the truth about ivies and elite schools

<p>I think it is insulting to say and think that students and parents choose elite schools for ego purposes. </p>

<p>The value of networking
“The honest real reason most people go to top tier schools is for the ego.” - This does not need any proof, everybody knows that. The hard working self-reliant kids do not just go to Harvard, they go where they want to be for the next 4 years, where they feel fit. They do not care about all this hoopla. And their chosen place may be Harvard and maybe unknown state public. They know very well that the value of their education will depend on them and not the place. You might as well prove otherwise. My D’s experience in her Medical School class with vast majority being from Ivy’s and other very top elite place prove to her (not anybody else, not people who are so hooked to all the names), it proved to her that her choice of in-state public UG was absolutely correct for her and gave her much more opprotunities for personal growth. If somebody feels the same about Harvard, I support the choice, but there are majority who are obsessed for the sake of the UG name. Nope, students in D’s class from all those top of the top UGs are NOT in any aspect whatsoever prepared better for huge challenges at Medical School, not at all. Again, it goes back to the student’s responsibility. OK, and many will say why is that Ivy’s / Elites are overrepresented at Medical Schools. These kids are so highly pre-selected, they are very hard working bunch who aim at A in every single class and continue the same in college. Again, personal responsibility, not the name of school that made them successful applicants.
Specifically, EECS does not require the top UG, it does not require networking either. No, vast majority of these graduates will not work for Google or Facebook. They will work for IT departments in various industries and they will work for engineering firms (most of which are small companies). IT departments and engineering firms hire locally. And how in world I know that. Well, I have been in IT for well over 30 years and my H. has been an EE for about 40 years. We know a huge crowd in both fields.
It is entertaining to read comments and see how remote many are from the reality that they are commenting on.<br>
I truly do not care what article is saying. I always rely strictly on my experiences. My kids did not even think about checking any rankings before they choose their UGs. They went to places where they feel comfy with the goal of doing their absolutely best. And they did</p>

<p>Hard-working, self-reliant kids may know that they don’t NEED Harvard, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want it, and aren’t right to do so. Outcomes are important, but so is the experience, and there are gains that aren’t necessarily measured in med school acceptance letters.</p>

<p>I just dislike how whenever a version of this discussion comes up, it devolves into hyperbole. You can make the point that SOME people have an inflated sense of the value of elite degrees without a) assuming that everyone who values the elite school experience is nothing more than an egoist with delusions of grandeur or b) trying to assert that there is no possible value that can be derived from attending such a school over and above a state school. </p>

<p>Why can’t there be a middle ground? If you can manage the price tag without going into debt or substantially changing your quality of life, elite schools offer certain benefits - in concentration of top students, in opportunity, in education – that I believe are worth paying for. If you can’t, don’t be too despondent, because you can also get a first-class education, find great opportunities, and meet a lot of very bright people in other schools as well. In addition, different students have different priorities and goals, which can affect the calculus in various ways. This doesn’t have to be such a contentious subject. </p>

<p>Networking goes far beyond having famous people attend your school. It also goes towards your fellow students having a work ethic.</p>

<p>I teach at a state college, and on occasion I get less than 50% class attendance, even in classes which give “free points” for attendance. I <em>NEVER</em> had that experience at the Ivy I attended. Students in my classes rarely stay after class, they rarely attend extra help sessions. When they do, the results are amazing. One student worked with me for 30 minutes after every lecture, and ended up with B+ in a freshman course with zero HS prep in the subject. But at that Ivy, almost everyone was staying after class. Almost everyone was trying to develop a relationship with the professor, their advisor, the department, and their college. That kind of dedication (and it’s not like we didn’t go to parties and drink by the way), to actually show up all the time and pay attention, and <em>try</em> matters.</p>

<p>If it happens at a state school, you will do well and you will succeed, and you will network based on your experience there. But <em>you</em> have to be an outlier at many schools, to be attending class all the time, to do homework whether or not it has to be handed in for points, to study, etc. I found that being among kids who actually cared about school was a big thing. (yes, I know some state schools do better than others, but my experience is tainted by where I work and the five sister state schools).</p>

<p>That’s also why campus visits are important, especially if you can sit in on classes. If anyone sat in on one of my freshman classes, they’d see empty seats, some kids who are messing around, others who walk out and walk back in at will. This happens in all of our first year classes, and yes, those kids are weeded out, but the first year is the most important to set up your work ethic for the following three years. As for classroom management, some professors will spend 25% of lecture time yelling at kids to put their cell phone away, stop eating, stop talking, stop bothering other students. I try to keep it to 5% of my lecture, and let students know that they should report anyone continually disrupting the class (if there are 200 people in a class, you can’t always tell who is acting up).</p>

<p>The “hard-working self-reliant kids” will succeed almost anywhere, but honestly, 90% of the kids who are going to college nowadays are not of that variety. Kudos to MiamiDAP if her kids are like that, they can succeed at any college that matches their goals. I highly doubt I would have succeeded had I not lucked into getting admitted to my top choice Ivy (not HYP).</p>

<p>We have this dilemma with my son, he is looking at a wide range of schools. I honestly am extremely worried if he attends the college I teach at, because so many kids are undermotivated. He hasn’t dealt with kids that undermotivated since 5th grade, when they started sorting kids according to honors and not honors tracks. We are expecting he will go to a more competitive school that is not Ivy, but has high test scores and GPAs for their incoming freshman classes (for example, 1400 CR + M vs. 1000 CR + M). I just can’t do that to him, to put him in such an environment where the college does not address student apathy, just cashes in on the Fs. And again, not all “sub-Ivy” schools are like that, but it is harder to pick from schools that are not well-known without personal knowledge of them.</p>

<p>I think the argument ends here - the most interesting man in the world is the one on the Dos Equis commercials. Does anyone know if he went to a top school?</p>

<p>@rhandco:</p>

<p>Eh, I daresay almost no honors college students are like that, and if you can get in to an Ivy, you can get in to those (and likely with a good amount of merit money). Also, I doubt the top-ranked departments of some publics are full of those types of kids.</p>

<p>@Bay:
“Interesting” is in the eye of the beholder. Someone who is a math genius and won national awards is pretty interesting to me, even if he is not an engaging conversationalist."</p>

<p>Even in HS, I found more interesting the people who had a fluidity of mind and willingness to tackle the big questions of the day.</p>

<p>My D was interested in just about every type of person, or rather, they did not have to possess any particular traits in order for her to find them interesting. She did tell me that not everyone seemed smart at her elite college, but she did not mention finding her classmates to be “uninteresting.” She also said she felt totally comfortable in that college’s particular environment; she said it was where she belonged. To my knowledge she didn’t go for “ego” reasons, she said she liked it best of the colleges she visited. </p>

<p>At our high school, about half the students with “Ivy level stats” go to elite schools, while the other half go to schools where they end up with merit money. In our family, we have one that went in each direction, and this had more to do with perceived opportunities in their areas of interest than anything else. </p>

<p>I would be loathe to conclude that a student with a “big ego” would necessarily go one way or the other. A student at either type of school can have a pretty big ego, or not. </p>

<p>Re “price tag”: another great reason to apply to top schools is the amazing financial aid, for those who qualify (and up to $150K family income still qualifies).</p>

<p>“Hard-working, self-reliant kids may know that they don’t NEED Harvard, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want it, and aren’t right to do so. Outcomes are important, but so is the experience, and there are gains that aren’t necessarily measured in med school acceptance letters.”</p>

<p>I agree. I don’t <em>need</em> to take my family to the beach or San Francisco or Europe either, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to or that the experience isn’t valuable even though it can’t be measured. </p>

<p>“Why can’t there be a middle ground? If you can manage the price tag without going into debt or substantially changing your quality of life, elite schools offer certain benefits - in concentration of top students, in opportunity, in education – that I believe are worth paying for. If you can’t, don’t be too despondent, because you can also get a first-class education, find great opportunities, and meet a lot of very bright people in other schools as well.”</p>

<p>Well said, apprenticeprof. </p>

<p>Why can’t everyone just re-read this thread once every three months and save all the typing?</p>

<p>Is there a ranking cut-off point for this “ego-driven” theory of attendance? Do students attend UPenn only to feed their egos, but UCLA students attend for righteous reasons? How does a student know when his choice is safe from the ego presumption?</p>

<p>Well, and what’s so silly is the assumption that the “ego schools” are the same everywhere. </p>

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<p>Largely agree though I believe this is a bit more nuanced than the above would imply. </p>

<p>My impression from hearing accounts and having sat in on college classes at elite U and institutions with much more open admission standards is that one is less likely to encounter critical masses of students lacking in work ethic or being academically disengaged at an elite/respectable U as their selective admissions policies already filtered out most of the unmotivated academically disengaged students. </p>

<p>However, that doesn’t mean one is guaranteed an environment free of the latter type students at an elite U…including Ivies or schools like Caltech or Swat. However, they tend to be much fewer in number and thus, their influence on most students is negligible at best. Also, some institutions will end up eliminating many such unmotivated/academically disengaged students through processes such as academic suspensions/expulsions or such students transferring out of their own volition or due to parental pressure after seeing bad grade reports. </p>

<p>Other related issues is academic level in comparison with one’s peers at a given college campus and how its campus culture relates to a given student. Many HS classmates who ended up attending our local public colleges due to poor HS GPAs, parental pressure to commute due to overprotectiveness or other factors, and/or finances were quite frustrated with the exceedingly lower academic level and anti-intellectual attitudes of most of their public college peers back then. Those frustrations factored into their transferring out to more respectable/elite colleges like Reed and Columbia and working part-time/summers to make up what FA didn’t cover. </p>

<p>@Bay, in my experience, while you may see a difference between typical students at an average state school and elite private, I didn’t see much difference in interestingness/impressiveness between the top state schools (or top departments in a public) and private elites. It seems that you’re only taking in to consideration admissions criteria and not the difference in price (since you didn’t mention that). There are a good number of middle/upper-middle-class kids who are interesting/impressive enough to get in to a top private, but they/their parents can not pay or can not justify paying the differential in price between in-state at a Cal/UMich/UVa/UT-Austin and a private elite.</p>

<p>As far as “interesting” students go, some of the math majors that I encountered at what was then a not-that-selective state school were brilliant at math and interesting in some ways, but were nowhere near “polished” enough to pass elite school admissions (would probably never pass an interview for elite school admissions, for example).</p>

<p>There were also hard-working students who took the roundabout way to their bachelor’s degrees, including (sometimes from an immigrant refugee background or other non-traditional background like military veteran) starting at a community college and transferring in. Elite schools mostly take very few transfers, so later bloomers or those who turn themselves around after poor or non-existent high school records are unlikely to be found at many elite schools. Perhaps they are not “interesting” to elite schools’ admissions policy makers, but they do help make the student population at many other schools “interesting”.</p>

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<p>Did you attend both a top public department and a private elite for your undergrad? </p>

<p>That’s fine if you did, and didn’t notice any difference between the students. Obviously, everyone has their own opinion. I didn’t do that and don’t claim know whether there is a difference, but I do know that while top private elites require LORs and interviews for admission, UCBerkeley will not even consider them, so it is logical that there would be fair number of high stat students at Cal who were not weeded out due to their lackluster personalities or interpersonal abilities.</p>

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<p>If we’re talking HYP-type elite, the beneficial price differential for a top public doesn’t exist until you get into the $200K+ income range.</p>

<p>This is a situation in which I always feel a bit churlish arguing that highly selective schools have more interesting students. Perhaps one could put it a different way: the most selective schools are able to attract and enroll a high concentration of highly accomplished students, including people accomplished in many different areas, including academic subjects, the arts, and other activities. Whether this makes them “interesting” is perhaps debatable, but it is intellectually stimulating to be around them, because they continue (mostly) to be highly engaged both in schoolwork and extracurriculars, and they tend to be very good at what they do. There are relatively few people spending a lot of time on Super Smash Brothers.</p>