A 2019, peer reviewed sociological study examined how Harvard and Stanford undergraduates define the differences between their schools and other elite universities. (Amy J. Binder and Andrea R. Abel, “Symbolically Maintained Inequality: How Harvard and Stanford Students Construct Boundaries Among Elite Universities,” Sociology of Education, Vol. 19, Issue 1, 2019, p. 13, https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040718821073).
It might be interesting to read what the study reveals about Harvard and Stanford undergrads’ views of Chicago (obviously these are the students’ views, and the conclusions are those of the authors, not my own):
“The University of Chicago was the campus that students most frequently mentioned as representing a pure experience in intellectualism. Harvard’s Kevin summed it up when he said: ‘Harvard kids are scared of the Chicago kids because the Chicago kids really are intellectuals and they really love learning (laughs)’ …By contrast, he said, ‘the Harvard students are great at maximizing outcomes…really good at playing the system…building a more complete package.’ If Chicago scored points as an academically superior campus, many interviewees simultaneously lowered its status for not offering a social experience that could benefit them…The University of Chicago was an interesting institution that Harvard and Stanford interviewees used to sort out status differences. On the one hand, participants understood that the University of Chicago offered a more classically rigorous curriculum than their own schools did. On the other hand, it was not good enough to attend.” (p. 11)
Many observations on this really interesting study are possible. It sometimes seemed to me that the author had taken the quotes of her subjects straight out of cc specimen posts. Here are a couple of thoughts:
Chicago is given its due and even singled out for its academic focus and "intellectualism". Predictably the "but" is about fun coming to die. However, there was another caveat: as one Harvard student said, "there is a perception that it is simply not at the same level." We get that perception often on this board from HYPS visitors. I can correlate this vague feeling with nothing other than the prestige factor, and I also relate it to the feeling these Harvard and Stanford students all expressed that their schools were simply the most prestigious in the world - the ne plus ultra. That's simply true, of course, but that this is such a prime motivator of these kids tells you something in itself about them.
Although the author of the study talks about asking these Harvard and Stanford kids for comments about all the ivy schools plus Chicago, Stanford, Duke, MIT and Caltech, in the study itself I saw no reference to any other ivy schools except Penn (singled out and disapproved of for its pre-professionalism), Princeton (singled out and disapproved of for its social hierarchy) and Yale (singled out and approved, sort of, as being everything Harvard is but just not, quite, well, Harvard). It almost seemed as if Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, and Cornell did not count enough even to be dissed by these H and S kids.
Perhaps that last impression is an artifact of the author’s presentation, but even so it might tell us something about which brands are seen to be the strongest. If I was a Columbia or Brown alum I would be pretty ticked, however. Even the other schools getting attention must not be too well-pleased. Whereas I am as pleased as punch about how Chicago is seen - both the positives and the negatives, which seem not only accurate but fair, and constitute a good reason for the kind of kid I especially prefer to prefer Chicago.
@Mom2Melcs - thank you for posting - this is a great article! And, agreed with @JBStillFlying the whole thing is insightful.
A few observations:
Given Chicago's fast-changing nature, the evidence may be a bit old. The researchers did these interviews in 2013 and 2014, right after Chicago's "selectivity boom." While I think much of the insight would remain true, it may be a bit dated.
-The “old” nature of the evidence seems most apparent with the assertion that Chicago is “where fun comes to die.” Honestly, in the past 3-4 years, I’ve heard this mantra far less. Yes, you hear it from time to time, but is it the defining descriptor of the place?
Interestingly, the authors asserts that HS students do *not* see Chicago as a true peer. The HS students "generally don't perceive [Chicago] at the same level."
This is disappointing. I’m not sure what else Chicago can do to be seen as a peer to the tippy top.
Well, strike that, I know what Chicago can do: get cash. Lots and lots and lots of cash. That’s what it needs.
Key point: The authors link elevated status to reinforcement of choice. For instance, students not only believe in H and S’ status, they have this belief reinforced from all corners - their parents, friends, neighborhoods, movies, media, etc. From so many different angles, society promotes these two universities as “best” - whether in academic circles, sports fields, wherever. Everyone knows.
Achieving universal recognition is Chicago’s biggest challenge for the decades ahead. There must be universality in acceptance of Chicago as a “great” university. Every corner of society must recognize Chicago for its excellence. It should be a known commodity, everywhere.
How do we get there? (I think lots and lots of cash is a necessary part to this ascension.)
I suppose there’s nothing wrong with cash, Cue, but you have said many times on this forum that Chicago lost the race in that regard a half-century or so ago and that it will never ever overtake the big boys. You never tire of telling us how successful are the fund-raising campaigns of not only the HYSP’s but all the lesser ivies and even NU in relation to Chicago. You have convinced me! You ought to face facts - and they are your own facts - my friend.
I myself face these facts in a different way. I see all the prestige that this money has bought as a litmus test separating those who prefer the prestige from those who prefer the true article without the prestige. Not everyone worships the golden calf. Some are even put off by it. These are the types Chicago specially wants. They are not a second-best, they are in my book the very best.
Do you really prefer this gormless Harvard kid who can find no reason to prefer Harvard to Chicago other than prestige? Or the Harvard kid who finds Chicago kids “scary”. Or the kid who said Chicago students are foucussed on learning things, whereas Harvard kids are focussed on ascending to positions of prominence in the world. Ugh. You can have all of them.
@marlowe1 - agreed, and no reason to bring up past debates here.
I do think - and we can both agree - Chicago wants to find the best talent (and the best fits) by searching as broadly and as widely as possible. Achieving universal recognition is the best way to achieve this talent-finding goal.
If Chicago’s excellence is reinforced and recognized in all corners, what do you think that would do to Chicago’s incoming talent pool? Admissions would be free to discard the “gormless Harvard kid” and take all those gritty intellectuals from Texas - who have heard, from the moment they were born onward, about the excellence of the University of Chicago.
I prefer those who discover for themselves to those who are told, especially if it was “from the moment they were born”. That’s the ivy trope, not the Chicago one.
So, let’s forget all past positions on this subject… Are you now saying you actually do think Chicago could raise funds that would catapult its Endowment into the stratosphere occupied by HYPS? If you do believe that, it would at least make your position coherent, though not consistent with my own vision for the University.
@Marlowe doesn’t the necessity of “discovery” limit the breadth of the talent pool? If everyone knew exactly what chicago stood for - that would lead to the broadest pool applying, right? And doesn’t chicago want the most talented, best fit kids to attend? Having everyone know seems to ensure that.
The problem is: H and S kids seem to know exactly what chicago is about. The problem is, they don’t perceive it as good enough.
Wouldn’t it be better if everyone perceived it as good enough, AND knew what it was all about?
Chicago could then get the best fits from rural texas, central manhattan, the north suburbs of chicago, the poorest parts of india, the plains of the midwest, the most elite boston suburbs, etc etc…
These 56 kids are portrayed as still trying to justify their choices, and being uncomfortable with their belief they may have been swayed by rankings and name recognition.
When presented with acceptances among several great elite universities, it is really hard to make a choice. We cling to small perceived differences. We have no idea which might be best for us. Or maybe a parent always pushed one school, or it was always held up as a reference for success.
No one at Harvard or Stanford thinks UChicago isn’t good enough or as good as their own school. Even today, every graduate of H or S knows UChicago is unambiguously an equal. When I hired undergrads from these schools I made no distinction between them based on HYPS or UChicago.
These 56 students are portrayed by this paper as wanting to feel they made the best choice and that their school is slightly better at least from the excerpted quotations which may be guiding us to the author’s own preconceptions.
Look at this paper for what it was written for, which is an examination of rationalization trying to create a further sense of elitism in rarified air, for those striving for elite status., from a self selecting sample. Hardly a rigorous paper in any sense, and perhaps quite unfair to these 56.
“ Having worked much of their young lives to earn a spot on one of these campuses, Harvard and Stanford students seek to shore up any doubt they may have about their place in the world by asserting that they have participated in something special, and they attempt to carry that privileged experience forward through what we call “symbolically maintained inequality”. As students, they enjoy the mark of high status through their association with highly prestigious organizations even within a set of super elite campuses. This means that a key offering at institutions like Harvard and Stanford is not merely preparing students to compete in the labor market, or making them more intellectual or more skilled, but in helping them to feel the entitlement of elite status and to confidently occupy positions within these social circles.”
We know what the authors wanted us to know. We don’t know how they guided the conversation or selected the quotes etc.
Steve Schwarzman cofounder of Blackstone is still upset Harvard rejected him and he went to Yale. He called them out publicly after all his successes and billions for making a mistake and gleefully announced the current dean of admissions at Harvard agreed. This is all driven by his then sense of insecurity and his perceiving there was a status difference.
When most people mature, they understand there is no difference intellectually. Differences in flavor not substance. Some of us are more status driven than others though. Me too, as I would wear Hermes ties to signal status. Some do it by school - until they realize when working that it’s about individuals.
For my children, I have told them that all these schools are great and it depends on the courses you take and the campus that speaks to you the most. Small versus larger. Urban versus more rural. Weather. Different geographic area. Etc.
Your career outcome is far more determined by the effort you put in and the path you choose than which of these schools name is on your diploma.
Bill Gates for example thinks UChicago is a fantastic place. And he was almost a Harvard grad.
Sure, @arbitrary99 - when most people mature they go beyond arbitrary boundaries. Are you comfortable saying ALL people do?
If not, I’d be much more comfortable with chicago having near-universal status and recognition. That’s the best insulation to the capriciousness even you note above.
Wow - great conversations are happening even as I type! Responding to @Cue7 and @marlowe1 upthread:
The perception of “what Chicago is about” and what that means in terms of prestige will not change. Even were UChicago to change its educational purpose and mission. Then it would be known by these H and S kids as “trying to be another Harvard.” No amount of cash will “fix” this - only a sea change in perceptions about what a university is supposed to be about will fix this.
Look, this article confirms “what everyone knows” which is that, by and large, students apply to and attend Harvard and Stanford because they are Harvard and Stanford. All other schools will be “inferior” (according to the perception) because the reinforcement structures raising up H and S are too deep. As the authors say, more follow up is needed to better understand how that perception might change over time, given some distance from college life and time in the real world. I suspect that it doesn’t and I believe that would answer part of @arbitrary99’s points as well. Parents and GC’s are helping to reinforce these perceptions and presumably they have been out in the world a bit. Bill Gates might be an exception to “the rule” (he had two others at Stanford).
What was particularly insightful were the articulations of why other schools weren’t perceived to be quite as “ideal.” Part of it was simply self-reinforcement (H/S must be the best so that which distinguishes it from MIT/CalTech/UChicago or Penn/Wharton is evidence of how H/S is better). But part of it also reinforces Diermeier’s points in that Night Owls talk that some schools don’t have the mission and purpose that in his view they should as great universities, and they certainly don’t have the same mission and purpose as does UChicago. I’m a tad more sympathetic to Hutchins now than I used to be
A natural question that comes out of this paper is just how well does our particular perceptions of “UChicago exceptionalism” stack up compared to how these young ones’ view their own esteemed institutions? I suspect they have most of us beat - whether justifiably so or out of sheer arrogance is left for discussion. For instance, several of those other schools mentioned as “inferior” I would consider to be great universities as worthy of attendance as Chicago (but perhaps chosen due to a different fit). And while not exactly surprised to find that Cornell/Columbia/Penn still suffer from some of the same disrespect they were subjected to back when my brother attended an HYP in the '80’s (and likely well before then), I was genuinely surprised to find such pronounced boundaries established between H/S and Y/P.
@JBStillFlying - why can’t chicago keep its mission but just be better known? Keep its approach, but be universally known and respected for what it does?
Note, no one in the paper said mit was “beneath” h and s, just that it was too technical. I’d like no one to think chicago is beneath any other school. (And by no one I mean literally no one.)
Why do you care about this universal name recognition, Cue? Is it simply to enhance the financial value of the degree? Is it to impress strangers at cocktail parties? There’s no shame in admitting these things, but not everyone thinks they’re very important.
You ask whether I wouldn’t welcome attracting all these objectively great students with a yen for prestige if Chicago had as much of the stuff as Harvard. In short, no. In the first place I don’t accept your assumption that there’s a single univocal pecking order of excellence. But if I’m being completely honest, I must also admit there’s something in my psychology that resists rooting for top dogs. How boring it would be to be a Yankee fan! I can admit they’re the most successful franchise in baseball without loving them. If you live in the Bronx, fine; perhaps even in NYCity. But the idea that anyone else would applaud the best team money can buy simply for being that - baffles me. Same with Harvard. Praising the place is like praising J.P. Morgan or the Hoover Dam. Admit the merits of the place, yes, but don’t tell me to love it, much less use it as a club to beat an institution I do love.
As JB and arbitrary both say, the kids in this study hardly have God’s Own Truth about all the schools they are being asked to describe, and their own motivations surely are self-ratifying and defensive. However, that doesn’t mean these aren’t the real perceptions that shape the types who actually apply to these schools and shape the student culture the schools inherently have and which get reinforced with every new batch of arrivals. How could that not be so? This sociologist thinks it’s so, and culture is what she studies for a living. The kids surveyed think it’s so. The actual students we hear from on this forum and another popular one think so. Why resist their conclusions? Why insist on seeing sameness where they see difference?
So true. I love UChicago and sometimes wish I had gone there, especially as one of my majors was economics. I chose Stanford over it and others, but that was because my other area of interest was only available at Stanford or MIT back then (and Stanford was more geographically desirable to me too given where I grew up).
I have never heard any of my friends who have gone to any of HYPS or MIT say anything but positive things about UChicago, and we all believe it is as least as good as the schools we went to, though some might prefer a different flavor or emphasis. I hear far more complaints from my Harvard friends about how they didn’t enjoy their undergrad experience, and found it a “where fun went to die place” than anywhere else.
Yeah, there are status hunters out there though that are swayed by USNWR etc no doubt. Those years are insecure ones.
Today, I am even more impressed by UChicago and it’s emphasis on undergraduates.
Care to elaborate, @PurpleTitan ? Charging “insecurity” is a slur, not a substantive comment. If you have a point to make, make it. The floor is yours.
“Harvard students who wished to be engineers described Stanford as an ideal campus – better than Harvard in its course offerings, and also preferable to MIT which, as we describe later, was demoted for being too narrow. Harvard students tended to respect Stanford for offering a balance of amenities and academics.” (Section 4).
“The problem of pre-professionalism was related to another boundary: universities that are too narrowly technical in their offerings. Students associated being overly technical with limiting their intellectual and social development – bad outcomes for elites-in-themaking. MIT was the main school that students demoted on this basis, despite getting nods of approval for attracting very smart students. Kevin, a Harvard senior from an upper-class background, was not the only person who thought, “If you want like pure academic credentials, a Cal Tech or an MIT might objectively have a better student pool.” Yet, brain power alone, associated with “technical schools,” was not what Harvard and Stanford students were after. Being truly elite requires a habitus beyond technical skill sets.” (Section 4.3).
And then: ‘More Harvard students – particularly those interested in engineering but who had not gained entry to Stanford – talked about what was lacking at MIT. One critique we heard was that MIT was an academic grind in a way that Harvard was not – which favored going to Harvard. Louis, a senior from a mixed race, upper-class family who was interested in engineering told us, “I got into MIT and Harvard. That was a tough decision. My dad went to MIT and he said it was kind of rough. Very, very hard academically, very grueling (…) so he sort of pushed me away from that.” Another critique focused on social narrowness at MIT, such as when Harvard’s Foster – a junior from a white, upper-class family – said, “I think more than anything, what I’ve appreciated is having lots of friends that are not engineers. I feel like they really help to broaden my perspective, whereas if I went to MIT, the only people I would hang out with would be engineers.” Varied social networks and opportunities for time away from intensive studying feel like a good fit.’ (Section 4.3).
There is more.
As for your first question - why can’t UChicago just be better known for what it does - I’m not sure they could find a more impactful marketer of the UChicago name than Jim Nondorf. Are you suggesting that he has somehow fallen short in his mission to make the school better known? In fact, I would argue that UChicago is VERY well known for what it does. It’s not just not everyone’s cup of tea. Why that is - ie why it’s not “more respected” - might be a question more about society than about UC.
Can’t answer to Stanford except to note that back in my day they thought they were better than Cal. As to Harvard, perhaps a bit of a generalization but it appears that Harvard grads probably flock to those positions that are filled with Harvard alums, and that network is quite prominent among certain industries and employers, particularly along the Eastern seaboard. We know Harvard alums who do view their education as preferable to something a tad more “lopsided” like at UChicago (perhaps they view “lopsided” as being more appropriate to graduate education than undergraduate). These alums had and have totally bought into Harvard’s philosophy of educating “the whole person” where intellect is simply one component of that development and the myriad sports, leadership and other EC’s available on campus help develop the rest. Some (not all) might go as far as to think that Harvard kids are smart coming in and smart four years later upon graduating, so there’s your “intellectual development.” That’s a very different educational philosophy from UChicago’s. To the extent that Harvard has the alum advantage in certain careers and locales, its educational philosophy will be preferred.
-Not sure it makes sense to pre-suppose what the authors’ intentions were. They stated their goals as such:
‘While contemporary sociologists have written widely on how parents seek to ensure intergenerational privilege for their children, they have paid less attention to what students do on their own to bolster their positions once admitted to elite colleges and universities. Yet, having been carefully cultivated for academic success (Calarco, 2014), we should expect students to be aware that their private elite education is a valuable asset for setting themselves apart from other social groups as the “best of the best” (Gaztambidé-Fernández, 2009). Young people, not just their parents, are motivated to maintain their status distinction and to ensure that whatever advantage they have accrued through admission to an elite campus is not squandered.’ (Section 2.1).
Earlier they opened with the following:
‘In this paper, we study students’ peculiar combination of confidence and insecurity about becoming elites, as well as their general perspective on being at the top of the educational hierarchy, in a novel way: by analyzing how a select group of young people who have obtained the brass ring of elite college entrance compare themselves and their universities to students at other very highly selective campuses. While yearly annual rankings by US News & World Report feed the college competition frenzy, sociologists know little about how students make everyday distinctions among institutions and engage in “tier talk” (Espeland & Sauder, 2016). Cultural sociologists have shown that for virtually all social phenomena – a sense of nationhood, consumption of cultural objects, estimations of excellence – individuals draw symbolic boundaries to separate people into groups, generating not only feelings of similarity and group membership, but also exclusion (Lamont, 1992). Examining the symbolic boundaries that students at elite colleges draw between educational institutions allows us to understand the dynamic dimensions of social relations among students, as they compete in the “production, diffusion, and institutionalization” of principles of classification and excellence (Lamont & Molnar, 2002, p. 168). Furthermore, analyzing these boundaries can shed light on how young people on elite campuses see themselves fitting into the wider class system, which itself is structured by the highly differentiated institutions that compose the U.S. higher education system (Stevens, Armstrong & Arum, 2008).’ (Section 1).
TLDR: students admitted to tippy-top universities are part of an exclusive community that, unlike other communities, has yet to be fleshed out for how it perceives itself vis a vis others within the community and in similar communities. I thought that’s the sort of stuff that sociologists tended to work on? Those characterizations that @arbitrary99 finds to be a “rationalization of a further sense of elitism” were actually statements based on the prior and contemporary research on the subject and were contextualized by the extent of boundary drawing that the authors found to actually occur (some of it surprisingly more extensive than originally thought). And the subject of drawing boundaries - including which ones and to what extent - was the entire point of the paper. Might not be pleasant to know such exists . . . but it exist it appears to (unless the author’s methodology was flawed).
