Well I can’t compare every school, of course, but I’m familiar with quite a few via family and friends. I’ve had many conversations about this stuff. I agree that it’s not a perfect argument and some lower ranked schools may have terrific career centers and alumni support. But, in the case of the more prestigious schools, the students do seem more likely to have alumni support that follows them for a lifetime if they choose to use it and likely a larger percent of those alums are influential when it comes to hiring.
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Hm. Maybe it is a little cult like? I have zero issues with that. Like I said, I went to NU and I guess I would like to hire NU grads but I also know we maybe don’t have much in common. When kids come from a small school, they bond more in totality. I’ve seen the excitement on an alum’s face when they realize our S is a student. When I meet someone who goes to NU? I’m like, eh, that’s nice.
Wait and what?? No way Bowdoin is giving everyone an A or B in Calc even if they “don’t know the material”. Wow. No words on that one.
The relationship is more complex than "harder’ or “calculus is calculus.” For example, earlier in the thread, I mentioned that Harvard, like most “top schools”, has all incoming students take math placement tests to select an appropriate math level and starting point based on their math background and goals. There is not just a universal hard/easy calculus that everyone takes. Instead there are some intro math classes that are slower and less rigorous than typical at other schools (math MA), as well as some intro math classes that are among the most rigorous anywhere (math 55). For a particular set of freshman math topics (a large portion of students start out beyond basic calculus), “top colleges” may have several classes to choose from with different paces, different levels of rigor, different emphasis on use of proofs, and different emphasis related to planned career (for example calculus with Matlab for prospective engineers).
I think this type of approach makes sense when you consider how wide the variation is among incoming students is. Some students come from HSs that offer far better math preparation than others, and some students are more innate ability than others. While nearly everyone takes calculus in HS, some students may not have sufficient calculus background upon entering, and may be better served by repeating the class at a slower and less rigorous pace, with a lot of opportunity for extra support. If you offer better support to students who are more likely to struggle, then those students are expected to have lesser attrition in fields that build on and use this type of basic math such as engineering.
This may be less true for smaller LACs since their small size limits the number of available levels of courses. A minority of larger “top colleges” also put almost everyone within a particular major in the same intro STEM classes for various reasons.
Grading is a separate, related issue. In general, as a larger portion of students do ‘A’ quality work, a larger portion of students receive ‘A’ grades. So you see colleges with a higher concentration of stellar students tend to have a higher portion of ‘A’ grades. At “top colleges”, the most common grade is A in the overwhelming majority of classes. For example, in Harvard’s recent senior survey, seniors reported a median graduating GPA of 3.87/4.0. It’s a similar idea for specific classes. The more rigorous versions of classes with a higher concentration of stellar students tend to give a larger portion of ‘A’ grades than the less rigorous versions of classes with a lower concentration of stellar students. These colleges still generally give out C grades to students who do C quality work, but hardly anyone at these colleges does C quality work. Classes are almost entirely composed of excellent students who excel academically.
In upperclassmen within major classes, there is less opportunity for different levels. Having taken classes at a variety of colleges of varied selectivities (Stanford, RPI, SUNY, UCSD, Syracuse, and Wyoming), my experience is the average workload is generally higher in upperclassmen classes at more selective colleges, although there are huge number of exceptions for specific classes. For example, I’d expect that if you compared the number of pages of required reading in similar humanities classes, I’d expect the overall average across all classes to be higher than typical at most “top colleges”, but the grading would not necessarily be harsher. I’d make a similar comment about most STEM field (not all STEM fields).
Having a higher concentration of stellar students can gives professors the opportunity to teach the class at a more advanced or rigorous level than at other colleges with less a less stellar student body, but many professors do not do this. And at less selective colleges, some professors do teach at a level well beyond what typical students in the class will succeed at, so they end up giving students a lot of non A/B grades. For example, I had one class at SUNY, where I was one of only 3 students in the class who qualified to take the final based on past class performance. Instead nearly everyone either withdrew from the class or repeated a past test instead of the final (professor had weird grading system with repeating past tests as a replacement to avoid failing nearly everyone).
So not only is it less prestigious to attend a larger state flagship (generalization…not Mich, etc.), but it’s harder to do well because of the curve? If you have the money…take the easy way out and find a US News top 20.
I think your argument is missing a competition component. It’s a bit like saying it’s harder to win a batting title in AAA baseball because there are more players. After all…baseball is baseball…it’s the same game regardless of the location of the field. There is the argument that future hall-of-famers are playing in AAA, but there aren’t nearly as many as there are in MLB.
I would agree with you that ranking alum is even crazier than ranking schools…but if you look at those rankings, prestige tends to associate closely with alum engagement.
50 Most Supportive Alumni Networks
Purely personal experience…but the alumni networks at smaller schools feel much more engaging than they do at larger schools. No data…just opinion.
That’s just a standard college ranking based on the average of various ranking lists like USNWR. It’s not a ranking of alum networks, regardless of what the page title may say. Their methodology is as follows:
50% weighting – Average(?) of various USNWR, Money, Walletub, and Washinton Monthly college ranking lists
50% weighting – Average(?) of student reviews on Cappex, Niche, Myplan, Students Review, and Unigo
They seem to have implemented the described methodology erroneously and not included certain colleges, like MIT and Yale for some reason. Maybe that is the Alumni Network part? They think MIT and Yale have a bad alumni network, so they exclude them from the list?
It says alumni network ranking…I noted the insanity of such a list in my posting. It exists…people will use it as they see fit (if at all).
If you have an issue, take it up with the founder.
While the title may say alumni network ranking, the methodology listed on the website is just an average of other college ranking lists that have nothing to do with alumni networks, such as USNWR. You can read more about the methodology at https://www.collegeconsensus.com/about/ .
There’s no way to make that categorical a statement, even at place at Harvard, that everybody is essentially incapable of C or bad work. You shouldn’t really buy into that kind of stuff. From gradeinflation.com, Harvard’s GPA in 1967 was a very reasonable 3.0 and remained in the low 3-s. I agree that there were probably not too many Cs given but there were not many A’s either, given the 3.0 average, and in fact that was the message we got as high school students in the early 80’s, it wasn’t too hard to get a B but pretty hard to get an A at places like Harvard.
Are you saying that the kids at Harvard now compared to earlier are all of sudden that much better at math, understand the physical universe like Einstein, potential double Nobels like Marie Curie? I highly doubt that. There are a few reasons for the grade inflation, one is that according to William Deresiewicz in his book, says at Yale, parents pay so much now and agree not to complain as long as the kids get As and Bs. iirc he referred to it as a peaceful coexistence of colleges like Yale.
“If you have the money…take the easy way out and find a US News top 20.”
That would be the conclusion of Deresiewicz, at least for the private ones. Easy way out is a little strong, the students do work hard. But saying that there are no C work at Harvard now, but there was earlier is not tenable unless you think there’s been a huge shift in their knowledge that 4 out of 5 kids should get As (the 3.8 average).
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Grading definitions have changed since 1967. What a C meant is 1967 is not the same as what a C means today. I mean a more general logical conclusion, along the lines of:
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The vast majority of admitted Harvard (or similar) are academically outstanding students who have almost entirely straight A’s in high school. By this reference from today’s grading standards, I am calling them “near straight A students”. In 1967, the same students may have received different grades in HS, today these are “near straight A students.”
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Students who excel academically and earn near straight A’s in HS by doing high quality and are accepted to colleges like Harvard or similar generally do not suddenly switch from becoming “near straight A students” to start doing C quality work in college. The overwhelming majority continue to do all assignments, do all readings, study for exams and do well, have decent mastery of the course concepts, etc. This is what is typically required for an A/B grade at Harvard or similar today.
While grading standards differ from college to college, as well as from course to course within the college; students who are accepted to HYPSM… are usually extremely strong academically, with sufficient motivation to continue to do quality work in classes during college. In modern times, quality work is enough to get A/B grades. This may differ from 1967 or earlier periods in which a C was average.
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so gradeinflation.com while having a lot of references obviously is biased given the name of the website, but this is their conclusion:
“America’s professors and college administrators have been promoting a fiction that college students routinely study long and hard, participate actively in class, write impressive papers, and ace their tests. The truth is that, for a variety of reasons, professors today commonly make no distinctions between mediocre and excellent student performance and are doing so from Harvard to CSU-San Bernardino.”
“In the Vietnam era, grades rose partly to keep male students from flunking out (and ending up being drafted into war). But the consumer era is different. It’s about helping students look good on paper, helping them to “succeed.” It’s about creating more and more A students.”
I think more A students are created artificially today.
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What’s an A work in a college course? How can we expect an A at one college to be equivalent to an A at another, if we can’t even standardize grading at a single college? IMO, course grades should be based on the historical grades of students who’ve taken the course, so a student can measure her/his performance not only relative to her/his classmates but also in absolute terms for that paritcular course at that particular college. Just as it’s pointless to compare grades for different courses at a college, it’s even sillier to compare them accross different colleges.
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Suppose the college has gotten more or less selective over time. Or the major has gotten more or less selective, or attracts stronger or weaker students over time. Should the grade distribution today be the same as that of when the students in the course were stronger or weaker?
Of course, law and medical schools do that for admission purposes…
I don’t think selectivity should influence course grades. In fact, the best way to know if the students are stronger or weaker is to measure their performance on a historically consistent basis.
They more or less do, but I don’t consider that to be a good practice or a good benchmark.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. If in your opinion, an elite college or university offers advantages, and you can afford to pay full freight without taking out loans (or making your kid take out loans) --as we were–more power to you/us.
Where I have a problem is with families who can afford elite schools for their kids presenting it as factual that those schools offer significant advantages over the public options. I’m not sure that’s an evidence based statement, although if that is what you believe, you’re entitled to your belief. However, by arguing strongly that there’s a universal advantage that accrues to everyone who attends such a school, rather than sticking with “we liked this school better because of our personal situation,” you imply that families of less means should consider taking out huge loans to attend such schools. And when a student or a family has to go into significant non-dischargeable debt to afford an elite school, I think that’s when the calculus changes.
So by all means, let’s say “this elite school was the best choice for our child,” but don’t go making global statements about the superiority of what that school offers in comparison to a state school.
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There is a lot to unpack in your post.
First there is a big difference between saying a school offers “significant advantages” and saying a school offers “universal advantages that accrue to everyone” but you seemingly conflate the two.
For a student at a an Ivy+ who aspires to attend for example Harvard or Stamford business school there is a clear statistical advantage. We can debate the root causes but the over representation is in fact “evidence” and not just “belief” as you describe:
“23.2% of MBA admits to HBS secured an IvyLeague undergrad degree, and the top three feeder schools are Harvard (46), University of Pennsylvania (39) and the West Coast’s Stanford (35).”
“ More than one third (37%) of Stanford’s class of MBAs earned their undergraduate degrees from a traditional Ivy League university”
This over representation exists across top grad schools, Fortune 500 CEOs,Fulbright and Rhodes scholarships, etc, as I have provided up thread. With Ivy+ students making up less then 1/2 of 1% of students their oversized footprint is undeniable
I don’t think however anyone suggests such an advantage (I prefer opportunity) is universal or accrued for “free”. The student needs to live up to the “elite” history and academic statistics that got them in, fully engage the world class resources an elite university provides and take advantage of a robust alumni network. They still have to do the work.
For many if not most this advantage will be realized, for almost all the opportunity will exist and for a small minority it won’t be realized. This success rate is largely attributable to how extensive the “weeding” out process was to get in.
You seem to imply some of your sentiments are based on experiences as a Wake Forest parent. Wake is a top school but I don’t think it is representative of the schools being referenced.
With a 29% acceptance rate, Wake actually has a reputation for weeding out students during freshman year. For example students applying to the school of business need minimum GPAs and course specific results to even be considered during the spring semester of sophomore year. It is an open acknowledgment that not all of those whom they accept are at the same level.
The elite schools being discussed have low single digit acceptance rates, 50% of students were Val or Sal of their classes and stood out by virtue of their ECs. I know this once again brings up the chicken vs egg question of is it just the top students or the top school that yields the result . The reality however is they are inextricably combined and it is a false premise to suggest it has to be either or.
Lastly, I have not read anyone suggesting families should go into debt in pursuit of these advantages. To the contrary it has been suggested similar levels of success can be achieved by really smart kids at all sorts of schools and that the relative value of any such benefit is personal, subjective and based on each families circumstances.
But as you highlight everyone is entitled to their opinion.
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A college education is expensive for most families. Like every other expensive product or service, whether or not it’s overpriced is always relative to your own expectation. Some of the colleges do meet (and exceed) the expectation of many of their students, even at their full prices. However, not a single one of them meets the expectation of all its students. Therefore, the payoff is far from certain and students shouldn’t borrow heavily with the expectation of a certain payoff.
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The estimated return on any one student is based solely on that individual.
The idea that regression analysis and projected future earnings can tell you whether you should borrow $100k for elite school X vs. borrowing $37k to attend flagship Y is a fools errand. The question isn’t about history…it’s would you risk $63k for the perceived experience and/or opportunities at school X for THAT KID.
All the anecdotal “my kid did…” and “my kids friends did…” are worthless bits of noise.
People come here for three reasons:
- gain a bit of comfort that they’re not crazy for doing what they are about to do
- gain a bit of insight into how they might do what they want to do
- prove to everyone else they selected the best path possible
To achieve the first two, the more you can filter the third the better.
For a good student who works hard and feels a sense of pride and accomplishment that comes along with borrowing extra money to attend a dream school…what’s the emotional cost of say “since we can’t guarantee an ROI…aim lower”?
All the empirical data in the world can’t change how that message feels when directed at you.
The only certainty in this entire conversation is that you only get to select the path once.
If you have much of a choice at all. Many students’ college choices are heavily limited by limits on the net price they can afford.
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Thus the notion of individuality in the discussion. You can only evaluate options available… to you.
Not many want to engage in a conversation about things they can’t have. It’s why I’m not on the yachting site typing right now.
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