The above is what I have shared repeatedly on this forum as our children’s real world outcomes. Our kids who have been top students have sought out every opportunity on their respective low-ranked campuses, have excelled as undergrads, and have gone on to have excellent careers in their fields or attend a tippy top grad school.
They have forged their own paths and their futures have not been dictated by the institutional name on their diplomas.
I agree with all of it and have been somewhat ranting against the rankings in several posts on CC. However, lets not forget this one important caveat:
I think this explains a lot about why certain groups are so desperate to make sure their kids attend a top ranked school. For those without prior networks, access, wealth, education, etc… Those schools are the best bet to vault someone into the next economic rank.
If by certain groups you mean Asian? I don’t think that’s why they oftentimes seem desperate. It is more cultural carryover as they were raised in countries where there are clear hierarchies of universities (AND black and white outcomes depending on where you go to) and they may have developed certain assumptions about hierarchies of universities in the United States. People who were raised in countries that don’t have a tradition of small but elite colleges sometimes don’t understand that smaller institutions labeled as a “college” rather than a university in this country may still be viewed as elite institutions here.
I haven’t read the study of low-income minorities (which I assume relate more to blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans) doing much better after graduating from elite schools but one has to remember that these populations are often targeted by extremely low quality (oftentimes for profit) colleges (while other groups often attend quality state colleges) so the comparison might not be completely fair. I might be building an straw-man argument here as I never read the study, so I apologize if that’s the case.
It’s the bold statement that goes against conventional wisdom that makes a splash, as in this one. There is a lot of truth to the claims that fit and engagement determine student success more than the name of the school, but to jump from that to advising the school does not matter is too big of a leap IMHO.
Let’s start off with brand recognition. Would this press release make as much of a splash if it was from Dordt College in Iowa and based on exactly the same research? No, because the name Stanford sells, whether you are issuing press releases or looking for an internship/job.
Second,it is hard to separate out commingled factors. Students applying to top schools are selected based on recs & essays which are going to be correlated with engagement. I’d wager the typical student admitted to Stanford is more likely to be engaged in school than one going to Cal State Northridge. In the past I’ve read posts by a prof who taught at a variety of colleges; at the Ivy league caliber school students regularly visited office hours, at a less prominent school he ended up requiring students to visit at least once and the most common response was “why would we want to do that?”
The study seems to treat students as an amorphous whole differing only on school engagement and what they want in college (eg. fit). There are many more differences. A student from a typical middle-class upbringing may have parents that never rose far in their careers and consequently doesn’t have advice and a blueprint for getting ahead (should that be what they want to do). By rubbing shoulders at a top school with those that know the ropes (internships, getting to know profs, the importance of involvement in the school) a student with little knowledge of how the game works will see how to get ahead should they so choose. A similar student at a college where the weekend starts with Thursday nite parties and an atmosphere of disengagement gets a different lesson.
@mikemac Things may have changed since the 90’s, but back then, at least at Penn, we were still struggling to get students into office hours. At one point I TAed and taught sections of Intro to Psych – there were about 550 students taking the class (across two sessions) with one superstar professor. His joy was to hold weekly “cafe” sessions where he would offer coffee and snacks (sometimes pizza, sometimes cake), and just gab with the students about anything at all (not just his course, and not just psychology). He would also bring along “guests” sometimes, who were other superstar professors or stars from other professions. Still, we were lucky if we could get one or two undergrads to show up for these events. Typically us TAs had to take home the food…
For standard office hours, which the TAs ran, no one came to office hours. In fact I used to schedule my experiments during office hours, I was so certain no one would show.
My son’s mid 100’s ranked college has so far given him great opportunities. He has met, and now is known by the CEO of a very large corporation; has a great GPA, has an early admit to vet school, and is getting a great education. He is happy, academically challenged, socially growing, has gained leadership positions, and has interned for graduates from his college doing well in other parts of the country! He will be entering vet school happy, well-prepared and not burnt out! I can’t stress enough to look for what is right for your student, not look for what ranking you think is best. Yale may be perfect for your child but another equally gifted student may have the best outcomes at Podunk State U. Be openminded.
So the good, little offspring of the elite at the top schools not only seek out internships, get to know professors and involved in the school but also rub the shoulders of the MC kids with parents who have made poor career choices and their “in the know” rubs off of them and enlightens the minds of those fortunate enough to be in their sphere while the poor schlubs at lower ranked schools are surrounded by dullards who don’t know any better and all of them just party from Thursday through the weekend with complete disengagement from what it takes to succeed. 8-|
Regarding the partying and drinking on campus, that may be more prominent at some elite colleges than at lower ranking colleges, because the latter are more likely to be commuter heavy.
From the article: “The report ends with two calls to action. One is for students to look past rankings to find programs that are the “right fit” for them — maybe because of academics, financial aid, location or extracurricular opportunities. The other is the need for even more research that looks at other commonly-held assumptions about college, including the belief that attending a “top-tier” school is mostly about the “network effect” of gaining access to elites.”
I’m not optimistic that such calls to two-fold action would have any tangible effect in any way when, for so many around the globe as within the U.S. that “prestige” is precisely the one that is the biggest determinant of what is the “right fit.” For that prestige as the major determinant of the right fit, so many are not only applying indiscriminately to all 8 Ivy + Stanford although each of these institutions are vastly different, but whichever admits, voila!, that’s the “right fit.”
IMHO, as long as that part of human nature with a built-in longing for and competing and striving for the elite status, be it an Olympic Gold Medal winner or a place in the class of HYPS, nothing will change the power of the Myth of the Quest. The USNWR, trust me, will continue to sell well into the future.
I got an Org announcement today at work. Two people,same job. The first has a ScB in Engineering from Brown and a MSEE from Stanford. The second has a BS in MIS from Western Connecticut State University.
If nothing else, there is something to be said about being in a room of extremely bright students, TA’s, and professors that cannot be replicated easily by going to say Middle Tennessee State. Recently talked with parents of freshman poli sci kid at Harvard who in one week had an impromptu dinner with a congressman and saw a John Kerry speak on campus. This interaction just doesn’t happen randomly at most average college campuses. It’s easy for someone to say “it doesn’t matter where you go to college” but reality tells us a different story…
Yes, I read Frank Bruni’s book and I, too, wholeheartedly recommend. However, I’d note that he was extremely one-sided. Given the nature and the intent of the book, I don’t know how else he could have done it differently, though.
Doesn’t anyone else find a little ironic that a researcher from STANFORD is telling everyone else to ignore the rankings?
Denise Pope, the Stanford researcher and lecturer who is the primary author of the paper and the one interviewed in the article, earned her bachelors degree at Stanford, her Masters at Harvard, and her PhD at Stanford. Does anyone here truly believe that Dr. Pope would have still achieved her same faculty position at Stanford, and had the same research opportunities, had her research published in the same journals, and gotten the same publicity about it if she had earned her degrees at a couple of low-ranked state universities?
I would say the arc of her own career is contrary to her headline-grabbing conclusions. When it came to her own education, employment, and success, Dr. Pope clearly did not ignore the rankings.
This may be a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” If she had come from an unknown, low ranked university, wouldn’t we be skeptical of her motives in advocating for those schools?
However, it doesn’t invalidate your point that for some, but not all, career paths, prestige absolutely does matter.
