<p>I think it is hubris to say that it is not ego. I am not saying that the ONLY reason is ego. I am saying it a big reason. You can see it in the defensive nature when you point out the poor cost-benefit of such schools. You can see it in the over-use of the names and pointing out where the kid goes to school. (including the school name in your online handle?). And yes, it applies everywhere to lesser degrees. People want to go to a school or have their kids go to a school that their friends would recognize. Sometimes it is the state flagship. </p>
<p>Yeah, saying that it isn’t ego is proof that it really is…</p>
<p>@Bay I’m just starting to learn about this stuff. Can you explain what you mean when you say:</p>
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<p>It means those earning less than $200K may pay something around the same price as a top public due to elite schools’ financial aid policies. IDK if it’s really $200K, I think it’s less, but I believe that’s the point being made.</p>
<p>We are low-income enough, for instance, that my S’12’s least expensive options were all private colleges, not our state schools.</p>
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<p>True, but if you’re the kid with HYP-type stats who ended up denied admission to or wait-listed at these schools (and there are PLENTY of such kids every year) and was offered admission to a slightly less-selective school, say Carnegie Mellon or Johns Hopkins, the in-state flagship may be the only affordable option for your family.</p>
<p>It is true in honors colleges the students are ultra motivated, but where I teach, the honors students don’t have anywhere near 100% honors classes, and the lack of initiative can rub off on them. It’s false that all super bright students have to work hard in HS, but in college, even less competitive schools require a lot of work.</p>
<p>For example, I get laughs and "no way"s when I tell students that they take 12 hours of classes per week, and are expected to spend 36 hours (time in lecture x 3) outside of class studying and doing homework. The honors college students get that (that is, they spend at least as much time studying and doing homework as they are in class, and increase it as needed, compared to many students spending a few hours at most on all classes), but unless it is a separate school, or at least more than half honors classes (more like 10% where I teach are honors classes for honors students), it’s not near a top flight university experience.</p>
<p>As for FA - we make around $150K together, and our EFC is around $30K, <em>regardless</em> of where my son goes to college. Other than where I teach, or if he gets a decent athletic scholarship, we are paying $30K per year. I don’t care if Harvard is around $60K and UMDCP is around $43K for non-residents - I am still paying $30K per year!!!</p>
<p>Things like spreading out the payments over the entire year will matter to us. Interest-free, all the better. I am not going to pay the difference between Harvard and UMDCP if my son gets into both, so why wouldn’t we rather go into hock for Harvard than UMDCP?</p>
<p>People attend top colleges for lots of different reasons. </p>
<p>Other than cost…and, yes, that’s a big except…for people who have to pay sticker price or close to it… why not attend a top school if you can get into it? The number of people who get into top colleges and choose not to attend for non-financial reasons is relatively small–Harvard, after all, has a yield of about 80% and a lot of those who turn it down choose other elites, e.g., MIT. But yes, there are a few.</p>
<p>In some cases, it’s because the student thinks he’d rather be the “big fish in the small pond.” In other cases, it’s because a working class kid thinks he won’t fit in socially at a top college. (Personally, I think $ has more social impact at many state flagships. ) Some kids don’t want to attend Ivies because they want better spectator sports–but there’s always Stanford, Duke,etc. A few kids turn down Ivies because they want to play sports. I’ve known kids who’ve attended LACs because they could play basketball,. run track, etc., while they weren’t good enough to play in the Ivies, but they went to elite LACs. There are probably a few kids who want to play pro sports and so attend universities with more competitive teams than the Ivies.</p>
<p>But many of the people who complain about the “elitism” of the Ivies and other top schools are people who can’t get in. I’m not saying that’s true of all of them, but it is true of many. Oh, they’ll tell you they had the “stats,” but they didn’t try. Most of them ONLY had the stats. Plus, many of the people who complain about the elitist mentality of kids at top colleges are people who don’t know a heck of a lot of people who attend/have attended top colleges.</p>
<p>Statements like this just aren’t true:</p>
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<p>Some elite schools don’t have interviews. Stanford is an example. I don’t know if it still does it, but it used to “flag” the applications of any of the top 200 scorers junior year on the AIME and unless one of them had committed a felony, they were just about guaranteed admission. All 10 of the kids from the NYC math team who applied to Harvard my kid’s senior year got in. Not all of them had scintillating personalities. </p>
<p>I went to an Ivy a long time ago. Only a very small group of people cared about much $ your family had and most of them spent almost every weekend off campus–mostly in New York–doing things the rest of us had very little interest in. Since they weren’t around all that much on weekends, they really had very little impact on the lives of the rest of us. My kid attended a different Ivy. Kid’s friends didn’t care about $ either. IMO, if you were a working class kid attending Yale while Barbara Bush was there, you had much higher odds of meeting her than a working class kid attending UTexas-A had of meeting her twin sister who belonged to one of its most exclusive–and expensive–sororities. </p>
<p>I’m not denying that SOME working class kids feel “out of it” at elite schools, but most of them gradually become more comfortable and realize that the vast majority of their wealthier classmates assume that they must be really special to have gotten in without the SAT prep, the private music and sports lessons, etc. </p>
<p>IMO, the best reason to attend a top school is the experience you’ll have while you’re attending it. The resources are mind-boggling. </p>
<p>“I think it is hubris to say that it is not ego. I am not saying that the ONLY reason is ego. I am saying it a big reason. You can see it in the defensive nature when you point out the poor cost-benefit of such schools.”</p>
<p>But this is where you aren’t understanding that for some of us, it isn’t ABOUT cost-benefit. It’s about a particular experience. You’re trying to measure it in dollars / cents – will the kid at the elite school get a job that pays $X more than if he had gone to the state flagship and therefore it was “worth it.” For some of us, that just isn’t the kind of factor that comes into play.</p>
<p>Here’s an analogy. My H and I scrimped and saved and ate rice and beans and all the rest because we wanted to spend several weeks in Europe once he had completed his residency. This was a HUGE deal to us, experience-wise. Whatever we spent, it was worth every penny. Now, it’s not like we came home and were suddenly more valuable to our employers or anything. The trip didn’t “pay out” monetarily versus if we’d just gone to the shore – but it paid out in an experience that we valued very highly. Others don’t value that experience and that’s fine. But for those of us who do believe there is a certain experience at an elite school that is less easily replicated elsewhere, we think it’s worth it.</p>
<p>And I’m not talking about the pretentiousness and utter nonsense of believing that this experience could only be had at Harvard but not at Vanderbilt or Tufts, so don’t even go there. This experience can be had a lot of places – as I think Hunt is wont to say, there are about 50 schools in the top 20. But it can’t be had everywhere.</p>
<p>And sometimes you don’t always get what you want, but if you can, why not?
My kids are both in top 20 schools - and their lists were, roughly speaking, in the top 40’s - they were not “Ivy or bust” at all. Does that make them ego-driven? Would it matter that both of them had second choices - that we and they would have been happy with - that were probably 20 or so points below their first choices on USNWR?</p>
<p>"You can see it in the over-use of the names and pointing out where the kid goes to school. (including the school name in your online handle?). "</p>
<p>I think in my neighborhood of maybe 200 or so houses, there are probably 3 houses other than mine in which anyone knows where my kids go to school.
And I think you also don’t understand that prestige does not equal “known by the common man.” My daughter’s college in particular is very prestigious. It’s also a name that elicits a shrug and a huh? from probably 98% of people. That doesn’t stop it from being prestigious, because it’s prestigious among the cognoscenti, not the masses. </p>
<p>I know a guy who loves BMW cars. He has several, and has had others. He belongs to a BMW club; he took a trip to visit the factory. Aside from liking those cars, he’s a very down-to-earth guy. While there may be people who buy BMWs as a status symbol, that’s not him. He just likes them a lot.</p>
<p>I guess I’m claiming that many of us are like him, with respect to our Ivy or similar alma maters. We just liked them a lot, had a great experience there, and want our kids to have the same experience. If there are people who want to go there or send their kids there for other reasons, that’s their look-out.</p>
<p>@Bay:</p>
<p>I went to an elite private and hung out/worked with a ton of Cal grads when I lived in the Bay Area (and I have family who went there as well). Also, my HS sends a decent number of kids to elite privates and a top department of a public.</p>
<p>I think it’s fallacious to make the assumption that you did without actually meeting both types of folks. I certainly do agree that the elite privates (or at least HYPS) do have a higher percentage of kids with unique accomplishments (that those schools value) during HS. Still, that’s high school. I put in that in because the first startup I was at included a bunch of Cal grads, grads from MIT/Stanford/Chicago, and a guy who went to a Cal State. That guy went to a Cal State because he spent HS playing ball and chasing tail. However, by the time I met him, you could already tell that he was bright, creative, and his mind was always churning. By now, he’s done better than all of us. The lesson I take from that is that it doesn’t matter much if you work hard to improve yourself in an area that schools/parents/teachers highly value, so long as you are bright and work hard to improve yourself in something (in his case, it was balling and bedding members of the opposite sex; and given his height, he did have to work hard at that). If you have that innate drive (as well as smarts), you will do well in life once you focus on the important stuff.</p>
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<p>Well, one plus of periodic repetition is that it enables one to update the mental list of posters who can be basically written off due to their intellectual dishonesty and lousy attitude. I’ve added at least one from this thread already.</p>
<p><a href=“including%20the%20school%20name%20in%20your%20online%20handle?”>quote</a>
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<p>Oh, you mean like MiamiDAP? </p>
<p>Right.</p>
<p>@Bay:</p>
<p>Also, HYPS starts getting more expensive around $170K (lower if you have a good amount of savings).</p>
<p>20 years ago (when tuition was much much lower and UCs were much cheaper), the crossover point was well below 100K. $80K was a decent salary even in CA 20 years ago, but nobody would consider a family making that to be well-off.</p>
<p><a href=“Admissions game getting riskier - Yale Daily News”>http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2010/04/05/admissions-game-getting-riskier/</a></p>
<p>Someone posted this chart in a response to Yale Daily news story. I am not so sure someone who got in 20 years ago to a specific school can do so now based on 19% vs 7.0% at Yale. </p>
<p>1990 1994 11,922 2,354 19.7% 1,366 58.0% (11.5% legacies)
1991 1995 10,794 2,372 22.0% 1,290 54.4% * legacy rate drops to 11.2%
1992 1996 11,054 2,455 22.2% 1,326 54.0% (10% legacies)
1993 1997 10,705 2,453 22.9% 1,317 53.7% (9% legacies)
1994 1998 12,991 2,451 18.9% 1,308 53.4% (8.6% legacies) (556/432 EA)
1995 1999 12,620 2,521 20.0% 1,364 54.1% (10% legacies)
1996 2000 12,952 2,371 18.3% 1,409 59.4% * (ED) (413 + 70) (9.2% legacies)
1997 2001 12,046 2,144 17.8% 1,307 61.0% (461 + 58) (10.5% legacies)
1998 2002 11,947 2,100 17.6% 1,299 61.9%<br>
1999 2003 13,270 2,135 16.1% 1,371 64.2%
2000 2004 12,887 2,084 16.2% 1,352 64.9%
2001 2005 14,809 2,038 13.8% 1,296 63.6%
2002 2006 15,466 2,009 13.0% 1,300 64.7%
2003 2007 17,735 2,014 11.4% 1,353 67.2%
2004 2008 19,682 1,958 9.9% 1,308 66.8% * (SCEA) (674 + 249)
2005 2009 19,451 1,880 9.7% 1,309 70.0%
2006 2010 21,101 1,878 8.9% 1,315 70.1%
2007 2011 19,323 1,911 9.9% 1,320 69.1%
2008 2012 22,817 1,952 8.6% 1,320 67.6%
2009 2013 26,003 1,958 7.5% 1,307 66.8%</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is claiming that, Texas. Nor, Purpletitan, is anyone claiming that there aren’t a lot of bright interesting people who don’t attend top colleges.</p>
<p>However, the idea that the folks in the flagship honors program somehow have smaller egos than the folks at HYPS is one that I, at least, find silly. I assure you that there are many people in those programs who applied to elite colleges and didn’t get it or chose not to go for finaid reasons (though I think that’s a much smaller # than most people think.) or think that if they go to state U they’ll be a “star” and thus have a better chance of getting into a top med or law school. </p>
<p>@pizzagirl I guess by definition that does not apply to you. I am sure that no poster on this forum has ego factor into their college choices, but we all know people who live to brag. They want their kids to go to ‘name’ schools, elite or no, because they want to tell people about it. Every human has ego. I think it is funny to see how indignant people get when you point out a fact of human existence. (may has well have said people ‘eat’)</p>
<p>While I appreciate saving your money for the experience, that does not apply in my thinking when you are spending $200K+ for the experience. I guess it depends on your income level, but I could eat beans for my entire existence and not pay for that type of school. Every college is an experience and I think people mistakenly think that their college experience was so unique that it could not be enjoyed at another school. I think it is a lot like anything where you can only do one thing or another. There is really no way to compare what really would have happened had you made another choice. Part of our built in defense mechanism is to justify our own decisions.</p>
<p>You have quite a jaded view of the world, Torveaux. I have known people who seemed to be bragging about one thing or another, but I don’t know any people who “live to brag.”</p>
<p>Maybe the problem is that you interpret information as a brag because you are jealous or insecure. If I were to tell you that I am so proud of my child for working hard to get into University of Colorado, would you tell others I am bragging? Or is it only if I say, Harvard or Yale or Stanford rather than U of Colorado that you will see my statement as a brag? </p>
<p>@jonri,</p>
<p>I make no claim about egos (though the 2 folks I’ve worked with who have stuck in my mind as being the most stuckup snobs went to Princeton and Stanford, respectively).</p>
<p>Also, someone <em>did</em> claim that Cal had a higher proportion of uninteresting people than elite privates. Higher up in this thread, in fact.</p>
<p>Finally, I love the “(though I think that’s a much smaller number than most people think)” part. Obviously disprovable, but it shows your biases clearly. I remember a good number of kids from my HS who went to the state flagship because fin aid was not good enough to allow them to attend their dream school, and a good number of the Cal kids I knew didn’t even apply to privates because their parents said it did not make sense financially. What crowd do you hang out with, @jonri? It’s pretty obvious that you don’t go to the “fin aid” forum on CC much.</p>
<p>Torveaux, I know nothing about your own lifestyle or finances so I am not being critical. But I know many families who have made conscious choices along the way about careers, lifestyle, etc. which may have had wonderful consequences for some aspects of their lives, but have definitely reduced their ability to fund a college education.</p>
<p>I don’t criticize my extended cousins and other family members who chose to become stay at home mom’s after their first child was born. And there is no question that their kids benefited greatly from having a parent available full time. But they don’t feel the same reticence when it comes to criticizing MY choices- limited maternity leave, traveling for my job, a major relocation for a fantastic professional opportunity. Yes, it required trade-offs for my kids and for my family life. No, I was not the mom with the home-baked gluten free sugar free treats for the school bake fair.</p>
<p>But a second professional income did mean that when college came rolling around, my kids had greater choices than many members of our family. That’s life- filled with trade-offs. Not just the second income. A generous life insurance policy which I could borrow against if I needed to for college. 401K with a generous match from an employer. A scholarship competition for children of employees. Etc.</p>
<p>If I’d been a single parent working a cash register at Walmart, I’d guess I’d be resenting someone in my position as well. But I pay taxes, I give generously to charity, I volunteer for organizations in my community, I try to “give back” by mentoring women who have not had the kind of luck and opportunity and good health that I’ve had.</p>
<p>So I should apologize that we didn’t make my kids attend the local, non-flagship State U (formerly a teacher’s college with a limited number of majors) and commute… just so that someone else shouldn’t feel bad about their more limited choices? I should have “taken” a publicly funded seat at our State Flagship for my kid that should have gone to someone else who couldn’t afford a private U?</p>
<p>I’m not sure why this makes me an elitist. The choice I made to stay in the work force after my kids were born have made a lot of things possible. A close friend from college left a six figure income to raise her kids and is now seething with resentment that she’s choosing between teaching yoga for $50 a day at the local Y or becoming a blogger/reporter for a website which pays some pittance per story. It’s too bad that her industry didn’t stand still for 18 years waiting for her return (her industry is gone). It’s too bad that technology pretty much wiped out the functional skills she had, and yes, it’s too bad that being class mom and running the Boy Scout’s annual tag sale are not valued in the corporate world.</p>
<p>But really- I should send my kid to a commuter college so she doesn’t feel bad about her life choices???</p>
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<p>I didn’t make any assumptions. The author was the one who found students at Cal to be uninteresting, not me. I was merely providing an analysis of why, if it is true, that it could be true (i.e., stats-only driven admissions). </p>
<p>Personally, I think people who can conclude that most of the students at a 25,000-person college campus are uninteresting are probably superficial people who make little effort to know others, and are probably pretty dull themselves.</p>