For those looking at elite schools: why do public universities have such a bad rep?

<p>JHS, I am sure your kids are just as smart as my kids, if not smarter. I made the comparison to what I was making out of school doing comparable work 30 years ago to what they are paying today, because someone said salary hasn’t gone up that much. I didn’t have the luxury of pursuing my passion out of school, had to do what I had to do to support myself. If I had parents like you, JHS, maybe I would have been a violin player or an artist, and my salary would have been a lot lower.</p>

<p>A few, disconnected points:</p>

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<li><p>I was one of those kids who didn’t want to go to my flagship state school, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I was a top high school student, and while the public in question is totally respectable, frankly, I did feel that I deserved better, if my family could swing it financially, than going to the same school I could have gotten into with a pretty average record. However, in the first place, the equation would have been different if the state had been Virginia or Michigan, and in the second, my preference against the public only went so far. Even with significant financial aid, my family paid considerably more for the Ivy I wound up in than they would have for the state school (although not more than they paid for my brother to attend the same state school - I would have gotten significant merit money at the public, while I went to the Ivy for, essentially the sticker price at the state school). If the best school I had gotten into had been Brandeis, the price differential would have had to be a lot smaller than that to pass up the deal the state school was giving me even though I think there are a lot of good reasons to prefer Brandeis to the state school. And I never for an instant thought of applying to any private schools that weren’t significantly more selective than my flagship, even though I’m sure some of them had nicer campuses and smaller classes.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, there may be a tiny, statistically insignificant number of cases in which a student whose moral character was so obviously bad that it would have prevented him from getting decent recommendations is limited to public schools that don’t require them. But students have a lot of teachers of the course of high school. Only in rare and highly unusual cases would a student’s behavior have been so uniformly appalling that ALL of his teachers are aware of his bad character - and in some of those instances, I suspect there would be something else in the record, like a suspension, to tip off a public school. In any case, even if a few of these bad apples slip into the public school bunch I really, really don’t think it is enough to have an impact on the general moral climate. Certainly not more of an impact than the fact that groups of highly successful, ambitious people are probably more likely than the average to include at least a few people who used less than ethical means to reach the top.</p></li>
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<p>-Oldfort, what is unfair about your position is that it winds up holding students from certain backgrounds to a standard that more privileged kids never have to meet. No one is saying here that you have to employ unqualified people out of some sense of social justice. But if you have two reasonable applicants with similar qualifications except for the fact that one took an extra semester to graduate, assuming that the latter is irresponsible or a slacker fails to account for the fact that in many, many cases, taking an extra semester may be due to factors that have much more to do with the student’s financial resources and/or level of preparation for college than it does with his intelligence or skills. Nor does it necessarily mean that this student should have picked a different college. Believe it or not, there are probably students whose SAT scores didn’t qualify them for automatic full rides or significant merit money but who wind up being good college students, whether or not finances mean it takes them a little longer to graduate. You’ll note that most of those automatic scholarships actually require very high scores; it isn’t as if the student with even a well above average SAT is swimming in affordable options that don’t require, in many cases, moving states away from home.</p>

<p>In any event, if the extra time is due to lack of work ethic, there should be other indications of this in the student’s record. You don’t need to use length of time to degree as a weed-out, because you have much better data, like grades, and previous work experience, at hand.</p>

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<p>I said “need-based aid,” which is frequently in the form of loans.</p>

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<p>My point was that it is false to assume that students who don’t get a full ride are lazy “sloths”.</p>

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<p>School and work are not the same. For example, someone who would not physically be able to negotiate the distances on a college campus without a reduced class schedule might thrive in a workplace where he/she could spend most of the day in one building, no matter how long the hours.</p>

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<p>You are talking about your personal experience. I assure you that an $80-100K salary is not typical for most parents looking to put a child through college. College costs have been rising much faster than family income and inflation for decades.</p>

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<p>High school students who display poor moral character and personal qualities, such as cheating and bullying, destruction of property, laziness and disrespect to the teachers and administrators and other students may have a difficult time obtaining positive counselor and teacher recommendations. There are also plenty of high school seniors who are not motivated enough to go through the extra step of requesting recommendations. You won’t find any of these students at colleges that require good counselor and teacher recs for admission.</p>

<p>Whether this matters to you or not is your prerogative. I don’t understand the fury this reality unleashed on some posters. Don’t kill the messenger. What did you think the counselor and teacher recs were used for?</p>

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<p>OMG! That is the most unaware of reality thing I have ever read on CC. Oldfort I teach at a college where a large percentage of students are first generation immigrants. NONE of them have a full ride. Many others are first generation college students. They get through college the same way that any student whose parents didn’t have enough money saved up to pay for school–some grants, some loans and a LOT of working their butts off.</p>

<p>My father was a chemical engineer. I think that his salary when I was in college was around $40-50K. A year at Wellesley cost about $3600. A year at Wellesley now costs almost $60K. I strongly doubt that chemical engineers are now making 15 times what they did then. Do you think my father would be making $600K today?</p>

<p>People in the financial world with MBAs and CFAs and 20 years of experience often make in the $100-150K range outside of New York and other major cities. I have a BIL who has been a financial exec at Ford for over 20 yrs. I think his salary is under $100K.</p>

<p>All of this talk of ginormous starting salaries as the norm is nonsense. It applies to very, very, very few people.</p>

<p>BTW, my father was the valedictorian of his large urban public HS in the Northwest, and received full rides to all three of HYP. But at Yale he had to work for dining services and wear a white jacket while he served the mediocre white shoe boys from Andover and Exeter.</p>

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<p>Lots of the poorer ones start at community college, then transfer to a state university. This is often while working part time to earn some money for school and/or living expenses (so, especially in community college, they may be taking part time course loads, leading to extended calendar time to graduation).</p>

<p>Of course, the ones whose parents originally came here on H-1B or other skilled worker visas (or PhD student visas) typically have well educated parents who have high income by the time they are in high school and college.</p>

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<p>Since when did annual income over $200,000 become the lower bound of the middle class? [Net</a> Price Calculator](<a href=“http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/]Net”>http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/) indicates that financial aid is available in some cases when the annual income is that much or more.</p>

<p>I am a graduate of a public university, the U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When I attended in the early 1980s, that school, like many of its peers, had some larges classes, but most were rather small. Almost all classes were taught by full professors. I wanted my son to apply to, and attend, my alma mater. When I brought my son to the U of Illinois for a tour, we found out that the school is literally hollowing out because of dramatically decreasing financial support from the state. The average class size, I was told, was 140. I asked the tour guide about small classes, and she told us there really aren’t too many anymore, and that you “never meet your professors”. My son hated the school, and opted to apply only to private colleges, all of which had average class sizes that ranged from a high of 25 to a low of 18. I would also add that, because of financial limitations, private schools are much more generous with financial and merit aid. So, my son is now happily attending Tulane, and got ample aid to make it only slightly more expensive than the in-state cost of the U of Illinois. In short, what turned my son off of public universities was not “prestige”, but the school itself.</p>

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<p>That is a very small set of H/SS requirements for an engineering major; even Brown has more than that, and Brown probably just requires the minimum for ABET accreditation. UW requires 12 units of communication courses and 24 units of other H/SS courses, or a little more than two full quarters’ worth of courses.</p>

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<p>Not that likely. Maybe CS majors in today’s hot CS job market (of course, the CS job market was really cold ten years ago), but they are the exception compared to college students overall. See the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-5.html#post15975553[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-5.html#post15975553&lt;/a&gt; .</p>

<p>@consolation. How did your father know that those students from Andover and Exeter were mediocre? Mediocre compared to whom?</p>

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<p>Tour guides are probably not reliable to ask for class sizes. Better to go to the school’s on-line class schedule to see if class sizes are listed. A tour guide who is a biology major or pre-med may see mostly large to huge classes, while a tour guide who is a math major may see mostly small classes; that may affect his/her description of the class sizes.</p>

<p>@ucbalum

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<p>We’re at the 200K income level we are full pay and/or near full pay to most Top 20 schools, at least according to the colleges NPC. Only HPS (not even Yale, UPenn to my surprise will give us about 5K) will give us more than 5K of need based aid. And this with a very conservative estimate of home equity, savings balance, 529, etc… Am I missing something that you are aware of?</p>

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<p>Decades ago, HYP tended to favor admission from SES-elite prep boarding schools, but admitted a portion of their classes from public schools. Back then, the SES-elite prep boarding schools were not necessarily academically elite (although some specific ones may have been), so the public school students tended to be the higher achievers (there was also much less need then for the scions of the SES-elite to do more than get “gentlemen’s C” grades to have good careers after graduation). Vance Packard, in his 1959 book The Status Seekers, described the situation, where HYP had to handle the conflict between maintaining academic eliteness (more top public school students) versus keeping wealthy donors happy (more SES-elite prep boarding school students). He noted that Princeton only recently (i.e. late 1950s) started admission a majority of students from public schools.</p>

<p>Of course, times have changed. The prep schools now have top end academics. But the conflict described above still exists at a lower level, with respect to legacy and developmental admissions.</p>

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<p>From your description, you are eligible for financial aid at some schools, so you are not at the income level that gets no financial aid anywhere.</p>

<p>Thank you for explaining it well, ucbalumnus. In the 1940s, I think the situation was even more so.</p>

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<p>In Harvard’s defense, the admission came well before the scandal erupted. The role of a paid advisor such as Kat Cohen in pushing the novel played a huge part in the deception. All Harvard could have done is determining if there was enough for an expulsion of the school. A much harder bar than denying or rescinding an admission a la Blair Hornstine.</p>

<p>On the other hand, the obvious lack of character or ethics did not stop Georgetown to admit her to their Law School or a prestigious law firm to offer a job. Of course, Georgetown Law has had its share of questionable or fluky decisions, with some making unfortunate political headlines. </p>

<p>Who said that crime does not pay?</p>

<p>[Summer</a> Associate of the Day: Kaavya Viswanathan (Aka the Alleged Harvard Plagiarist) « Above the Law: A Legal Web Site ? News, Commentary, and Opinions on Law Firms, Lawyers, Law Schools, Law Suits, Judges and Courts + Career Resources](<a href=“http://abovethelaw.com/2010/05/summer-associate-of-the-day-kaavya-viswanathanaka-the-alleged-harvard-plagiarist/]Summer”>http://abovethelaw.com/2010/05/summer-associate-of-the-day-kaavya-viswanathanaka-the-alleged-harvard-plagiarist/)</p>

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<p>It was probably the remorse and apology that paid, not the crime.</p>

<p>I’m sure there are plenty of students who make juvenile behavior mistakes in high school, are remorseful, pay their dues and make amends to the satisfaction of those around them. Those students will not likely be penalized by counselor and teacher recs in the admissions process.</p>

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<p>Times must have changed. In today’s world, HYP (and the other five members of the Ivy League) no longer offer merit scholarships. This means that all offers of a full ride are in the form of need based financial aid. </p>

<p>Anyone knows when the schools abandoned non-need based scholarships?</p>

<p>Bay, I think you may have had a different experience with your kids’ high school than some of us have. Teachers evaluate students on their knowledge of a student from a class or series of classes. They are qualified to discuss the student’s intellectual aptitude, preparedness, participation in discussions, and so on. If the student has contributed in ECs that the teacher is aware of, he or she might be able to speak to that involvement as well. But most teachers don’t know ANYTHING about kids’ activities outside of school–vandalizing property, selling drugs or hosting wild parties on the weekend, being generally selfish jerks, etc. And parents of means often do everything they can to make sure no one knows about a stain on their kids’ records. I have seen this happen again and again with the highly competitive parents of ambitious kids–the very ones who are applying and being admitted to elite private institutions that require recommendations. In some cases I would say both the kids AND the parents are completely devoid of anything resembling a moral compass…but the teachers would probably describe the kids as “model students.”</p>