<p>I don’t this has too much to do with pre-professionalism. Many if not most people that go into finance and consulting seem to have never even considered those fields until their junior or senior years. I think the issue is that people are scared of looking unsuccessful. The reason TFA is so popular - versus becoming a teacher through more standard routes - is that anyone could become a teacher, while TFA is pretty competitive. And I definitely think that people at Yale are more concerned with looking successful than people at Illinois.</p>
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<p>I don’t think most students at Yale are concerned with looking successful–I think they are concerned about getting some kind of job, and hopefully a job that they will enjoy doing. This is certainly the case for my son and his friends, who graduated from Yale a year ago. They are doing all sorts of things. A couple of them went into finance and consulting, but others are working for non-profits. A couple went to TFA, and others are in grad school, law school, or medical school. The biggest problem I have observed among them is that some of them had trouble finding good jobs in their fields. Some of those people are doing internships. Others are working at pretty good jobs but not really what they’d like to be doing.</p>
<p>In other words, pretty much like the graduates of any other college, except that some of them have really good opportunities and are maybe getting more competitive jobs or grad school slots. The idea that they are more sheep-like than kids from other colleges is laughable, as far as I’m concerned.</p>
<p>Oh, and about credentialism–would anybody be reading D’s book at all if he had gone to Kenyon and been denied tenure at Brandeis?</p>
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<p>@warbrain: I think you have it backwards. </p>
<p>While I couldn’t say what percentage of people who go into finance or consulting plan to do that from the start, you just have to look at CC to see that there are plenty of high school kids who want to do that. This has probably been the case since Liar’s Poker came out. </p>
<p>On the other hand, TFA is popular because students can do it who did not plan to become a teacher, and thus have not taken the education courses required to do it the normal way. It also helps that there isn’t an expectation that they will make a career of it either. The competitiveness likely a consequence of its desirability, not (primarily) the other way around.</p>
<p>I suspect a lot of students are interested in TFA because it is similar to, but not quite as daunting as, the Peace Corps.</p>
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<p>“In other words, pretty much like the graduates of any other college, except that some of them have really good opportunities and are maybe getting more competitive jobs or grad school slots. The idea that they are more sheep-like than kids from other colleges is laughable, as far as I’m concerned.”</p>
<p>Yes, exactly. </p>
<p>“The Ivy League schools do vary.”</p>
<p>They do, but even the most preprofessional among them put a lot more emphasis on liberal arts than do most public schools (or lower-ranked private schools) do. At any rate, the fact that they vary is all the more reason not to write/promote books lumping all the elites together.</p>
<p>It shouldn’t be mysterious or surprising that if you show up on a college campus to offer $100k+ jobs to 21-year-olds, a lot of them will say yes. If Goldman Sachs showed up at UMass instead of Harvard to hand those jobs out, they’d be just as popular, if not more so.</p>
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<p><a href=“http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000554.pdf”>http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000554.pdf</a> indicates that 54% of bachelor’s degrees at Cornell are in pre-professional subjects (58% if you include CS as a pre-professional subject). That is not too different from the approximately 59.5% over all bachelor’s degrees as shown at <a href=“Bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2011-12”>http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.asp</a> (based on the assumption of “other majors” as pre-professional majors rather than liberal arts majors – note that CS is included with engineering in this table, so it is included in the 59.5%).</p>
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<p>While the Ivies do vary, my perception of Yale–the school Deresciwiez should theoretically know the most about–is very much at adds with what he says. But my knowledge is only based on having gone there myself, and having one kid who recently graduated and one who is a student there now, so what do I know?</p>
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<p>That was in the book review, not your post. </p>
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<p>That’s not what I was saying. I was making an example of someone with intellectual interests and no career ambition. </p>
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<p>The portion of the population that innovate is relatively small. And it’s going to require you’re smarter than most. The most intelligent million or so in the US aren’t who I’m talking about. Me and the 319 million others in this country who were never smart enough to do anything important have our best options in a regular job.</p>
<p>“54% of bachelor’s degrees at Cornell are in pre-professional subjects”</p>
<p>Interesting – all the more reason not to lump them in with Yale.</p>
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<p>Yale has only 9% of bachelor’s degrees in pre-professional subjects (11% if you count CS as such), according to <a href=“http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/CDS2013_2014.pdf”>http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/CDS2013_2014.pdf</a> . English (presumably Deresciwiez’ department) makes up 5%. The largest group is (non-psychology) social studies at 27%, with biological sciences next at 11%.</p>
<p>Of course, that does not stop Wall Street and consulting companies from recruiting a large percentage of graduating seniors.</p>
<p>Granted, but the fact that someone took a plum job as a senior doesn’t mean that they spent their college career grubbing grades to impress a bank. My closest friend who went to Goldman Sachs (and still works in finance) was summa cum laude in Classics. You can’t get any more purely intellectual than that.</p>
<p>Maybe we could stir things up by saying that what Deresciwiez is really doing is displaying anti-Asian bias.</p>
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<p>And anti-White? Really it’s anti-everyone-except-Jews.</p>
<p>I think it’s anti-Jewish, too, because everybody knows how careerist they are.</p>
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<p>Would be interesting how his opinions relate to those in Ivy league admissions offices which seem to vary <strong>a lot</strong> in their ethnicity considerations. Clearly college admissions have biases in diversity. See <a href=“College Navigator - Columbia University in the City of New York”>College Navigator - Columbia University in the City of New York; and compare with <a href=“College Navigator - Yale University”>College Navigator - Yale University; and very different from Dartmouth <a href=“College Navigator - Dartmouth College”>College Navigator - Dartmouth College;
<p>Columbia is more asian and more hispanic than the US in general, while Yale slightly less than Columbia but still a much lower percentage of white (non-international students) are admitted than would be expected based on US demographics. I was surprised that the Military Academies seem to have the “fairest” admissions (in the sense of matching the demographics of the US overall).</p>
<p>There are probably lots of CC threads on the topics of which schools ignore race (the top 7% rule at UT, which results in much higher percentages of Asians) while others try to match the US demographics while others try to maximize diversity. Probably someone has college lists showing which schools to apply to depending on which ethnicity you are.</p>
<p>@poetgrl:
Is there a school filling close to half their student body with athletes and legacies? Plus, if you believe schools, legacies get a bump up, but don’t have a several times better chance of getting in. Look at the numbers and do the math. At some schools, ED acceptance rates are 3 times higher than RD acceptance rates. Even if you take out athletes and legacies, it’s still much easier to get in ED than RD at many schools.</p>
<p>@dadx: school enrollment expanded as well. Sometimes dramatically.</p>
<p>@2018RiceParent : I’m not sure why you’re surprised that the military academies would mirror US demographics the best. Their selection process almost assures that.</p>
<p>Also, those are student body numbers, right? If so, keep in mind that applicant bias (in terms of schools to apply to) vary considerably as well. Until recently, Asians were considered URM by Dartmouth because so few applied there, for instance.</p>
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<p>Enrollment has expanded, but competition based on the percentile ranking required for admissions to the top programs has steadily grown, I believe. I’m too lazy to seek out data for it right now though. </p>
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<p>@PurpleTitan: Thirty-six percent of Williams’s student body competes in varsity intercollegiate athletics. Throw in more than a handful of legacies, and you’re pretty close to half. The other NESCACs aren’t quite as “sporty” as that, but some of them are probably pretty close. </p>