<p>I wonder what percent of all undergraduate college students attend Ivy League colleges? </p>
<p>Does anyone know the total number of college students in the US? Has anyone ever counted them?</p>
<p>Then, would Ivy League students be among the top 1%, one tenth of 1%, etc?</p>
<p>Assuming that there are about 2,000,000 18 year olds in the US and that about 1,000,000 of those will go on to college. When you discount the international students you get about 10,000 US kids going to the eight ivies. This then translates to 1%. It should not be considered the top 1% since there are other great choices for college and some great students have no interest in the ivies or do not have the means to attend. There a big gap in the middle class that cannot afford these schools and these students are accepting scholarships to other great schools.</p>
<p>Here are slightly better numbers (but not such a different story):</p>
<p>Based on US Census Bureau projections for 2008:</p>
<p>Total undergraduate enrollment -- 15.7 million
Total four-year college enrollment -- 11.5 million
Total full-time-equivalent enrollment at 4-year colleges -- 9.7 million
Bachelor's degrees conferred -- 1.6 million</p>
<p>Based on my back-of-the-envelope:</p>
<p>Total Ivy entering/graduating class -- 14,000 (Cornell and Penn are pretty big)
Total Ivy enrollment -- 60,000</p>
<p>So . . . Ivy graduates are about 0.9% of total bachelor's degree recipients. Ivy students are about 0.6% of total four-year college full time students, 0.5% of all four-year college students, and 0.4% of all college students.</p>
<p>what % of 18 years old graduate from HS? What will be the % HS graduate goes to college? </p>
<p>Based on JHS' number, I am guessing that within the same age group, there will be about .2% are Ivy graduates? That is why you don't frequently meet one on street.</p>
<p>Meeting Ivy grads also depends on your region- most will be on the east coast where those schools are located. Some grads will choose to stay in the region because that is the area they are from and some imports will also decide to stay there. These are the local colleges for a large number of people, but with greater distance the extra factors distance provides have an effect. Away from the east coast the influence diminishes greatly- other choices are more known and less is heard about the Ivys on a daily basis.</p>
<p>To expand a little on what wis75 says, the not HarvardPrincetonYale Ivies don't carry nearly as much weight out of the northeast. I know this is inexplicable to anyone east of the Pittsburgh, but a student can get a more recognizable degree in many places in the rest of the country than, say, Brown or Dartmouth. Here in Washington the average hiring manager knows more about UW grads than Brown grads, has hired a lot more of them, and is confident in what they are getting as a new employee. The non-HYP Ivy Leaguers are (mostly) just a reputation if you don't come from the northeast. I would say that on the west coast, especially, you get a lot more recognition from Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford, etc., than from the "other" Ivies.</p>
<p>I got a chuckle out of the OP's assumption that anyone attending an Ivy is in the "top" 1%. Picture a Venn diagram with "top 1% high school grads" in one bubble, and "Ivy League students" in the other. No matter how you define those terms, the two bubbles overlap, but are NOT the same.</p>
<p>I suspect the conclusion of this exercise is supposed to be: So few get into the Ivys, so see how elite and exclusive it is to attend them?</p>
<p>My conclusion is: So few actually attend the Ivys, so why do people on CC go on endlessly about them? People on CC ought mainly to be discussing where the bulk of students really go, like the top 50 mega publics or at least the full list of top 100 colleges and not just ivy level. Many great colleges like #100, #99, #98... are rarely, if ever, even mentioned here nor do they have separate forums. Hype aside, the majority of the student population isn't even interested in attending stuffy old frostbelt schools. CC needs more coverage of newer colleges that don't get high ranking due to few generations of alumni and lower endowments, yet have excellent education quality. Colleges less than 75 years old, colleges in the west and sunbelt of the US where the majority of students live.</p>
<p>I asked a group of HS seniors out here to name all the IVY's. Only a couple got more than 4 of them. Harvard, Princeton, Yale were pretty well known but after that pretty hit and miss.</p>
<p>Dad II:</p>
<p>As of 2005, roughly 85.5% of the total population 25 or older had graduated from high school, and 27.8% had graduated from college. In 1970, the equivalent percentages were 52.5% and 10.8%. The break really came with the baby boom. In 2005, for people 25-64 (i.e., born in 1951 or later), the high school graduation rate is around 87-89% for all age cohorts (lowest for the youngest and oldest of those groups). For people older than 64, the high school graduation rate was much lower -- 79% for those under 75, and 71% for those 75 and over. The percentages of college graduates show a similar pattern -- a sharp difference between pre-boom and post-boom, although the percentage of college graduates has been climbing slightly while the percentage of high school graduates hasn't, largely due to women equalling and then surpassing men in college graduation.</p>
<p>Today, roughly half of people attend at least some college.</p>
<p>Total higher education enrollment increased substantially from 1970 to 2005, from roughly 7 million to 17 million +. That's relevant to the subject of this thread, because Ivy undergraduate enrollment has remained roughly the same. There was some expansion in the 1970s as formerly single-sex institutions went co-ed, but that's probably only about 1,500 of the 14,000 aggregate Ivy class size. In 1970, Ivy graduates represented about twice the proportion of all four-year college graduates than they do now, and I would hazard a guess that if you went back to 1960 it would be significantly higher than that -- maybe 3% or more of all bachelor's degree recipients.</p>
<p>WashDad, I think you're missing the point. A great majority of top school grads will never be chasing the local jobs the UW grads pursue. They'll be going after elite consulting/ banking jobs that only the top 15-20 schools really provide access to. And those firms know all about Brown and Dartmouth.</p>
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<p>I find it endlessly amusing that folks on CC frequently make the assumption that America's "greatest colleges" exist mostly to train money-grubbing drones for the financial industry. If this is true, I think that Southern Midwest Agricultural and Mining is doing more good for the world than is Harvard or Yale.</p>
<p>EDITED TO ADD: Talk about serendipity, <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/525241-first-wall-street-indictments-coming-down.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/525241-first-wall-street-indictments-coming-down.html</a>.</p>
<p>WashDad, I choked on my lunch - that was too funny!</p>
<p>Ivy league grads are drones to elite, high paying jobs in general. The kids tend to be much more pre professional than say top LAC kids who are more likely to pursue PhDs.</p>
<p>In any pocket of the world where high paying, elite jobs exist in strong numbers, all ivies are well known. That would include banking and consulting in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Zurich, venture capital jobs in Silicon Valley and all over the world, corporate law jobs in every world capital, etc.</p>
<p>I'm sure they are not as well known at say commercial banking jobs in any state outside of the east coast.</p>
<p>P.S Do we joke about all the crooked politicians from state flagships?</p>
<p>Bringing on the grammar police:
Who is Ivy and what is she selling? Is that a restaurant, as in my local Charlie's Kitchen? Or is Ivy hosting a party and posters are wondering about how she is going to cater to so many guests?
The plural of a noun is not noun + apostrophe + s.</p>
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<p>Based on this, I did some Googling to find a crooked politician from a state flagship to make a joke about them. All the crooked politicians I searched on went to private colleges. Hmm... Coincidence or causality?</p>
<p>Hmmm . . . Dick Cheney flunked out of Yale and wound up graduating from the U. of Wyoming. So I wonder which one was his undoing - Yale or Wyoming?</p>
<p>mrego, re: Post #7: People on CC talk about whatever they want to talk about. No one tells us what to talk about. So, I guess we want to talk about ivies!</p>
<p>Well I was born in Wyo and a UW graduate. I know we like to blame Cheney's behavior on Yale LOL</p>
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I find it endlessly amusing that folks on CC frequently make the assumption that America's "greatest colleges" exist mostly to train money-grubbing drones for the financial industry. If this is true, I think that Southern Midwest Agricultural and Mining is doing more good for the world than is Harvard or Yale.
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<p>You are so right. All the pre-i-banking and mgt consulting mindset is so depressing. And I'm a mgt consultant, LOL. But I fell into it and carved out a certain niche - I didn't decide on it in freakin' high school!</p>
<p>"How many students attend Ivy's?"
I don't know and I don't care. </p>
<p>I've been wanting to say that for months.....</p>