<p>Tell me. How many of you (rising seniors) will really apply to Harvard & Yale? Have they sent you letters and info in the mail? Is it worth it to apply just to try or not? We all know it's such a long shot. What will make you decide to apply or not?</p>
<p>If I had an endless supply of money I would probably try out for Harvard or Yale just to see what would happen but honestly the low admissions tell me that although “anything is possible,” it’s better that I save my money and hopefully get into UPenn, Brown, or some other similar schools.</p>
<p>I think Harvard and Yale are great but I don’t think I would like the environment esp at Harvard. I wouldn’t feel at home and it seems too tense. But hey, I might be wrong. I don’t think I’m going to apply for an ivy league for undergrad but I will be ****ED if I don’t get into an Ivy League for grad school.</p>
<p>And yeah… I think that endless supply of money that those schools are requesting for is a pretty BIG factor. Just saying.</p>
<p>What endless supply of money are they asking for? o.o</p>
<p>Getting letters in the mail from these two colleges don’t mean much.</p>
<p>onuho123: Y and H (because of their huge endowments) are among the most generous Fin Aid schools extant. For most middle class families, it’s cheaper to send a kid to Y or H than their local flagship state school.</p>
<p>I am also a bit scared of those schools. I know that Brown and most other tier one schools have low admissions rates, but I feel like I could actually excel at Brown or UPenn and I would be motivated there. I feel like if I went to Harvard of Yale (HYPS in general) I would be scared out of my mind and never do well due to the stress. I know it’s unreasonable but I will still not be applying regardless. At Brown or another similar school I would see someone better than me and kill my self working so I could surpass them (“kill” being figurative). At HYPS I would see someone better than me and accept it as the facts of life and not try any harder.</p>
<p>Here we go again with the fetishization of Harvard and Yale. Yes, they are fantastic schools. I was accepted to both, went to one for grad school and taught at same school. Wonderful students. Superb faculties and facilities, maintained by hefty endowments. But you kids are acting like they are on a completely different plane of academic existance and achievement; you are acting as though Harvard and Yale exist on some exhalted mythical tier, so far above every other school as to be of another category of institution altogether. Several have gone so far as to say that they could make it at Brown or UPenn, but not at Harvard or Yale. This seems to suggest that lesser academic beings attend Brown and UPenn. Brown and UPenn pick from the same applicant pool as Harvard and Yale, and have students that would have done as well at Harvard or Yale, but for the quirks of admission decisions. If you could make it through admissions to Brown or UPenn, you would probably be academically qualified for Harvard and Yale. Harvard and Yale, as extraordinary as they are, do not have a lock on talent and achievement. By mythologizing Harvard and Yale you downgrade the extraordinary qualities of SOOO MANY American colleges and universities. By making Harvard and Yale SO SPECIAL, you act as though other American schools are not. Don’t kid yourself that Brown, or UPenn, or Columbia, or UChicago (my undergrad alma mater), or Stanford, or MIT, or Williams, or Pomona, or Duke are “easy” compared to those two. These schools are peers with Harvard and Yale. They have their strengths and stresses as well.</p>
<p>Each school is unique in its strengths and all of the schools at this level have intelligent and talented undergraduates. What each one has is an environment unique to each, and what you should be asking yourself is this: based on ambition, achievement, interests, and goals, which schools fit me best. It might be Harvard or Yale. It might be some other school. The point is, threads like this on CC elide the crucial point that the American education system has many extraordinary institutions where students will get world-class educations fitting them for any imaginable career choice. Some are better than others. But the most famous are NOT, in all ways, the best.</p>
<p>Harvard and Yale are nothing to be scared of. And other schools are not schools that --because they are not Harvard or Yale – one should preceive as easier or lesser. Harvard and Yale are two spectacular schools. They are not unilaterally the best schools in America, leaving every other school in the dust. They are only two of America’s many great educational institutions.</p>
<p>Sorry for the rant. But the fetishization of these schools does SUCH a disservice to students on CC, and to other great American colleges and universities that should be held in equal esteem.</p>
<p>I wonder why they send out these catalogs to everybody, seriously, do they think everybody is that gullible? I feel bad that they target these young naive students.</p>
<p>^ @swingtime we have a winner for post of the day</p>
<p>Yes, Brown and UPenn are definitely peers to H and Y academically. But in public’s perception, they are still different. It’s just a fact.</p>
<p>Agree that swingtime’s post is fantastic.</p>
<p>hzhao2004, it doesn’t matter what the public’s perception is. Countless threads on this site, along with ample outside research, have demonstrated that where someone gets his/her undergraduate degree is not a major determinant of their success getting into grad schools or finding jobs. The “public” is not making the decision to admit someone into an MD or master’s or PhD program. Admissions committees, who look at the strength of each applicant’s work, are. Same goes for hiring, to a large degree. Most job markets are local, and most hiring managers look at skills, experience, character, cultural fit and so on more than any name on a diploma.</p>
<p>Some kids, like my kid, have no interest in the ivies. For engineering none of them offered what he wanted. He researched the programs by major and teaching methodology and came up with his own idea of what kind of school he wanted to attend. Ultimately, he went for a state polytechnic program with a stellar reputation for developing engineers who were work ready at graduation. All hands on and almost every class in addition to lecture had a lab and/or workshop. He had the grades and test scores to take a shot at the ivies – the interest just wasn’t there.</p>
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<p>All of the schools at almost any so-called “level” have intelligent and talented undergraduates.</p>
<p>harvard and yale both have super power just in their names alone , I can not argue against that! but, these schools attract a certain type of student that many are destined to become future “greats” but not because harvard or yale molded and made them into who they became! bill gates and zuckerberg were attracted to the school by the name but, dropped out to follow a “dream” and they would have done the same thing had they gone to eckerd college or university of akron or no school at all! I wish more people would stop the obsession with the ivies, there are so many other schools out their that you can learn at, be part of a community and grow as a person…to many on this board think there are ivies, then safeties…williams and stanford and then the other schools out their are nothing more then places the peasants go to!</p>
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<p>Swingtime’s post is absolutely spot-on, and hzhao2004, you are betraying your background because in point of fact, John Q Public really doesn’t care all that much about Brown, U Penn, Harvard OR Yale. Despite what seems to be the story on CC, the vast majority of people don’t “bow down in awe” to hearing that someone attends Harvard or Yale. They think, “oh, that person sure must be smart” and then they move on, because for John Q Public there are a lot of other factors that are important in life other than pure smartness.</p>
<p>its not like getting into the other ivy’s is any easier?
i’m pretty sure, unless you are a genius, its a shot in hell to get into any ivy.
i hate when people are unrealistic about this.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t exactly say it’s a “shot in hell” as 2014nhs said, but he/she is definitely correct in that admission rates for ivy schools are extremely low.</p>
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<p>You are wrong, as I, a mere public college grad, would definitely bow down in both awe and humility to anyone who graduated from Yale or Harvard (add MIT as well).</p>
<p>By the way, do you work at Domino’s or Pizza Hut?</p>