Do elite schools matter? One man's story (long)

Parents Forum
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<p>Disclaimer: For myself, I truly love Yale. It changed my life, and so far it seems wonderful for my daughter too. But my husband is also a Yalie, and as I watch the debates over whether elite schools are worth the angst of admission or the cost of attendance, it occurs to me that his story from college onwards might offer a degree of balance.</p>

<p>When he entered Yale, he expected to major in political science, but time and his freshman-year girlfriend got him interested in being a doctor. Unfortunately, a ridiculous percentage of our graduating class (25%? 35%?) had the same idea, and they ended up competing against each other in one of the toughest years ever in medical school admissions. Like many applicants to elite colleges today, he didn’t see it coming. After all, he’d breezed through high school at the top of his class, breezed into Yale, breezed through organic chemistry--why should medical school be a problem? When he was sick on the day of the MCATs and got a lower-than-expected score, he never even considered taking them again.</p>

<p>Senior year turned out to be very long. Qualified Yalies were being turned down flat by every med school in America, and my husband came close--but was finally accepted at his state school late in the spring. On the positive side: He got a good education there, receiving the highest possible scores on the national medical boards, and graduated from med school with only a few thousand dollars--rather than tens of thousands--of debt. Less positively, because his med school (at the time, at least) did not give grades or honors and was not a member of the honor medical society, AOA, he was at a real disadvantage in applying for top residency programs, especially out of state.</p>

<p>He matched with the 7th residency on his list--a large NYC hospital that didn’t do much research but took good care of its patients. As he was finishing that residency, he decided to change specialties--and ended up doing his second residency at an extremely prestigious Ivy. Again, there were costs and benefits: On the one hand, the faculty and house staff were often arrogant and seemed more devoted to research than to patient care; on the other hand, he worked with faculty who remain some of the leading experts in his field.</p>

<p>Twenty-odd years later, he’s an associate professor at a well-known (not top 5, but top 25) medical school, where he likes his work. Is there a moral here? I don’t know--maybe nothing’s perfect? Or it ain’t over till it’s over?</p>

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<p>editrix,</p>

<p>I thank you for sharing this story. I am not sure there are any solid answers to the questions you raise. I think your husband has followed a very unique pathway that encompassed experiences at both elite schools and state schools. Clearly he is the kind of person who could make something GREAT out of any situation, and maybe, more than anything else, that is the lesson I take from your story--that one CAN succeed anywhere if one is determined to do so! Thanks again for relating this! love, ~berurah</p>

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<p>Berurah, that seems to be what Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist and New York Times columnist, thinks too. I posted the following link this morning, but it seems to have fallen to page 2 and people may have missed it. I imagine some of us are sick of the debate (elite school vs. lower cost alternate choice) but for those still in the throws of the decision, here it is again, along with an excerpt of what Krueger thinks....</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/b.../17college.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/b.../17college.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist and New York Times columnist, has studied the issue and questions the validity of this. "Students who attend more selective colleges," he wrote in 2000, "are likely to have higher earnings regardless of where they attend college for the very reasons that they were admitted to the more selective colleges in the first place." In other words, intelligence, like cream, will rise to the top. But definitely go to college, he stresses; that's "more important than where you go."</p>

<p>That's not to say it isn't important to go to a decent college, but in an essay in The Atlantic Monthly last year titled "Who Needs Harvard?" Gregg Easterbrook (Colorado College, class of 1976) argued that "any of a wide range of colleges can equip its graduates for success." Part of his reasoning is that there has been a "profusion of able faculty members" but only a finite number of top schools for them to funnel into. As a result, the pretty good schools "have gotten much better, while the great schools have remained more or less the same," narrowing the quality gap considerably.</p>

<p>And if the goal is graduate school, Mr. Easterbrook asserts, the elite schools are no longer the "exclusive gatekeepers," as more and more schools feed students into advanced study, even at top graduate schools.</p>

<p>Mr. Krueger, a product of the Ivy League, asked recently for his latest thinking on the value of elite schools, reiterated his skepticism about blindly going for the "name" school. "I think it is very wrong," he said, "to advise students to automatically go to the most selective or elite school that accepts them, without regard to the match between the particular student's interests and personality and the school's strengths and weaknesses."</p>

<p>Loved the illustrative cartoon too!</p>

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<p>editrix
Thanks so much. Your story shows that there are many different roads to success. It helps so much to hear that !!!!!!!!!!
andi</p>

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<p>Editrix, did your husband go to Med school in the '80s? This is so cyclical, at times there is demand, at times no demand for doctors..anyway, thanks for the story.</p>

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<p>I'll give you my story related to the thread's title. I come from a lower middle class background and didn't even consider applying to private colleges in the early 70s. I went to a neighboring state's flagship U and graduated summa cum laude with a 3.94/4.0 GPA. Out of state tuition was about $1200/yr and my mom took a job to pay for it (thanks mom!).
I was pre-dental and got into almost every dental school I applied to. I know I could have gotten into med school if I was interested since just about any student at my school with a GPA higher than 3.6 did. I wound up going to a top dental school and accumulating 40K in debt, which didn't take me long to pay off as a practicing dentist.</p>

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<p>Editrix, is it fair to say that it does not matter where you go to college for med school admissions?</p>

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<p>Thanks, Berurah and Andi. I do think my husband is smart and motivated--very much like most of the kids I've heard about on CC. The other thing that strikes me about his experience is that we can't always predict where we'll want to go or what it will take to get there. For example, he could have picked a college primarily for its political science department and contacts--and ended up regretting it or sticking with that as his major. (He almost certainly wouldn't have met the girlfriend--the child of two physicians, now a doctor as well--who first turned his attention to medicine.) </p>

<p>Achat--I'm afraid I don't really know about med school admissions today, but my husband applied in the mid-1970s, just as the demand for places was skyrocketing (at least from these parts; unlike Audiophile's experience, plenty of Yalies with GPAs above 3.6 ended up giving up or going to med school in Mexico). The first hurdle was being invited for an interview. As I recall, he got a letter from Georgetown telling him he could come for an interview at a particular time and place--which could not be rescheduled under any circumstances; they were offering something like 800 interviews for 30 places. (Is that possible? It seems really extreme, but I know that the odds were just absurd.) Seriously discouraging--but again, not the end of the story.</p>

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<p>Hubbells dad comments:</p>

<p>I went to medical school in the 1970's(when there were 3 applicants for every spot-now there are 2 applicants for every spot). I, also went to a state university, graduated summa and got in to my 1st choice medical school. If you have a high GPA(3.6+) and a high MCAT(>30), I do not think it makes much difference where you went undergrad. It does make a difference if you have discordant GPA and MCAT scores; the state university graduate with a 3.8 GPA and a 25 MCAT(not uncommon) vs the Swarthmore grad with the 3.3 GPA and 33 MCAT(also, not uncommon). In that case, the selectivity of the undergrad college is taken into accout. Med schools do rate undergrad colleges and review the school profile. Also, ssmall, selective LAC's do a good job with the other stuff that is important(clinical rotations, medical mentoring, research experience) that sometimes gets lost in a large state school.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The other thing that strikes me about his experience is that we can't always predict where we'll want to go or what it will take to get there.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>editrix~This is an excellent point! I tend to be so fascinated with the stories of people whose careers have taken bizarre and unexpected turns through little twists of fate. I always wonder what event occurred that sent the whole thing reeling off in a completely new direction. And I guess I fantasize about this happening to me??!! <em>lol</em> At any rate, the point about "best laid plans" is very well taken!</p>

<p>~b.</p>

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<p>Another point of view, rarely heard on these boards, is that choosing a college is not all about which will be the highest trump to play when applying to professional school, or which college will yield the best-paying job. Surely there is more to it than that.</p>

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<p>Editrix - great story - where in the world (even on the mid-70s) did he to go to a med school without an AOA chapter??? Never mind.</p>

<p>I agree 100% with Hubbell's Dad's observations. A small LAC in or near a city with a med school, is often a very good pre-med choice. The faculty at the LAC develops relationships with the med school faculty and with the admissions department and that leads to research opportunities and internships.</p>

<p>I feel strongly that, depending on your home state, the in-state med school should be the first choice for most students - both for financial and strategic reasons. The other thing that I see on this forum is kids convinced they are going to be doctors and desperately trying to decide if school A gives them a slight edge over school B, when they should be asking themselves why do I want to be an MD? Should I be? What will I do if I don't get in to med school? Am I a hoop jumper or an iconoclast? (I'm convinced that the whole process selects for "hoop jumpers", if you aren't willing to play the game and jump through all the hoops while keeping some genuine passion for medicine alive, you will have a tough time getting into med school - also helps to be a GOOD standardized test taker, I don't think the "bad" test takers ever get that far).</p>

<p>When DD first said she was considering med school, I began rolling my eyes (most other MDs I know aren't overly anxious for their offspring to become doctors, either, sadly). She is doing exactly the opposite of what I would advise her to do if she had a deep, genuine calling for medicine - but that's OK, because I think that if she does decide to pursue medicine, she can keep her options open, and still get a good education. Get through freshman year of college first.
We told her to do what Idler is saying - go to the college you want to go to for the education, worry about professional school later, take a few science classes, learn and grow.</p>

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<p>What I would want to know about Yale, in order to determine whether it "mattered," is whether your husband's experience there has had an impact on his leisure time, his concern for the wider world, his avocations. I have always told my kids that you don't attend a school like that in order to be successful, but in order to be interesting and engaged with the world. I know lots of successful people from various colleges and universities. It does seem to me that those who come out of schools that could be described as an intellectual banquet (and these are not just the Ivies, of course) tend to have very rich lives in their off-hours, reading extensively, writing, traveling. Now, this may be truer for people our age, as many of the younger ones seem to work 24/7 and not have any off-hours! </p>

<p>One reason my d has backed off of pre-med, despite the fact that she is doing very well and loves science, is that she says there are already far more fascinating courses at Princeton than she will ever be able to take, and if she has to do the pre-med sequence she will miss out on way too many of them. I guess that's another topic.</p>

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<p>aparent, I have a small sample size but what you say about the current generation holds true. Having a rich life involves a lot of leisure time which this generation does not seem to have...I wonder what it will be like for my son.</p>

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<p>Aparent - that is what I predict will happen to my daughter. I see another year or 2 of post-bac, getting that med school application together. She may need to pay for that herself!</p>

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<p>A friend's D was recently admitted to Case's med school, which seems to be highly ranked. Her MCAT's were not stellar - but Skidmore gave her a fabulous undergraduate education, may ops to work with profs, and so on. She also had top grades. In this case, going to a smaller school (that was not impossibly hard) served her very well indeed.</p>

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<p>The leisure time needs to be earned. My dad used to tell me: "work hard now, play later". In other words, pay your dues then kick back and reap the rewards. It's important not to neglect the second part of that!!</p>

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<p>Hi! I know I'm a dinosaur (Wittenberg U, 1979, CWRU Med School 1983), but the relatively inexpensive LAC, excellent med school combo worked well for me! I went to Case Western Reserve U on an Air Force Scholarship (ran out of loans for undergrad school), trained in internal medicine in the Air Force and in cardiology at Georgetown U and am on the faculty of a major (top 10) university med school. You achieve what you work hard to get. Wherever that is. Period.</p>

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<p>echo, many of us are class of 1979! I don't think of myself as a dinosaur! :)</p>

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<p>Achat, I was talking to a college student the other day who said to me, "Wow! You went to college in the 70's?? What was that like??" to which I replied, "Well, we had caves, not dorms and dinosaurs roamed the campus!"</p>