<p>Over a five year period, here’s where the top two officers on my (pretty prestigious) law review went to college (they all went to the same top law school, obviously, and were successful there): Harvard x 2, Yale x 2, City College of New York, University of Minnesota - TC, University of Texas - Austin, University of Arizona, Princeton, Stanford. The person who graduated #1 in my law school class had gone to college at the University of Missouri. Among the really great (and really successful) lawyers I know are one who went to Hope College (and later clerked for the Supreme Court), one who went to Albright College, one who went to the University of New Hampshire (and he has one of the most glamorous jobs in the world), and one who went to, yes, the University of Utah (OK, not Utah State), both for college and for law school. And he didn’t stay in Utah, either.</p>
<p>I am a big fan of fancy, prestigious colleges. They are wonderful, if you can afford them. But public flagship universities all over the country offer amazing quality and scope of educational opportunity. Harvard may be the greatest university in the world, because it offers literally millions of educational and social opportunities, but no undergraduate student can really take advantage of more than four or five of them. A third-tier public flagship may “only” offer hundreds of thousands of opportunities, but a few dozen of those may surpass anything Harvard has, and a single student is still only going to be able to do four or five. A smart, well-prepared, ambitious, and hard-working student can turn any public flagship into his or her personal Harvard.</p>
<p>the only thing sillier than 17 year olds and 18 year olds laughing at somebody for going to college is worrying about 17 year olds or 18 year olds laughing about somebody going to college.</p>
<p>It’s the height of absurdity and thinking like this can only lead to future misery for the participants. Life is long. Everybody is going to have some disappointments and some success. Of the kids I know who graduated from college in the last couple of years, all are doing well, either in graduate programs or at work. Some went to top schools and some, for whatever reason, did not. ALL of them, with the exception of two, are in the incredibly fortunate position of doing something they really want to be doing. </p>
<p>The two who are not are a bit lost. Bright, bright, bright top achievers at the end of the structured road and can’t find a place “worthy” of them. It’s sad to see.</p>
<p>That’s the long version.</p>
<p>The short version, or the one my kids would give you is, “Oh, get over yourself already.”</p>
<p>Pitt is a fabulous place. It has a great honors college, a really nice location, a fun city. If you are interested in medicine or life sciences, it is one of the premier research institutions in the country, and it has some great programs in the arts, too. </p>
<p>It’s not hard to get accepted there if you are a decent student. So what? That means nothing about whether it is a good place to go to college. Maybe you won’t choose to go there, but the only people who would laugh at you for applying or getting accepted there are really ignorant people. </p>
<p>One of my kids applied and was accepted there, and quite a number of my kids’ friends went to college there. No one laughed. A couple turned down Penn for a much better financial deal at Pitt, and several were bona fide Ivy candidates that just missed the cut somehow. No one thought that made them any less smart than they were the day before the decisions came out. Pitt is a big college, and it has lots of students who were not world-beaters in high school, but it has plenty of students who were (and some very sweet merit scholarships for them). And of course plenty of students who are world-beaters in the real world.</p>
<p>@psych_, awesome story. I counting on being able to do well with an education from a 2nd tier school - a state uni with a full ride scholarship I can get that has a solid program that I’m interested in. I figure if I study hard and keep a good GPA, get club and work experience, I’ll be okay whether I decide to go on to grad school or look for a job directly after my bachelors. </p>
<p>My group of best friends:
Actuary for giant consulting company…from SUNY Albany
Very successful insurance agent…from Bowling Green
Senior VP of national retail chain…from SUNY Albany
Network engineering consultant…from RIT
Head of HR for major hospital…from Ithaca College
Head actuary for pro sports league…from Cooper Union
Senior VP of worldwide insurance company…from SUNY Binghamton
VP of Tax for Fortune 500 company…from Bryant College</p>
<p>All of us have six figure incomes, and have managed to shake off being laughed at for the joke schools we attended.</p>
<p>Just as one anecdote, the actuary got into Wharton but couldn’t afford it. She got the exact same job out of Albany as she would have gotten out of Wharton–actuarial student program for major insurer, the coveted starting gig for every actuary. So who did that employer hire? The candidate from Albany. Her starting salary was more than she paid for her entire college. Oh, and that tax guy from Bryant? My college roommate and fraternity brother. Your jaw would drop if I list where we all started and what we’re doing now. All from a college that’s such a joke that it doesn’t even have its own board on CC. </p>
<p>“When I called “University of Alabama” a “joke” school, I was just echoing what other people I know say about it. Nobody would be impressed if you go there.”</p>
<p>The opinions of others in your high school are meaningless. They are high school kids. They know nothing of life. </p>
<h1>224 I note zero scientists, engineers (possibly one), physicians, or college professors in the list. Should I be worried? I actually don’t think of the schools that you listed as joke schools, though admit I haven’t heard of a couple.</h1>
<p>I figured that #224 was a business major or similar, in a business or similar field, and so has friends in largely business-type fields, hence the sample. Just an assumption, could be wrong.</p>
<p>Looking at the faculty of a highly ranked department, it is true that the highest profile schools in the major are very well represented. But some faculty earned degrees from lower profile schools:</p>
<p>This year there is a Rhodes Scholar from U. of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. Any school can be terrific if the student is terrific. If one wants to be a petroleum engineer, South Dakota School of Mines might be better than Dartmouth or Yale or Princeton.</p>
<p>If everyone went to Harvard, would it be special anymore?</p>
<p>I think it is a good idea to look at recent graduate school admissions in departments of interest. Many state school honors colleges have an entire advising office that helps students prepare for graduate school admissions and fellowships. Many are also happy to provide a list of employers who have hired recent graduates.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus I think I left a smiley off my last posting. All of those faculty members you listed have degrees from solid research universities. These are not directional states or tiny unheard of LACs. I don’t really think of these as “lesser schools.” I guess we all have our own definitions. Moreover, some of what you call lesser actually have the top programs in particular fields at the graduate level, e.g. U Mass Amherst in polymer chemistry, UC Santa Cruz in bioinformatics, etc. (You consider UC Davis is a lesser school? You truly are a UCB alumnus! ). </p>
<p>^^I had the same reaction as LBowie. Those aren’t “lesser schools”. One has to be very very careful on the doctorate level. What may seem to others (uninformed folks) as non-name schools are in fact very good programs within solid research universities. The “lineage” or “ancestry” of faculty (who was their advisor; who was that person’s advisor; and so on) is probably more important.</p>
<p>Yes I was a finance major, and that list is my group of best friends. There is one other in the group with an engineering degree (from Albany), though he’s not a practicing engineer. He owns a high end A/V company (home theater, etc.). He makes more than his wife, a lawyer who attended three Ivies. I am not close friends with any scientists, physicians, or professors, though I do have some among my casual friends. Come to think of it, that group also came from joke schools. My cousin is a renowned gastroenterologist, undergrad at Albany. Two family friends from my youth are plastic surgeons, one undergrad at Albany, the other at Union College (whose brother also has engineering degree from Union and is now a patent attorney). Another cousin is a philosophy professor, undergrad at Rowan U. Point was, my circle of highly successful friends all went to joke schools.</p>
<p>I agree that they are not “lesser schools” and are perfectly fine schools to start off one’s post-secondary education (at the bachelor’s degree level) or continue at (at the PhD level). Indeed, my point was that attending a school other than the highest profile schools need not hold one back (in this example, becoming faculty at a high profile school in the major).</p>
<p>However, I don’t think either of you or I is representative of the large number of posters who come to these forums who do think that most of those schools are “lesser schools”.</p>
<p>“As a parent, it is there duty to provide resources so that their children can succeed to the best of their abilities.”
Parent’s duty is provide the safe environment that does not endanger a child’s life. This is as basic as this, absolutely nothing else, zilch, zero. Even this is sometime debatable as parent may refuse some medical treatment of the child for the religious beliefs / personal vallue system. Then what? Courts may or may not overrule, it depending, even docs admit that sometime it is not in thier hands to make somebody better.<br>
When one is a parent, the person will determine what is his/her/family duty. This determination made by the govenment (along of many other similar regulations) will eventually leave to a dictatorship, it is inevitable ans has proven by many historical events, I guess, godd, bad or whatever, if one does not want to learn history, even admirably dedicated parents cannot make him/her. And the latest fact is very very sad, especially that history is doing nothing but repeats itself over and over and over…</p>
<p>Well if you parents do not care enough about your children to provide them with an elite education, then that is no business of mine. I am not saying that people can’t do well at lesser tier schools. I am saying that prestigious schools give you a foot-in-the-door and allows you to establish connections with other people of great ability. I would rather be friends with a future CEO at Harvard than a future call center guy at Bama. Who would benefit me more in the long run?</p>
). </p>