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I don’t think we should say “the ivies” when we really mean Harvard.</p>
<p>Sorry, little Yale joke there. I think the percentage of truly packaged kids at these schools is small. It’s not that easy to package for the kinds of achievements those schools want. It’s certainly true, though, that a lot of the achievements are much more available to kids with money and kids who go to high schools that make them more available.</p>
<p>I can echo sewhappy’s experience and maggiedog’s comments too. It was definitely a humbling experience for DS to go from the top of the heap from PK through high school to an “elite” school (and, truthfully, a bit shocking for him). But it was also one of the best things that could have happened to him.</p>
<p>It’s quite possible to have that same humbling experience at a different non-Harvard/Yale school! Again, this notion that only the most intelligent kids get into these schools is what perpetuates the elitism and mythology of these places.</p>
<p>In any event, my D just told me about a workshop for Harvard undergrads that she found quite funny. I thought it underscored the point the author was making:</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Hosts Workshop to Prevent Students From Becoming Arrogant Jerks](<a href=“Harvard Hosts Workshop to Prevent Students From Becoming Arrogant Jerks | The College Fix”>Harvard Hosts Workshop to Prevent Students From Becoming Arrogant Jerks | The College Fix)</p>
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<p>I see this effect at any school whenever a group gets through a relatively hard experience. Just because you made it through discrete math or a state politics course doesnt automatically mean you know how the world should be run. </p>
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<p>Let me add another germ- I doubt we could come up with a better system. If the scare resource of the best institutions, the best instructors and the best facilities arent distributed on an effort and merit basis the we risk using them suboptimally and encouraging more of the behavior that seems suspiciously slackerish.</p>
<p>I haven’t really heard my kids be self-congratulatory. Sometimes the opposite. I thought that was what the article would be about – maintaining self-esteem at the elite schools, lol.</p>
<p>Good news!</p>
<p>The not-so-little-article-that-could has become a book:</p>
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"NEW YORK, April 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., has acquired EXCELLENT SHEEP: Thinking for Yourself, Inventing Your Life, and Other Things the Ivy League Won’t Teach You by former Yale Professor and author of A Jane Austen Education William Deresiewicz . Free Press acquired World rights, including audio and first and second serial, in a deal negotiated by Senior Editor Alessandra Bastagli with literary agent Elyse Cheney . EXCELLENT SHEEP is tentatively scheduled for publication in 2014.</p>
<p>In EXCELLENT SHEEP, Deresiewicz expands on the arguments in his widely read American Scholar pieces that the culture of elite education stifles risk-taking and independent thinking, and encouraging students to seek out the kind of insight on leading, thinking, and living that elite schools should be providing. The American Scholar pieces went viral and sparked widespread, ongoing debate. Deresiewicz argues that college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, their own morals and moral courage, so they can forge their own path. In his book he will address parents, students, and educators, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he corresponded with over the years, frankly exposing where the system is broken, and clearly presenting the sorely-needed solutions.</p>
<p>Alessandra Bastagli says, “In the age of helicopter parenting, increasingly competitive environments from pre-school through to college, ivy league schools that can no longer deliver on the promise of jobs, and stressed-out kids, Deresiewicz’s voice must be heard. College-age readers will be inspired to pause and think about what they really want, well-meaning parents will be compelled to do some soul-searching and educators will finally be sparked into action and address these longstanding issues.”</p>
<p>PR Newswire ([Free</a> Press to Publish EXCELLENT SHEEP: Thinking for Yourself, Inventing Your… – NEW YORK, April 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --](<a href=“http://s.tt/1vau7]Free”>http://s.tt/1vau7))
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<p>Seeing as the subtext of Disadvantages of an Elite Education was grumbling about Yale products Kerry and Bush, I wonder how it will be respun 6 years later. I mean Romney went to BYU- he isnt going to get dragged into this is he?</p>
<p>^ I love it. A shot across the bow warning the unwashed masses not to question the Ivory Tower, just hand over all your money and your kid and let them work their magic! lol</p>
<p>I will just note that Deresiewicz is a former Yale professor because he didn’t get tenure, and couldn’t find another academic job. He now makes a living biting the hand that used to feed him.</p>
<p>Well, if we move away from this tired Deresiewicz for a second, we did have a thread on here just before the holidays addressing the concern that Hahvaad is missing out on more creative applicants due to a certain focus on the hoop jumpers. fwiw.</p>
<p>And when the hoop jumpers don’t get in, and the “less accomplished” kids do, everyone’s full of angst over that too. Can’t win for losing.</p>
<p>Two kids at top 20 schools - neither one a hoop jumper by any stretch of the imagination. Just good, solid, smart students with interesting EC’s and personal stories, well communicated.</p>
<p>Rich folk upset they can’t converse with the masses.</p>
<p>I wish I had a few of their problems.</p>
<p>How elitist is the whole premise of an article about the difficulties of their eliteness?</p>
<p>Well said Madaboutx. I agree. Should we take the Mercedes or the Porsche?</p>
<p>Lather, rinse, repeat…</p>
<p>As I read that article, the only thing I could think is - really?? My son is the antithesis of what the author described. He followed his passions and hoop jumping is not in his lexicon. As a matter of fact, he said to me, “I am not going to volunteer just to volunteer, I want to do something that matters to me.”</p>
<p>Having read “A Jane Austen Education,” I think the author rates about a C- as an author. (I like Jane Austen and was looking forward to a fun read. I got a sophomoric diatribe about the author and the “insights” reading Austen gave him. I suspect that it would have earned about an 85 in my offspring’s “elite” middle school.)</p>
<p>I went to a regular old high school in the Midwest. I got a lousy education. I lucked out and got into a second tier Ivy. I felt as if someone hadn’t told me but I’d died and gone to heaven. </p>
<p>My offspring attended NYC public magnets from K-12. Went on to first tier Ivy. In truth,my offspring are much better dealing with the hoi polloi than I am…by a long shot. I credit that in part to the fact that some of the brightest kids in my offspring’s elementary and high school were from poor, immigrant backgrounds. When you know that Steve’s dad is an assistant chef at a restaurant in Chinatown and Andrew’s dad is a night watchman and Vicky’s mom is a LPN and Joey’s dad is the handy man in our building, you don’t make assumptions about people’s intelligence based on their jobs.</p>
<p>Plus, I live in a very diverse–even by NYC standards–neighborhood.My offspring learned how to deal with all sort of people in scouts, religious instruction, youth soccer, community theatre and just hanging out at the neighborhood playgrounds. </p>
<p>There aren’t a heck of a lot of colleges where your fellow students include plumbers. If you haven’t learned how to talk to all sorts of people by the time you’re 18, it’s unlikely you’ll ever learn.</p>
<p>Bill Clinton has a lot of faults, but I think he could talk to the plumber. Georgetown undergrad, Yale Law.</p>
<p>the happiest plumber I know is an ivy grad, a true philosopher. Actually, the happiest ivy grad I know is a plumber, now that I think about it. Dershowicz missed the boat on that one. ;)</p>
<p>Sounds like my plumber!</p>
<p>It sounds like people are starting to talk about elite schools more broadly than how they seemed to be defined when this discussion started. I agree that there’s plenty of room for non-hoop jumpers in elite schools but not necessarily in ELITE schools.</p>
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<p>He probably is being a plumber so he’ll have a unique experience to write about for his Rhodes Scholarship. I read about a congressman who lived in a box after college so that he would better understand homeless people and then went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. It was not clear whether he took a box from a homeless person on the street or used a brand-new box.</p>
<p>Or maybe he’s chosen the profession so his kids can use the “I-come-from-humble-beginnings” hook when they apply to the ivy league!</p>
<p>The possibilities are endless!</p>
<p>Nah. This guy is my age. He’s living the life he wants. He reads the books he wants, takes great trips with his wife. He’s definitely upper income. He is a big lover of “Walden” if that tells you anything. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if his kids don’t get his notebooks published when he dies. He’s really a great thinker.</p>
<p>Yale did not teach him how to talk to his plumber? Seriously? Does he think State U would have taught him how to talk to his plumber? Really, if he can’t talk to a plumber at the age of 35, it is not because he went to an Ivy League school. Maybe he is personally socially deficient. Maybe his upbringing before college didn’t prepare him to talk to people. I know my daughter, who graduated from Yale, can talk to plumbers. My daughter lives in an apartment building in an area of her city where a lot of people have not gone to college and where many do not speak English. She has no trouble talking to her neighbors and speaks with them in their language. How you relate to people is something that is developed long before college. And I don’t think it’s the job of any college anywhere to teach someone how to have basic people skills and to instill values about what makes people valuable. It’s unfortunate that the author somehow thought that people who went to less elite schools weren’t smart. I don’t know where he went to high school, but if he’d gone to our high school he’d know better. </p>
<p>Do elite schools make you think you’ve “arrived?” I’m sure they do. I’m also sure that a whole lot of colleges do that these days, including flagship state schools. But using the fact that Yale has ID cards as some kind of example of anything is ludicrous because every school I’ve toured in the last several years used ID cards. I wonder how many college students don’t have a card that swipes a door to get into buildings these days. There is hardly a dorm in America in any urban area that isn’t going to have security measures in place. And the gates that close at night are closing for safety reasons, not to inculcate some sense of specialness. If you want to leave, you can leave. You can walk through the gates into the real world anytime you want to and many students do so in order to interface with the community in which they live.</p>
<p>The author makes the point that you can get extensions, etc. at Yale but not at Cleveland State. Perhaps, but that’s not an Ivy League thing, it’s a private school thing. Many students rearrange finals, etc. and get special arrangements who are at non-elite privates. It’s what you get in a smaller school. Large state schools tend to be a lot less personal, even the really “elite” state schools. That’s just part of what you get with many private schools. Why make that an Ivy issue? </p>
<p>As for grades, there may be some truth in what he says, but it’s not because elite schools are not challenging. Maybe it’s because a) they have an admissions process that works pretty well – not because qualified people aren’t turned away and other admissions games – but because most of the people who get in have already demonstrated a high level of ability and performance b) because they don’t want them to flunk out and what I mean by that is them saying, “We know you’re smart. You proved that to us. Now we want you to learns and we’ll provide the support for you to do that.” c) they work very closely with students who are struggling providing support and working with them to take a leave of absence when necessary. Sometimes kids leave. Sometimes they leave for a time and return. It’s not “flunking out” per se, it’s more subtle than that, but there are kids who struggle and who take time off, etc. </p>
<p>It’s hard to flunk out of some LACs. It’s also hard to pull a C average. Not because they aren’t difficult, but because everyone really wants students to succeed and help is provided. Compare that to some public universities in my state where they have no problem flunking out a lot of kids in intro science courses, etc. and where they don’t care as much if you make it or not. It’s different. Does that make an LAC easier than such a state university? It probably makes it easier not to flunk out. But that doesn’t mean the caliber of student, of teaching and of the work is lower. </p>
<p>Is it so hard to believe that if you put a lot of really bright people into an academic setting who have already been high achievers that the fail-rate will be low? At many state schools there are many extremely bright people. But the range of ability and performance is wider, depending on the school. At an “easier to get into” state school versus a very “difficult to get into one”, there will be students who maybe didn’t work that hard in high school and who aren’t necessarily that academically inclined. Not all, but there will be some. And they may not all make it. It’s not like if those kids were at Harvard they would succeed because Harvard is so much easier and cushier. Harvard is not admitting many students who can’t do the necessary work to succeed.</p>
<p>As for Ivies preparing you for a life in the upper-class, maybe he needs to meet some of today’s grads who are joining organizations like Teach for America, the Peace Corps, etc. in record numbers. Not all Ivy League kids want an upper-class life. Some really are going into a life of service. He makes the argument, “How can I be a schoolteacher?” Well, that’s exactly what my kid was after graduating from Yale. Sure, some people think it’s a waste of a degree, but who cares what some people think? And I think she felt perfectly free to follow her passion and that she received a lot of support at Yale to do that. </p>
<p>Sure there are many kids who loaded up on APs and were editors of multiple campus publications at elite schools. My son fits that description and he is a freshman at Yale now. But while he was doing those things, he was also reading voraciously many of the great works of literature and taking walks and thinking. To assume that students who are able to do a lot are somehow not also thinking, reading and asking big questions is a mistake. A lot of students at top schools can and do think, read and question. And a lot of them are comfortable talking to people from all walks of life.</p>