the truth about ivies and elite schools

[PurpleTitan]

<p>@Consolation: I’ll publish the alumni acheivement rankings I have soon. When you compare those rankings with USN, you’ll notice something.</p>

<p>But if you can’t wait, google “insidehighered usc engineering rankings rigging” and read the comments.</p>

[Bay]

<p>

Yet you still go around thinking that while the kids at Cal are uninteresting, the kids at the school your D go to are more interesting. In fact, you felt compelled to point that out.

</p>

<p>PurpleTitan,</p>

<p>While I think you write well, your reading skills are looking subpar. </p>

<p>I did not point out that Cal students are uninteresting. The author of the article being discussed did that! I don’t know whether they are uninteresting or not. But I do think its interesting that a Cal grad thinks his fellow students were uninteresting.</p>

<p>I did not say the kids at my D’s school are more interesting than Cal students, I said she never mentioned they were uninteresting. Knowing her as I do, my guess is that D doesn’t think her fellow students were uninteresting, because she is the type of person who is interested in just about everything. (She’s very good on trivia night)</p>

[Nrdsb4]

<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>That’s always been my philosophy.</p>

<p>There is no doubt the Ivies and other counterparts are great schools. They are filled with intelligent, ambitious, engaging, students, many of whom will go on to do great things.</p>

<p>My only BUT to that is this: If you cannot or do not wish to go to one of these schools, you are no less likely to go on to great things. You can blossom elsewhere, and with intelligence, drive, and ambition you can achieve whatever you want. But let’s not pretend these are not great schools.</p>

<p>There are those who believe that people who went to non Ivies must be lacking in some way. Fortunately, people like that are few and far between, at least in my neck of the woods.</p>

[Consolation]

<p>Interesting. </p>

<p>BTW, I recently discovered an interesting fact about the --if anything MORE bogus-- ranking of high schools. Apparently they count either IB participation OR AP participation, not both. So a school with more or less equal participation in both will be downgraded in favor of a school that pushes one or the other. Which is obviously ridiculous.</p>

[Youdon_tsay]

<p>This whole conversation of who is and isn’t “interesting” is so weird. Who’s to say who/what is interesting? Someone I find interesting may not be interesting to you and vice versa.</p>

<p>This reminds me of my former workplace, which bordered on obnoxious at times when a couple of particular roosters began crowing, engaging in an intellectual pissing match. One day, I’d had enough and asked a third co-worker a question: “When you win the U.S. Masters in golf, what piece of clothing are you awarded?” Now the woman who was asked was quite highly regarded for her keen mind. She had no idea. I told the other two arguing, “Does that make her dumb? Of course not. She’s just not well-versed in this area. Not everyone values the same things. Now be quiet so I can get some work done.” We all laughed about it. </p>

[Nrdsb4]

<p>As to networking, it can depend on where you plan to live and work. If you want to stay in Texas, your degree from Prestigious University no one here has ever heard of won’t necessarily do you much good in the networking department (though of course it has brought all kinds of other intangibles and a fab education). Texas A & M has a vast networking structure, as do several other publics/privates in Texas. If you want to work on Wall Street, your networking resources in New York may not be very strong with your UT Austin degree compared to HYP (though it will have brought you all kinds of other intangibles and a fab education ) and you will have to be more resourceful. I’m sure it’s similar in other areas.</p>

<p>As we always say, it just depends.</p>

[PurpleTitan]

<p>@Consolation: not sure that anyone cares about HS rankings (other than for bragging rights). That is, they aren’t picking a high school based on them. At least, I hope not. That would be sad.</p>

<p>The USN college rankings still influence where people apply and accept, though (which is sad in its own way) but is more dangerous (in that it encourages and rewards immoral behavior).</p>

<p>Makes me think that the only USN rankings of any validity are the ones based solely on surveys (which I believe are the grad departmental ones), which at least are not gameable (or are very hard to).</p>

[dietz199]

<p>And then there is this…<a href=“The American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - <a href='https://theamericanscholar.org/author/william-deresiewicz/'>William Deresiewicz</a>”>The American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - <a href='https://theamericanscholar.org/author/william-deresiewicz/'>William Deresiewicz</a>; </p>

<p>A view from someone on the inside…</p>

<p>

The second disadvantage, implicit in what I’ve been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth. Getting to an elite college, being at an elite college, and going on from an elite college—all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE. You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers. They come to signify not only your fate, but your identity; not only your identity, but your value. It’s been said that what those tests really measure is your ability to take tests, but even if they measure something real, it is only a small slice of the real. The problem begins when students are encouraged to forget this truth, when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense, when “better at X” becomes simply “better.”

</p>

<p>…</p>

<p>

The political implications don’t stop there. An elite education not only ushers you into the upper classes; it trains you for the life you will lead once you get there. I didn’t understand this until I began comparing my experience, and even more, my students’ experience, with the experience of a friend of mine who went to Cleveland State. There are due dates and attendance requirements at places like Yale, but no one takes them very seriously. Extensions are available for the asking; threats to deduct credit for missed classes are rarely, if ever, carried out. In other words, students at places like Yale get an endless string of second chances. Not so at places like Cleveland State. My friend once got a D in a class in which she’d been running an A because she was coming off a waitressing shift and had to hand in her term paper an hour late.

</p>

<p>We have no horse in this race. Somehow missed the whole Ivy rage.</p>

[Consolation]

<p>Is this the infamous article written by that idiot who claims he doesn’t know how to talk to his plumber?></p>

[dietz199]

<p>^^Well, I guess as a graduate of Columbia and subsequent professor at Yale…if he is an ‘idiot’ he’s proved his own points! :)) </p>

[DrGoogle]

<p>delete</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>You’re not new here, dietz. That article has been discussed a million times on CC, and the consensus is always that this guy is out of touch – just because he’s an elitist snob who can’t talk to his plumber doesn’t mean that elite schools teach one not to talk to the “common man.” </p>

<p>And this guy is not “on the inside,” any more than anyone else on this board who has attended an elite school. </p>

[shawbridge]

<p>I always find the “Ivies are not really special and you could do just as well attending your flagship in state university versus they are so so so so special that your kids will be doomed if they don’t go there (but mine are not because they are going)” threads to be somewhat silly.</p>

<p>Torveaux says, “The truly gifted will shine wherever they go in whatever they do.” Probably, although they might have fewer opportunities coming from the very good state school than they would otherwise (depending upon the field). </p>

<p>But there aren’t that many truly gifted. I have friends whose parents are very well-connected to HPYMS and their kids attend. The kids are pretty good and can manage the work and do well but are far from truly gifted. But, the mentors they’ve gotten have introduced them to remarkable opportunities. The good news is that the kids I’m thinking of mostly took are taking advantage of the opportunities. But, those kids can get a huge advantage by attending elites. I suspect that URMs, especially those from poor families, also get a huge advantage. An African American with a degree from Yale probably gets treated differently in the job market than an African American with a degree from Indiana University or Ohio State, even is said kid is not “truly gifted” but is strong enough to do decently at Yale. Just to be clear: I’m not criticizing the kids. Just saying that they get real benefits especially when they aren’t truly gifted.</p>

<p>The place to network more and not worry less about grades is probably a top-tier B-School. Stanford GSB does not even release grades to employers. Don’t know about HBS or Wharton. And, according to data in Poets and Quants (I think), top B-Schools admit a really disproportionate number of kids from the Ivies/Stanford.</p>

[Hunt]

<p>“I can have just as much fun at the county fair as at Disney World.”</p>

<p>Yes, but…</p>

<p>Also, don’t make me demolish that embittered ex-professor again. His name is too hard to type.</p>

[Pizzagirl]

<p>“I can have just as much fun at the county fair as at Disney World.”</p>

<p>So? So go to the county fair and enjoy yourself. What do you care if someone who likes Disneyworld better and can afford to go there wants to take his family to Disneyworld and prefers it over the county fair? It’s not a slam on YOU … is it? </p>

[dietz199]

<p>Oh dear…guess no one here is pre-ordering the upcoming book by He Who Shall Not Be Named</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Excellent-Sheep-Miseducation-American-Meaningful/dp/1476702713”>http://www.amazon.com/Excellent-Sheep-Miseducation-American-Meaningful/dp/1476702713&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[Exodius]

<p>Like you, I prefer to quote the “insiders” whose writings suit my agenda. Here’s another Yale professor:</p>

<p><a href=“David Brooks article”>http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Misc/Brooks-article.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

@David Brooks

At elite schools, students are able to project that level of comfort, confidence, and competence. I asked a science professor who had moved to Yale how big the difference was between students at Yale and at the other competitive colleges where he had worked. The students at Yale are not that much smarter, he said. He’s taught the same course at different schools, and the test results from school to school do not differ widely. But, he continued, most students at Yale, when they walk into a room, feel they can basically handle whatever situation they find there.</p>

<p>These students have been instilled with a basic faith in themselves. They are thus remarkably eager to try new things, to thrust themselves into unlikely situations, to travel the world in search of new activities. At Dartmouth and Princeton, too, every other student you meet has just come back from some service adventure in remotest China or Brazil. During my conversations with them, I would sometimes realize with a start that they were two decades younger than me. With their worldliness, their sophisticated senses of humor, their ability to at least fake knowledge of a wide variety of fields, they socialize just like any group of fortysomethings.</p>

<p>They are also incredibly entrepreneurial when it comes to student activities. I’ve long regarded Yale as the best school in America, on the basis of conversations with adult friends who went there. It seems to have the best combination of small classes, a curious intellectual atmosphere, and a fun social scene. (I went to the University of Chicago, which had the first two, but not the last.) But even I was blown away by the richness of student life at Yale. There are periodicals, singing groups, secret societies, theater groups, community service groups, religious groups, debating societies, intramural teams, and so on everywhere you turn. Students start these things themselves. They run them themselves (and many of these groups are really small businesses). They build them bigger and bigger. Even if the Yale faculty disappeared tomorrow, the school would still be a fantastic place for students because of these activities.

</p>

<p>…</p>

<p>

I’m not going to close with any grand summation about the moral and intellectual health of America’s student generation. What I will say is that today’s students are a lot of fun to be around. When I signed up to teach at Yale, I figured I’d try to meet some members of the Yale faculty while I was up there and taste the intellectual life. But then I started having lunches and dinners with groups of students (my interactions with students in class are off the record), and I found them so completely engaging I never got around to meeting these scholars. At Kenyon, an enormously appealing place, I found myself at the one campus bar, amidst students who actually talked philosophy over beers. Then I met some of the members of the Kenyon football team. The team, which has a grand total of 29 players, is among the worst in the country. This year they lost every game but one. They even lost to Oberlin, not exactly a football powerhouse. One opponent, I was told, started kicking field goals on second down to avoid running up the score with more touchdowns. And yet these Kenyon guys practiced as hard as any team, cared about winning as much as any set of players, and endured teasing that was painful to them. By 1 A.M., they were drunk and getting gooey about their friendships–hugging and slobbering over each other. I’m sure they are learning important things from their professors, but even if they aren’t, they are getting their money’s worth out of their college experience.

</p>

<p>Come, now, @dietz199‌, we’ve no use for sentimentality! Our professors are equally right (or equally wrong). Their points are far from mutually exclusive, but their tones are at variance. Whereas Deresiewicz laments the indoctrination of the elites, Brooks sees their opportunities for engagement and entrepreneurship. Both professors have formidable stocks of academic cant, baseless generalities, and lovely straw men, but I like to believe that Brooks is more moderate on those fronts. As Montaigne, Thomas Browne, and the Classical skeptics might have said, we have reached a state of aporia, which we should follow up with epokhē.</p>

<p>But we’re better off not going to college at all as far as the education goes: the indoctrination your pet professor decries is a matter of degree and not of kind. </p>

<p>I hope that someone catches the irony in this post.</p>

[Hunt]

<p>

As a professor at Yale, Bill Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply.

Yeah, he saw that he didn’t get tenure, and he couldn’t get another teaching gig. But he has to make a living somehow, so best wishes to him in selling his book.</p>

<p>And Pizzagirl–that’s the point I was making, attempting to use sarcasm.</p>

[dietz199]

<p>Exodius: As I said from the beginning…we have no horse in this race. Frankly, never heard of this prof before reading a small article on his upcoming book. I’ve since learned that the Ivy interested have hacked this topic to bits…so…please carry on with the next POI.</p>

[Bay]

<p>My D graduated from Yale, and had a very nice conversation with her plumber the other day. </p>

<p>There, does that put the argument to bed?</p>