The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

<p>Case in point: an acquantaince of mine, two years older than myself, felt that Princeton (a so-called bastion of elitism) was actually not preppy enough for them! They realized that the Ivy league schools were actually incredibly more diverse than their high schools. So, for that matter, are many top private grammar and secondary schools - often they are 10-30 percent minority, which is a much higher number than at Darien High School (approx. 1-2 percent minority)</p>

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You have two kids. Both from an upper middle class family. One kid gets accepted to Yale. The other (just as strong) tries, gets rejected (or doesn't have the money) and attends a not so prestigious state school in the NE (take your pick, UConn, Umass. SUNY). Do they end up having different social and cultural experiences? Probably. Does one end up being better equipped to to speak to plumbers? That's a stretch. But the culture they're surrounded by certainly does have an impact.

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<p>Raising hand. Upper middle class family, I went to a top 20, younger sister went to an unremarkable state school. I firmly believe that I had a broader and more impressive network of <em>people</em> to tap into (as I so desired), and a name on my diploma that opened my doors, and I did get the chance to meet and greet some pretty elite people who weren't going to unremarkable state schools, but on the whole, it's not as though it was SO remarkably different that she can talk to plumbers and I can't possibly deign to.</p>

<p>pinkpineapple's post about greater diversity in top private grammar and secondary schools notwithstanding, I'm wondering if part of the issue isn't the entire "elite" feeder system leading up to the Ivys and their ilk. The article mentioned this briefly, and then had this one quote:</p>

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I have a friend who went to an Ivy League college after graduating from a typically mediocre public high school. One of the values of going to such a school, she once said, is that it teaches you to relate to stupid people. Some people are smart in the elite-college way, some are smart in other ways, and some aren’t smart at all. It should be embarrassing not to know how to talk to any of them, if only because talking to people is the only real way of knowing them.

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<p>This leapt out at me, because D1 has had a similar experience. She attended a well-regarded but not academically exceptional public magnet, and then switched to a high school magnet which draws the academic tippy-top. Most of her classmates at her new school attended similar super-academic middle and even elementary school magnets. The high school magnet, however, is located within a large urban high school. The magnet kids take some courses in the regular school--PE, band, maybe a few electives. </p>

<p>D1 commented to me that she's one of the few kids in her magnet who hangs around with kids in the regular school, or is even comfortable talking to them. She says that was one benefit of going to her former school, that it forced her to pick up certain social skills that her more insulated classmates didn't need. Of course, most of these kids end up being able to talk to lots of different people just fine. But maybe there is something to making sure that kids lucky enough to be receiving an "elite" education from birth through grad school spend some time outside the bubble. </p>

<p>Our plumber is an excellent baker; we trade recipes and cookies.</p>

<p>It is not true at all that straight A students are just "teacher's pleasers" and do their EC's just for resume. Most of them were told since kindergarden that all it takes to get all As is to do their homework and put their best effort into it. This kid will not quit if his homework math answer is incorrect, he will get it correct at home before it is explained in school. The fact is that they just have a work ethic to try their best even it is boring material for them. This is an awesome skill since not all assignments at work are excited, sometime job is boring, and the next day it is fun. However, ANY job assignment should be given our best effort, including boring ones. Having straight As indicate this type of attitude.</p>

<p>Hey PizzaGirl - If I was your plumber, I wouldn't like how you talk about your sister...or your "impressive" contacts for that matter.
Hey, coming from a lower middle class family, my brothers went to Ivy and I went to an "unremarkable state school." All of us can talk to plumbers - no problem. And you would have no idea where my brothers went if you went to one of their parties (no rubbing elbows with the elite unfortunately).<br>
So, yeah, going to an Ivy can encourage "snooty" behaviors and "social retardation" in some folks - but certainly not all.</p>

<p>Toneranger - I was only drawing the distinction for purposes of the discussion. I wasn't putting her down, I wasn't putting plumbers down, nothing wrong with any honest day's work in any profession for the most part. If anything, the type of person I'll put down is the snob from the original article, who seemed to have a complete inability to talk to "the common guy" and blamed that on his education when it's evident that it was merely his own personal hang-up and cluelessness.
While I was UMC by the time I went to college, I grew up in a rowhouse in a decidely blue-collar background. So no snobbery, I promise.</p>

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FROM TONERANGER: One kid gets accepted to Yale. The other (just as strong) tries, gets rejected (or doesn't have the money) and attends a not so prestigious state school in the NE (take your pick, UConn, Umass. SUNY). Do they end up having different social and cultural experiences? Probably. Does one end up being better equipped to to speak to plumbers? That's a stretch.

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<p>I AGREED with you, Toneranger! So not quite sure why you're disagreeing with me.</p>

<p>Yes we do agree for the most part.<br>
Sorry I was a bit cranky in my last post...but your post referencing "elite people" and "impressive contacts" came across as snooty even though I'm sure that was not your intention.</p>

<p>But that's my whole point. Yes, I did get a chance to go to school with kids who had gone to Andover, Exeter, came from notable national families, were more world-traveled, etc. compared to the kids my sister went to school with. Yes, I had doors opened that wouldn't be opened to her. HOWEVER, none of that meant that I had somehow escalated to some world-of-the-elite where I'd never deign to speak to a plumber again -- what an obnoxious and disgusting thought. It's not as though the worlds are THAT different, on the whole. It's not as if you'd take a bunch of my university's grads and a bunch of the state school grads and notice a difference IRL. It was an experience that provided some additional opportunities, but it wasn't the finishing school that the original article makes it sound like. The original article was written by someone who was extremely pompous and wanted to blame that on his elite education. I call BS on that.</p>

<p>Thanks for the thread and for the comments so far. I'd like to hear from more people with knowledge of the issue what kind of people can be met by a student at an elite college. I went to State U, and I certainly met many fellow students from rather straitened circumstances while I was in college, and had jobs to work my way through school with co-workers who had no prospect of attending college. How is the socioeconomic mix at the HYPSM echelon of colleges?</p>

<p>Many of the elite schools are now less socioeconomically diverse than at any time in the past 28 years. Most have fewer Pell Grant recipients than they did in 1993. And while the percentage of full-pay students at the majority has barely budged, the income/assets necessary to afford full-pay has risen dramatically. In other words, the wealthy students are wealthier than they used to be.</p>

<p>In my personal experience as a lower-income student at an elite school, looking back at it the most important educational experience I had was being able to observe the mindsight of wealthy students. They treated the world as their oyster! Many spoke several languages, spent vacations in Europe. Some had fathers (it was always fathers) who were international bankers; others funded public health missions in Africa, or conservation efforts in Peru. They were well-traveled; and (other than inner city neighborhoods), there wasn't a single place they didn't feel they belonged. They carried an air of entitlement - that I envied.</p>

<p>And emulated. I have spent most of my life figuring out how to have this same ease about my own dreams and aspirations as I saw among wealthy students, and to pursue them without the requisite income. And it has worked! (long story. I carried NONE of those vaunted contacts with me into my adult life (indeed, when I got to choose roommates after my first year, I chose students from the same socioecomic class as I came from, as a form of self-protection.)</p>

<p>I have to admit that I was often made to feel uncomfortable in that elite environment, and would probably not choose to repeat the experience. But I also have to report that this discomfort was probably the single most important factor in my personal growth in college (and which had absolutely nothing to do with comparative quality of the classroom experience.).</p>

<p>* like to hear from more people with knowledge of the issue what kind of people can be met by a student at an elite college. I went to State U, and I certainly met many fellow students from rather straitened circumstances while I was in college, and had jobs to work my way through school with co-workers who had no prospect of attending college. How is the socioeconomic mix at the HYPSM echelon of college*</p>

<p>I think it really depends on the tone of the school.
There can be schools that charge $18,000 for tuition, where it is important to have a car on campus, to go on fashionable places for breaks & where you don't have a job for personal expenses, let alone a work study job & your parents send you an allowance.</p>

<p>Schools that pledge to meet 100% of need, probably have enough students who need their work study job, it wouldn't even occur to them to go to Tahiti for the winter break, indeed that might be the only time they go back home all year, to form a cohort of the "less privileged".</p>

<p>Not having any Greeks & being on a coast where people are often fairly low key with their wealth, the tongue in cheek slogan of " Atheism-Communism-Free Love" @ Reed isn't too far off the mark. They aren't the most elite of elite schools, having a self selected student body, but that unfortunately is less the case nowadays. Still have the scroungers saving money by reducing food waste though.</p>

<p>But, I did perceive snobbery of a different kind. A large portion of the students I met had parents who were college professors at schools that rank higher in USnews ;). Oberlin, UChicago, Princeton etc.</p>

<p>I'm assuming they were proud of their parents, or else they wouldn't have mentioned their status so often, but I also heard a tone that implied they were more worthy to attend a school that " exists for the life of the mind", than a student whose father raced motorcycles or whose mother cleaned motel rooms.</p>

<p>I wouldn't say it was a dominant theme , and I would also attribute that to being young ( most were freshmen at the time) and insecure at a place that has been compared to the USMC boot camp. </p>

<p>However, it seemed unsettling to a few, that some of their classmates, who were more than keeping up with them academically and socially, had backgrounds that were working class . </p>

<p>One of the things we liked about Reed ( and we also saw this at one or two other schools) is that they had a program for students who were first gen/low income/minority. My daughter had a mentor her freshman year, and she was a mentor in subsequent years.</p>

<p>While she did ( and does) have very good friends whose tuition was paid by trusts & who were able to travel/volunteer summers instead of earning money to put toward their EFC, & also did not need to work during the school year, she also stayed grounded with her friends who shared her background.
Even allowing for that though, her attitude was more of a "I have found my people" when she got to Portland. While she had always attended excellent private day schools ( on aid), probably because the numbers on aid were far fewer, she was much more conscious of differences between herself and other students, much more than I realized at the time.</p>

<p>Mini, I appreciate that you can acknowledge that you grew in that situation, but as a parent, I think that many kids in K-12, have enough to handle just being kids, without wondering if your friends parents made in one month, what yours did in a year.
But, I probably would have done it again. The schools were great, the kids & their parents were very nice, it was mostly that the classes were so small, that she didn't have a big group of friends. ( Her sister who attended private K-2, then switched to public- but just for sheer hassle in retrospect I wish I had kept her in private)</p>

<p>I also recognized at the time, that by choosing private schools for them, I could get more support for parenting & an unexpected bonus was, I met people who I would have never gotten to know otherwise & I learned so much about myself and the world.</p>

<p>Going back to the article, I think there is a difference not in the schools, but in the reason you are going there. I've met people who attended colleges, to make the right connections, as cliched as that sounds, to help them with their predetermined career.</p>

<p>But I also know people much more worldly and brilliant than myself, with multiple degrees from H & Y, who have found that for all their intelligence, there is still more they * don't* know and they are the first to admit it.</p>

<p>Of course they are not college age anymore & for all I know, they could have been supercilious on campus. ;)</p>

<p>As a current Princeton student, I can say that thankfully the author's generalizations do not apply to the majority of my classmates. That said, they ring very true for a small but still significant portion of the student body. For those who grew up in Greenwich or the Upper East Side or Beacon Hill, an Ivy League degree is little more than another stop on the preordained path to a career in consulting or investment banking. Finals clubs, secret societies, and eating clubs serve to amuse these students for the four years they spend at the nation's finest country clubs. This segment of the student body has an admittedly small, but still pernicious, effect on campus culture.</p>

<p>I agree entirely with debryc's comments and would be interested to hear from other current students at HYP.</p>

<p>Marite asked earlier whether Yale had "failed" so miserably in recruiting a socioeconomically diverse class. I'm not sure they failed - as I see little evidence this is something they've even attempted.</p>

<p>57% of Yale's student body receives no need-based aid. What this likely means is that the minimum income for the majority of the student body is $200k plus, the median income of the student body well up in the $200ks, and the median income of those receiving no need-based aid likely approaching $400k. (This doesn't even consider assets). 9% of the student body is on Pell Grants, leaving 34% of the student body, the bulk of whom likely come from families with incomes between $100k and $200k. </p>

<p>In other words, middle income students ($43k-$67k), or even students in the next income quintile ($67k-$100k) are in reality few and far between. Yale is less economically diverse today than it was in 1980, and by a good distance. (The same is NOT true at Princeton.)</p>

<p>Did the author of the article then never talk to someone from the 9% on Pell grants? And if he did, would he have talked about British lit or the Red Sox or plumbing? If he wants to talk about either topic, surely where he lives matters more than where he teaches?</p>

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The same is NOT true at Princeton.

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<p>But do they learn the plumbing lingo in their eating clubs?</p>

<p>"Did the author of the article then never talk to someone from the 9% on Pell grants?"</p>

<p>He probably would have had to explicitly looked for them, and they him. It would be very easy for them to be pretty close to invisible, given the makeup of the rest of the student body. (And, and I say this from firsthand experience, many might have preferred invisibility. My friends at Class Action have actually been hired by Dartmouth to help deal with this invisibility, but not by Yale as of yet, though they have helped establish a support group.)</p>

<p>Isn't this article stating the disadvantages of "More of the Same" and making a stereotypical assumption that all (or at least most) current Ivy League students are coming from prep school or at least advantaged backgrounds?</p>

<p>Our Harvard-freshman-to-be has no trouble speaking to plumbers -- or farmers, or delivery truck drivers, or grocery store employees, or cops. These are his relatives and the parents of some of his best friends. I, for one, do not believe that four years at Harvard will render him unable to relate to the people who have loved and supported him for the previous 18 years.</p>

<p>Mini: </p>

<p>The prof probably talked to Pell grantees. They don't go about advertising that fact just as most students don't have their parents' incomes branded on their forehead or even on their clothes (the preppiest looking friend of my S is a Pell grantee). </p>

<p>The author of the article just did not know how to talk to any of his students about the Red Sox or his plumbing problems, or did not think these were appropriate topics for a prof of British literature to be speaking about to students. His loss and his problem.</p>

<p>"The prof probably talked to Pell grantees. They don't go about advertising that fact just as most students don't have their parents' incomes branded on their forehead or even on their clothes (the preppiest looking friend of my S is a Pell grantee)."</p>

<p>From firsthand experience (my own), I can tell you that Pell grantees and the like OFTEN have their parents' incomes branded on them through their speech. Folks with higher incomes often try to make believe it isn't there, or ignore it altogether (which sometimes hurts! and is precisely why Dartmouth has hired Class Action on a multi-year contract). Alternatively, we try to hide (I've told my "pizza" story before).</p>

<p>Or, alternatively, we get stereotyped. I'll never forget my first-year seminar reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", and since there were no Black students in the class (no less urban low-income ones), I was thought to be the "expert on the ghetto" (I grew up in eastern Queens!)</p>