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[QUOTE=crescent22]
This is laughably simplistic. It gets down to every individual’s situation. If you’re capable of a Goldman Sachs banking job and want to do it, good luck trying to get there from SUNY-Albany instead of Columbia. If you just want a middle class job, you may have a point.
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How about getting from SUNY-Albany to Columbia and then to Goldman Sach?</p>
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Blossom, I agree that there is no country where students get to go to the college of their choice. I would not use China or Korea as a model, and yes, Europe does track students too early for my taste. I don’t think everyone should go to college, or that everyone even wants to. Unfortunately, a bachelor’s degree has become a requirement for most jobs here, while at the same time it has been devalued. College is the new high school, mainly because our high schools are so bad.</p>
<p>My problem with the American model is that educational opportunities are limited by parental income rather than student abilities. I am not talking about the differences between growing up in a poor or wealthy family – these differences exist in all societies, though not always to the degree we have here. I am talking about student ability to afford college. At least access to universities elsewhere is based on student performance, rather than parents’ ability to pay. While most students here could afford a community college, they are not appropriate for everyone. And the few low income students who get a “bargain” at a small number of elite schools with great FA are a drop in the bucket and don’t change the overall picture. We have large differences in quality among American colleges, along with large differences in family income and absurdly high college costs, all of which have led to a situation I find repellant: Students are limited in their access to good schools (including state schools) by the income their parents have available. </p>
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But there is stringent gate-keeping here – just look at all the strong applicants who fail to get admitted to Yale, or who have to turn down a top school for financial reasons. At least the gate-keeping elsewhere is based on a student’s academic performance, rather than ability to pay (or athletic abilities, or legacy status, etc.)</p>
<p>I don’t see Canadian or Scandinavian students becoming suicidal about college admissions. In Canada, at least, you have public schools which are all of the generally same fine quality, so students don’t need to stress about getting into the right school or worry about paying for it. </p>
<p>Ultimately this is a philosophical issue and I am not optimistic living in a country that is still debating whether healthcare should be a “right.”</p>
<p>my cousin graduated from SUNY Albany and worked at Morgan Stanley for many years. Does THAT count? LOL.</p>
<p>“So mark me down in the “I love standardized tests” camp. Especially when you’ve got data to prove that they allow you to hire high-potential people who weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths, or for whom English is not their native language, or who have funny accents.” – blossom</p>
<p>And I’m firmly in the “I hate standardized tests” camp. I understand that they are supposed to be a supposedly fair measure since everyone has to take the same test. However, I’m still a little lost as to how they are fair. In my hometown, we have a well-regarded state university where if you are an in-state student, you can receive free tuition if you make a 30 or higher on the ACT or a 1320 or higher on the SAT. <em>Plenty</em> of my friends and classmates kept retaking these tests to score that high on the exams, and they also enrolled in expensive prep classes to achieve higher scores each time. I have a friend, a year younger than me, who is taking his ACT for the fifth time, trying to make a 30, so he can be competitive at Emory. My point is that if you keep retaking a test and learn the tricks, which is what the prep classes are for, I’m sure you (general you) are much more likely to score higher than someone who can’t afford to take these tests muiltiple times and the prep classes for them. I took the ACT only once and the SAT twice, and that was stretching it for my mom financially. I couldn’t even consider the prep classes. I’m not saying someone should be penalized for being able to afford the prep classes and mulitple tests, but if everyone had that opportunity, the test scores would be more comparable, IMO.</p>
<p>Personally, I think GPA is a better indicator because to me that spells work ethic. You can look at class rigor, the chances of a student retaking a test until he/she gets an acceptable score are much slimmer, and it’s an indicator of how much a student will challenge themselves in college. I’ve known some of the laziest people who have a high standardized test score and a mediocre GPA. I’d rather take someone who had a 3.5 GPA and a 26 on the ACT than someone who had a 2.8 GPA and made a 30 on the ACT. Standardized have a greater chance at being a fluke than a 4 year, cumulative GPA. Also, even though some high schools might be more challenging, on the Common Application, they’ll ask your guidance counselor did a student take the highest level classes (ie “most demanding”, “very demanding”, “somewhat demanding”, etc…) in reference to the curriculum the school offers, and they’ll also ask for the highest GPA out of the student’s class. Those things also bring the differences in high school curriculums down, IMO.</p>
<p>^^^
I’ll take both…gpa AND test scores. The more info the better.
And yes, as someone who has seen lots of resumes, both can be included on graduate’s resume without concern (no laughing here), especially if the numbers are high. You need every edge you can get in this market…I have no problem with it. Nor do I have a problem with employers requesting it.</p>
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<p>How many Canadian or Scandinavian college applicants do you know?</p>
<p>On a recent radio program about Bhutanoften cited as the happiest nation on Earth, where “gross national happiness” is an actual measure used by the government to judge their success as a societyan interviewer asked a young student what troubled him most. He said he was very worried about getting into a good university. He didn’t sound suicidal to me, but who knows?</p>
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<p>The valedictorian of my high school class had perfect grades and was a rote-memorizing, teacher-pleasing-answer-spewing trained monkey.</p>
<p>I hire engineers, and the best ones have a lazy streak. That doesn’t mean they’re incapable of working hard, but it does mean that they would rather find a smart way to get something done easily than work really hard to do it the way they’re told. That’s the kind of thinking that makes a company (or society) successful.</p>
<p>Put another way:</p>
<p>2400 SAT + 2.0 GPA = bad.
1500 SAT + 4.0 GPA = not much better.
2200 SAT + 3.4 GPA = just about right.</p>
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Of course he was worried. The best colleges there, as in most countries around the world, are free and subsidized by the government. If he doesn’t get into one of those, he would have to pay for an expensive, private, lower quality school, or most likely not attend at all.</p>
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A few. How many do you know?</p>
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<p>If your child could get a front office position at Goldman from private elite college, would you fund it?</p>
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<p>Too few upon which to base a comparison with the overall U.S. higher education system, that’s for sure!</p>
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<p>If you could spend $200,000 for a ticket in a raffle for a position at Goldman Sachs, would you buy it?</p>
<p>$200,000 invested at 7.5% for 40 years grows to $3.6 million. Here’s a suggestion: Send your kid to the least costly decent college, put the $200,000 cost of a Harvard education in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and let your child do whatever he or she wants for the next 40 years, followed by a very comfortable retirement. Whaddya say?</p>
<p>Getting a job at Goldman Sachs is one thing. Keeping it is another. Cannon fodder, that’s what these young graduates, hungry for $$ and glory, are to places like that.</p>
<p>BIL went to SUNY/Albany; has done just fine for himself.</p>
<p>“If your child could get a front office position at Goldman from private elite college, would you fund it?”</p>
<p>I’m already spending 200k at Harvard and I have seen any of my daughter’s graduating friends get positions at GS.</p>
<p>I would rather buy my kids the fulfillment of doing meaningful work. I know my job as a college teacher isn’t going to go ringing any financial bells, and we’ve had plenty of struggle, but I do think I’d be lost without it.</p>
<p>I am investing in the kids’ college educations with the hope they can do the same – find a way to spend their lives that they enjoy and that contributes to the lives of others at the same time.</p>
<p>There are many, many avenues for this. But not everyone does end up with this fulfillment. For my kids, I really believe the LAC education will get them close to this.</p>
<p>I went to a state school and did fine, but I did start out with more focus in my field than my kids have.</p>
<p>Each had their gears kick in somewhere around the summer between sophomore and junior year, which for my son is right about now. He is upstairs studying Latin grammar right now.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t want my kids to work at Goldman Sachs and they wouldn’t be interested anyway.</p>
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<p>Right, it’s easier to get into Columbia MBA from SUNY-Albany than Cornell or Penn.</p>
<p>I love how you naysayers take the Goldman Sachs example and use its unique existence as a way to deny the basic point. ANY of the investment banks or private equity firms, the original statement is still the same. Your chance of getting an analyst job out of undergrad at a Wall Street investment firm goes up 5-6x at a name private school than a public school. I would say the ONLY two exceptions to this are Berkeley and maybe Virginia. </p>
<p>You can sit around and justify your high-horse stance the same by finding some exception, “My cousin-in-law twice removed went to Wisconsin and got a great job at KKR”- fact it look at the roster of incoming analysts at a bank. It looks something like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Wharton</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Chicago</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Brown</li>
<li>Wharton</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
</ol>
<p>Does this apply to all jobs where you can claim later “My daughter has done fine?” No. Does it apply to a lot of top-tier professions? Absolutely.</p>
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<p>right, and your point would stand still in your own mind if they got jobs at Renaissance or Credit Suisse instead.</p>
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<p>Send them to state school then. They’ll make great contributors to this board in 2020 during the next “tax the rich” phenomenon.</p>
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<p>Not if it was the mailroom.</p>