<p>Someone who has a degree from MIT and is sitting at home doing nothing is a wasted $250K investment. I assume MIT admitted him because of his high intelligence, ECs, great LOR from his teachers, involvement with the community. He was chosen out of thousands of applicants because they thought if they gave him a better opportunity, put him in a more advantageous environment, it would give him a chance to better himself and move ahead. A bit of social justice.</p>
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Of course, but that’s all we have to go on. If the kid were to come on here to say he has been pounding the pavement, he is not been given the opportunity because he is an URM, or he has been sick…, we would be having a different discussion. We are always having our discussion based on the information that’s give, what else do we have?</p>
<p>“But when you compare Environmental law to litigation, estate planning, real estate, corporate and others Environmental Law shows the most potential.”</p>
<p>I wish him, and all the environmental lawyers currently pounding the pavement in Washington, DC looking for work (and who can’t even get hired as paralegals), well. </p>
<p>And, no, I don’t assume there are that many retail jobs out there.</p>
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<p>Apparently not very good ones in terms of jobs, compared to other majors. For 2010, 12 MIT graduates with bachelor’s degrees in biology took jobs with average pay of $45,583 per year. In 2009, only 3 had jobs, but with higher average pay of $63,667. In 2008, 8 had jobs with average pay of $53,688.</p>
<p>[Graduating</a> Student Survey - MIT Careers Office](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation.html]Graduating”>http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation.html)</p>
<p>Still, that is not a reason to be so unmotivated; it does not sound like he tried to find a job and couldn’t and became a discouraged worker. However, he obviously was motivated enough in school to do well enough to graduate. Perhaps there is a medical problem like depression or something going on?</p>
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<p>Why is this an issue here and in American discussions on higher-ed and yet, crickets on legacy/developmental admissions? </p>
<p>The latter IMHO has arguably greater moral and ethical issues if one wants to maintain college admissions is still a meritocracy of some kind as it isn’t too different IMO from effectively purchasing your way into admissions.</p>
<p>The quote you took from my post is about job search, not about college admission. But since you want to discussion college admission…
cobrat - why do you think those top tier schools admit students from disadvantaged background? Hoping they would sit on their butt after they graduated? Kids who purchased their way into admissions, could afford to do that. I know I couldn’t afford it.</p>
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<p>I think so too. It isn’t just about judgments of those that go to top colleges, but about bashing anyone that seems to be a tall flower. Spouse and I have heard such kinds of things from our relatives (our families didn’t go to college and we are professors). Maybe they think we think we’re ‘all that’ so they need to bring us down a notch, or comfortably make snipes to ease their own discomfort. Stuff like about those ‘booksmart’ people who lack common sense, or wouldn’t know their way out of a wet paper bag. I guess it makes them feel better, brings a sense of justice to their world, or evens things out in their mind.</p>
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<p>A mix of redressing past systemic discrimination against URMs in US history and to provide a more seemingly cosmopolitan social experience for all students. The latter is a reason why gender balancing is also so important that many liberal arts-centered universities/LACs have lowered admissions standards for male applicants while engineering/tech schools do the same for female applicants.</p>
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<p>The ironic part was that the aunt in question herself had a university education from National Taiwan U along with another older aunt in an era when gaining admission to any university in the ROC is magnitudes tougher than US elite college admissions. However, she was way out of her academic element compared to the other aunt and many of their mutual friends and as a result…ended up resenting those who are “booksmart”. </p>
<p>It also made it easier to adopt the latent resentment for anyone who is an intellectual/values an education for anything beyond social/vocational advancement common among some subsets of the American population.</p>
<p>“For 2010, 12 MIT graduates with bachelor’s degrees in biology took jobs with average pay of $45,583 per year.”</p>
<p>That’s those who got jobs at all. And how long did it take for them to get those jobs?</p>
<p>Don’t make assumptions: the kid may turn out just fine. He may be fine now. Three months isn’t a long time, and it’s not like the employment world is at anyone’s doorstep these days. (And anyone look at the unemployment rate for new minority college graduates these days? Try 60% and up and you won’t be far off.)</p>
<p>So more than likely the kid bombed the MCAT and figured out that his degree is only a stepping stone, and by itself is pretty worthless. Thats cool, let him take a break and figure out what he wants to do in grad school.</p>
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<p>Right, but the kid who got into MIT and graduated and is now waiting tables, or decided to get married and have children and leave the workforce, and the one who hasn’t found a job in six months isn’t? And fwiw, few are actually paying the real cost of their education (even the full pay kids). </p>
<p>Besides, it’s been what, four months so far of the rest of his life? Isn’t it a bit premature to judge the adcom screwed up here?</p>
<p>Cobrat - They are not admitting URMs or first generations students to provide a “better social experience” for other students. They are doing it to give them a better opportunity in life. Those adcoms belief by providing them with a better environment would give them more of an equal opportunity to compete with students who are from better social economic background.</p>
<p>How many people do we know who have been sitting around for 4 months doing nothing, and living off someone? If this kid had put it down on his college application, do you think he could have gotten into MIT? No. Why?</p>
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<p>That’s what adcoms love to say publicly. They may even believe it to some extent. </p>
<p>However, there’s also an element of institutional self-interest/promotion involved. To believe otherwise is to ascribe more altruism on the adcoms and the institutions they serve than I believe is warranted.</p>
<p>So what is the rest of the bottom 25% of MIT’s class doing? (whether Black or white, though the Black new college graduate unemployment rate is about 50% higher than the white one.) I’m sure they’ve all got wonderful job offers at $65k or more, and have put the down-payment on the condo…</p>
<p>Ever imagine what the shock must have been like if, before he left MIT, he applied for 25 jobs and didn’t receive a single interview? Could have happened easily, you know.</p>
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<p>Well actually I don’t know any, but then I do not know personally of any students that graduated recently in the US. From what I read on CC though, it seems to be a pretty big problem. </p>
<p>And well, the OP said the mom has always played victim. So I’ll bet a million bucks we are getting a special version of what is really going on with this guy…so now let me guess she’s the victim of a “good for nothing lazy-ass son’ that she has to support while he won’t even take out the trash!”</p>
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<p>I wonder how prevalent these types of conversations, stories, and the underlying social/economic anxieties which prompted them were during the Great Depression? </p>
<p>Wonder how many parents had or made one-sided incomplete complaints about the bottom 50% USNA 1934 graduates who were unemployed upon graduation because the Navy didn’t have the budget to take on more than the top half of the class?</p>
<p>“How many people do we know who have been sitting around for 4 months doing nothing, and living off someone?”</p>
<p>Come on now, most everyone I know takes a few months off here and there to find themselves. Some people even take a few years off. It is absolutely not the end of the world.</p>
<p>The main thing here is that this kid just needs to figure out what he wants to do and get into grad school.</p>
<p>Haven’t read all the posts, but have to say, having just recently gone through college fairs, many of these “elite” universities advertise themselves as “guaranteeing” you a job. Son asked one elite school about internships, and the adcom said, paraphrasing: You don’t need to do an internship. You’ll have a degree from our university. That alone will get you a job. We want you to enjoy your college experience and don’t worry about getting a job until you graduate.</p>
<p>I also have experience with two nephews who attended a selective elite school, free of charge, because their mother, my sister, works there. Neither did any internships or got involved in the campus at all. Now, several years after their graduation from this university, they are aimlessly going from one blue collar job to the next. They go on interviews, and are shocked when they don’t get a job. After all, they have a degree from a fancy school.</p>
<p>So, while an adcom will boast that a degree from his school will open many doors for you, it’s up to you to go up to those doors and knock on them.</p>
<p>So I just read through the MIT study of its 2010 graduates. Of those who graduated, didn’t go on for graduate work, and received job offers at all (I didn’t see what percentage that was - only 76% responded to the survey, and I’ll bet it was skewed toward those employed or in graduate school), the average applicant who got a job at all made 14 applications and got 1.8 offers. That includes all the engineers, CS people, etc., and all the students, whatever their class rank. One can easily imagine that this number is heavily skewed toward those in the top quarter (or at least top 50%) of the class, and those with CS/engineering degrees, meaning that for those who got job offers at all, it is likely that those in the bottom 50% (or non-engineering/CS majors) had to put in, on average, more applications (than 14), and likely had fewer job offers (than 1.8). (Of course, we don’t know that for certain, though I doubt employers as a whole make a fetish of trying to hire from the bottom half of the class, especially in this economy.) </p>
<p>So how many didn’t get hired at all? How long did it take those 12 biology majors to get their $45k/year jobs? (And, though I really don’t want to go there, the national data say I should, what is their breakdown by race?)</p>
<p>I am seeing people from elite universities, and in at least one case an engineer, with 3-4 years of experience, getting laid off and not being able to even land an interview. It’s rough out there. </p>
<p>Go light.</p>
<p>(Now, it’s true, my d. did very well. 200 applicants for 3 spots, many of the applicants from Wharton, Georgetown, Princeton, Duke, and she (from American, and with SAT scores a fraction of theirs) got the job. And that’s fine as far as it goes. But it makes me wonder what happened to the other 200 applicants?)</p>