If we take at face value the idea that the top schools could fill their classes ten times over with equally qualified students…then those that end up at HYP have cohorts who are equally bright who have ended up at other schools. I firmly believe that “true genius” occurs at many, many schools and the Ivies certainly do NOT have a monopoly on it. In fact, the very idea that they do…is what is creating the craziness we see in admissions.
A lot of the appeal of the HYP trio is the doors just going to those schools opens, you’re part of the club, it’s not solely based on the quality of education.
@CValle - I agree there are 10X plus who can do the work, but the number of truly special kids (intellectually) is skewed toward Ivy / S / MIT. A lot of this is historically biased, as those schools have attracted big thinkers longer. The Grad programs also drive the reputations.
To your point about not being exclusively Ivy, I found the Quartz list of schools with the greatest scientific advances to be interesting: https://qz.com/498534/these-25-schools-are-responsible-for-the-greatest-advances-in-science/
It proves that there has been amazing contribution from dozens of schools, especially when normalized for size.
^@JHS It is incorrect to say Michigan State would not likely rank among “anyone’s top 60” list. Actually Michigan State is ranked 30th in Money Magazine’s most recent best college (for your money) list. The University also ranked, in terms of “reputation,” among the top 80 in the recent THE (Times Higher Education – of London) World list. Also in terms of world ranking, MSU is 78th and 83rd on the most recent US News (global) and THE (overall ranking) lists, respectively.
Finally Michigan State was also recently designated by THE as one of the world “Powerhouse” universities That is, one of the rising world universities that is most likely to soon replace one or more of the traditional (ie HYP, Oxford/Cambridge) top world schools.
EyeVeee, having seen their apps, they aren’t the intellectual top XXX. They’re mortals. They’re kids. This idea top grades, some awards, etc, makes them superior is off. It drives the narrative. People want to be able to say their kids go to Yale or Stanford, eg. This idea that makes them “special,” just for being admitted.
It’s an honor, sure. A nice win. But then the real work starts. You make your future. Or not.
@Quincy4 - the lists you are referencing focus on Universities (excluding LAC’s), or value. Go to a list like Forbes (not that I believe too much in any list), and MSU is 178.
@lookingforward - I agree with you, but think the Ivy’s get more than their share of intellectuals. I have no skin in the game…no reason for bias (in favor of the Ivies). I have met some amazing students at the LAC’s my children attend, and know that many either didn’t apply or in many cases rejected Ivy acceptances. That said, when given a chance to attend an Ivy versus Williams, Bowdoin, Amherst, Swarthmore or other great schools in the same region, the majority choose Ivy.
No, the narrative remains because people are willing to accept pure assertion as simple truth. The difference between the number 10 and the number 60 is less than a rounding error when compared to 4,000 four-year institutions of higher learning.
@EyeVeee - I don’t like rankings much either because, in one way or another, they tend to be subjective. That said Forbes list holds even less water than most because mixing large research Us with LACs is mixing apples and oranges. Their missions and agendas are very different; in some ways, they are polar opposites.
- Chemists need clusters more than writers? Since when? What size cluster does a chemistry major need?
It happens that I don’t know that many chemists (although there are lots in my community, I just don’t know them that well). But I know lots of writers. They cluster like crazy.
Meanwhile, I would be stunned if any of the colleges we are talking about fails to have a critical mass of chemists, not to mention biochemists, and other STEM types with an interest in chemistry. According to NCES, Stanford graduated 17 Chemistry majors last year, out of a class of about 1,670 (1%). Wesleyan had 15 Chemistry majors out of a class of 700 (2%).
- The meaning of "clustering" goes to the heart of a lot of what we are talking about here. Colleges serve multiple functions, and two important ones are the ones I'll call "education" and "credentialing." From the standpoint of education, scores, maybe hundreds of colleges provide first-rate educational opportunities to high-ability students, in terms of faculty, facilities, and a community of students. A place like Harvard may provide more such opportunities across more fields than anywhere else, but any particular student can only take advantage of maybe two or three of them. The fact that there may be 167,578 available is not very meaningful in any practical sense to any individual. Brand X University may offer only a couple of hundred first-rate educational opportunities, but the students who take advantage of one or two of them, especially if they have the same kind of talents that most Harvard students have, are going to have a Harvard-quality educational experience. (That's a slogan I often use with kids: "You can make any college into Harvard for you.") Of course, not every student at Brand X University is going to be taking full advantage of one of its finite number of excellent educational opportunities, but that shouldn't affect the value of Brand X education for the ones that do.
What it does affect, however, is the credentialing value of Brand X University. If all you know about someone is that he or she graduated from Brand X, you don’t know very much that’s valuable, and you would not assume a high level of achievement. You would have to look carefully at what a student did there to understand his or her capacity and level of achievement. With the acknowledged elite universities, because of their hyperselective admissions and more or less uniform educational quality, if all you know about someone is that he or she graduated from AEU, you are pretty safe in assuming that he or she has a lot of academic-type intelligence, decent study skills, and decent academic achievement. Of course, that’s not so much information at all, and it may be wrong in some individual cases, but it’s a lot more than you get from Brand X.
How important is credentialing? I think a lot less than many people think, especially people on CC. I doubt it’s completely without value, though. That’s what sustains the current frenzy, not for the “Ivies” specifically, but for some cluster of institutions that’s probably less than 25 of them.
For schools as large as, say, Texas A and M, yeah, there probably are dozens at one time.
Probably not quite. Back then the Ivy schools were schools for the SES elite (mainly from favored boarding schools) getting their gentleman C grades, with some academically elite students to help them keep up that part of the reputation.
The private LACs mentioned most often here tend to have a higher SES profile than the Ivy schools, but it would be overstating that to say that they were like the 1930s to 1950s Ivy schools.
Seems like credential creep is making credentials more important, though not necessarily in terms of college prestige. But it seems more common for employers to want people with BA/BS degrees even for jobs that require neither general nor major specific skills and knowledge that the degree indicates.
Also, some credentials have been getting more difficult, but not necessarily due to more subject specific content. A recent example is that occupational therapy is now a master’s degree instead of a bachelor’s degree. Earlier examples include the accounting 150 credit minimum, and law degrees requiring bachelor’s degree first.
@OHMomof2 “I know plenty of people who don’t know Stanford and definitely not most of the Ivies. Or what MIT actually stands for.” I’m not sure who these people are but below is one list of the Best Global Universities in the world.
Overall Best Global Universities – Top 10
- Harvard University (U.S.)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.)
- Stanford University (U.S.)
- University of California—Berkeley (U.S.)
- University of Oxford (U.K.)
- California Institute of Technology (U.S.)
- University of Cambridge (U.K.)
- Columbia University (U.S.)
- Princeton University (U.S.)
- Johns Hopkins University (U.S.) (tie)
- University of Washington (U.S.) (tie)
- Yale University (U.S.) (tie)
“These People” are those who do not obsessively follow CC, @socaldad2002
More like follow SEC, if I can make a bad rhyme. (But actually, Big10, duh).
PS: John Hopkins. (typo intentional) :))
@circuitrider “The difference between the number 10 and the number 60 is less than a rounding error when compared to 4,000 four-year institutions of higher learning.”
In other words, you are saying, Ivies+S+M are indistinguishable – “less than a rounding error” – from Colby and Hamilton on a list of 40 a previous poster provided.
I would have to disagree.
Part of the narrative that needs to change is the perspective that Ivies cover the same material as any other school only in a “fancy” environment.
Students and parents need to understand the level of competition at Ivies (and equivalents) and the amount of homework that is expected. Many have no idea. For many applicants, a rejection is a huge gift, but they do not realize that. The primary cause is the disparity in k-12 education where an A student at one high school can be several years the A students at another high school. Most students and parents at below average high schools have no idea how far they are behind top students.
If you’re in a field where attending Caltech makes sense, they’ve heard of it. Maybe MIT is a bit better known because it has a respected business program. And it has architecture. And it’s bigger. But that’s about all it has over Caltech.
MIT also has creative writing (humanities and arts school) and snow.
@bestmom888 wrote:
I think when compared to 99% of the colleges and universities in the United States, the top 100 or so, have several distinguishing characteristics: a high volume of “output” in terms of STEM research, but, also an amalgam of artistic, humanistic and architectural footprints that stamp them as cultural treasures. That is entirely different from saying that they are interchangeable - they’re not. Yet, go to any part of the country and the local elites can tell you which colleges fit that description, including everything from UT-Austin, Rice, Berkeley, Michigan, to, yes - Bates, Bowdoin and Colby, too.
@ucbalumnus : That’s not exactly what I meant by credentialing, although your reading is probably a better use of the term than mine. A mere Brand X University degree is probably fine for certifying that a graduate has at least what I would consider basic high school skills; it serves the credentialing function to that extent. A Stanford degree – any Stanford degree – certifies that this person can probably fill one of the roles you need young people to fill in your investment bank. It’s a richer, more meaningful credential, until someone looks under the hood, so to speak. But I think everyone looks under the hood, so the mere credential – even Stanford’s – doesn’t mean much.