff was a great place to live and go to school and his son is now happily employed by Boeing.

Now if your kid is determined to run for President, be a professor of some liberal arts discipline, or is a huge snob, then that Ivy league degree may make a big difference. (“I haven’t seen rain like this since that big storm in Cambridge back in 2002”).

Even the NY Times is coming around to the view that public university honors colleges are prudent options: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-a-prudent-college-path.html

I will have three in college next year, so I could not afford three Ivy league educations anyway, but I am not sorry at all about my kids’ options. Son number one is a rising sophomore in the Honors College at Texas A&M, studying Aerospace Engineering. Son number two starts next week in the Miami (Ohio) University Honors Program, studying Mechanical Engineering. Both kids got great merit scholarships. Finally, son number three will be starting college next year. His two favorites right now are the honors colleges at MSU (hooray!) and ASU.

[blue147]

@ Beaudreau: Good luck to your sons. I have a good feeling their careers will turn out alright.

Also, thanks for the link. A wonderful and informative writeup. Did you see the comment section? Yikes.

Here’s one with some sanity -

The whole obsession with Ivy League, Oxbridge or “Honors Colleges” is utter nonsense and the system tends to be self-perpetuating.

Two of the most distinguished people in my field, a medical subspecialty, took their undergraduate degrees at Wyoming State and the University of Puerto Rico, respectively. They then went to state medical schools and residency programs and were ultimately recruited by “prestigious” universities as research clinicians.

Their prowess had less to do with where they studied than their own individual passion and focus on their discipline.

This is probably something that prestigious institutions will never admit. It just isn’t good for business or your own self-image as an institution.

Here are the ‘gems’ -

Poor Mr. Nelson. This is a mistake he’ll regret for the rest of his life. He’ll always be explaining that he went to the University of Alabama, not for its football or campus fun but for its honors program and he will expect people to understand that his intellectual capacities and academic accomplishments. But mostly people will hear the University of Alabama. When one word Harvard, Princeton or Yale would have explained his talents to the world.

Ronald Nelson’s determination to attend his local university’s honors program instead of Harvard, Yale or Princeton was a stupid decision, and saddening. He clearly did not receive shrewd academic academic advising, knowledgeable about how the university/world works, and it will be a loss to him. That trio of universities is not just of elite expensive schools otherwise like many others – they attract better, more adventurous and intellectually creative faculty as well as ditto students. The academic community is RICHER, and I don’t mean fiscally, thus enriching, and after all, a college education, I tell my community college students, IS an investment into ONESELF. Why not swim in the finest waters? An honors program at a southern college is simply not going to draw the caliber of faculty and students that one would find at major research universities. And students don’t realize that the faculty may be good, but they, as well as the better students, are held back if most in the classroom are not used to excelling. College pals are the ones you will be inspired by now, and in the future will hire you, you will hire, and will trade info with. Non-academics think that B.A.s are approximately the same and carry the same weight. Actually, the college’s milieu and intellectual identity makes a BIG difference. Nelson was smart enough to get into those schools, but he doesn’t display long-term ambitiousness, or he wouldn’t have chosen short-term expediency.

Mr Bruni uses the same kind of poor reasoning that is critiqued in the accompanying article by Mr Kristof. That is, he finds an exception to a rule, and then makes a case that the exception is the way forward. Yes, some factory workers’ sons will go to England on a Rhodes. Most won’t. Most will probably never get to England in their lifetimes. And most are likely not even to be able to work at a factory like their fathers. And in any case, what’s wrong with working at a factory, if it provides security? The whole reasoning here is so skewed by middle class bias that it doesn’t even see how it argues in favour of middle class values – and marginalizes all the rest who will never be able to make it there.

And by the way, I agree Josh Hill. It was nuts for him not to go to an Ivy. If anyone thinks for a minute that the U of Alabama experience is equivalent to an Ivy experience – well, you haven’t been to an Ivy, and you haven’t been to U of Alabama. Sounds to me like the kid wanted to ‘stay in the South’ above all. A lot of southerners, there in the land of Bibles and poverty (Alabama being what, the second poorest state in the country?) and much much bigotry (I know, I have been there in m nay places) is a place where some kids need to stay out of fear of the future. The brave ones leave. The best ones leave and go back to try to make a difference.

[blue147]

Some more ‘gems’ -

From Leonard Charlap, an MIT alumnus and a retired math professor.

Color me skeptical. There are no, zero, figures here to show these honors colleges are producing leaders, scientists, scholars, architects, etc in comparable numbers to the usual suspects, the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, The 7 Sisters, Caltech, U of Chicago, etc. What percent of their graduates go on to get a doctorate? Go to med or law school? How many winners of the various prizes, Nobel, Fields, Pritzker, etc, have graduated from these honors colleges?

And what of their faculty? Are there great researchers and scholars to inspire their student. I hate anecdotal evidence especially personal evidence, but since the column has only anecdotal evidence, let me tell you of my years, 1956 - 1959 at MIT. Let me tell you about my 2nd semester freshman year, I had, all in small classes, I. M. Singer for freshman calculus, M. A. Kervaire for linear algebra, and Bernard Feld for physics. Later on I had Carvel Collins for American literature and Ernest Levy for Music. Most of my advanced courses were taught by faculty who were extremely respected.

Finally it is difficult for me to understand the belief people have that the elite schools take mostly rich students. Certainly I was lower middle class. None of my friends were rich; none went to private schools. Today at Princeton, admission is need blind, and all admitted students are given grants, not loans, so they can afford to attend. It is difficult to see how this would skew the results. Any bias is due to lower level education.

So if one chooses to attend a non-elite over an elite it’s due to a “lower level education.” I should be generous to the man and interpret this as “not aware of the financial aid packets to an Ivy admit.” Maybe he didn’t mean it that way.

It’s amusing that a professor, very familiar with institutions dedicated to higher education is blissfully ignorant that, yes, medical doctors, lawyers and future professors graduate from state universities. The percent? Of course less, no doubt, since state universities have different goals than privates. It seems he is also unaware that a number of state honor programs are new, and that it’s the university’s attempt to attract students who are academically “elite.” Mr. Charlap has read the article, but its message went over his head. He is aliterate. Of course, this is probably a clue to the man’s bias towards academic elitism.

6500 students is an honors college?

Sounds like an honors mill.

The best undergraduate choices and experience is not this or the Ivies or their national counterparts like Stanford and Duke. It’s quality small liberal arts colleges where students are taught by professors not by graduate students.

Sounds like someone is batting hard for the elite LACs. Plus, like Mr. Charlap, this poster is rather ignorant of the honors college showcased in the article. If he has done his research he’d understand that many of the honors classes are faculty led, with smaller classes than the average normal Alabama course.

If we take a look at the Ivies, even though they were dismissed entirely by the poster who wrote the above quote, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and Princeton are said to have the best undergraduate experience amongst other Ivies in terms of teaching. Brown has approximately 6, 300 undergraduate students; Yale, approximately 5, 300 undergraduates; Dartmouth, approximately 4, 300; and Princeton approximately 5, 200. If we go by the poster’s reasoning all of these would be considered “honor” mills if we look strictly at its population, just a stand-alone demographic without the added +35, 000 or so other students not in the honors college in a major state university setting.

If you’re familiar with LACs, LACs have extraordinarily small student bodies. The top LAC, if we look at rankings and CC talk, is Williams College. The College hosts about 2, 000 undergraduates. Now it’s true that LACs like Williams put their professors as the primary teacher in the classroom. Having had experience in very small classes - both of the disciplines that I attained degrees where all taught by professors, and the largest class I had in one was 35 - I can attest to the great advantages of having professors be in front of the class instead of a TA. But then again many fine students have survived the dreaded intro/weeding courses that make education at state universities infamous. Besides the warm,superior feeling one gets by saying all their classes were taught by professors (I’m not one of them), I’m not sure if anyone in the real world actually cares.

The movie character Will Hunting noted his “free” education, unless we count book fines, from the public library.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azM6xSTT2I0

Note: I learned more when I was in the university’s library, outside of class doing internships, and talking to my professors during their office hours about class material (and non-class material) than I did in-class.

[blue147]

@ Spartan: True about one’s effort.

I have a dear cousin who just recently graduated from Michigan State and found a job after graduation at a Top 100 company. He majored in civil engineering with plans to leave within a couple of years to pursue a career in Silicon Valley where his brother works for Yahoo! (graduate of U of M in philosophy). I have other stories of family members and friends who have graduated from state universities and have found success in their careers, or went on to attain an advance degree from respected institutions. I have friends who attended small private institutions, only recognized within its region which are definitely non-elite and not ranked, that have careers in their major as well.

Of course there are stories of people who have washed out and are trying to figure out their lives, but that’s pretty much a given almost anywhere, but more at state universities.

[blue147]

I also want to say that the majority of the comments are par for the course with such a rag like NYT. Great writing, interesting subject matters, sometimes provocative commentary, but the combox leaves much to be desired. Even more disturbing when the academic/social elite choose to chime in.

[blue147]

From another CC thread -

… But I will get involved defensively in any discussion which suggests that one reason regular school grads do just as well or better than Ivy grads is that the latter are socially inept or don’t understand real life.

Oh please. Ivy students & grads on CC are drooled upon. Defenses made towards the “no ones” barely register here on CC in my experience. True, the dig towards Ivy grads being socially inept is unfair; on average they’re probably more arrogant than Irene the Arizona State 2nd generation student not in honors. The dig that they don’t understand life - well, they don’t understand life anymore than a student from a non-elite. In fact, I’d even argue they’re more prone to all the social BS that plagues elite institutions. (Enter “white privilege.”) Their politics probably heavily leans towards the SJW (if you don’t know what that is please google it) crowd, even more so than make-believe Irene.