<p>Although GFG and I have disagreed from time to time in the past (and I agree with her that her community sounds very competitive in a somewhat toxic way), I think she’s spot on with her observations. The “social capital” for lack of a better term that people who come from either wealth, or a family that once had wealth or serious connections even if it no longer does (busts at Harvard and all that), and all the other trappings of high socio-economic status, really can’t be replicated by those on the other side of the divide. Hence the enormous import attached to schooling by immigrants (a nod to why GFG’s community puts emphasis on elite school.); hence the enormous influence of the “right” EC’s in these communities, etc.</p>
<p>I am first generation American and my parents were beyond clueless when it came to college admissions. I showed up at Brown and there was a language being spoken that I did not understand- kids from places like Greenwich and La Jolla and Winnetka who knew each other (how did that happen? they grew up thousands of miles from each other) and who had experiences that the “scholarship kids” read about in novels. First Semester Art History class assigned a paper to be written about a work of Renaissance Art- most of us trooped on over to the University museum (a block from campus). But others wrote about the paintings they saw during Xmas break which sounded like a travelogue in a magazine- Ringling museum (for those with a grandparent with a house on the Florida gulf); a bunch of museums in Europe for those who were “hanging out” in Europe over break; and for the plebes-- staying in the family pied a terre in NYC and visiting the Met.</p>
<p>So while I agree that a smart kid can get a great education anywhere, I don’t think that people who lack a family pedigree going back several great-grandparents are delusional in thinking that there is a secret sauce at some of these schools. My friends from wealthy families weren’t hitting the pavement looking for a job come September of Senior year. They had a fallback of some kind. The ones who were going to “teach” or somehow change the world weren’t actually worried about supporting themselves or paying back their loans by working at a non-profit for 10K per year (the going rate for a college grad at a non-profit in the late 1970’s.) Kids like us knew that Grandpa’s Firm wasn’t going to find us a job as an analyst; Mom and Dad didn’t know anyone who could help our job search; our best friends from high school had parents who owned a carpet and linoleum flooring store or worked as administrators at the DMV-- not exactly great “personal connections” when trying to launch a job search as a college senior.</p>
<p>In some ways it’s better now. At least at the large corporations, many of whom have pretty strict nepotism rules, it’s hard for someone’s well connected but stupid kid to get a job.</p>
<p>Everyone is just trying to get ahead. If you come from a family that is already ahead, your perspective is different and perhaps your sense of urgency is a little less. Consider the Asian immigrant population and their motivation, relative to that of the already established citizens.</p>
<p>Parents love to say “I only went to such and such school and did just fine in life.” Don’t we all like to believe we’ve pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and did everything ourselves to get where we are! In reality, most of us have built on the foundation we inherited. If you have great-grandparents and grandparents who attended an Ivy in a time when few people even went to college, your family is advantaged. (cross posted with blossom) None of my grandparents attended college, only one of my parents did, and in my father’s family only the oldest of his siblings could afford to go. Which sibling earned the most money do you think? And which of my cousins started out in life with no college debt and nice gifts of down-payments for their first homes? No doubt they just think they worked hard (and they did, but my point is that they had a nice starting place.)</p>
<p>Secondly, very few individuals are honest enough to admit that they are average, or below average. I don’t remember more than one poster ever who came on CC and admitted to being unsuccessful. And perhaps all those that boast about doing just fine have indeed done just fine. But might they have done a lot better had their education been superior? We’ll just never know, and nor will we know how our kids’ results would be different had they attended a different college. And that’s why this argument will pop up on CC forever.</p>
<p>The other reason why it won’t ever die is that humans create hierarchies of status. All these hierarchies are flawed of course, but they exist. This offends sensibilities, since no one likes to feel inferior. A degree from Harvard doesn’t make you a better PERSON, but a Harvard graduate is likely to be quite a bit better than someone like me in a whole lot of ways. I love my youngest child just as much as my older two kids, but she simply isn’t as smart or as talented. She won’t be attending an elite school. Is she a worse PERSON? Of course not. But by a lot of the measures our society uses, she isn’t as successful. So while there are HYP caliber kids at many other schools, the average HYP student is going to be BETTER than my youngest and kids like her at most endeavors, and that’s a fact. I might not like it, but it’s silly to act like isn’t the case. And by the way, it’s silly to assume that my hypothetical women’s studies major from an elite school doesn’t have just as much or better volunteer experience as the state school student, despite what sally suggests in her hypothetical.</p>
<p>UMD( smith business school) very little merit VS UDel ( great merit ). S want to do a dual major accounting / finance. He is an EXCELLENT motivated student. We are OOS. Is it worth the name to pay an extra 20 k in loans for UMD? That is on top of a 20 k loan already …any thoughts ?</p>
<p>Well, I agree with Sally about the importance of being secure with who you are, as well as about the bewilderment I feel when faced with everyone’s concerns about “what the neighbors might think.” Who cares what the neighbors think about any of my choices – carm vacation, travel, and where my kids go to college? Why would I even pay all that much attention in the first place? My next door neighbor has a kid who goes to Wisconsin. Want to know the sum total of my thoughts on that? He goes to Wisconsin. Same reaction if he went to Harvard. Good for him, hope he does well. And if my neighbors spent any amount of time ruminating on or questioning or being jealous of my family’s college choices, then they are sadly in need of a life. </p>
<p>And my background isn’t great-grandfather at Yale. It’s one grandfather off the boat at Ellis Island, one grandfather working the furnace at a steel factory and taking a second job to make ends meet. It’s a father who dropped out of high school and got a GED while serving in Vietnam. It’s a mother who went to night school at an undistinguished don’t-hear-about-it-on-CC night school while working as a secretary. It’s being the first in my family to go to a traditional four year residential college experience. </p>
<p>Sorry, celesteroberts and theGFG. You choose to play the game of caring what the neighbors think.</p>
<p>My daughter is deciding between UC Berkeley with a $55,000 price tag as out of state student and Stony Brook Honors College which gave her full scholarship and fees. We are not eligible for any FA. She is probably pre-med. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Twins4ever - UDel has a pretty good reputation. As you may know, most financial institutions in this nation are registered as corporations in Delaware.</p>
<p>nellec2 - What is the major? People who have money to spend seem to believe Berkeley’s engineering is worth it but different people make different choices with their money. Most large state schools are good for engineering.</p>
<p>I should add that we Americans love the idea of equality and fairness. It seems to me that many people really, really want to believe in their heart of hearts that we are all equal. That’s why we see posters suggest that Ivy kids have no social skills, have sacrificed their happiness, have lost their childhood, are psychologically unbalanced, etc.; they have to subtract something from them as a counterbalance so the score is even. They are uncomfortable thinking that those ultra-successful kids really might “have it all.”</p>
<p>When my youngest was in special ed. and looked disabled, I can’t tell you how many well-meaning people would say that they were sure that she had a special gift and suggested that it would one day compensate for her deficiencies. They were extremely uncomfortable with the unfairness of the situation, and would become upset if I commented that I hadn’t seen any evidence of a special gift yet. It made them feel better to convince themselves that some super special gift would magically develop in D’s life and thus the score would eventually be even again. I’ll let you all know if that happens.</p>
<p>This need for equality is what makes people uncomfortable saying one school is better than another. I care about the real quality of the school, and what employers think. My neighbors don’t speak English, so I have no idea what they think. But their compatriots seem to all want their kids to attend an Ivy for some odd reason.</p>
<p>I think doing honors at UDel is a good deal. Have you looked into the benefits? It might be a much better deal, not only financially, than UMD. MD is very big. </p>
<p>I wish I knew more about the SUNY schools. I Only know Geneseo, because I really think it’s a great state LAC option, which we don’t have in Illinois. I think that’ might be a tougher choice to make. Can you afford Cal? Or is the expense going to kill you ? That’s the only question. If the expense is brutal for you, or if you have to borrow more than a reasonable amount, you need to go to SUNY. </p>
<p>As an aside: I don’t fault anyone who wants to send their kid to any school. That is their choice. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business. I do have a problem if a parent chooses a school for a kid and then makes the KID borrow exorbitantly for the expense. I think there is a limit to what parents ought to be allowed to impose on their kids. And debt is one of those things they need to either take on themselves or discourage at the undergrad level. It’s the responsible thing to do.</p>
<p>finalchild, I too have appreciated your posts. But you are missing my main point: not all kids WANT to go to Ivies or other “elite” colleges. Is there anything wrong with those places? No, of course not. The kid I know at Harvard absolutely, 100% belongs there. We were all thrilled when he was accepted. Other kids I know are thriving at a variety of schools on the continuum of “eliteness,” except for those who are not and who are trying to transfer out. There is no one solution for every child or every family.</p>
<p>Where I get irritated is when posters come on here saying “well, the stats are clearly on the side of an elite education” when they’re not. And even when asked, they offer no proof. Or they use a couple of choice anecdotes about their own bubble in suburban NJ or MA to make the case for an “Ivy or bust” college search process. I have seen what this mindset has done to a few of my friends (and more importantly, their kids) and it isn’t pretty. </p>
<p>To answer your question about my own kids: if my son had wanted to apply to Harvard or Yale I would have told him to go for it (while making sure he was clear on the scant odds of acceptance). But he wasn’t interested. This is a child who is something of an anti-conformist and doesn’t want to be in the northeast and hates colonial architecture and other things that appear “pretentious” or “cliched” to him. (Please don’t jump all over me for this–this is HIS opinion.) He also ABSOLUTELY wanted a small LAC. Even his high school was too big for him. So what would have been the point of pushing Yale or Bowdoin or Cornell? As for my second child, she is a girl who has always planned on pursuing dance in college. The best programs are not at prestigious universities. For what she might want to do, the best schools are places like Point Park and SUNY-Purchase and Indiana and Arizona and Muhlenberg. She has a couple of years, so we are still figuring it out.</p>
<p>Stony Brook is a really good school. They have top notch research and great faculty. They mentor a lot of the science fair kids who make it to Intel finals year after year. Their engineering is top notch.</p>
<p>And not all kids want to go to Point Park, Suny-Purchase, or Muhlenberg, but rather want to go to Yale, Bowdoin, or Cornell. But on this forum, people tend to only criticize the latter group.</p>
<p>I, for one, have come to really appreciate the Ivy-or-bust folks hereabouts. That attitude makes it marginally easier for my kids to get in to other fantastic top twenty schools that don’t play in a bad basketball conference. So, thanks.</p>
<p>This is actually funny but I should have expected people to react the way they did. There is absolutely ZERO lingering social capital from having had successful WASP ancestors, at least in my family. My grandmother spent what was left of the family money (which was actually not much by the time it got to her) during a long life of playing bridge and drinking G&Ts. There is no one IRL who knows or would care about the fact that I have some blue-blood ancestors. Even my kids don’t care much, which is sad because some of them were interesting people (the Harvard guy was more notable as a famous Civil War general who was drafted out of college).</p>
<p>I think it would be funny if I still lived out east and tried to use whatever social capital I thought I had to get…what? A job? A house in a nice neighborhood? Do you know how many people by now can also claim my Civil War ancestor as their own? We are talking several generations. What would that capital buy me that a well-paying job and a good credit score wouldn’t?</p>
<p>Hmm poetgrl. So Pizzagirl’s last post saying I care too much what the neighbor’s think was supposed to be a compliment? And here I thought she was implying I was either shallow or didn’t have a mind of my own.</p>
<p>Stony Brook is an excellent SUNY school. The only negative I can think of ( and some may not consider it a negative) is that a lot of kids tend to go home on the weekends. The SUNY schools are a great deal for OOS compared to other schools as they come in at under 30,000. SUNY Buffalo has an outstanding engineering school, and Binghamton, Buffalo and SB are all amazing for pre-med. I agree with Pizzagirl’s post.</p>
<p>I once tried to use “social capital” to pay tuition at [IVY REDACTED] but found they vastly preferred cash to my grandmother’s DAR membership or my ancestor’s KIA status at Vicksburg.</p>