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<p>I believe the following was the thread that had provoked flowerhead to pose this question:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/843328-transferring-ivy-worth.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/843328-transferring-ivy-worth.html</a></p>
<p>This is a case of a freshman at Notre Dame wanting to transfer to Ivy League schools such as Dartmouth, Penn, and Brown.</p>
<p>It’s outrageous, to say the least.</p>
<p>Notre Dame is one of the nation’s most reputable and desirable schools. It might be scoffed at by the new, rising elite, but it is plenty respected by the old elite, and middle and working class families.</p>
<p>[The</a> Princeton Review, Inc. - Princeton Review’s 2009 “College Hopes & Worries Survey” Reports On 15,000 Students’ & Parents’ Application Experiences, Concerns & “Dream” Schools](<a href=“http://ir.princetonreview.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=372901]The”>http://ir.princetonreview.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=372901)</p>
<p>However, if one sees ND, Dartmouth, Penn, and Brown as peers, as one should, then one quickly realizes that it does boil down to prestige and a neediness to accommodate the shifting shape of prestige.</p>
<p>Alexandre is right. Disregarding anomalies who fall into the abyss due to poor decisions or extreme misfortune, each student, generally speaking, ends up where he or she ultimately belongs. A school like Notre Dame falls in the top national university group and also, very fortunately, is reputable enough that it doesn’t make sense for its students to harbor inferiority complexes.</p>
<p>I maintain that the problem is an overbearing sense of entitlement–but the root of the problem, I admit, is a deeply misconceived notion of prestige, that trivial/negligible differences in prestige among top institutions are more than what they are.</p>