dfb students don’t need hooks except at elite colleges because they have nearly open admission like at Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma, FL State, and most other schools.
The “hook” needed at major football powers like Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma, etc. is the talent. The general talent level at places like HYP pales in comparison. Even more so, in general, at the elite D3 schools that are top heavy with athletic recruits. I am talking about the big sports like football and basketball. It is certainly not “open admission” at places like Florida State. You need top athletic talent for these programs.
Not everyone who works in expensive cities lives in the same expensive cities. There are places near Palo Alto that are considerably less expensive to live in, for example. However, how do you explain the fact that there are people living Palo Alto on an income of $126,771 (the median there) or lower? Or do you suggest that half of the population of Palo Alto is either living in poverty (since you apparently cannot believe that people can live there on that income), or has some large amount of accumulated wealth to spend down in order to supplement their income?
Google up the list of the top 100 millionaire producing millionaires. Even if you don’t correct for class size and wealth of matriculated students, there are a surprising number of good old state universities.
Guidance counselors are famous for saying how important prestige is. When guidance counselors start paying my kid’s student loans, I’ll become interested.
Our GC was nice enough, but provided zero useful information.
SAY, Schools like Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma and Florida State have lots of school spirit, and loyal and successful alumni. These kinds of schools may not be your cup of tea, since you say your 4 kids went to the “most elite” schools, but they can provide wonderful experiences for lots of folks.
sevmom the talent you are talking about here is all physical which is a different subject.
admissions Data (2015):
Florida State University Acceptance Rate: 56%
GPA, SAT and ACT graph for FSU
Test Scores – 25th / 75th Percentile
SAT Critical Reading: 560 / 640
SAT Math: 560 / 640
SAT Writing: 560 / 640
This school is a good fit for many students.
ucb sure you can always live for less. The point is that no new workers earning 110k will ever be able to buy a house there and the commute is getting longer and longer. Some stay and try to grind it out and many leave for places with a lower cost of living.
Of course, physical is different. But you are the one who keeps bringing up the "elite " angle. And the schools you seem to be so dismissive of are “elite” in that realm. How is it a surprise that a state school like FSU has lower general SAT scores and GPA’s than schools like Stanford? That is just common sense. It is certainly not “open admission.”
No but any good student can be nearly 100% certain of admission. No one is dismissive. There are different schools for students with different cognitive abilities. There certainly are elite sports colleges and there are just a handful on both lists. However in the context of CC prior to your post the term elite has always referred to admissions. Being on the top of both lists certainly sets Stanford apart from the rest though NU,Duke,ND, Georgetown, and Vanderbilt also do a fantastic job of combining top level sports with top level scholastics.
Well, you keep talking about sports, sports hooks, Olympians, etc. You left out UVA in terms of good schools with elite sports teams but that’s a state school. They won the men’s Capital One Cup for 2014-15, Stanford won for women. http://www.capitalonecup.com/docs/2014-2015_COC_CompleteStandings.pdf
Say, my aspirations for my kids are not that they go into certain pre-chosen mommy and daddy preapproved fields that I can brag about to the neighbors. How unbelievably pathetic! My aspirations for my kids are to a) go to a very good school (check - two schools that everyone on CC would agree fall into elite) and b) find a career that they enjoy, as life is too short to slog away at something you don’t like. A is done. B is up to them.
What is a good school teacher?
One that can teach and loves to teach. Two teachers in our school my kids like took pay cuts (50% or more) to teach. These are happy teachers and they make the kids happy. I don’t want those who despise being a teacher come near our school regardless of how elite a school they came out.
Btw SAY - if your “world” is a world of a people who are concerned with getting their kids into elite schools merely because they aspire for them to get the same handful of jobs and it’s all about pay - then I submit your world may be a certain type of affluence but it’s not an intellectual elite world.
Only on CC does a kid who teaches HS at age 24 end up retiring as a HS teacher at age 65.
In the real world, young teachers decide to go to law school to focus on ed law; get Masters degrees in public policy and end up at think tanks or in Ed Reform organizations; get doctorates and become superintendents or commissioner of education at the state level; become entrepreneurs and start tech-enabled learning companies or NGO’s focused on education or other “disruptive” educational models. They become heads of business development for software companies with a classroom product. They become heads of marketing for companies which make whiteboards adapted to the school market. They become VP’s of Investor Relations of profitable publishing companies with large textbook divisions, and inventors who create and develop adaptive devices which allow kids with disabilities to function in a mainstream classroom.
Or run for office.
I know dozens of people in senior corporate roles who began their career as schoolteachers. I know dozens of people in the ed-reform industry- founders of charter school networks, CEO’s of successful startups in the ed tech field, or leaders in the not-for-profit sector focused on education. There are huge foundations started by first gen billionaires (i.e. still alive) as well as legacy foundations (founders no longer alive) which focus on education, access, creating new models of classroom engagement and leadership training for superintendents, etc- and the people who make funding decisions and create the metrics by which new models are evaluated- are almost all former teachers.
This blather about how sad it is when a graduate of an elite school “ends up” teaching focuses on the first rung of the ladder- managing a classroom. But there are so many fantastic careers for people interested in education. And many of them-- especially in the corporate sector- are extremely well paid. The first multi-millionaire I ever met was a 32 year old who had sold his company to a global publishing house and was on his way to an even bigger ed-tech start up.
It would be like telling your kid not to become a doctor because Intro Anatomy involves a lot of memorization plus working with a cadaver. Yeah- that’s how you launch a medical career. Not how you spend 30 years.
@say “Educated affluent parents in high performing HS do not worry about gaining admission to the 35th-40th ranked school. It’s just a fact.”
I am not sure what your point is here. I agree with you that top 10 schools are at the epicenter of competitive admissions, but I would probably add five more: NU, JHU, Cal Tech, Duke, Chicago.
The idea that parents don’t worry about a kid gaining admission to schools who are in the 35-40th ranking, however is not true. All of the schools in the top 50 are very competitive.
Often a student and their parents may realize that a top 10 school is not right for that student. They are targeting schools a notch down in the 25 - 50 range. I agree that it is easier to know your odds of admission to these schools, especially the public U’s, but it still isn’t a sure thing. These schools are only easy to get into for a handful of students.
One must be careful to not imply teaching as an occupation or a full-time career is the option of last resort for respectable/elite college grads.
While that may be the case with some, there are also cases of respectable/elite college grads who pursued teaching K-12 as an affirmative choice…and not merely as a first rung on his/her career ladder.
For instance, several grad classmates of my post-college roommate’s M.Ed classes at a top 3 program were topflight elite college grads…including HYPS who entered because they aspired to become full-time career teachers from the getgo.
Moreover, some end up leaving the K-12 teaching field and moving on to what many may consider “better” or “more prestigious” occupations because they find K-12 teaching wasn’t for them or they were forced out by supervisory teachers who felt them ill-suited to the field after observing their classroom performance.
A college alum friend and several older HS alum friends who ended up as higher-ed Profs/academics, biglaw partners, organizational business consultants, ibankers, etc ended up doing so because they voluntarily quit or were encouraged by older supervisory teachers who felt they were ill-suited to pursue other careers.
“my aspirations for my kids are to go to a very good school (check-two schools that everyone on CC would agree fall into elite.).” What if they didn’t want to go to an “elite” school? What if that was not something they themselves aspired to ? What then?
You guys are getting derailed on teaching. The bigger point is - does one send a child to elite school with the intent of steering them into only a handful of careers or does one actually respect one’s child enough to let him make his own way in the world? And how important is it what the neighbors think - is that how people of substance make their choices?
But how common are teachers moving into such other career directions compared to teachers who stay in the classroom for most or all of their careers?
Of course, it is perfectly fine that someone who likes teaching and is good at it does so for most or all of his/her career, rather than move into law, think tanks, administrators, politicians, entrepreneurs, etc., whether or not s/he attended an elite college.
@cobrat Fair enough. There are ones that got in the high paying jobs fresh out of college because they feel they “are compelled to” because everyone else who are high achieving do, just like there are some who get in a less competitive job like teaching in HS don’t necessarily “choose to”. It goes both ways. And yes, we are talking about first jobs out of college. They are 22 and there’s a long way ahead o them. Just look back how far you have gone through 30 years of career life…
Exactly. You could substitute nursing, hotel management, accounting, acting, journalism, market research, brand management, public health, etc. for teaching in this debate. All of those are occupations outside of medicine, law, IB, consulting, tech, (and, apparently museum curation according to an earlier post) which form the constellation of professions seen as worthy of an elite education by some. And all are occupations of real elite university graduates that I know of personally.
I would just assume that if my kid is bright enough to get into an elite college, she is also bright enough to figure out their own path in life.