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<p>Wow! People are unbelievable, aren’t they? Your friend dodged a bullet with this neighbor! Ah well – when people reveal themselves to be what they are, trust them.</p>
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<p>I like that last sentence, a lot. I don’t need diamonds or furs; what better use of my savings than my kids’ education?</p>
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<p>The problem is that this isn’t an absolute truth. I work around several Ivy folks doing the same thing I do. I went to a land grant, Midwest school. I make more than any of them, a lot more as a matter of fact, with the same years of experience.</p>
<p>As much as the intention of that statement is not just good, but great, there’s just no data to blanketly support it.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>^ Then they must have been those under-qualified legacies or recruited athletes.</p>
<p>I want to clarify a few things about my position, if for no others reasons because it is entertaining and I often can clarify some of own thinking and what is bothering me by writing the stuff out.</p>
<p>I do care about money and I do like schools that offer merit because paying full cost is too painful for us, and maybe one or both kids will go to med or grad school. If money wasn’t an issue and I had to pay full pay for Harvard and my kid got in I would gladly do it.</p>
<p>My kid dreamed of going to NYU and got in, but we were going to have to pay 64K+ plus the extras of living in NYC on top of that. Dream school was off the board within 5 minutes. Painful, but necessary. Did feel some stinging and wrote some snarky, stupid posts on a NYU thread.</p>
<p>I want my kids to go to as good a school as they can that they want to go to, that is a good to great fit, and that we can make work. I fall for buying into some schools being better choices than others. There are instances where I personally believe some schools are fantastic and I can’t help wishing the reputation was just a little stronger.</p>
<p>My kids are going to schools I consider more than “good enough.” That doesn’t mean they don’t take shots. Short of HYPSM, any school is vulnerable to shots, and crazy stuff like “well, then, the top 4 national firms won’t be visiting your school” or “Duke is an easy pick over Michigan…no contest.”</p>
<p>Recently someone objected to the fairly elite Midwest LAC he was interested in being compared to the fairly elite Midwest LAC I am interested in. He wanted his school compared to the the top Midwest LAC elite (and only that one). I was incensed. How dare him even take an indirect shot at the one where I have an investment? So we had a little ****ing match about it and he “took his ball and went home,” I’m sure feeling very smug that he was right and that I am an oversensitive idiot who just wishes my kid had accessed a better school. I’m still thinking about it occasionally a couple of weeks later!</p>
<p>If I was a Wooster parent, I would be mad at my references to Wooster. Wooster isn’t just a great school in a qualified way. It’s a great school, period. I wish I had been a bigger person to push it harder with one of my kids. But there is no perfect vacuum to live in, and if one is being bombarded with crap about Michigan not being good enough, or Colby or Colgate aren’t good enough, then there is collateral damage in the thought process. I can’t even remember what the other school was now, but everyone was making Colgate sound like chopped liver. I have no affiliation with or interest in Colgate at all, but I was livid. And in being livid, I was revealing that I had at least an indirect interest in these comparisons that sicken us but we also can’t completely extricate ourselves from either.</p>
<p>I enjoy CC. But to suggest that CC and its proliferation aren’t part of the college craze just seems silly on it face. We are all under the influence of the industry that exerts forces and power dynamics beyond any single individual’s ability to control. You can make a decision against the run of play, so to speak, but not a decision cleanly outside of the whole context. And I believe all of us defend and support our positions and our schools. How many sites have at least a handful of regulars or old-timers who at least indirectly serve the function of protecting and defending the image and interests of that school? A lot as far as I can see. And yes, it’s mostly the “elite” ones.</p>
<p>I know plenty of people with IVy league and MIT degrees (grad and PHd) who didnt stay a professional long and opted to be home with kids. They don’t plan to go back to work as it’s been too long and no longer qualified to do what they did or didnt like their jobs. So, an expensive education for maybe 10 years of work. These are all women.</p>
<p>I also know several guys- some about to graduate and some that graduated up to 5 years ago that could never get a professional job. They are working jobs that don’t require a degree. How sad is that? And the ones about to graduate, some have great jobs lined up and some still have nothing. </p>
<p>Bottom line is that perhaps an ivy will open doors, but your future is up to you. A HS school kid pushed to no limits by their parents to look good for colleges or their parents spending lots of money to give them that extra thing to add to the resume (travels, shark study in Australia etc) is not gonna make a difference if the kid cannot move mountains on their own once they get out of college. </p>
<p>I read that while some graduates from elite IVY schools will be paid more than those in a state school, at the end…it is a matter of what you do in the next several years. Also some companies, wont even hire an Ivy for certain jobs. A recruiter from a large co, said reason is money. While, sadly, there are others (because they went to Ivy) will only hire ivy.</p>
<p>A comment about the article cited in the OP: It irks me that once again it’s someone who is enjoying the prestige benefits of an elite university affiliation–prestige which helped get his article published–who wants to tell others not to bother paying for a top school. Would the advice of a Wooster professor have been solicited by the NYT? Would it carry the same weight as that of a Harvard professor?</p>
<p>PS: He attend Berkeley undergrad and then MIT–such lowly schools.</p>
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<p>Sure, and if they might be able to make $1,000,000/yr without going to college at all, so why bother?</p>
<p>Wow, final child, you need to get out and go for a run or play some tennis or take a boxing class. Get a little oxygen up in your head.</p>
<p>Look, I really, really actually, and truly, do not care what the neighbors think or anybody else. This would date me at being over 45 when women really do stop caring what other people think, good OR bad, of them or their children.</p>
<p>If you like my kid’s school, fine. I do too.</p>
<p>Why? I like my kid.</p>
<p>I have a lot of reasons to think this way:</p>
<ol>
<li> I live in the midwest where bigstateU is king. Even Iowa or Kansas are going to get a better cheer around here than Cornell or Harvard. “Rock Chalk!” Honestly, I promise you, even in this wealthy enclave, people really prefer Madison or Ann Arbor to Princeton, NJ or New Haven, connecticut.</li>
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<p>They like Boston, but because they like Boston, not MIT or Harvard.</p>
<p>I promise you I am not making this up.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>My youngest happens to be going to a school where a Bulls superstar played. This is why people love the school around here. Seriously. I’m not kidding. It’s not why I love the school, but it is why they do.</p></li>
<li><p>My oldest goes to a small school out west. “Great skiing!” This is all anybody has to say on the subject.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>This is the midwest.</p>
<p>People on the coast have a different thing going on. I’m sorry to hear it or to say it, but it grates on you guys and eats at you in different way.</p>
<p>I’m sorry for that.</p>
<p>Put the damn sticker on your car and buy the t-shirt or ball cap and leave it be. YOU aren’t the one going to school, anyway.</p>
<p>But I do feel for you guys on the coasts. The things I’ve heard you guys say that people say to you are appalling. People around here don’t say that kind of stuff, mostly. They just want their kid to go Big10. (One of the origninals) or Notre Dame.</p>
<p>Final child, I think you are mis-characterizing the views of many of the old timers. I’m an old timer so I will speak for myself.</p>
<p>We were full pay. I’d have rather my engineering kid have attended U Missouri Rolla (I think it’s now M&T) than a whole host of “higher ranked” engineering schools. Why? I used to hire engineers, and I know that dollar for dollar, those kids are every bit as challenged, and sometimes more so, than the kids at a bunch of schools that get “ranked” higher up. My kids GC’s were always surprised at our kids lists- with no need based aid to consider since we weren’t getting any, I was not playing the “special snowflake needs a special environment” card- especially if it meant not exploring places which would have been academically stronger for their interests.</p>
<p>I accept that for other people, having a kid at a small college which has an engineering program might be a good investment of their dollars. It wasn’t a strong consideration for us, since many of the public U’s just beat the pants off smaller schools in many of the STEM disciplines. If that meant that my kid had to take physics in a class with 500 and not 60 so be it; by junior and senior year the class size evens out regardless of where your kid goes to college. I could not justify paying private tuition knowing that there’s a better engineering program not too far down the road at a large public U which gets tens of millions of dollars in research grants to explore every exciting avenue of nano or composite material or whatever the hot new thing is. Big grants attract ambitious professors and phenomenal grad students and all the things that make it exciting to be a college student getting exposed to big and cool and great stuff. But my neighbor thought her son would only get taught by TA’s, would get lost in the shuffle, would skate by at a big U so they sought out a small engineering program and seem happy with their investment. To each his own.</p>
<p>So I am not an indiscriminate elitist. There are many colleges which fly under the radar of popular opinion that are under valued in my mind-- and I have run recruiting programs at some of them, and hired new grads who are exceptional.</p>
<p>But the corollary to this often seems to be (both in real life as well as on CC) that the allegedly elite schools are an over-hyped, over priced, not worth the trip from anywhere type of experience. And that does not jive with my observations (speaking professionally as someone who has hired and recruited and dozens of universities in my career.) </p>
<p>If your kids aren’t interested in applying to Harvard, then great- don’t apply. If your kid isn’t a strong applicant for Yale then save your money and go out to a nice dinner after his or her applications are done to celebrate, using the Yale money to pay the check. But you don’t need to put on a hair shirt and proclaim that every other kid who has applied to Harvard or Yale is too stupid to see that Knox or Wheaton are every bit as good and often superior to Harvard or Yale. If your kid finds his bliss at Wheaton, and it’s affordable, then it’s win/win. But it doesn’t mean that everyone else is a hypocrite for not seeing how special a place it is.</p>
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I’m on the west coast and I’ve never heard that stuff. But maybe for the obvious reason that my kid flies in a different pattern.</p>
<p>Maybe I’ll ask my sister. BIL is an Ivy Leaguer, they sent their kids to the fancy prep school around here and the kids go top flight colleges full pay (I think). Sis never really talks about it when we get together at holidays. I don’t ask because I assume the kids are sick of all the college stuff and don’t want to hear it from prying uncle bovertine. But maybe I’ll check it out next time I talk to her.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know. I’ve just noticed that those of us from the midwest don’t really have this same neighbor issue, for what it’s worth.</p>
<p>this thread is waaaaaaaaaaay too estrogen-heavy!!!</p>
<p>Having spent few years on admissions comm to an excellent but not elite grad school, I can tell you that 3.5 GPA from an elite college has more weight than the same from a state or any other school within the same tier. Having worked with students from both, there’s a significant gap in their writing, presentation and analytical skills and, unfortunately, not in favor of state schools. Having great peers and professors that challenge you for 4 years is essential for one’s growth. State schools do not provide that on a consistent basis. That does not preclude running into a total disaster of a student from an elite setting.</p>
<p>Yeah, what school? Please provide stats.</p>
<p>All stats show that state school grads do just fine in the grad school game. Post count: 2</p>
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<p>Well, then go away. It’s not like you’re going to help.</p>
<p>Here’s our adcom’s post from the MIT forum:</p>
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<p>■■■■■</p>
<p>It has been a long week, finally came home early, now I have a glass wine, I see what I have been missing, especially with post #374. </p>
<p>I live in the NE, I don’t understand this neighbor thing either. I kind of feel just because I happen to live next door to you, it doesn’t mean we have anything in common, so why should I care about what you think.</p>
<p>poetgirl:
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<p>I don’t see this as a really big problem on the West Coast…Silicon Valley maybe, probably parts of the greater LA area…but otherwise…we are pretty chill. As a matter of fact, a not insignificant number of kids from the chill zone who do venture East often have a difficult time figuring out the different rules of engagement. :)</p>
<p>poetgrl: LOL. i forgot how ‘helpful’ you can be…</p>
<p>yep, you and me babe. ;)</p>
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<p>I don’t think vanderbob said anything different. Grades, and by implication, from where, do matter. Why, is a different issue. I can tell you there is a big difference between classes at the local college vs flagship state school. I don’t think many people would dispute that. What seems to be funny is that people claim there is not a material difference between a high ranked school, and an elite school.</p>
<p>If you are a civil engineer building a road, I can see how there is not much need for cutting edge design. But in cutting edge work, I can see how there can be a material difference in the average graduate of different schools.</p>