Ha! Only every other kid? I don’t know what kind of cow college @julian16 went to, but it definitely wasn’t a top tier elite school. At a true tippy top school, every single one of the students is related to the movers and shakers.
I mean, even the social life is better. Why, God knows that I slept with so many supermodels during my college days that I simply stopped counting after the first hundred. Good thing I was young and an athlete or I might have died from exhaustion. Fortunately, eating caviar daily and being massaged with hundred dollar bills (delivered fresh from the vaults of a robber baron by their chief butler) does wonders for one’s constitution.
Of course, it’s pretty obvious that julian16 didn’t go to an Ivy himself. Everyone who attended an Ivy knows not to speak about all the great opportunities in front of outsiders … it is simply not done ! You’ve got to think about the effects on the morale of the peasantry. After all, “the first rule of going to an Ivy is - you don’t talk about what goes on at an Ivy.”
Seriously, the OP is obviously struggling to clear up a lot of misconceptions that they have. There’s no need to yank their chain.
" Everyone who attended an Ivy knows not to speak about all the great opportunities in front of outsiders … it is simply not done ! "
Oh of course, it was just an average experience. That’s why we donate large sums, spend a mint sending kids to the best primary and secondary schools, obsess over cultivating the perfect application, call in favors if kids are wait listed. All to give jr that same very average experience.
“At an elite every other kid is related to a Hollywood exec/producer, best selling author, partner at a white shoe firm, editor at the WSJ, titans of finance, old money robber baron family…”
Nah. Have to remember our experiences were at least 20 years ago. Things changed, the competition got fiercer, various types of diversity now matter, most of the tippy tops which were male-only began including women. And lots of next tier colleges (and the tier after that) got stronger, picked up all sorts of great faculty from the pool of great baby boomer PhDs.
As the saying goes, when all those great kids today don’t get into a freaking tippy top, where do you think they do go? It’s not straight to the pits of a subpar state school or a job bagging groceries. They take their academic, EC and social skills to another great college, strive, grow and network there.
Both my parents were Ivy (different schools. My father also went to professional school at a third.) They had friends, but also complaints. Neither wanted me or my brother to go that route. I work for an Ivy, close enough to tell you the experience is what you make of it. It’s no magic castle. If you’re great, you will be just as great outside the top ten colleges. You will make lots of great friends who stretch you. The big difference is in much lower ranked colleges.
I don’t think I know what any parents did besides my roommates and not even then always. (I had 8 over the years.) One worked for the UN, one was a Lutheran minister, one did something business-y out in CA, and one was was a lower middle class. I have no idea what the parents of any of my sophomore year roommates did, but I did meet YoYo Ma through one of them.
My Carnegie Mellon kid benefited from their network both for a junior year internship and probably for getting a Google interview as well. They (CS) had a list serv that he still participates in that he connected up with freshman year.
Not an Ivy, but Williams. I got a good combo of grants and loans (now paid off), and I think it was the best expense of my life. I’m so much better for having attended my alma mater.
Oh, my bad, I thought I was clear. How about this:
No attempt to ascertain a school’s relative “eliteness” or prestige can arrive at a satisfying result if its limited to a narrow (and local) geographic region.
And ooh! I thought of another!
Arguing about which schools are “elite” is a waste of time because “elite” is an abstract, subjective term.
@marvin100: “No attempt to ascertain a school’s relative “eliteness” or prestige can arrive at a satisfying result if its limited to a narrow (and local) geographic region.”
OK. But here are the schools that are seen as elite everywhere in all major fields:
Stanford
Maybe Harvard these days.
You may be able to throw in Oxbridge and Princeton.
Some posters keep mentioning wealthy people and Ivy parents sending kids to public schools, though some of them probably do it for a better fit but let’s not forget that even with hooks of wealth and legacy, acceptance rate is still very low. It’s more likely than not that their kids didn’t get accepted.
I get the feeling that you want us all to tell you that only an elite school could possibly prepare a student for a successful life, because they need to be surrounded by movie stars’ children in order to be happy or experience intellectual growth.
“Some posters keep mentioning wealthy people and Ivy parents sending kids to public schools, though some of them probably do it for a better fit but let’s not forget that even with hooks of wealth and legacy, acceptance rate is still very low. It’s more likely than not that their kids didn’t get accepted.”
You are making the assumption that wealthy parents always have the goal of sending their kids to Ivies / elites, and the only reason such kids don’t go there is because they don’t get accepted. I think you’re missing 3 crucial points:
Many wealthy-parent kids don’t necessarily have the goods (grades, etc) to be competitive for elites in the first place.
Even those who are competitive for elites may or may not necessarily be interested - esp if they live in parts of the country where the state flagships are highly regarded.
Wealthy parents don’t need to impress others by racking up an Ivy / elite degree (unless it is what the kid wants). They already have their own connections, they may already have their own family businesses that the kids are going to inherit anyway.
BTW, those wealthy parents who do value education often choose LAC’s. They don’t have the broad “name prestige” of HYPS but so what? What do they care?
I’m from an immigrant family, went to a high performing HS in a very poorly resourced, large urban school district. By Jan 1 of my Senior year, I had applied to multiple Ivies and engineering schools (although some with rolling admissions had accepted me already) – was extremely blessed to be accepted by all. I ended up at an Ivy with very generous FinAid – had a wonderful time, great experiences, memories, friends. I’ve stayed deeply involved through its alum groups and alumni interviewing of HS kids. I promote it through my recruiting presentations at a couple of “big name” local high schools. I loved my alma mater.
For all that, I also am perfectly honest with students and families when I tell them “it ain’t all dat”. While forever grateful for my time there, I’m equally as convinced that had I attended one of the non-Ivies, I don’t think my life’s trajectory and what I consider meaningful, would have been that different. Would I have loved for my oldest to consider applying to my alma mater? Sure – but I realize it totally wasn’t her cup of tea. Although a very competitive senior, she chose an Honors College at a lesser known public school in my state – and loves it. I’m ecstatic for her. She loves it so much her younger sister might follow her footsteps. How can any parent be sad or disappointed at that?
@compmom
Thank you for pointing out that the Ivies do a great job meeting middle income student’s needs. There are plenty of low and middle income kids at them but plenty seem to like to image them as playgrounds for the rich. I think the Ivies are an easy target for people. Easy to pass judgement.
Just like anything, both public and private universities have all kinds of folks.
My experience was similar to @mathmom 's, although I probably knew what more parents did. I definitely knew kids whose families were famous, but so what? One of my roommates was wealthy, and his aunt was married to the son of a President. Big deal. This guy was very nice, but very alcoholic. He never graduated; he has spent meaningful stretches of his adult life in jail. A childhood friend was a grandson of one of the university’s trustees; he struggled, and has not had a happy life, either. The son of a future President was a classmate; at the time, his relationship with his parents was very, very distant. No one got any leg up in the world by being his friend, and he would have dropped like a rock anyone whom he suspected of sucking up to his father.
In general, the people who have set the world on fire came from modest backgrounds, and their success had little or nothing to do with their college social network. Except for one modest-background guy who was in a secret society and worked those contacts a lot – but I knew several people in secret societies, and only one whose career was meaningfully advanced by it. And this guy, trust me, would have made it if he had gone to East Podunk U.
For every Steve Ballmer – whose career was made by a friend he made freshman year at Harvard – there are thousands and thousands of people whose careers weren’t advanced at all. And, of course, Ballmer’s friend came from a well-to-do, locally-powerful professional-class family in the West, but it was the child, not the father, who made “Gates” a meaningful name.
Here’s a story about association with people from famous families at Harvard:
When my grandmother showed up at Radcliffe, they of course assigned her to share a room with another Jew – Estelle Frankfurter, the younger sister of a new professor at the law school. Years later, he became a Supreme Court Justice. My grandmother and his sister had a perfectly lovely lifetime friendship. A little more than 60 years later, one of my grandmother’s granddaughters also came to Radcliffe, and one of her roommates was the younger sister of someone who had just graduated near the top of his class from Harvard Law School. Merrick Garland. So . . . in two different generations, a roommate who turns out to be a sibling of a Supreme Court Justice (maybe). And you know what it means? Nothing. It couldn’t happen anywhere else, but so what?
Most of the Ivy League schools and similarly selective private schools have about half of their students getting no financial aid (i.e. with very high family income/wealth). Meanwhile, their percentage of Pell grant students is typically quite low.
So, while there are students from low and middle income families at those schools, the students there are heavily skewed toward scions of wealth.
Yes, roughly half are full-pay families. However, that does not even remotely make them “scions of wealth,” ucbalumnus.
Julian16’s erroneous post notwithstanding, within the full-pay group at elites, that comprises a heck of a lot of “mere” doctors’ and lawyers’ kids, small businessmen’s kids, and so forth - people who are getting their income from getting up and going to work every day, not phoning their trustee who has administered grandmama’s fortune.
@ucbalumnus
My husband and I are not wealthy…both work for non-profits and never imagined we could afford to send our son to an Ivy. Of the few students we know also attending an Ivy, the situation is very similar. As it stands I’m not sure we would be able to afford to send our son to a UC. Wonderful universities that they are (my hubby and I both proud UC graduates) they have become prohibitively expensive for the average middle class student.
“Scions of wealth” has a great ring to it. I suppose it’s true that Ivy League schools are “heavily skewed” towards them, because maybe 2-3% of students come from families that have to worry about estate taxes (net worth in excess of $11 million). That’s heavily skewed, because at public universities it might be .02%, even though the absolute numbers might not be much lower.
Ivy League schools are definitely more heavily skewed than average to families with pretty high income and comfortable lives, but that’s not quite wealth-scionhood. And I think lots of non-Ivy private colleges, as well as public flagships, are well-stocked with such people, too.
@Pizzagirl , You are correct. For example, my daughter first roommate has a few bulldozers, excavators and cranes right on her property - her father owns a small construction business. So if my daughter ever needs a bulldozer - she is all set.
““Scions of wealth” has a great ring to it. I suppose it’s true that Ivy League schools are “heavily skewed” towards them, because maybe 2-3% of students come from families that have to worry about estate taxes (net worth in excess of $11 million). That’s heavily skewed, because at public universities it might be .02%, even though the absolute numbers might not be much lower.”
But it’s so much more dramatic to pretend that a) “every other kid is connected” and b) “they are all scions of wealth”! You’re harshing their mellow, JHS.