<p>^ If I’m following your rants Annasdad, you are upset that other schools beyond Ivies don’t get the same respect. Why would you care?</p>
<p>It’s possible some people would rather attend the schools populated by all the truly qualified and intellectual Asians unfairly rejected by the Ivy League. :)</p>
<p>Maybe that will get this thread closed.</p>
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Wow, thats pretty rude.</p>
<p>BTW, I live in the south, and lots of people I know are both familiar with the smaller NE midwest and west coast schools and/or have kids there. No need to overgeneralize.</p>
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Why so angry, pizzagirl? Relax a little. </p>
<p>I have never met anyone who encountered the University of Chicago or Northwestern or whatever other non-Ivy peer you want to include who thought they were inherently inferior schools. </p>
<p>Only thing I can think is that, as mentioned above, there are regional biases and ignorances. Chicago and UPenn are probably the most subject to misunderstanding (and UPenn’s even one of the 8!). Southerners seem to think much more highly of Duke than other parts of the country I’ve found.</p>
<p>Re Annasdad, aside from a few elite state universities, like Michigan, I’m don’t think you can claim the education is the same as at schools in the realm of Vanderbilt or Duke as the state school down the street. I’d even hesitate to say Berkeley offers the same level of education as Stanford. I don’t know, though.</p>
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<p>First of all, what a gratuitously ad hominem reply.</p>
<p>Second of all, you can’t have read very many of my posts at all on this forum, because everybody else here knows I’m female. Therefore, Consider the Source of your supposed view of posts which are “typical” of me. You obviously have a very small range of knowledge in that respect.</p>
<p>Thirdly, regarding Categorical Absolutes:
I was referring back to the schoolyard tone of arguments which developed before & after page 9 on this thread, with high black-white contrast.</p>
<p>Fourthly, apparently my theme in my previous post is not a “straw man.”</p>
<p>From sewhappy:
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<p>Fifthly, supporting the sense of Categorical Absolutes – in the opposite direction – is frazzled’s remark on my post, here, in which she supports my observations, and adds, correctly:</p>
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<p>She was agreeing with the theme of the Mutual Exclusivity which also I remarked on in my post. Threads have to be read for their entirety.
:rolleyes:</p>
<p>oldfort, no one disputes the numbers you posted. But they say absolutely nothing about the quality of the education those students get once they get there, only the qualifications of the entering students. Now you may claim that the two factors correlate - do you have any evidence that they do?</p>
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<p>Nope. First of all, I’m not upset. Second, I could frankly care less about what schools get what “respect.” I do find it amusing when advocates of this school or that school (or this athletic conference or that athletic conference) twist things about so to convince themselves that the name on their college degree (or the name on their kids’ to-be-expected degree) makes a real difference in the world.</p>
<p>annasdad - of course quality of education correlates with qualifications of students, it is the silliest question I have ever heard. An economic course taught to students who have taken calculus vs no calculus is a huge difference. It is why many students drop out a course/school when they are not prepared. There are schools that have no choice but to teach to the lowest denominator. If there is no correlation, why would you be opposed to paying for a school with low test scores, as you have stated before.</p>
<p>What you always trying to post on this forum is to support what you could afford and what your kids could achieve, anything above or below that is not the right choice.</p>
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Was wondering the same thing.
And as much as some posters don’t want to believe it, name recognition DOES make a difference in some circumstances. It does offer a degree of instant credibility. Like.it.or.not. Its often more frustrating when a very good school (U Chicago, Nw’ern, Harvey Mudd, Tufts, Rice, etc) suffers from lack of name recognition.</p>
<p>I agree with the sentiment that it has less to do with the Ivies themselves, and is more or less a never-ending battle of prestige.</p>
<p>It’s like, when one kid says he got into UNC-CH, the other kid says she got into Vandy, and then a third kid says he got into Duke which somehow validates the third kid’s existence more than the others. And if you went to HYPS? Well, that’s just like a walk-off home run!</p>
<p>Seriously though, the regional bias is alive and real. I come from the uncultured, backwaters of Chicago (some of you on the coasts might find it’s called “Here be Dragons” on your maps 
) and when a girl from my school guy into Harvard, everyone was extremely impressed. And not because the girl was undeserving–everyone who met the girl knew she was brilliant after two minutes of conversation. But at the same time, she wasn’t “generationally smart” as in “operating at an intelligence quotient so much higher than her peers that she needed to be challenged.” She had a lower GPA (in easier classes) than I do!</p>
<p>So how much will the Harvard name actually help her? Quite a bit. I like it because I can say that I’m friends with a girl that goes to Harvard. But see, here in the Great Lakes region of the Midwest, a HYPS degree is the only non-regional safe bet. Anything else and you hit two roadblocks: ignorance and networks. 1. Most people here, and some employers, are probably ignorant of how good a school like Rice or even WUSTL really is. </p>
<p>And 2. I cannot over-exaggerate how strong some of the networks are. Basically, anyone who’s anyone in Chicago went to Notre Dame. ND sports get an unofficial page dedicated to them in the Tribune every day it seems (even when they’re terrible). Of course, there are pockets where NU dominates the scene and the other Midwestern schools are well-represented. If they can, Illini like to hire other Illini, Badgers like to hire fellow Badgers, Wolverines like to hire fellow Wolverines etc. and it may even surprise you to know that these people turned down higher ranked schools for their alma maters.</p>
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<p>So if it’s so silly to argue otherwise, provide some evidence.</p>
<p>What evidence do you have, annasdad, that it doesn’t correlate?</p>
<p>No one, except the occasional develomental admit with an extremely rich and generous parent, gets into these top schools without being deemed exceptional. Judging by the reports on these boards about legacy students with superb stats getting rejected from the Ivies, even kids with hooks need to be not only high-achieving but truly special somehow.</p>
<p>A friend’s son who’s a decent football player was being recruited by Dartmouth, but was dropped from the coach’s list when he didn’t score above 2000 on the SAT’s. Thus the athletes aren’t exempt from the need to have worked hard academically. If a kid is recruited with lower scores, then s/he is a darn good athlete and thus has demonstrated superior work ethic and talent in that arena.</p>
<p>It’s plain and simple: an Ivy student is already vetted by virtue of graduating from a challenging school and by having beat out some 20,000 other people for the spot to begin with. So employers who hire an Ivy grad feel they have a better chance of hiring a smart, hard-working person than if they hire a no-name/lower-ranked school grad. Not that they won’t or don’t hire others, as of course they do. And as we’ve said ad nauseum every time this topic comes up, plenty of super smart diligent kids attend other schools. They may have to be a bit more aggressive about building a resume that proves they’re smart and diligent, though.</p>
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<p>You’re talking about the value of the credential. I’m talking about the quality of the education. They’re not the same thing, and a higher-value credential does not necessarily mean a higher-quality education.</p>
<p>Where is your evidence, annasdad?</p>
<p>annasdad - your daughter goes to a magnet school for gifted math/science students, right? Why do you think they have such school? In NYC there are schools for highly gifted science students, performing arts…Why? Do you think maybe if students have higher credential in any of those areas, then teachers could teach at a deeper and faster level, hence give better quality of education? Students who could get into higher ranking schools (not just the Ivies), need to have very strong aptitude in all areas, which would then allow professors at those schools to move at a faster pace instead of worrying about remedial work.</p>
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If you ever sat in a job interview with a top-ranked (Ivy or otherwise) degree, especially soon after college where there’s not much track record, you would not believe what you do. It makes a huge difference to a lot of people trying to discern from hundreds of applications.</p>
<p>That said, I’ve studied at a variety of institutions in various capacities, some considered top and others far from. I certainly had specific professors at the lower-prestige schools that were incredible and better than many professors at the others, but overall the intellectual culture, attitude, focus, motivation, level of expectation, diversity and depth of programming, accomplishments of professors, and depth of resources were what made the higher prestige schools overall a superior experience.</p>
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<p>Not sure I fully agree with that. A classmate from my son’s hs got into Yale for next year. Ran into her mother in the store the other day and Mom freely admitted if it weren’t for the fact that her daughter was a recruited athletic, she would have never gotten into Yale. Now the girl is a good student, probably in the top third of the class, certainly not an exceptional student but she is an exceptional athlete. </p>
<p>Exceptional at being a good student in high school is not the same thing as being exceptional in life or in all walks of life. A number of my son’s classmates have gotten into Ivies without doing anything ‘exceptional’ other than being a great student at a rigorous private school with some solid ECs - none of them as far as I know had a ‘hook’.</p>
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<p>I continue to ask for evidence, and you continue to respond with opinion, with each post getting farther and farther afield from the question.</p>
<p>Let me put to you a real simple question: Do you have any evidence that a student who has the statistics to get into Northwestern and chooses instead to go to UIUC will get a poorer education at UIUC than s/he would have at Northwestern? Or, at your option, substitute any selective enrollment public university and any prestigious private university.</p>
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<p>Exactly. …</p>