<p>I don't understand why so many people are stressing about it?... this probably sounds new, but i dont come from a very educated family, and i'm just curious why so many people are like OMFG, i better get into harvard and take 1039 AP tests.... so what is it?</p>
<p>Because then when people ask you where you’re going to college you can say “Princeton” and then they can say “Wow, you must be a genius!” and then you feel smart and superior. </p>
<p>In other words, dumb superficial reasons.</p>
<p>It’s not important, as in your life is over if you don’t make it, but it is a pretty big accomplishment, and a lot of people like to shoot for the top. So it’s not important, except for bragging rights - riches are not guaranteed if you make and futures can be made from plenty of other schools.</p>
<p>It’s for the wannabes, the ones that just arrived to this country. They only know a few names and that’s why.</p>
<p>While a lot of people do go for the name factor, you can’t argue that there is 0 advantage to going to a highly ranked school. There’s a reason the vast majority of CEOs of fortune 100 companies all graduated from ivy league schools.</p>
<p>You need to modify that statement a bit. CEOs have undergrad degrees from everywhere, where the Ivies, primarily Harvard, dominate is in grad degrees. A Harvard MBA is quite common among CEOs, but I don’t think Ivies are a majority of undergrad degrees.</p>
<p>@DrGoogle:</p>
<p>My experience is that more of the upper-middle class have the “Ivy or bust” mentality.</p>
<p>Immigrants in states like CA, TX, IL, GA, and VA tend to be perfectly happy with their kids studying STEM fields at their state flagships.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan, new immigrants from the above states, not the ones that have been here more than 30+ years. I think also people from the Northeast where the state schools are not good or much more expensive than California.</p>
<p>“There’s a reason the vast majority of CEOs of fortune 100 companies all graduated from ivy league schools.”</p>
<p>From what I see, many of ivy league (CEOs) didn’t even complete the university because they are too dumb 
lol</p>
<p>anyway, actually people want to brag about something. if you want to learn, you can get a great education at podunk state, if you don’t want to or you just want to go to a “prestigious” school, then I got bad news for you. you’ll suck after college.</p>
<p>In some sectors like big finance, going to a top name business school can make a difference. But in most cases, I think the “Ivy League factor” is way overplayed. You can get a fantastic education at any number of schools, and an Ivy league school isn’t necessarily the best choice for everyone financially, academically, or fit-wise.
Plus, remember, if you’re looking at CC as your source on this, remember that it isn’t a representative sample. At my high school, no one even applied to any Ivy Leagues. The highest most people aimed for as a dream school was the state flagship and hardly anyone left the midwest.</p>
<p>It’s like the first separation between people, starting at a top college definitely has some benefits.
That said, the bigger factor is definitely “prestige” “bragging rights” and I guess a sort of reward for working very hard throughout high school (and in some cases their whole life).</p>
<p>
This thread was about undergrad colleges. The vast majority of Fortune 100 CEOs did NOT attend Ivy League schools for undergrad. Instead a larger portion of the CEOs attended non-selective directional state type universities. Among the Fortune 50, the number of CEOs by college is below (based on report from several years ago, so numbers may have changed slightly):</p>
<p>3 CEOs – University of Texas and Harvard
2 CEOs – University of Minnesota and Duke
1 CEO – All others on list</p>
<p>Ivy Total – 7 out of 50
Non-ivy Total – 43 out of 50</p>
<p>I wouldn’t limit the question to just the Ivy League. I believe the true advantage is the holistic education that exists at these schools. In other words like the admission process there’s a hodgepodge of things that can occur more readily at a top school vs say an average state university. You can receive a great book education anywhere but the advantages some of the top schools have tend to show up in and outside the classroom. Networking, the amount of money the school spends on an individual student, exposure the quality of the student body, quality of faculty, Internships, financial aid, who comes and recruits at your school, who speaks at your school. The quality of your day to day life. I’m sure i left some things out. I always felt the best education I received having attended one of these schools was the constant exchange of ideas and thoughts amongst my peers who came from a wide spectrum of experiences and thoughts. These exchanges rarely took place in the classroom. If you decide to attend one of these schools others will make much more of a deal about it then you will. </p>
<p>@DrGoogle Yep. My family and I are recent immigrants (4-5 years in the US), and my parents kept telling me throughout the app process that “any college here in the US will be better than studying in our home country,” which is very much true in our case. I imagine that immigrants who’ve been here longer feel like they deserve “more” since they’ve put in more effort/years/etc.</p>
<p>Going to an ivy league school -or really any highly ranked school- has a few advantages. Of course there is the “wow” factor as has been mentioned before. After that there are less superficial motives such as exposure to the best professors (yes this varies per school since some schools have TAs teach undergrads), access to research, advising/prestige for graduate/med/law school admission, lower student:faculty ratio as opposed to other research universities (of course you will have even smaller class sizes at LACs), need based financial aid, alumni connections, and intellectual depth of student body.
Personally having just gone through the process of selecting a highly ranked private school (not ivy but comparable) over my state flagship I can say that while every one of these factors played a part in my decision it was the last one -intellectual depth of student body- that influenced my decision the most. While you’ll find smart students at just about any school just by walking around campus and talking to random students I could tell the difference between the intellect of the average student at the top 20 schools versus those of some other schools. </p>
<p>@kei04086 Though a lot of CEOs go to ivy leagues, they go for graduate school, not undergrad. If you really think about it, unless you are doing something in the sciences, your undergrad degree doesn’t matter. My sister was a Radio/ TV major for undergrad. Now, she’s an English professor.</p>
<p>I don’t know but ivy leagues have ~15-22K undergrads per year (don’t care about numbers). how many of those are becoming CEOs? and what is the point of arguing about CEO? are you planning to go to a college for earning money? don’t go to college then, save 250K and start your own business. you’ll do a lot better work.</p>
<p>@saif235 True. The real value of an Ivy-League/Ivy-caliber education isn’t the prestige, but all the resources devoted to students, resources which most colleges simply can’t afford/don’t have.</p>
<p>@drexter</p>
<ol>
<li>I doubt the profit from starting a business would even come close to matching an ivy-league hotshot’s salary going to Wall Street.</li>
<li>From where does one obtain $250,000 without a college degree or technical degree?</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>How many Ivy Leaguers actually go to Wall Street?</li>
<li>The parents, who would otherwise be spending that money on your education (assuming you’re full-pay).</li>
</ol>
<p>In any case, the real value is the alumni network, and the alumni network is mostly helpful in a few lognormal fields. The “wow” factor doesn’t actually count for much besides an ego boost (and if you desire that, you can always get a grad degree from an Ivy later so long as you keep achieving in the classroom). The top state schools are research powerhouses as well and have profs of the same quality (in research prowess) as most Ivies. For that matter, the network at the top programs of some state schools aren’t too shabby either. My HS actually has produced a few tech startup founders, but the most successful ones actually went to the state flagship in CS, and pulled each other to Silicon Valley, where one after another started companies that have become household names.</p>
<p>BTW, I know that most 18 year-old wants to be in a select group of other smart people, but don’t kid yourself: it’s mostly so that you can feel better about yourself. The truly confident kid believes that he can achieve just as much by his own efforts at a state school as at a high-priced Ivy.</p>
<p>In any case, if the price is about the same, you might as well go with the elite private. That was what I did 20 or so years ago. If the difference is 200K or something like that, however, and you still get a lot of opportunities through a public school honors college on scholarship, I think only a handful of private elites make sense, and only if you’re gunning for Wall Street or looking for funding for a startup idea (and I have doubts about even that, because if you keep your grades up, you could still try for SHMPY/whatever grad school, and 2 years of a master’s program is cheaper than 4 years of undergrad).</p>