<p>"Did you know that Harvard produces the most CEOs?"</p>
<p>If that's true, it's because Harvard selects students who are aggressive, smart and creative risk takers. The same students probably would have become CEOs if they'd gone elsewhere.</p>
<p>I am a Harvard grad. I love my alma mater. At the same time, though, I think that many students and parents who think that Harvard is the ticket to wealth, and nonIvy colleges are trash, are sadly misinformed.</p>
<p>An Ivy degreee is a trademark to success.</p>
<p>OneThousandFists</p>
<p>You are just spitting out one ignorant post after another. </p>
<p>Although I really do symphatized with astrife's situation, I disagree with many of the ignorant remarks that astrife and onethousandfists make. These parents probably know more about life and what it takes to get a job than you lousy book-smart life-stupid perfect SAT teenagers who don't know jack about reality. Thank God I am not one of you guys.</p>
<p>Parents here are not giving advice, their are just trying to shed some enthusiasm for going to a cheaper school. You are doing a great disservice to those with the same dilemma as the OP.</p>
<p>You could save thousands of dollars by attending the university of wisconsin which now hass caught up harvard in producing CEOs</p>
<p>Harvard and Wisconsin Tie in Turning Out the Most CEOs in U.S.
<a href="http://www.bus.wisc.edu/update/december04/ceos.asp%5B/url%5D">http://www.bus.wisc.edu/update/december04/ceos.asp</a></p>
<p>That was the headline in the September 2004 issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine. The article showed the University of Wisconsin tied with Harvard for educating the most CEOs of S&P 500 companies. Both schools outranked Princeton, Stanford, Yale and other prestigious universities.</p>
<p>To most people, it probably came as no surprise that Harvard turned out a large number of corporate leaders. Harvard students often grow up in families with parents who lead businesses. Many move from prep school to Harvard Yard, all with the understanding that they, too, will one day lead an organization. </p>
<p>But Wisconsin? A public university perhaps known more for beer, bicycles and Birkenstocks and less for gold-plated pedigrees? Yes, Wisconsin was right up there with the best the Ivy League could offer when it came to CEO production. </p>
<p>So what is it about Wisconsin that seems to breed leadership? Why are Wisconsin alumni more apt to rise to the role of leader than graduates of other top schools? </p>
<p>Lets come back to those questions. First, we need to consider what it takes to be a leader. Amazon.com lists more than 95,000 books on the subject of leadership. Nearly everyone has an opinion on how leaders are created. Some say charisma is key, others argue intelligence is most important. Some say education makes the difference, others argue the school of hard knocks creates the best leaders. Still others argue that while technical skills may be important, the most knowledgeable individuals do not necessarily make the best leaders.</p>
<p>The concept of leadership is very complex, and many people are struggling to find the magic recipe for creating a leader. Jack Welch, the renowned former CEO of GE, summed up leadership in a catchy phrase. According to Welch, leaders should exhibit four Es wrapped in a P Energy, Energize, Edge, Execute, all wrapped up in Passion. </p>
<p>Does the Harvard brand matter anymore?</p>
<p>1980 grads reflect on what they learned
By Greg Farrell
USA TODAY </p>
<p>Harvard. Just the name exudes superiority, if not smugness. From its Veritas coat of arms to the Georgian-era brick edifices that dot its campus, everything about this storied institution, founded in 1636, smacks of that most un-American trait, elitism.</p>
<p>As Harvard prepares to confer degrees on yet another batch of graduates Thursday, academic experts scratch their heads at how this institution maintains its reputational dominance in an era of academic parity. But a marketer would understand the Harvard aura in a nanosecond: It's the ultimate brand, at least in the academic world.</p>
<p>There isn't any doubt that brand matters and that Harvard is the prestige brand, says Stanley Katz, director of Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. It's the Gucci of higher education, the most selective place.</p>
<p>Never mind the price tag (upward of $40,000 per year for tuition, room and board), or the fact that guides such as the U.S. News & World Report ranking of colleges and universities say the differences between Harvard and other top-ranked schools are microscopically small. The gulf that separates Harvard from the rest in terms of reputation remains enormous.</p>
<p>It used to be the case that of students who were admitted to Harvard and Princeton or Harvard and Yale, seven of 10 would choose to go to Harvard, Katz says. It may be more now. There is a tendency for the academically best to skew even more to Harvard. We just get our socks beat off in those cases.</p>
<p>A study by Spencer Stuart, the executive search firm, shows that as of 2004, Harvard no longer owns the No. 1 ranking as the university attended by the most CEOs of Standard & Poor's 500 companies (just under 4%). *The school that caught up to it: the University of Wisconsin. *</p>
<p>Harvard and Wisconsin Tie in Turning Out the Most CEOs in U.S.</p>
<p>July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Ryan Hertel, a student tour guide at the University of Wisconsin's Madison campus, pauses before the Old Red Gym, a former armory firebombed by Vietnam War protesters in 1970. That same year, homemade explosives killed a graduate student in physics working late into the night. </p>
<p>The article goes on to state:</p>
<p>Wisconsin's CEO honor roll, from all of its campuses, includes Carol Bartz, 55, CEO of Autodesk Inc., which makes software for architects and engineers; Thomas Falk, 46, who runs Kimberly-Clark Corp., the largest U.S. maker of disposable diapers; and Lee Raymond, 65, head of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company. </p>
<p>Harvard alumni include Steve Ballmer, 48, CEO of Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker; Franklin Raines, 55, who heads Fannie Mae, the largest source of U.S. mortgage money; and Sumner Redstone, 81, CEO of Viacom Inc., the third-largest U.S. media company. </p>
<p>Harvard and Wisconsin outrank both Princeton University and Stanford University, two private institutions that tied for third place in educating the most CEOs. </p>
<p>**State Universities **</p>
<p>**Big state universities like Wisconsin outpace their private counterparts in educating CEOs. Chief executives are four times more likely to have earned their undergraduate degrees from a publicly funded university than from an Ivy League school. </p>
<p>The top 10 educators of CEOs also include the University of Texas, City University of New York and the University of North Carolina. </p>
<p>``There should be more respect for the kind of education you can get from a large public institution,'' says Sim Sitkin, founding director of the Center of Leadership and Ethics at the Fuqua School of Business, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
``Senior executives in large companies need not only come from an isolated elite but need to be able to relate to a wide spectrum of people,'' he says. **
Trying Harder
**The preponderance of CEOs educated at public universities may result from the schools' numerical advantage: Only 0.8 percent of the nation's estimated 7.5 million four-year college students attended the nation's eight Ivy League schools in 2001.
Wisconsin and other state schools may turn out more CEOs because their graduates have to try harder, says Maury Hanigan, founder of Hanigan Consulting Group, a New York-based consultant on human resources strategy.
``The kids who went to Harvard tend to be dynasty kids, fairly privileged, not the kids who scrap hard enough to work their way up to the top,'' Hanigan says. **
`MBA is Preferred </p> <p>Michael Dell, 39, chairman and former CEO of Round Rock, Texas-based Dell Inc., the world's largest personal computer maker, left the University of Texas in 1984 after his freshman year. </p> <p>At least 16 current CEOs never got an undergraduate degree. Steve Jobs, 49, CEO of Apple Computer Inc., quit Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after one semester. </p> <p>Other dropout CEOs include James Cayne, 70, of Bear Stearns Cos., the seventh-biggest securities firm, who left Indiana's Purdue University, and Wayne Inouye, 51, CEO of PC maker Gateway Inc., who left the University of California, Berkeley, to join a blues band. </p> <p>For CEOs who did finish college, an MBA is the preferred graduate credential. More than a third of the 500 U.S. chief executives -- 37.5 percent -- earned their MBAs, and they were three times as likely to have gone to Harvard Business School in Boston than to any other school. </p> <p>Degree Importance Fades </p> <p>**By the time executives are considered for a CEO job, their degree often fades in importance, says Tom Neff, former chairman of executive search firm Spencer Stuart Inc. ``It's a rare occasion when a client says I want a graduate of an Ivy League school or Harvard,'' Neff says. **
Track Record
David Nosal, head of CEO recruitment at Korn/Ferry International, the world's largest executive search firm, looks at a candidate's ethics and experience.
``A track record of success in building organizations, a record of leadership and delivering the highest level of results are far more important for a CEO than attending an Ivy League college,'' he says.
CEOs who graduated from public universities say working their way through school helped instill a strong work ethic.
``I think it's a very telling tale about an individual,'' says Terry Lundgren, 52-year-old CEO of Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores Inc., who likes to hire graduates who also put themselves through school. </p>
<p>As a student at the University of Arizona, Lundgren cracked oysters and peeled shrimp at a Tucson restaurant, working his way up to manager. </p>
<p>For shareholders of S&P 500 companies, there may be an even better argument for a Wisconsin education. In the 12 months ended on June 30, stocks of companies led by Wisconsin grads returned 27.4 percent -- a little more than 2 percentage points better than companies led by Harvard grads.</p>
<p>Who said Wisconsin doesnt have prestige? They are ranked #4 in Real Estate studies. Wisconsin can get expensive for OOS students, though.</p>
<p>while wisconsin can be expensive for out of state, it is still much less expensive than an ivy league school.</p>
<p>hey, I'm not mad at ya, I just want dispel the fact that one can only be successful if they attend an ivy league school when clearly that is not the case.</p>
<p>Sure, you can succeed by going to Stanford, Duke, MIT, Stern, UCB, Rice, London school of Economics, Caltech, etc. LOL, j/k.</p>
<p>I had my parents read my post, my mom gave me a hug but my dad got slightly upset and asked for some revisions.</p>
<p>My parents actually insisted on filling out FASFA for me, they volunteered to do it for me because I asked them to.</p>
<p>That said they wont pay ALL the family portion, they already told me that.</p>
<p>Ok, that done, I have a response to Sibbie (I don't know how to do quote thing properly yet)</p>
<p>Quote: However, I also hope that I have instilled in her that wealth is not always equated in terms of $ and cents and to be comfortable in your own skin. </p>
<p>Yes, hence my reluctance to think about this situation merely on the basis of a future career, also I truly hope that my college education won't change my current values and turn me into something I'm not, but I really want to see the people, and experience something new, most of my "friends" are going to state schools due to Texas's auto expectance of top ten percent and they will be following in several generations of footsteps, I have experienced this type of people, for better or worse, and I want to try something new. </p>
<p>To calmom, In retrospect my parents moving here, for the cost of living (our 3 bed 2 bath house cost 42K), thus the amount they can put away, was a way that they used the skills they had to still make enough for retirement (they have that relatively settled) and enough to help me go to school.<br>
I don't hold it against them that they can't pay the full EFC, they tried, I might feel sour about where I live, but I'm a teenager we always feel sour about something. As for your situation not being able to pay for your kid to go to a private school, loans can be co-signed for, being as you are very confidant in her drive and assorted skills. </p>
<p>To LKF7, why be so aggressive? Also, I am not talking about personal libraries I'm talking about a public library that has books by people like Robert Heinlein, Ayn Rand, or anything published in the last five years.
My parents have retirement taken care of; we don't spend much money in this house. Also, I do see the merits of my parent's choice; I think I have properly stated them. You don't have to live in an expensive area to find several people with intellect, I hope. I will make sure to make enough money to provide opportunities for my kids, but what kind of lesson would I be teaching my kids if I sold my life, future, and most of my time with them, for money. If I allowed myself to go into a field I had no joy being in, then I would be teaching them that money comes before fulfillment, or that they were in some way equated.</p>
<p>My dad after reading my original post, he said that he didn't help fund my education out of love, or some extraneous obligation, he said he did it because for me my learning was akin to my eating, and it was a parents duty to provide what they can.</p>
<p>You youngsters with dreams of Ivy glory fail to recognize something with your "who would the employer choose" gambit.</p>
<p>We parents ARE employers. We have careers that we have been involved in for years and we are either directly involved in hiring or have had plenty of opportunity to observe the hiring process.... and it just isn't the way you think.</p>
<p>One of the reason that the stats show that CEO's tend NOT to come from Ivy's is that the positions you so covet are often entry level positions that are highly competitive career tracks that do not lead to long-term career positions for most. What happens is that major investment banking firms will hire a crop of freshly minted Ivy grads every spring, knowing that the vast majority won't last more than 2 years. There is always a new crop coming in, and as much as they get paid it is nothing compared to what these firms pay their senior level execs.... and a lot of the execs are lateral hires who get there by way of their accomplishments not their educational credentials. Executive and managerial positions tend to go to people who have a creative spark and think for themselves, and are often risk-takers -- and those people often follow career paths that are off the beaten track.</p>
<p>Look TJ, I am not trying to be aggressive. I even gave you all a break in post 119 because of your youth and inexperience. Perhaps you and others didnt like what I said?</p>
<p>You (TJ) stated that you have been working on your parents and pressuring them into paying for the college of your choice, even though it will be hard on them. Astrife thinks his parents suck and are underachieving, he is frustrated because he was born into a semi-blue collar household and he believes he is entitled to a certain education. OneThousandFists feels that his future job prospects are dismal if he doesnt attend an Ivy League school.</p>
<p>As parents here tried to point out to you all, your finances cannot be left to chance, especially if you plan on graduate or professional schools. Your parents are probably at or near their maximum earning potential and incurring a lot of your debt now will almost certainly jeopardize their retirement years. You may not get that high paying job you aspire to and you may find yourselves in dire straits when you are trying to begin your young adult life and are saddled with high loan payments. And there is abundant proof that people from all kinds of schools can be successful in the upper echelons of business management. </p>
<p>As I said before, have your dreams but be resilient. There is more than one path.</p>
<p>"We parents ARE employers. We have careers that we have been involved in for years and we are either directly involved in hiring or have had plenty of opportunity to observe the hiring process.... and it just isn't the way you think."</p>
<p>Very true. I am not just a Harvard grad, I used to work in the human resources office of a Fortune 500 company (where, incidentally, I can't think of any top execs who had Ivy degrees). </p>
<p>What gets people jobs are contacts, skills and experience. In many cases, having an Ivy degree will prejudice prospective employers against one. They may prefer people with a more local connection or who are perceived as more down to earth.</p>
<p>The idea that people with Ivy degrees automatically are in at top jobs is ridiculous.</p>
<p>The reason that one sees so many Ivy people in some kinds of well paying jobs is that the Ivy universities select students with the smarts and assertiveness that cause them to get such jobs at graduation. It's not as if going Ivy created those students' brains and personality. The students probably would have done equally well if they had gone elsewhere.</p>
<p>T.J., you wrote:
[quote]
As for your situation not being able to pay for your kid to go to a private school, loans can be co-signed for, being as you are very confidant in her drive and assorted skills.
[/quote]
I definitely would not allow my child to burden herself with debt for a a purchase of dubious value. No cosigning, no way. I love my kid too much to be a participant in stupid, short-sighted decisions. </p>
<p>My point is that my daughter will do well no matter where she attends college -- a private school is just paying a premium for the same commodity, kind of like flying first class. More comfy... but we can all travel more frequently and visit more destinations if we shop for bargain fares. The same is true of public education: more financial resources in hand mean more opportunities, more options every step along the way. </p>
<p>I have enough experience with debt to know that it can be a bottomless pit that sucks every joy out of life. You end up with a job you can't quit no matter how much you hate it because you can't afford to. You are paying for something for years and years after you have received whatever it was that you paid for. </p>
<p>I do expect my kids to take out Stafford loans because I think they should share in the financial responsibility for their own educations -- but I think that the limits the federal government has put on loan amounts are reasonable. </p>
<p>What I know is that my kids have the capacity to do well in this world wherever they get their educations. I know that an Ivy league college affords a good education -- but so does the University of California. As I said, I have some sympathy for your situation -- I too grew up in Texas, attended college & law school at U of California campuses. But I don't really think that UC offered a significantly better education than UT -- what it offered was the opportunity to get out of Texas. </p>
<p>I realize that for you, an out of state public might be as expensive or more expensive than a private, and of course Ivies tend to give good financial aid. But the point is that there are also dozens of excellent colleges that are not Ivies and with merit aid might offer you or other students a full ride. If you think that there is something inherently better or different about the way they teach biology at Yale as opposed to the way it is taught at any other college, then you are simply misinformed -- the content of the lower level courses are the same anywhere. At an advanced level, any college will have its strengths, and there will be individual professors who can teach from a very unique perspective based on their own experience .... but that is true of any college, not just Ivies or elites. It will be different from one place to another... but the difference has very little to do with the prestige of the college. </p>
<p>When I was 15 and choosing colleges, one reason I chose my UC campus was a very famous prof on campus in a field that I thought I might be interested in. Unfortunately, I didn't quite understand what "Emeritus" meant. I ended up majoring in something else anyway, and I actually did have the opportunity to attend a lecture by that famous and very elderly prof -- he was invited as a guest in a course that a friend was taking, my friend told me, I wasn't in the class but I went to the lecture, and it was awesome. So I guess I got what I wanted.</p>
<p>I am not sure that any of you starry-eyed Ivy wannabees even know the names of the profs at the schools you aspire to attend. I don't know what schools you have applied to, but when I see kids with lists that include "Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown" it tells me that the kids haven't given much thought at all to what they want out of an education, beyond the prestige factors. These are simply very different schools, with some very different approaches to education. Now if I see someone who is applying to Yale & Rice & UC Santa Cruz, or Columbia and Chicago and Reed... I have more of a sense of what that student might be after.</p>
<p>Calmom, your post is going to be required reading for my 17 year old. She's applied to 3 elite privates, 3 good states. Our financial commitment to date is that we would pay the application fees. After that, it comes down to the bottom line. SUBSTANTIAL staff discount at state school and good honors program will be hard to pass up, even if accepted to the Ivies. My mom taught me that you get out of education what you put into it. I can only hope that DD has learned the same lesson.</p>
<p>"Shut up you damn brats! It's our money, and you are not worth the effort!"</p>
<p>That's about the message I get from you wise old parents. And btw there is alot of discussion about business jobs. Well not all of us want to work up the corporate ladder to become a CEO, although I do here the compensation is nice.</p>
<p>I bet the majority of the parents here didn't plan their future child and from the remarks made on here it really shows. This is the kind of thing that seperates the upper class from the middle and lower class. Get a clue people.</p>
<p>Tell me again astrife... why is it that you can't get a decent education at your state university like everyone else? </p>
<p>Bottom line... if you can't succeed as an adult without your parent's financial backing, you've already lost the race. Its a nice boost for those whose parents can afford to help, but the world is full of intelligent, hard-working, dedicated youngsters who are very capable of making it on their own. I'd suggest a gap year for you so you can pick some of those basic survival skills.</p>
<p>"decent" is the key word... people like me strive for excellence...</p>
<p>astrife,</p>
<p>as I said before, I do sympatize with you. However, I don't know the specifics of your EFC and parent's income so I can't make a judgement of how fair it is</p>
<p>It all boils down to whether the pros outweigh the cons</p>
<p>Also, note that the reason students like astrife are so frustrated with attending a state university is that all their hard work might go down the drain. They might feel that they could have not worked as hard if they knew they were going to attend a state university anyway since many state universities just base their admissions on numbers</p>
<p>I am a student, and I would love to have the chance to go to Cornell. However, I know it is unrealistic, because my parents are divorced and teh noncostodial parent gets factored into the equation for EFC. Seeing as my father will probably give me next to nothing even though he makes 100k a year, and I am more concerned about my family having to sell our house rather than have my college finaced, I would gladly go to a state school. I think the most important thing is to not focus in on one college. I know I can do equally well at any college and will work equally hard. If you think that prestigious degrees are very important, go to an ivy for graduate school. If you are ivy material, you will still be ivy maerial in four years. I do not think that it you are a top student in your school and have a 4.0, you will be turned down because you attended Penn State, etc. There is a difference between college degrees, I definitley agree. But sometimes your only choice is to do something the hard way. Also, come on! You can have a great education at a state school, look for ones that are dominant in the major you are interested in.</p>