<p>Nope--I'm sure it does. But your question was "what matters?" and my answer is "not that."</p>
<p>I'm happy now. So going to an IVY does give social standing. You can say it doesn't matter, but people who go to IVY League schools have social standing and they get to make the choice, does it matter in their lives or not? People who don't go to elite schools don't get to make that choice. </p>
<p>People don't want to give up possibilities and that is one reason why they want to go to the elite schools. They will have choices others won't have. They may not choose to use them, but they will have choices. Doors won't be shut.</p>
<p>Somtimes, having choices is more important than the choice itself.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So going to an IVY does give social standing. You can say it doesn't matter, but people who go to IVY League schools have social standing and they get to make the choice, does it matter in their lives or not?People who don't go to elite schools don't get to make that choice.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What nonsense! Care to pass that one by Warren Buffett or the billionnaires without an Ivy degree? Poor little rich guys one and all, they did not go to an Ivy. I'd feel their pain, except that they sure did make the choices that led to folks with Ivy degrees being laid off several times in their working lives.</p>
<p>Warren Buffett has an IVY League Degree.</p>
<p>He attended the University of Nebraska (transferring there from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania) and took a Master's degree in economics at Columbia Business School, studying under Benjamin Graham, alongside other budding value investors like Walter Schloss and Irving Kahn.</p>
<p>(From Wikipedia)</p>
<p>He obviously found Nebraska more worthwhile than Wharton! As for Columbia Business School, it seems it's the profs who were important to him, not the name on the degree. </p>
<p>I'm with Daderoo. I'm outta here. This is a game for both snobs and inverted snobs, neither of which are to my liking.</p>
<p>Buffett had multiple business interests by his senior year in high school. He was a prodigy. Any advantage he gained at Columbia business school was due to the mentorship he received there, not social connections (his father was a congressman and stockbroker, anyway--he was already connected).</p>
<p>Dstark--it's obvious to me that you just want to play semantic games to advance your agenda. </p>
<p>You asked-- what matters? but you don't really care what I or anyone else think.</p>
<p>You know what I think is the most thing to learn, wherever you go to school?</p>
<p>To have an open mind.</p>
<p>Garland, my agenda is that people, if they have to be judged, are judged on their character.</p>
<p>As for this thread, I'm just expressing my social observations. Anyone who wants to can express his or hers. I find it interesting to read about other people's observations whether they are similar to mine or not.</p>
<p>I do like to see if other people are seeing things the way I am.</p>
<p>But no, I didn't expect to change my mind. I don't expect anyone to change their mind.</p>
<p>I don't think that having an open mind necessarily means changing your mind. I think it often means more along the lines of hearing what other people say, and thinking that, just maybe, they are being sincere (rather than judging their characters based on your on preconceived notions.)</p>
<p>You started this thread with a series of questions. But you have not shown much interest in anyone's answers.</p>
<p>"And I'm pretty sure, Mini, we're not in the top five percent of American families, and we are paying full fare, which is fine."</p>
<p>I have no idea what your income is, and have no need to know. I do know that the 95% percentile in family income in 2004 was $160,500, and that this is the point, for an "average" family of four, need-based aid begins to cut out all together at 100%-of-need schools. Since roughly half the student bodies at these schools receive no needbased aid, you can do the math. The average no-need family would be well above that figure, probably higher at Harvard and lower at Swarthmore, but it gives a pretty good picture.</p>
<p>But, and here's where I agree: If there are 75,000 new enrollees at the 20 "top" prestige unis and lacs each year (I think that number is probably a little high), roughly 38,000 of those admits go to top 5%ers. If every single one of those places went to a poor or middle class family, it would hardly make a dent in the educational situation in this country. In other words, wipe the Harvards and College #1s off the map, and the big issues still remain.</p>
<p>As they do in my town. They AREN'T on the map. We send virtually no one except an occasional athlete to HYPS. They have no networking potential in my town (the state capital) because they have no alums to speak of here - none of them ever return. Forget the top 20 Lacs or the Browns or Dartmouths of the world - not 2 in a 100 have ever heard of them (including mine, my wife's, and my d.s). In short, they are absolutely and totally irrelevant - and it doesn't matter whether they are doctors, lawyers, or business executives. (As I said, if you want networking help here, go to BYU or, perhaps, WSU - UW doesn't help, because it is so common.) So except for some very minor brain drain (my d. included), the prestige schools are completely irrelevant to our lives, except for an occasional magazine article. You will get NO social standing from Columbia around here: people might ask whether it was weird to live in NYC. (Hey, I'm an Oxford grad, and get zilch out of it in social standing; my UChicago degree, however, helps a little, as we have lots of social workers.)</p>
<p>But the big issues around higher education remain the same: access, quality, cost, rationing. Those are the tough ones to tackle.</p>
<p>"Mini, I'm beginning to wonder whether lust for those "prestige institutions" is driving some deplorable parenting practices."</p>
<p>You bet, though it is a subset of a subset of a subset. But (in true Veblen "Theory of the Leisure Class" fashion) they drive a public consciousness frenzy, and make for good magazine copy.</p>
<p>Garland, Well then maybe, I did a bad job in communicating.</p>
<p>I am amazed how adamant people are that social class doesn't have any meaning to them. </p>
<p>I'm not judging anybody's character on this thread. I don't know anybody's character. I am questioning the thinking that it doesn't matter.</p>
<p>It DOES matter. Big time. If you were to poll multimillionaires, you'd quickly see how fast they come to the defense of their "class" interests (you can think of it as those of their kids.) The "classless" society is the bill of goods sold to the rest of us peons.</p>
<p>Can someone please define social class for me as being discussed in this thread? Do we just mean money? In this discussion, can someone be assumed to be in a high social class if they don't have much money? Please advise.</p>
<p>Alumother, what is your definition?</p>
<p>I tend to agree with mini, most care less where one went to school. Choosing a school for the name and not the educational experience is not a great idea.</p>
<p>But there is one other minor point in this have and have not discussion. One can have a greater than $160,000 income and still not have a great deal of discretionary income, live paycheck to paycheck, and still mostly have friends who make much less. Many in this category consider themselves mostly middle class, in fact and in outlook, kids go to public school, and live in mixed income neighborhoods where the cost of buying a home is often quite high. Though they can't afford to send their kids to college outright, they can with sacrifice, make loan payments, often for many years. They consider themselves the middle class folks who are sending their kids to elite colleges, often alongside the neighbor who makes less but gets financial aid, who shares a similar "relative" burden. These "higher" income folks don't necessarily particularly feel or act that way, referring to them as elite may not be entirely accurate.</p>
<p>Mini: Look, I have no interest in the name meaning anything, so that's fine with me! (And our income, not that you asked, was just over half that last year, and will be much, much less this year.)</p>
<p>Dstark: I guess maybe we're not most people, but I honestly don't understand why social standing would be important. I guess maybe I don't know what it is. I know that we live in a middle to lower middle class neighborhood and really, really like our neighbors--police, teachers, plumbers, clerks, day laborers, etc. etc. I know that when I was disabled in a car accident ten years ago, the neighborhood set up a schedule to bring dinner to our house every night for months. Why would I want to live in a different kind of place than that? I know that one of the smartest men I know is a high school dropout who works his family farm and drives a truck to make ends meet (and plays in a wonderful bluegrass band). I know that my kids went to a local public high school which many CC'ers would be aghast by, but where they made friends with kids who were joining unions, kids entering the army, kids going to com colleges, etc. I know that we don't need to integrate our schools because our neighborhoods are multi-multi cultural. I know that when my kids showed up in school in discount store clothes, no one cared. I know that when I picked them up in a 10 year old car, no one cared. Nor did they expect cars of their own; few kids here have them.</p>
<p>So what is it about "social class" that I'm supposed to want? I really don't know.</p>
<p>speaking of Olympia- whatcha think of the Green Party candidate for US Senate?
Now Gregoire attended UW and Gonzage, but Locke did attend Yale and Boston U.
But ya, they are pretty much local- Lowry went to WSU, even Rossi attended Seattle U, I didn't find where Gardner went, probably UW,Dixy Lee Ray went to Mills and Stanford , Spellman got his law degree from Georgetown.
Not sure why you are painting your town as being so provincial, and are there really that many Mormons in the capitol? My sister didn't even want to send her kids there, and she goes to temple several times a week not counting Sunday.</p>
<p>Read Veblen.</p>
<p>"Almost a century after its original publication, Thorstein Veblen's work is as fresh and relevant as ever. Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class is in the tradition of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, yet it provides a surprisingly contemporary look at American economics and society. Establishing such terms as "conspicuous consumption" and "pecuniary emulation," Veblen's most famous work has become an archetype not only of economic theory, but of historical and sociological thought as well. As sociologist Alan Wolfe writes in his Introduction, Veblen "skillfully . . . wrote a book that will be read so long as the rich are different from the rest of us; which, if the future is anything like the past, they always will be." </p>
<p>This was also a fun read:</p>
<p>"Not sure why you are painting your town as being so provincial, and are there really that many Mormons in the capitol?"</p>
<p>Why do you think provincial? BYU has a strong internationalist student body, and students from all 50 states. Very strong academics. Extraordinary networking, if you are LDS of course. There are several state agencies headed by LDS folks; the new head of DSHS comes from Utah (and Gregoire has been recruiting from there), and news travels. (And take away the LDS music people, and the local symphony and youth music scene collapses.)</p>
<p>I think it must depend on the setting-
I know I sound like I am name dropping, but the profs I know who have degrees from Ivies, never, ever bring that up, even the prof who flies to Sweden to consult with on the Noble short list, never brings it up ( I only know because a fellow prof- told me)
Some of the wealthiest people I know ( I assume they are because they are Weyerhausers) pretty much live and dress like they shop at value village, and while for instance my D old school has the Bezos and the Gates etc. everyone pretty much treats them like they were the Smiths and the Singhs, but "class" doesn't depend on who you talk to or how much money you make IMO.
Class is how you treat others.</p>