<p>Maybe Northwestern can re-name itself after some robber baron alumnus. Otherwise, forget it.</p>
<p>“Students in my school think that anything famous is an Ivy League.”</p>
<p>I have learned to massage this message for my students … “well, there’s the actual athletic Ivy League. It’s only eight East Coast schools… No, Duke isnt part of that, but it’s a very prestigious school and you need to work very hard to get in there”</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Tops Gallup Poll List as Best University](<a href=“Harvard Tops Gallup Poll List as Best University”>Harvard Tops Gallup Poll List as Best University)</p>
<p>It’s getting a bit old now…but still the only poll I know of.</p>
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<p>And what I’m saying is … If you ask UNAIDEDLY “what are the best colleges in the country,” I doubt the average man in the street will even give you Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton. And that’s why I’m interested in what happens when you all go ask your local men-and-women-in-the-street. What do they say, without any prompting from you? How many do they even come up with?</p>
<p>I’ve been in that situation. A girl asked me whether I was going to apply to UNC, Harvard, or Duke. Since I am going to major in CS, I responded to her that I was going to try to get in UNC and Duke, since they offered some of the best programs for my major in-state, but not Harvard as even though it has a good CS program, it’s not at the same caliber as MIT. Her response sounded like she hasn’t even heard of it, which is not surprising since my school is an average-size public school where most of our students are going to small schools such as Campbell, UNCC, and ECU. To tell the truth, most of my classmates seem to be completely ignorant of MIT, as they all said both my friend and I would be guaranteed to get in as “we are smart.” I just got my deferral message today, and by the look of my friend’s FB page, he hasn’t gotten in either.</p>
<p>Does it really matter that the average guy doesn’t know that Amherst or Williams or MIT are top-notch colleges? Given the fact that just 30% of American adults have a college degree, it’s not too surprising that the average guy can’t identify the “best” colleges. Recruiters, graduate school admissions committee certainly know which colleges/universities are strong academic institutions. IMO that recognition matters more. It is mildly annoying when kids find themselves in a scenario like the OP described (the kid from MN whose relatives/neighbors didn’t have a clue about Haverford). I think the best response in a situation like this is to smile and end the conversation.</p>
<p>what this social experiment really speaks to is the inequality (of both income and opportunity) in our country, not so much the devil-may-care attitude of the common man. the average person hasn’t heard of nor investigated these things because they don’t have the resources to even think about life beyond high school. the college confidential myth is that “everybody” or “too many” people are flooding up colleges and universities, when that just isn’t reality. we still have very low college-going rates in this country overall. anything past 12th grade is still a luxury for the most part.</p>
<p>Top colleges among those in the street in my old childhood NYC neighborhood in the '80s included HYPM, Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Fordham. </p>
<p>Binghamton and Stonybrook weren’t mentioned very often, but were also well-respected to a lesser extent. </p>
<p>NYU was regarded for strong undergrad programs in Tisch(Arts)/STERN(Business). Arts & sciences was considered hit or miss among NYC locals in the 80s and early-mid '90s as their department strengths varied widely and the pool of students tended to skew overwhelmingly upper/upper-middle class and tending to be middling or mediocre in their graduating HS class. </p>
<p>St. Johns in Queens was widely regarded even among my Catholic elementary school teachers/neighbors as a once great institution in academic decline. None of those neighbors thought it was worth the private school tuition. </p>
<p>As for the CUNYs, this was when I heard about how they were once regarded as the “poor man’s Ivy League” before some student radicals and Mayor Lindsay implemented Open admission policies which caused the whole system to go to seed within a few years. </p>
<p>Even as a young elementary school kid, it was common for teachers and even some parents who had college dreams to tell us to avoid those colleges like the plague because of the marked academic decline due to the flood of and institutional prioritization of remedial students over above-average ones during the '80s and '90s.* Only exception among HS classmates was Brooklyn College honors, Hunter Honors, and Baruch as they was considered “ok-good”, but not “top”. </p>
<p>Once I hit high school, “top colleges” among students and their parents depended on whether they were going into STEM(mainly engineering/CS) or anything else. The former would drop HY completely and add CMU, Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, UMich, UIUC, and for some…Cooper Union. </p>
<p>This was illustrated by the reaction most HS classmates had when one aspiring engineering classmate turned down admission to MIT and Stanford to attend Harvard which in the mid-'90s…wasn’t regarded as first-tier as far as engineering programs were concerned among hardcore STEM kids at my HS or later on, many engineering/CS co-workers/supervisors. They all thought she was nuts for doing so and wondered whether she really wanted to become a “real engineer”. </p>
<p>Among those who weren’t hardcore STEM aspirants, it was basically HYPSMC/SWAR or bust. Women also had Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mayr, Mt. Holyoke, etc. </p>
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<li>No longer applicable due to implementation of Macaulay Honors and the shifting of all remediation programs to the 2-year community colleges.</li>
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<p>Penn State would win around here.</p>
<p>No, Bromfield, I don’t think it “matters” – people on the street don’t know either my D’s LAC nor yours. I think the point in the post below is the relevant one – people bemoan mailings from these schools, but the truth of the matter is, if the average working person did have a smart younger sibling or cousin, they might not know these schools nd opportunities at all.</p>
<p>Why do people think Penn state is so awesome? Is it because of their football? Or does UPenn bolster their prestige since people see them as one and the same.</p>
<p>My D has been frustrated with this because nobody around here knows what Barnard is. Soon after she was accepted, she and a friend ran into another student who asked them where they were going to college. Her friend said “I’m going to the University of Michigan” and my D said “I’m going to Barnard College” The other student looked at my D’s friend and said “WOW! You got into Michigan?” D got into Michigan too…lol. Now she says “I go to Barnard College in New York City.” If she gets the blank stare, she says “The women’s college affiliated with Columbia”. Some still give her blank stares… oh well!</p>
<p>I think LACs have a VERY hard time getting prestige. I myself didn’t know they existed till I started researching colleges in 9th grade and I didn’t know of any good LACs outside of Williams and Amherst till my friend got into Pomona while I was in 11th.</p>
<p>You know, if you repeated this experiment for classical composers, the MOTS would acknowledge Bach and Beethoven. Then if you asked college music faculty to name the best composers, they’d probably never suggest B and B. Why? Heck, anyone on the street could name those - they’re going to throw out a name that confirms their expertise and inside information. Those of us who are smitten with the Haverfords and their ilk may have a little of dynamic going on.</p>
<p>Anyway, I agree that the MOTS knows few top colleges, especially here in the Deep South. Among the Ivies he’d know HYP and maybe Dartmouth or Cornell because their names are relatively distinctive. Penn would be mistaken for PSU, there are all kinds of colleges and business named “Columbia,” and I don’t think the name “Brown” would even register for 90% of the folks around here.</p>
<p>Imagine the blanks stares the “average guy” would give when you tell them your going to Washington University. Most likely they would be convinced that your going to school somewhere near Seattle or DC and that your attending a public university.</p>
<p>I haven’t done the experiment now but I will say that growing up in rural Wisconsin, it was one of the UWs (or University of Minnesota), Beloit, or Marquette (for the smart kids). Occasionally Northwestern for really ambitious kids who were going “far” away. I don’t remember even hearing about any other schools, although I suppose there were flyers in the guidance office. And I knew kids who ended up at some of the other privates, of course, but usually becaue they knew someone who went there. People were very impressed that I applied to Harvard (rejection irrelevant). And that was from the high school GC and teachers.</p>
<p>I also think that people think Penn St is good because they’ve heard of it. Why else would they know about it if it weren’t special? People tend to like what they know more than they know what they like, myself included.</p>
<p>I’m asking you guys to do the experiment, not merely speculate on what the people around you think. Obviously I’m not very persuasive :-)</p>
<p>I will try it Pizzagirl, as soon as I make my way out of the house. They’re locking me in today and forcing me to make multiple pans of lasagna. I will say that I have not more than a two or three people locally who know anything about Carleton College, where one of my best friend’s kid goes.</p>
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<p>PG - If I did that, they will smile in a crooked way and ask, “Do you need a quarter?”</p>
<p>I actually find it refreshing that people don’t know much about college. There’s hope after all.</p>
<p>I once reviewed a resume that indicated the job applicant was a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did not get an interview.</p>