I heard this as well from my S22 who is currently going through the internship process.
I actually rank my kids based on their degree of caring about ranking.
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Nope. We financially do not belong to that crowd. My kids did not want to be the white crows on campus. They specifically said - no Ivies. My kids were not interested in CA schools -too far and too expensive area. MIT - too much cut throat. After the first 10, no problem.
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As someone who started doing research my very first semester in college, and never stopped (now a research prof), I don’t get the fascination. I mean, I’m personally fascinated by research, but it is sure not a fit for everyone, especially when young.
Maybe it’s one of those things that sounds and seems impressive from the outside, so people go gaga over it. Meanwhile, my freshman STEM college kid (son of 2 STEM professors), is decidedly meh on doing research. Probably because he has a sense of what it’s actually like, and understands the pros and cons.
I’ve seen how much of the “research” done by HS and college students is done just as a teaching opportunity. That’s a wonderful purpose, and I support that. But I don’t feel it’s necessary to pretend like there’s some novel thing being done to truly advance knowledge in the field. Most of it is appropriate for local dissemination. I’d compare a lot of it to the non-profit ECs that HS students do that function primarily to bolster college apps, rather than being borne out of true interest. I wish it was more acceptable to just admit that much of research done by HS and even college students is done for teaching purposes (not unlike lab classes). Or is of the glassware-washing variety – which is honorable and useful but not really “research”. Disclaimer: it depends on the student! and mentor! your own kid is amazing and did truly valuable research!
I eat live and breathe research and I’m not that fussed about it for college students, let alone HS kids. It’s nice that the kids who want to do it can get involved. But a college student who really wants to do research will have opportunities at pretty much any school.
Besides, you don’t want them to fall so in love with it that they end up doing a PhD 
shudder
This might be too off-topic though, unless we’re including “research” as part of the rankings in question.
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Agree with you 100%. Everyone loves to brag that their kid is curing cancer. Meanwhile, the Emperor of All Maladies is going to require another 50 billion dollars in GDP to even make a dent in the big ones, let alone the niche cancers…
The last kid I know whose parents bragged about his cancer curing (as a HS student) admitted that his job was to show up in the lab, make sure whatever yeasty concoction was being cooked was still at the appropriate temperature, make sure the air conditioning was on the lab, and then leave without contaminating anything by eating, drinking, or smoking. 15 minutes a day. The rest of the time was spent with the grad students playing online poker.
I mean- curing cancer- like it’s hard?
Yes it is true that curing cancer in a dish is a far cry from doing something with potential for clinical translation. And there are a zillion kinds of cancer. But some are curable or even immunizable (never thought I’d see that in my lifetime!). The strides that have been made with multiple myeloma in the last few years are staggering. That all starts in a dish, with plenty of grunt workers grinding away 
I would argue that the job you just described does fall in the category of actual “research”, because it is a direct contribution to a real research project.
When I was doing a cell culture project early in my PhD, there was an undergrad that was being paid to do exactly what you’ve described for me (except the online poker). Maybe 5 hrs/week total? He was so bad at it that he kept contaminating my cells. After resurrecting my cell line several times, I got fed up I decided it wasn’t worth it to me. So I went to work every day, including holidays, to take care of my cells by myself because I couldn’t trust anyone else. Sometimes my toddler and baby had to come with me. I would have loved to have the kid you know working for me!
But yeah, there are a lot of other “research” experiences that really aren’t what I’d define as research.
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I noted 99% would and we are not most of society. It was I think @Gatormama who answered the other day that the #1 consideration for most everyone near her is cost.
You may be an outlier but if someone is given a full ride to HYPSM, the yield, I believe would be near 100% and if it were a full ride to any reputable school, I’m betting over 75%.
Alas neither of us could never prove the point as it’s hypothetical so it doesn’t matter. But since someone asked the question.
I do think the folks who post here are not reflective of society at large.
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I agree it’s a useful tool if the reader understands what they’re reading. I think your son’s method of reading the course catalog was probably just as valuable.
Opportunities are out there in many shapes and forms. Our son has a publication and a patent and he went to a non-PhD granting institution. NASA, Boeing and the Air Force all use the device he worked on.
My main point is to understand the methodology of each ranking system so one knows what is actually being ranked, and can determine if it resonates with what’s important to them.
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Forbes has a good article (paywalled) noting how much major matters more than college.
Grads in computer science from Purdue, ranked 300, outearn English grads fron number 3 Yale by quite a bit, even several years after graduation
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yep 
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Would be a nice read. The dreaded paywall - too bad.
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Wish I could share. Sorry; maybe someone else can.
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I just googled the article and it wasn’t paywalled. The summary is that schools should be ranked by their individual programs, not as a school as a whole. Basically what you major in is more correlated to earnings than the name of the school. No big surprise there ; )
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In what way?
MIT actually prides itself on fostering a collaborative spirit (so much so that professors encourage group work on psets).
Now, it’s still arguably the most rigorous college experience available anywhere in the US, and if taking classes with some of the world’s top academic superstars (IMO & IOI winners, Putnam fellows and the like) is not one’s idea of an ideal college environment, that is entirely understandable.
But that is not the same thing as it being a cutthroat environment, where one’s success depends on their friends’ failure (say due to curve grading etc).
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Thanks for the cliff note version… I believe I just dated myself.
I’ve been saying that forever. Institution wide ROIs are worthless.
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Not to start a flame war, but Caltech holds that distinction with MIT certainly not too far back.
Is that a good quality? Questionable.
I agree though, cutthroat and grind are different. Cutthroat is lack of student cooperation. Grind is high pace, probably higher than is necessary.
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Being GaTech graduate (in my time it was called Southern MIT among students) I was not thinking that even more rigor was necessary. It was more than enough pressure cooker. I do not have first-hand experience at MIT but I can imagine it is a step up from GaTech 
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A lot depends on the field.
You may be familiar with high-school “research” in biology, where a high-school student works in a lab over a summer, mostly doing menial tasks like cleaning test tubes, and is rewarded with a paper to publish or to present in science fair competitions. There is a major cultural difference between biology and mathematics. In biology, everyone who is involved in any way on a project is listed as a coauthor, so sometimes author lists run into the hundreds. (See this paper for an extreme example.) But in mathematics, only those people who made a significant technical contribution are coauthors. There is no mathematical equivalent of cleaning test tubes. (We can erase our own chalkboards, thank you very much.)
So on the one hand, yes, there’s a lot of glassware-washing going on, but on the other hand, there are programs like MIT PRIMES and RSI that have high-schoolers publish peer-reviewed papers in reputable journals, either with their mentors or as sole authors.
OTOH, if the result of that early research involvement is that they get disillusioned sooner - that can be chalked up as another benefit. 
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