Well of course my husband laughed–he was not the one with the problem. That doesn’t change the fact that people are sensitive about this issue and can become unreasonable when it comes to any claims of superiority for the elite schools.
Sensitivity on the issue goes both ways though.
Its always interesting to me that when this issue is discussed (and its a very regular discussion on this board in various different slants to introducing it), there seems to be surprise that the issue is sensitive, emotional, etc. for various people (and again from what I have seen its on both sides of the issue). Knowing what I know about human nature its no surprise to me at all.
""I guess this happens in part because in some regions of the country one’s child’s college choice is seen as a public announcement of socio-economic status. " - This is my impression also. I would say that while Midwest seems to take pride in the amount of Merit awards, both coasts are into being accepted into Elite colleges. It also reflects the situation in my family. After multiple tries, we quit trying to convince our granddaughter to consider other schools that WILL offer her significant Merit awards…she lives in NYC where she attends one of the top test-ins. The example of my D. (we live in OH) did not make a dent in NYC girl decision. Well, she will have to learn a hard way. Let see what happen with her younger bro. in couple years…Frankly, we do not care what people say about any colleges that any of us attended, why should we? My H. and I went to our local low ranked college and are just fine working in our respective fields. Most professional positions in our city are filled from the local university. We have many engineering firms, they hire locally, all IT / IS departments hire locally, medical facilities hire locally,…etc. There is no need for the name recognition here, but it all different story on both coasts.
I love the vilification of the Coasts. Name me a town in America (and last time I checked, Winnetka IL was not on either coast) and I can point to you on a map near by communities which ARE prestige obsessed and which ones are not.
Bridgeport CT- probably closer to where Miami lives if she’s being accurate in her descriptions of a “down at the heels industrial city” in the Midwest. HS kids in Bridgeport go into the military, get jobs, go to a state school, and often win terrific merit awards from colleges across the country. (Hey, just like kids in Miami’s town, even though it SITS ON A COAST.)
But sure- if it makes you happy to assume that living on a coast makes you a prestige^&*, then carry forth.
“Well of course my husband laughed–he was not the one with the problem. That doesn’t change the fact that people are sensitive about this issue and can become unreasonable when it comes to any claims of superiority for the elite schools.”
So then why make the claim? Why is it important to assert? The people who matter know better. If some random parent in my town wanted to claim Northwestern and Wellesley are no better than Illinois State, let 'em. Why do I need to correct them? They have no influence on my life.
If everyone took that approach there would be a significant decrease in the number of threads and posts on this site.
"Bridgeport CT- probably closer to where Miami lives if she’s being accurate in her descriptions of a “down at the heels industrial city” in the Midwest. " - I have no idea where this is, but I stated above where we live - OH - and nobody around us is obsessed with prestige, including people with higher incomes. MD’s kids mostly attend in-state publics and they go around bragging about Merit awards. We do not live in the industrial city either, I wish we did. Jobs here are very hard to come by, people are leaving in hordes even if it is only to a different city in OH. Our city sits on a coast, that is correct, it is on the lake shore, but frankly, nobody here call it a coast.
C’mon. Its the north coast. Or the south shores of Lake Erie. 
Saillakeerie - one comes to a forum like this for discussion, advice, perspectives from people who are thoughtful and knowledgeable. There are lots of smart people on here that I have learned a lot from. I daresay I trust their judgment and perspective more than I do some random parent in my town with which I have zero in common except that we both procreated around the same time and chose to live in school district X.
My point is not the water. My point is that it is easy to claim that folks “on the coast” are prestige obsessed, despite the presence of hundreds of towns near Boston, NY, SF, LA, etc. where kids aspire to merit awards or their local college (just like in Ohio), and despite the presence of hundreds of towns near St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Nashville, Memphis, Kansas City, etc. where kids have the same “elite or bust” mentality as their cohort in NY or LA.
Toledo Ohio, Bridgeport CT, Lowell MA, Pawtucket RI, Yonkers NY- One kid in an exam-only HS in NYC does not mean that the entire East Coast is obsessed with prestige.
What bothers me is that people seem to feel like they have to “pick sides”. Why does it have to be “elite or bust” (aka “prestige ****”) vs. “they’re all the same” (aka “defensive whiners”)? That kind of either/or, black-and-white thinking just gets in the way of exploring a full-range of educational options.
Our own college search with D was pretty wide-ranging, but I also think we did her a disservice by not looking more closely at LACs. Something that I fear was based largely on my own experience as a university researcher and vague preferences for research universities over liberal arts schools.
I just think it’s easy to get entrenched into our own sometimes narrow view of higher education and not be open to options that may be less familiar among our own acquaintances but that could ultimately benefit our kids.
Blossom - absolutely. A lot of it is SES. The kids in Ladue, MO and Winnetka, IL are much more like their counterparts in affluent NJ. Having said that, there is more “acceptance” and respect for the big state u’s out here.
PG – I agree with what you stated above. Just not sure how its relevant or responsive to what I posted.
In this information age, there is so much data accessible at the fingertips that people get overwhelmed with the nuances and seek simple black and white answers. I wish it were more like Elliemom’s ideal. We see this across the board in online media with their “Top Ten Reasons to Eat Cabbage” type of articles about every single topic imaginable, including colleges.
PG, nobody corrected anybody in my anecdote. It was only meant to show that people associate colleges with income level and social class distinctions, which contributes to the sensitivity.
Good point.
Not to mention that there are a lot of people who have educational backgrounds such degrees from both a community college and a hyper-elite (with, in my case, another from a public university along the way). It’s not an either/or—for any one particular degree it might be, but for one’s entire educational existence? Nope.
I agree with this, up to a point. I’ve lived at various times in Boston, New York City, and Washington, and it’s certainly true that most people I knew in those places weren’t obsessed with college prestige. And I’ve also known people from places like Winnetka, IL and Edina, MN who are as much into the college prestige game as anyone in the country. Still, judging by the relative rates at which they apply to and attend elite private colleges, there is a difference. A significantly higher percentage of Northeasterners and Californians pursue places in elite private colleges than do Midwesterners, Southerners, or residents of the interior West (or for that matter, any part of the West other than California). For Northeasterners it’s partly just home-region bias; most people in all parts of the country stay pretty close to home for college, and many of the most highly regarded colleges are in the Northeast, so you’d expect more Northeasterners to apply to and attend those Northeastern schools. But that’s only part of the story. New Jersey also sends more kids to elite private schools in the Midwest—Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and WUSTL—than either Michigan or Ohio, states that produce similar numbers of college-bound students. New Jersey also sends more kids to Notre Dame than Michigan, despite Notre Dame’s location about 5 miles south of Michigan’s southern border. And it’s not just that New Jerseyans love the Midwest. New Jersey sends more kids to schools like Stanford, USC, Rice, Duke, Emory, and Vanderbilt than Michigan and Ohio combined. And of course, once you get to the Northeastern schools, it’s not even close. New Jersey sent 233 freshmen to Penn in 2014; Michigan sent 18, Ohio 44. New Jersey sent 287 to Cornell; Michigan sent 17, Ohio 39, and Illinois—a significantly larger state than New Jersey— sent 92. I won’t accuse New Jerseyans of being prestige-obsessed; maybe they’re just discerning consumers. But whatever the cause, there’s no question that there’s a much higher level of interest in and commitment to elite private colleges and universities in New Jersey than in the Midwest
Maybe the midwest just has lots of affordable highly regarded public Us and relatively fewer elites.
Most of the top 10% of my kids’ upper-middle-class HS class went to OSU.
@OHMomof2, attitude and atmosphere have a lot to do with it, though. Academically, overall, are OSU (and PSU) superior to RU?
Frankly, no.
States don’t “send” HS kids off to college. Kids apply, get accepted, and then make a decision based on the options in front of them. So looking at enrollment data- absent application data- gives a very skewed impressions of who is “sending” their kids where.
Other than that- I agree with much of BC’s post.
However- I’d love to see an analysis which- for example- takes into account the relative percentage of Catholic families in NJ vs. Michigan. For many of the Northeast Catholics I know- ND is at the very top of the heap, prestige wise, followed by Georgetown and BC although interest there starts to splinter according to academics, sports, etc. So telling me that ND has a lot of kids from NJ and many fewer than they should from Michigan- without a comparable analysis of religious affiliations in Michigan vs. NJ I’m not sure this supports your point.
I don’t argue with your point that NJ residents don’t seem to have a lot of love for their instate public options. BUT- i think if you did your analysis at U Maryland, Delaware, U Conn, and Penn State- you’d get the same result. Lots of NJ kids go out of state- even to “less elite” options than ND or Rice or Duke. Population density and the small size of the state for sure are part of this- if your kid is on a travel soccer team starting at age 10, he or she perceives that he/she has “met everyone” by the time they turn 16. Debate? The leagues can pull from Montclair down to Cherry Hill and all the way to the PA border. Is there any EC activity in Michigan where a HS kid can indeed spend virtually every weekend- in season, traveling the entire state, meeting the opposing teams stars and coaches (and parents)??? I don’t know. But I know a lot of kids in NJ who feel like they’ve been in every inch of the state by senior year which is why Delaware starts to look so appealing (another small state- but not as dense).
I’ll stop picking on NJ. Rutgers has a very fine reputation among corporate recruiters and employers, and I’ve hired tremendously talented kids from there. So this is not an anti-NJ rant- just an observation.