<p>Not to mention, many of us would actively discourage our kids from pursuing a career on Wall Street, for all kinds of reasons.</p>
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<p>And many of us would discourage our kids from becoming physicians or engineers even though those two careers appear to be the CC âHoly Grailâ of socially acceptable career objectives.</p>
<p>Yes, for some fields and for some companies and in some functions in companies (but not all) where you went to college matters. And in others it doesnât.</p>
<p>Itâs just as foolish to claim that a kid from Northern Illinois will never get a job as it is to claim that you can become a Supreme Court Justice with a law degree from Suffolk.</p>
<p>^If history is any indication, yes. Although we have already started seeing presidential candidates with less-than-prestigious academic credentials. Itâs probably only a matter of time before the Supreme Court starts to reflect a wider range of educational backgrounds as well.</p>
<p>Sally, if by matter of time you mean decades than I probably agree with you. But if you take a look at the route upwards in the legal profession (Federal clerkship, US Attorneyâs office or similar, district then appellate judge, law professor and/or partner in a firm which argues before the Supreme Court or takes on complex cases for appellate cases) it is hard to argue that the prestige of the law school âdoesnât matterâ.</p>
<p>I donât care where the guy who did my house closing went to law school.</p>
<p>I didnât say the quality of the law school doesnât matterâonly that we may in time start seeing justices who have earned their degrees from a wider range of very good schools.</p>
<p>Also, I donât think itâs fair to assume that just graduating from an elite law school and continuing on the typical path to legal greatness makes someone worthy of serving on our nationâs highest court. There are a number of justices now who I think demean the position and have no business deciding the most important cases of our time.</p>
<p>Donât confuse worthiness and opportunity.</p>
<p>I think you are missing the context of that sayingâŠ
It is not meant to substitute the undergrad experience. What it is meant for, if you are as motivated as you are today and grad school is in your future, you always have that option later. It is not easy to spend 50K+/year on private undergrad school, so it is a viable option for high performing students to choose a state flagship, do really really well, and then apply to their dream grad school. </p>
<p>I have seen so many grad students at the ivy/privates who are from state flagships. Yes, it is true sometimes if they want assistantship and research grant, they may get that in another state school, at that time, they have to make that choice. But many many students do end up going to their âdreamâ grad school after saving up their undergrad money on a full ride scholarship etcâŠ</p>
<p>But many students (like my oldest a comp sci grad) donât need to go to grad school. Spending the money up front on a top program pays itself off in a few years.</p>
<p>For my younger son, in international relations, most students are expected to work a few years before applying to grad school. Getting those first jobs will be based partly on undergrad reputation and partly on whatever skills you have from summer internships and other experiences.</p>
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<p>We have? Maybe if you count obscure, third-party candidates this might be true. But for the two major parties if anything the trend is in the opposite direction. You have to go back to Bob Dole to find a major party presidential candidate without a degree from a prestigious school, and you have to go back to Reagan to find an actual president without one.</p>
<p>Letâs look at the recent list. As you can see, the trend is for prestigious degrees to become more common. The farther back you look the more common it becomes for candidates to lack a degree from a prestigious school:</p>
<p>Obama - Undergrad: Occidental & Columbia, Law: Harvard
Romney -Undergrad: Stanford & BYU, Law: Harvard, Business: Harvard
McCain - Undergrad: US Naval Academy
GW Bush - Undergrad: Yale, Business: Harvard
Kerry - Undergrad: Yale, Law: Boston College
Clinton - Undergrad: Georgetown, Grad school: Oxford, Law: Yale
Dole - Undergrad: Univ. of Kansas, Law: Univ of Arizona & Washburn Univ.
GHW Bush - Undergrad: Yale
Dukakis - Undergrad: Swarthmore, Law: Harvard
Mondale - Undergrad & Law: Univ. of Minnesota
Reagan - Undergrad: Eureka College
Carter - Undergrad: Georgia Tech & US Naval Academy
Ford - Undergrad: Michigan, Law: Yale
McGovern - Undergrad: Dakota Wesleyan, Grad School: Northwestern
Nixon - Undergrad: Whittier, Law: Duke
Humphrey - Undergrad:Univ. of Minnesota, Grad school: LSU & Univ. of Minnesota
LBJ - Undergrad: Southwest Texas Teachers College
Goldwater - Undergrad: Univ. of Arizona
Kennedy - Undergrad: Harvard.</p>
<p>Even more remarkable than this trend among candidates is the hold just two schools, Harvard and Yale, have had over the presidency itself in recent decades. From January 1989 until at least January 2017 the occupant of the Oval Office will hold a degree from either Harvard or Yale (or both). And this streak still would have held true if Romney had won last year, or if Kerry had won in 2004, or if Dukakis had won in 1988. Thatâs 28 straight years and seven consecutive election cycles, which is far more than can be accounted for by luck or random chance.</p>
<p>Spending the money up front on a top program CAN PAY itself off in a few years. (And I would say in RARE casesâŠhow many people get a âreturnâ equalling a quarter of a million dollars?) There are no guarantees. What about a kid whose dream is to work at the New Yorker? The quality of her writing/editing abilities will get her there, not the prestige of her undergraduate institution. Her parents might be wiser to subsidize her while she works at unpaid or low-paying internships and develops her portfolio.</p>
<p>And what about people who go to âtopâ schools and then decide they really donât want to do what they set out to do? Many of them will go back for an unrelated degree or find their way into something else. I know Ivy grads who have gone back to community college to get interior design degrees.</p>
<p>From the 2012 Republican primary field:</p>
<p>Michele BachmannâWinona State, Oral Roberts
Herman CainâMorehouse, Purdue
Rick PerryâTexas A&M
Rick SantorumâPenn State, Dickinson
Newt GingrichâEmory, Tulane
Ron PaulâGettysburg, Duke
Jon HuntsmanâUtah, Penn</p>
<p>Am I forgetting anyone?</p>
<p>sally, no comment. :D</p>
<p>Your restraint is admirable. :)</p>
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Unless she goes to Columbia, where sheâll have a decent chance of getting an internship at the New Yorker while sheâs still in college. This is the other kind of advantage that can be important in many fields.</p>
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<p>Pizzagirl, 17- and 18-year-olds tend to be obsessive and are generally not all that sophisticated. The kids who apply to HYPSM have been told their entire lives that they are the best of the best and suddenly have to deal with their first-ever meaningful rejection. Iâd generally be inclined to blame the parents and the school staff for setting up unrealistic expectations.</p>
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<p>I donât disagree, and I think most of these kids, once they happily settle into what may have initially been a second-choice college, will realize that. Free of family expectations and peer pressure, many will decide they donât care to try again; yet for those who are internally driven, a second shot does potentially exist, so why not soften the blow of the initial rejection by reminding them of that?</p>
<p>Why does pointing out that certain fields care about undergrad prestige mean anyone is saying those fields are superior or more desirable, or should be? Who is saying that? </p>
<p>Itâs just that one philosophy some of us have regarding our childrenâs education is to keep as many options open as possible, for as long as possible. When my kids were in middle school, I counseled them to work hard so they could qualify for the honors classes in high school if they wanted to take them. They could always say no thanks later. Similarly, I encouraged them to strive in high school in their academics and ECâs, so that they would have a greater variety of options open to them for college. Clearly, if they had worked very hard but still got a lot of Bâs in middle school or high school, well then certain doors would have closed for them. No one is saying that this would be a huge tragedy or bring ruination to their young lives. At the same time, though, on the off chance the student decides in a few years he wants to work on Wall Street, or dreams of becoming a Supreme Court Justice, or desires a career in national politics, if he has gotten admitted to and chosen HYPS et al., well then he can work toward those goals with one fewer obstacle in his path.</p>
<p>IMO, no one should counsel a student to close doors he doesnât need to close just yet. But if the door has to be closed due to insufficient finances, or the failure to be admitted, or a perceived lack of fit at a top school, then no one has a problem with that and we all agree the student can do just fine at another good school.</p>
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<p>Right. Which is why I see no need to perpetuate it by implying - god, it really IS terrible you didnât get into HYPSM, but thereâs always hope that you can finally achieve the true meaning of life by getting into HYPSM for grad school. âYou can always go to HYPSM for grad schoolâ implies that itâs really important to get into one of those specific five schools. Which is, of course, nonsense.</p>
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<p>Up and comer Ted Cruz went to Princeton, I believe ⊠though I donât know how much that helps him in Texas.</p>
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<p>I would have liked my son to go to Georgetown instead of Northwestern, but ah well, it wasnât my choice. Still and all, he has a desire to be in politics and Iâm just not going to worry my pretty little head over how his options are dampened by âonlyâ being at Northwestern. I mean, really now.</p>
<p>Well, I know for the sciences at least, many of the state flagships are right up there with the ivies in terms of graduate research output. Ie. I have probably read as many cell and molecular biology papers out of Ann Arbor as I have out of a school like Yale, or even Harvard so it isnt like ONLY the top privates that rule graduate school. In fact in my experience (admittedly mainly at Canadian universities) many top publics comparatively sacrifice funding to their undergrad specific programming in order to pump up their research funding, which largely benefits graduate students. I would argue that the big advantage in private universities is chiefly at the undergraduate level, where they often offer much more personalized attention then the top public universities.</p>
<p>Also the cost of graduate school varies greatly based on what you take (ie. most science students get stipends but these are much less common for arts graduate students), as well as the personal financial situation of your supervisor (for a thesis based degree), the financial policies of the university department you are applying to and the availability of entrance awards and scholarships. If you are lucky you can find a program that will pay you enough to cover tuition and most of your living expenses.</p>