<p>"If this seems a bit prejudiced against the Ivies, I dont mean it to be. There are only so many freshman slots at such schools...The East outside the Ivy League is saturated with marvelous undergraduate institutions."</p>
<p>Dan</a> K. Thomasson: Ivy League doesn't have monopoly on ed. opportunities Abilene Reporter-News</p>
<p>I agree 100% with this article. People get way too caught up in Ivy League Schools to realize that there are plenty of other (and sometimes better) options. Lehigh, Boston College, Villanova, Penn State, University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, etc. are all great schools that give students more practical experience needed to succeed in the work force. While Ivy League institutions may be some of the best in the country, they seem to be more geared towards “scholars” and Nobel Prize hopefuls than towards the average human being looking for a decent paying job. If you don’t believe me, check this out.</p>
<p>[Best</a> Colleges & Universities - Ranked by Job Recruiters - WSJ.com](<a href=“Best Colleges & Universities - Ranked by Job Recruiters - WSJ”>Best Colleges & Universities - Ranked by Job Recruiters - WSJ)</p>
<p>I agree with sbrtth’s post above, but I’d caution against putting too much weight on the WSJ article about campus job recruiters. The article is based upon the number of recruiters and career fair participants that each school receives. On-campus visits and fairs are basically PR efforts - they’re not how companies actually manage their human resources needs. Obviously, there’s an economy of scale in sending a representative of your company to a school with 40,000 students over a school with 5,000. And the large state Us are the ones turning out the most candidates who are looking for entry-level jobs after their baccalaureate degrees - their counterparts at more selective colleges are going on in greater proportions to graduate and professional schools. The latter may be likely to be better positioned for career success ten to twenty years later than the student with a bachelor’s degree who took an entry-level job after learning about a company from an on-campus recruiter. It’s like ranking the financial value of a college degree by the average income of graduates a year or two out of of college. Those who took entry-level jobs will have some income while those who are in med school, law school, and pursuing Ph.D.s will not. The resulting numbers may be accurate, but they’re very misleading when used to calculate long-term career prospects.</p>
<p>“If this seems a bit prejudiced against the Ivies, I don’t mean it to be. There are only so many freshman slots at such schools…The East outside the Ivy League is saturated with marvelous undergraduate institutions.”</p>
<p>Well, duh. Who doesn’t know this? I mean, really. Are there really people in the Northeast who honestly, actually think that only Ivy League schools provide opportunities? (and don’t have the excuse that they are new to this country and therefore don’t know any better) If so, those people are truly dumber than rocks.</p>
<p>In other news, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.</p>
<p>Graduate school credentials are more important than undergraduate credentials. But in any case there is nothing better than being at the top of your class no matter where you attend. Hard work pays dividends. </p>
<p>The most important factor in picking a school is fit. That includes academic fit, social fit, geographic etc. Be yourself, not somebody else.</p>
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<p>For a specific career path, yes. But undergraduate credentials are probably more important in leading students to determine what kinds of adults they wish to be and what particular assets will be their personal strengths, and in teaching them how to integrate and adapt understandings from different disciplines in order to address new challenges. The graduate degree in field X will open doors in career X, but an individual’s long-term success, flexibility, and upward mobility - and as well, their ability to adapt their success strategies to other leadership opportunities outside of their job or primary role, is most likely to be influenced by their undergraduate experiences. Going through those experiences with the most talented and motivated peers one can find is one of the greatest investments a student can make in their future life.</p>
<p>Remember that to a person whose sole tool is a hammer, all of life’s challenges appear to be nails. Graduate school is largely aimed at creating great hammerers. But undergraduate experiences are for learning the differences between a nail, a screw, a loose pipe, a situation that isn’t broken and doesn’t require fixing, and a loose nail that appears to require nailing but may actually provide an opportunity for a whole new approach that hasn’t been attempted before.</p>
<p>“If this seems a bit prejudiced against the Ivies, I dont mean it to be. There are only so many freshman slots at such schools…The East outside the Ivy League is saturated with marvelous undergraduate institutions.”</p>
<p>Obviously, geographical cronyism is still alive and kicking on the Right Coast. </p>
<p>“The East outside the Ivy League is saturated with marvelous undergraduate institutions.”</p>
<p>lol @PizzaGirl</p>
<p>So more for “Northeast sophistication.” If you’ve reached the age of adulthood and you haven’t figured out that there’s more to life success than attending one of just a handful of colleges, then you’re really an idiot. It amazes me (as a former Northeasterner who gets the culture) how provincial they can be in pretending that they aren’t provincial and that everyone else is.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, my daughter, who grew up in the west and attends school in the east, is also surprised by how provincial northeasterners can be. And out here in cowboy country we thought they were pretty high falutin’ folks… ;)</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - You are preaching to the choir. Who among us (dare I say) mature adults doesn’t have the life experience to appreciate that there are many fine options in higher education?</p>
<p>But this is a COLLEGE forum geared for the young, who will NEVER understand the mature viewpoint – why?! – eh – because they are not THERE yet.</p>
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<p>Right, but the article Dave Berry linked to breathlessly announces there are opportunities outside the Ivies as though this is breaking news. That article was geared towards adults, not hs students.</p>
<p>I’ve been arguing that the smartest students at a lot of schools are about the same in terms of intelligence and abilities. There’s finally an article that lends it some support. However, the sad thing is, what I’m saying and what this article is saying is what most people (excluding the prestige hungry high school students who populate this board) already know, but they are still interested in arguing whether Stanford is better than Yale, or whether Dartmouth is better than Williams, or whether Columbia or Duke places more students onto Wall Street, whether Berkeley is more of a research powerhouse than Brown, whether the Ivy League is superior to Oxbridge, etc.</p>
<p>“While Ivy League institutions may be some of the best in the country, they seem to be more geared towards “scholars” and Nobel Prize hopefuls than towards the average human being looking for a decent paying job. If you don’t believe me, check this out.”</p>
<p>This is not true. Students at the Ivy League (plus Stanford, Duke, UChicago, Northwestern) are more pre-professional than students anywhere else. Most students are interested in finance, consulting, medicine, and law, explaining why top majors at the Ivies and Stanford are economics, English literature, history, government, psychology, etc. Sciences usually serve as a springboard for aspiring doctors.</p>
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<p>Just the East? Right on, xiggi. I noticed that too. Thought of the famous New Yorker poster of the “world” according to a Manhattanite. Everything west of N.J. (itself a pathetic skinny brown smear) seems not to exist. </p>
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<p>Like an old family joke taken from a small-town paper: Boats Sail In, Out of Harbor.</p>
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<p>PG, although I love to nettle my NE friends about being a “bit” provincial, I believe that everyone exhibits the same behavior to a certain degree. I do not think that people in Texas, California, or Utah are really that more “cosmopolitan” and “citizens of the world.” In the end, if is often easier to look at the world from the terrace of a little cafe in an isolated village! </p>
<p>Fwiw, there is a reason why I like to grab one of Robert Frost’s book from my shelves. Reading Mending Wall always seems to bring context to discussions such as this one (or the more acrimonious discussions about walls and immigration) … </p>
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<p>And so it goes. :)</p>
<p>xiggi:</p>
<p>I think its a difference of 'tude. Many/most in the west, south, and southwest are proud of being provincial, as are Manhatannties (sp?). But the other elites in the NE won’t cop to it.</p>
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<p>So true. As are comments by Xigi and blue bayou (#16). Every region is provincial. Northeasterners are just as bad as folks in other regions. But their reaction to the charge is this: “We’re not provincial. It’s true the best schools are in the northeast. Everybody knows that.” </p>
<p>I’m a homegrown Northeasterner. Years ago, when I announced I was quitting my job to go to grad school at Michigan (Top 10 MBA), the reaction from my peers in NJ was “Why would anybody go out there? Where’s Ann Arbor? Michigan? There’s nothing but cows out there. You could go to Seton Hall or NYU.”</p>
<p>LOL.</p>
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<p>The flip side of the “the only good places are the Ivies” is the apparently oft-held belief that all the very best students are AT the Ivies and their kissing cousins (Duke, etc.). Ergo, if <em>you</em> are somewhere else, you must be somehow inferior as a student. Pretty much every school is going to have at least some uber-students who may be there for reasons not having anything to do with their academic potential. Even at CC’s, as I can attest from my 2 years of experience at one of the SUNY CC’s.</p>
<p>But you know what?</p>
<p>Ivy League schools are BETTER.</p>
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<p>And it gets even better if you’re in the Midwest!</p>