<p>worried_mom - almost everyone has gone to prom in limos in high school. Has your son done done it in college, paid by the college? I don’t think so, if he didn’t attend an Ivy or an equivalent private school. Only rich private schools can do that. Public ones can’t because that would really please the taxpayers. If there are no experience unique to the Ivies (+equivalent private schools), why would most people pick them over the engineering school at a mediocre state school? Unless, you want to claim that a bright student at the engineering school at a mediocre state school wouldn’t have the same opportunity as a student an Ivy. Which isn’t true.</p>
<p>If you have ever been close to engineering students at Ivies, you know that they are there for mainly for the experience, not any unique academic or career advantages. Non-engineering students are mainly there for the prestige and experience.</p>
<p>"If there are no experience unique to the Ivies (+equivalent private schools), why would most people pick them over the engineering school at a mediocre state school??</p>
<p>Which state schools mentioned in this thread are mediocre?</p>
<p>confidentialcoll-The Cornell engineering statistics in post #63 come from a phone call to the admissions office and are supposedly for the class entering 2010.</p>
<p>Huh? I’ve never heard of a private college providing limo service for students attending formal dances. Both my daughters went ot Ivy league colleges and both have attended formal dances, but they never had a limo. If they wanted one for some reason they (or their dates) would have to pay for that themselves. The thought that the college would pay for that sort of personal luxury is laughable.</p>
<p>I asked the Dartmouth rep about employer recruiting at graduation. This guy was a local alumni volunteer, not the admissions rep who ran the presentation. He told me there is significant recruiting of engineering students by all the big finance and tech firms. And the recruiting is not just at graduation but all year. With the D-Plan, students are available for internships all year long, so companies recruit there throughout the year. They can’t get spring or fall interns at other schools. Those firms get to really see the students’ work up close since they usually have few interns at those times (as opposed to typical summer). This often leads to permanent job offers from those firms at graduation. Engineering students definitely get recruited for engineering jobs, not just for banking.</p>
<p>^You have to take what he said with a huge grain of salt given the following two facts directly from the engineering website:
more than half go on to graduate schools; this is unusually high for an engineering school. It’s likely that students go to graduate schools to “specialize” since the degree they got is “general engineering”.
there were 60 BE awarded in 2009. If more than half went to grad school and another half of the balance went to consulting/finance, you are talking about <15 students available for companies to recruit and what their concentrations are is anybody’s guess (e.g. do they take any Civil or Chemical Eng courses?). I think it’s highly unlikely large number of companies would go there given the perceived low return, despite the fact that Dartmouth students are obviously very bright.</p>
<p>I used to work for one of the largest engineering firms. They really didn’t physically go to some of the Ivy campuses because of the low turn out. But they welcome resumes from Ivy students through their online system.</p>
<p>Maybe IvyPBear is unaware that even at Southwest Missouri State, students who want to take limos to events are just as able to call up limo companies and arrange for it? Perhaps he thinks there is a certain SAT cutoff required to reserve a limo?</p>
<p>The only formal dance I have heard of was at Princeton where a group of students got dressed up and took limos to the dance. I don’t know how widespread this is but I thought it was a nice tradition. I saw pictures of my friend with her date who was wearing a tux. I can’t remember exactly but I think it was some kind of annual fraternity/sorority event. </p>
<p>So, it does happen. I didn’t hear of any events like this at Cornell but I was not in a frat. Plus, I was in engineering and engineers are a drag and don’t get out much. LOL. I think it would be nice if there were more old-fashioned traditions like this. But, they must be rare.</p>
<p>I have never heard of a university (Ivy, private, LAC or public) that organizes formals or hires limos for their students. This may have been the case back in the 1950s and 1960s, when dating was a big deal and most Ivies were open to men only, but since the 1980s, I am fairly certain that this sort of practice has not taken place in the vast majority of universities, including the Ivies.</p>
<p>No one is saying that kids at these schools don’t ever dress up and take limos to formal events. But, that’s a function of the kids and / or their organizations (such as the Greek system) arranging these things, and they are just as accessible to kids at “mere mortal” schools, too. </p>
<p>IvyPBear’s post implied that taking a limo to a formal event was a part of an Ivy experience that just couldn’t be replicated elsewhere, and I’d like him to explain what he meant by that. Is the experience of stepping out of your Princeton dorm into a limo qualitatively different from the experience of stepping out of your no-name-school dorm into a limo? Are the limos grander or something?</p>
<p>And anyway, who is impressed by a limo anyway? Once you’ve been in one once, well, the thrill is pretty much over. Heck, years ago, my parents won some kind of package that had a limo ride and a gift certificate to a local mall, and took my kids, who were then about 6 or 7, in the limo because well, why not. It was a big deal for them because … well, they were 6 or 7.</p>
<p>Some of the Houses at Harvard or dorms at Dartmouth have formal dances every year. But they aren’t organized by the school administration. And the thought of the school paying for limos is just silly. They wouldn’t fund a limo any more than they would pay for the men’s tuxes or the ladies’ corsages.</p>