<p>mini - my advise to D1 is not to think about buying any real estate until she knows where is going to be for the next few years. D1 is in NYC, most coop and condo boards have pretty strict rules about renting out apartments. It is not necessary cheaper (or better return) to buy an apartment vs renting. I told D1 that she is better off in saving her money. This is off the original topic.</p>
<p>Yes, but mine already knows what she is doing for the next three years. (Totally weird!) She already has the firm job offer, in writing. It will be for at least two years after she finishes grad school (and she is working for them now, part-time, at a ridiculous hourly rate.) Thereafter, it is likely she needs to be based in DC.</p>
<p>At any rate, we aren’t buying, or providing any of the funds. That’s up to her. (The real reason she needs the condo, she feels, is for her grand piano she plans to move from our house. It’s part of who she is - and she makes good money at that as well.) Anyhow, we’ll see - surprises in store I’m sure.</p>
<p>"She asked her mother, “What is wrong with these people? We are in our mid 30’s. We haven’t gone to college for over 10 years.”</p>
<p>This is an east coast thing…People don’t ask on the west coast."</p>
<p>We just came from D’s parent weekend and noted the same thing. The rental car clerk asked where D was going and mentioned that his D had recently graduated from Harvard. A couple in the hotel lobby asked us the same thing and proudly announced that their son had just gone to Brown. In both cases, we were minding our own business, and when asked why we were in the area, said only “we’re visiting our daughter at college.” We didn’t indicate which one (unless specifically asked). It just seemed a topic that got worked more into conversation and idle chit chat.</p>
<p>A friend who has lived on both the east and west coasts says that on the east coast people ask where you went to school, and on the west coast people ask what you do (how much money you make).</p>
<p>I would add in the south, they ask where you go to church.</p>
<p>In all cases, it seems to me, people are just trying to “place” you and figure out who you are?</p>
<p>Now I live in an area where they ask who your cousins are… lol</p>
<p>“And whether it helps with law school, med school, or business school admissions, again, above and beyond the fact that many of the students are really smart (and many come from wealthy, highly connected families with high aspirations for their children - nothing wrong with that) cannot be determined.”</p>
<p>I did want to add that the percentage of Yale graduates attending medical school has dropped by more than 65% in the past 30 years. That isn’t to say that they couldn’t have attended medical school, only that they didn’t. Those places were taken up by very bright students not attending Yale.</p>
<p>When I lived around NYC area, at parties people will ask, “Oh, where do you live?” when they first meet you. At some point, then it´s where you work. I never talked about much about my kids´private school, but someone would always make a point of bringing it up.</p>
<p>My poor kids…must be destined to a pathetic future. Neither went to an Ivy League school and neither is earning a lot of money. But you know…they are both HAPPY and doing well. Priceless.</p>
<p>I guess I live in an alternate universe. When we lived in the South people seemed enormously fixated on the Ivies. It was a college town and our social circle was mostly professors and their families. When we lived in the Midwest there again seemed to be huge concern over where kids went to college. When a kid in our neighborhood went to Yale it was hugely exciting to everyone. DH and I started our careers in California and that was where we first encountered fixation on college pedigree. Stanford and Berkeley were very big, of course, but there were also colleagues from Yale and Princeton who were regarded as having some seriously big credentials going for them. </p>
<p>Sure, in any region or community the majority will be focused on the local college and the big game and that is where most of the kids will attend. It depends on where you work and with whom. If your are in a sea of cubes several rungs down on the org chart from upper management or heavy weight R&D labs then college brand is not going to be a huge topic of conversation. The scenario shifts depending on where you go within the company, community or region.</p>
<p>The OP seems to be getting answers on the value of an Ivy education from a lot of posters who didn’t attend an Ivy or send a kid to an Ivy. </p>
<p>The OP and any on CC contemplating an application to an Ivy and possibly matriculating at one should understand the first thing that changes in your life when this happens is that a great, great many people will put a lot of energy into “proving” that attending your school was not valuable or no more valuable then their school or the school their kids attended. That, in itself, says a great deal about the value of an Ivy education.</p>
True. Just as it’s true that when someone questions the relative benefit to attending an Ivy all the people who attended these universities or sent their kids to attend them (sometimes at considerable expense) spend a lot of time trying to convince anonymous strangers on the internet that it was worth it.</p>
<p>I think it does depend who you hang out with.</p>
<p>I have lived in academic communities in this country and in Europe, and yes, academics talk about the same things everywhere.</p>
<p>The locals were typically having a different conversation. And sometimes a much more “educational” one. :)</p>
<p>I would say I fit your category of one who can give advice and I don’t see the point of “defending” ivy education. And the older I get the more attractive an idea it seems to go to college in your home state and value the community into which you were born. But I realize it may not be possible to value it till you see more of the world.</p>
<p>I was raised in a southern state where all my relatives had attended the state university for several generations. When a cousin of my generation asked me where my firstborn was headed for college and I answered, she looked really startled and asked “Why??” before she remembered her manners and said she understood that was supposed to be a really good school. She wasn’t trying to prove anything.</p>
<p>That data is false. Last year, according to the AMA there were 229 applicants to medical school with Yale undergraduate degrees or approximately17.5% of a typical graduating class. After law school, medical school it is the second most popular destination for Yale grads. If there had been a 65% reduction that would have meant that 50% of all Yale grads applied to med school in 1980 which is nonsense. The numbers never exceeded 20%. </p>
<p>Only the number of white males applying to medical school has substantially declined over the past 30 years. The number of females has steadily increased and the number of Asians has more than doubled, essentially compensating fro the drop in white male applicants. The change in the Yale applicant pool is essentially reflecting the change in its own student body. </p>
<p>The biggest change is that the applicant pool is getting progressively older. Fewer students apply straight out of college to medical school. Many take a job for few years, get a graduate degree, work for TFA or some other organization before applying.</p>
<p>Let’s not kid ourselves that even Ivy League graduates who are working in entry-level finance capabilities aren’t “in a sea of cubes several rungs down on the org chart from upper management.” Whether the cubes are at Goldman Sachs, AT&T or Proctor & Gamble are irrelevant - everyone just starting out is paying dues at some level.</p>
<p>still thinking about the sea of cubes several rungs down</p>
<p>Southern cousin’s kids graduated from the state university, and then went to the public law and med school. They are a lawyer married to a lawyer and a dentist married to an MD. They do very very very well financially. If one primarily values an ivy league degree as a votech degree, then my cousins’ education probably wins for $$ invested, and because they have the careers they do because their local degrees have more value where they live. And they get referrals from college and professional school buddies. And their parents’ friends. :)</p>
<p>@pizzagirl #104-
Your story reminded me of one, too:
D, H and I were going through the new TSA gate at Logan when the older man in TSA uniform checking our plane tix asked my D where she was going to college. Yikes! but this IS Boston, land of 100 colleges… anyway.
She explained that she was still in HS, and applying. Then he said that H and I should try to get a job, any job even as a janitor, at the college so we could get her tuition covered.</p>
<p>I had a conversation with a maintenance person at Cornell. He told me he was taking courses at Cornell, it was free to him as part of his benefit, but he was limited to few courses a semester. But he said, “Hey, I am going to get a Cornell degree at some point.”</p>