<p>I think many people here need to brush up on just how few 99 percentile students there are in the country. The straw man “phony” good students just doesn’t make sense. A 34 ACT, a 3.9 GPA, starting a club, captain of tennis team can be “faked”? Sour grapes from less motivated people with lower percentile numbers.</p>
<p>I think the other thing is that often getting involved in the activities teaches the kids things about themselves. My highschool for example had no classes on Wednesdays. Instead we all got shipped out to various volunteer activities. A couple of years of service work, a year on Capital Hill and senior year you usually did something related to a field you thought you’d like to work in. I learned a lot from being a school tutor and working with pre-school kids, including a ton about how less privileged kids work. It didn’t matter that I have no interest in social work or teaching in the long term. The main thing I learned about volunteering is that the person who is doing the volunteering can gain as much as the person they are supposedly helping.</p>
<p>As for missing the intellectuals - none of these elite colleges were ever full of intellectuals. They always had a mix.</p>
<p>I still wonder if Deresiewicz had gotten tenure at Yale, would he still have been so jaded? </p>
<p>@jym626 He doesn’t sound jaded to me.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I would use the term “jaded.” “Full of baloney,” yes, and perhaps “sour-grapesy.” It is true that Yale had a particularly bad tenure arrangement, which resulted in some people (including Deresciwiez) staying on so long that when they were denied tenure, they were too old to easily get a tenture-track position at another university. Apparently Yale has made some steps to change this situation.</p>
<p>What I don’t get is why this is supposedly some huge tragedy? Or, for that matter, anything new? Oh no, our nation’s highest-achieving and most ambitious students are doing what they have to do to position themselves to become rich and powerful. Exactly what else did you expect them to do?</p>
<p>I also can’t tell, from this or from the various other articles and excerpts that have been linked at various times around CC, whether this author thinks that the big problem is that (a) students are so busy jumping through hoops (including the hoop of trying to be an “interesting person”) that they don’t have time to figure out who they really are, or (b) that the hoop-jumping apparently actually works. Who is he concerned for, the students who have apparently sacrificed their true selves in order to gain admission to the hallowed portals, or society for being duped by these Machiavellian little jerks?</p>
<p>He exhibits an odd combination of condescending pity (which he disguises by including himself in the category of those to be pitied, e.g. he can’t talk to his plumber) and soapboxing about the breakdown of society. When you consider that in the end he’s just talking about a tiny segment of the populace, it’s hard to take him seriously. </p>
<p>I think anyone who checks out his speeches or discussions of youtube might be surprised how authentic he comes across. He has a lot of bones to pick and doesn’t claim to have all the solutions. Just interesting insight, that was sparked by other people’s interest in a piece or two he wrote for some education publication a while back. I really don’t get the “dig” about him being denied tenure. I guess if that’s a valid “dig” then everybody who got denied or can’t afford to attend an elite school is “jaded” they had to attend their back up, and therefore would never have an unbiased view of those elite schools, right?</p>
<p>I am not particularly impressed by the argument put forth by Deresciwiez, but to be fair I think his main point is that the best and the brightest have become too focused on small details in their own pursuit of narrow self interest and that has left a deficit of capable people to develop the grand ideas and perspectives that would best serve the broad and long-term interests of the society.</p>
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<p>@Hunt Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t see any of his work as taking shots at his former employer.</p>
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<p>I’m not so sure about that considering most of the students in the most challenging majors especially the usual suspects tend not to be from wealthy backgrounds. Also, it seems a large critical mass of wealthy/well-connected students tend to congregate in departments not usually considered “hard”…such as Art History. </p>
<p>If anything, any pre-professional aspects along with the grueling academic workloads…especially pre-med and engineering tend to be major turnoffs to many students from such families. Especially those from families who have a reserved executive/managerial position for their students upon graduation regardless of GPA…or sometimes whether he/she even graduated. </p>
<p>Also, some of the worst slackers* at my private college and those noticed by friends who attended elite Us…including HYP tend to be genuinely wealthy students who don’t have to worry about maintaining more than a 2.0 or whatever the absolute minimum was to remain in good standing. Why would they worry when they already have a plum job lined up for them thanks to the family/family friend’s business?</p>
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<li>It was from this group that I first learned there are students at elite/respectable private colleges who have the “As long as I maintain a C-/C in all my classes, it’s all good.” A mentality completely alien to my mind and fellow FA/scholarship students who didn’t have the luxury to slack off like that even if we were so inclined.<br></li>
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His whole argument is taking shots at Yale students, who are presumably the ones he knows the most about. But he doesn’t seem to actually know very much about them; either that, or he is lying about them. That’s what I don’t like about him. He may genuinely believe in the baloney he is peddling, but it is still baloney.</p>
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<p>Between the SAT and the ACT, and assuming some reasonable degree of overlap (i.e., people who took both tests), there are probably 35,000-40,000 kids each year with the equivalent of a 34 ACT (which is officially the 99th percentile, but has more than 1% of the students in it because the scoring is not that fine). The widespread practice of using the best scores from multiple test dates probably boosts that number by another 5-6,000 kids at least. I think you can assume most of them have pretty good grades, too. There are about 30,000 high schools in the U.S., and every one of them has at least one “best” kid (some claim to have dozens). About 3 million kids graduate from high school in the U.S. every year; if you look at the top 2% of them it’s 60,000 kids. And that doesn’t take into account that someone who is in the top 25% or even 50% at schools like Exeter, Harvard-Westlake, Stuyvesant, or Thomas Jefferson would blow away most valedictorians in a head-to-head contest.</p>
<p>In other words, there are lots and lots of kids with good numbers out there. The total class size of the Ivy League, Stanford, and MIT combined is about 17,000, with somewhere around 9,000 - 11,000 slots available to be filled by domestic applicants whose credentials are primarily academic. Not every high-numbers kid applies to any of those schools, of course, and very few apply to all of them, but it’s not hard to believe that all of them get more applications than they are prepared to accept from this group.</p>
<p>As for faking: Nothing is easier than saying you started a club. If I were an admissions person, I would heavily discount anything supposedly started by the applicant, unless I had real evidence that it involved real, ongoing commitments by other people. Being captain of the tennis team may be harder to fake (unless there isn’t really much of a team), but those 30,000 high schools produce God knows how many team captains, Model UN captains, Academic Decathalon captain, so that’s not so much help in telling who really has the goods.</p>
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<p>That’s probably true (haven’t read his book so can’t say for sure), and I think it’s a stupid argument. There are at least as many people today spending time thinking about grand ideas and perspectives about the long-term interests of society as there ever have been. People are paid to do this – it’s no longer just Erasmus up in his tower – and I can’t go on Facebook without seeing a link to a blog post where somebody is working through their own larger ideas and perspectives about society, whether through the lens of Ferguson, the Middle East or sexual assault on college campuses.</p>
<p>Personally, I think all his hand-wringing is useless and overblown. You know what’s going to happen after all those “excellent sheep” graduate? Sure, some will keep on chasing the high of going for the biggest prize just because it’s the biggest (or if you like, running from the emptiness in their own souls, idk). But most will find their own paths, one way or another, just as they would have done anyway had they gone to a different school. It’s just not that big a deal. Kids be crazy, then they grow up. Film at eleven.</p>
<p>@Hunt He’s “taking shots” at a few things. The way elite education in 2014 is perpetually for the rich, because they’re the only ones that can afford to create elite college-bound kids. He’s taking shots at diversity on elite campuses, as it’s mostly rich people of color, often from oversees. He’s taking a shot at admissions departments who don’t do anything to disrupt this, or give lower means students a chance. He’s taking shots at college kids for being obsessed with money and occupational “prestige,” that will no doubt turn to depression as an empty law associate or consultant. You may not agree with his tone, but everything he says has merit. He’s taking shots at elite schools who want rich kids, because donor levels are more valued than socio-economic diversification. In short, he’s just pontificating on the state of affairs at the United States’ elite colleges. I don’t know how anyone could get offended at what he’s pitching. It’s all very accurate.</p>
<p>Maize,
Deresiewicz tends to putdown the very schools and classmates whet he worked and attended. </p>
<p>@jym626 Debating or pontificating isn’t necessarily personal.</p>
<p>@maize, it’s the tone. He probably comes across better when speaking in person, and I get that you’re a student who’s had the opportunity to hear him speak a few times. Maybe he should stick to speaking, because in print he comes across as kind of arrogant and self-indulgent.</p>
<p>“You may not agree with his tone, but everything he says has merit.”</p>
<p>There is merit to some of his theories, but he keeps supporting them with fictional “facts,” like the idea that 40% of Ivy grads are going into consulting and i-banking, and he calls that “most of them.” He’s going off of data saying that 40% of THOSE EMPLOYED AT GRADUATION go into those fields…and only half are employed at graduation as opposed to entering grad school, planning travel, or unsure. 20% vs. 40% is a gigantic error that undercuts all his generalizations about how the corporate mindset is so widespread. I’m not sure whether it says worse things about him as a social critic if he understands that error, or if he does not.</p>
<p>@Hunt:</p>
<p>You said the same thing before and I rebutted you before as well. B-schools and med schools do look at different kinds of ECs (I think law schools too to a less extent). Also other types of grad schools for various ECs. Also, Wall Street likes to recruit among Ivy/equivalent athletes.</p>
<p>@JHS:
Of course, there are more than 10 Ivy/Ivy-equivalents in this country that can get you pretty much anywhere than an Ivy can get you. Throwing in UChicago, Duke, CalTech, and Northwestern adds a few more thousand. Adding in the LACs that are Ivy-equivalents adds another few thousand. Add in other elite privates who are just as respected as Ivies in certain fields and regions like JHU, Rice, etc. adds another few thousand. Add in Cal, UMich, UVa, and various parts of other publics that are just as respected and can get you as far as an Ivy in certain career paths (including many honors colleges) adds another few tens of thousands.</p>