The students we read about are for the most part immigrant URMs with (apparently) high stats. They are going to get in wherever they apply, and their family income is such that the Ivies (with generous financial aid) may be the most affordable options.
If I were advising such a student I’d suggest a different strategy. But their GCs may be encouraging them to apply to all the Ivies because it boosts the school’s prestige. And their parents may like the idea because if you’re a recent immigrant you’ve heard of Harvard but you lack the encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. institutions of higher learning that folks here on CC possess.
You’re kidding, right? Prestige is about “what other people think.” Quality is quality, regardless of what other people know or think.
Let’s say you desired to buy a fine watch. The shallow person says - what’s the most prestigious? - and maybe then goes and buys a Rolex because “everyone’s heard of it and will recognize it on my wrist.” The smart person says - what’s the best quality? - and then they’ll learn about all kinds of quality brand watches that are of equal or superior quality to Rolex (Patek Philippe, Breitling, Audemars, etc). Quiet quality is good enough; it’s irrelevant that the average person hasn’t heard of these brands.
Why would you act like the first person and not the second?
I also find that it’s the more sophisticated, traveled, learned people who know a lot more. It’s the unsophisticated person who says - the only nice watch is a Rolex, the only nice hotel is a Ritz-Carlton, the only good colleges are Ivies.
@Pizzagirl, I agree with your general point but an education isn’t quite like a watch. I would never pay more than about $40 for a watch and I don’t buy expensive clothes or shoes. But having a certain college name on your resume can open doors. It can help get you hired in some fields (mine, for example). Does that mean everyone should go to the most “prestigious” college they can? Of course not. But there’s a middle ground between “Harvard or bust” and “Prestige doesn’t matter.”
I don’t think anybody is saying it doesn’t matter at all. They are merely saying some people allow it to trump all other considerations. This is especially absurd and even harmful when it is assumed that slight differences in a magazine’s imperfect rankings are actually significant. In other words, just because someone assigns a numeric rank to something, it does not necessarily mean the ranks are accurate, or even if they were accurate, it doesn’t mean that the differences in rank are meaningful or have practical significance.
Like when you see people assuming that one school or department that is ranked #10 is obviously “better” than a school or department that’s ranked #20. If you are in an auto race, where there is one criterion (the rank in which you finish), rank is pretty important and meaningful. But with things as multi-faceted and complex as colleges or even departments, that sort of precision and therefore the accuracy of the rankings does not seem very likely. The rankings of colleges are more akin to those “100 most beautiful women in the world” lists (or “sexiest man alive” awards) that magazines have…yes, they assign ranks, but that doesn’t guarantee #30 is “better” than #40, and it especially doesn’t guarantee #30 is better FOR YOU.
@marvin100
My argument does not include a straw man fallacy. Some of the people I refer to are people I see on a daily basis and openly proclaim the fact that they are applying to all these colleges because they are prestigious. While this is a very specific situation, I wrote this post cause I feel as though I am not alone. I have in no way oversimplified the opposing argument. Whether or not you know them, there are people who solely look at prestige.
Okay, then, I’ll set aside my conviction that you have no idea what is really in those people’s hearts and minds, I’ll amend my “straw man” critique, replacing it with “small sample size” and “anecdata.”
Nope. I’d say they have prestige as a criterion. If they had prestige as the only criterion, they wouldn’t even be asking–they’d simply go for the more prestigious school without a second thought. It’s simple, really.
@marvin100
There’s no need to be snarky and condescending. I’m pretty sure I made it clear that this wasn’t some study, just personal observations. This is a complete opinion piece and while it is okay to argue your point, you can’t just choose only certain selections from the arguments of myself and others to be able to better poke holes in our arguments.
Example: @moooop spoke about students debating whether to attend a less prestigious school they absolutely love or a very prestigious one they don’t. When he made this comment, he was referring to the people commenting as valuing prestige more, telling the student to pick the more prestigious one college and totally ignoring the fact that the student loves the less prestigious one. He was fairly blatant with the fact that he was referring to commenters as the ones overemphasizing prestige, not the student. You spun the example (which was excellent) into something that it wasn’t to further your own argument. You speak of the straw man fallacy. Well (correct me if I’m wrong), that’s a non sequitur.
@delurk1
I am not stating that prestige doesn’t matter, but when it completely dominates other important factors when picking a college, you are picking a college for the wrong reasons. I also like the watch analogy. No, education and watches aren’t exactly the same, and a prestigious name can open doors, but those who really know their stuff (not the average Joe) will know a good quality school that isn’t as prestigious. Employers and grad schools know which schools are good and which aren’t, its their job.
My bad–that was a hasty misreading. Sorry. That said, if some student asks which school to pick and someone responds solely to recommend the more prestigious school, that reveals nothing about the commentator’s reasoning, and, in fact, may even be irrelevant, as the commentator may or may not even be a college-applying student in the first place.
Honestly, I think it’s easy to sit around and throw stones at other people, impugning their decision-making and preferences as somehow inferior to our own (enlightened, open-minded!) ones. It seems to me, though, to be self-serving at best and counterproductive at worst, and, while this discussion isn’t about fairness, its interest in speculating about and criticizing the priorities and intentions of others calls to mind [a memorable monologue](A Little Girls Lesson In Fairness - YouTube).
Marv, this is isn’t a court of law…if u are unmoved by anything less than sworn statements that a statistically significant number of students are 100% obsessed with prestige, then you win, case closed.
Congratulations!
It’s not about looking down on.others’ views, its about warning people who are considering spending a ton of money or going deep in debt that they might be employing a false premise, namely that the criterion called prestige is so important that its worth chasing it even though other options are cheaper and/.or a better fit.
Our experience with DS and his close friends was that prestige attracted them to many schools in the beginning. At that point they started digging in to see which ones suited their interests. I’m pretty sure all of them had a rank order in the end based on how well it met their needs not how prestigious the school was. But these are high stat kids with well developed ideas about what they plan to do with their lives.
Also saw prestige cut the other way. DS latched on to a couple of the Claremont colleges early on in his hIgh school career. He really liked them. But when Pomona hit number 1 on the Forbes list of LACs, he scratched it off since he figured it would be next to impossible to get in.
Another aspect of prestige chasing is that despite the grade inflation at some elite schools, there would seem to be some people who get sub -3.0 gpas…and perhaps might have had more options after graduting if they had done better at a less -competitive school.
Marv, I gotta warn you that I do not have in my posession a notarized copy of his transcript, but I swear I knew a very bright Cornell grad who graduated with a 2.8 GPA. He was bitter about the fact that most grad programs require a 3.0 minimum for full acceptance, There are ways to get around that (probation acceptance, a second bachelor’s, "night school"with easier admissions , for-profit schools, etc.). But this guy was certain that if he’d gone to a less -demanding school he could have gotten well above a 3.0 , and his career and educational options would have been different.
Yeah, that’s definitely a thing, although I’m not sure it’s always the case that schools with less “prestige” are “less demanding.” [Check this out](http://www.gradeinflation.com).