<p>Yeah just wondering, who here is not interested in Ivy schools? </p>
<p>These days, it seems like everyone is obsessed with the Ivies. Pretty much every high-achieving kid in the grade below me wants to go to an Ivy, ESPECIALLY Harvard. I don't really know what's so special about the Ivy League. Of course, the academics are stellar, but there are tons of other schools out there that are just as good. Plus, it's really annoying seeing kids on this site who think that one MUST go to an Ivy to be successful in life. Harvard Yale Princeton Education = HYPE :D</p>
<p>By the way, I only applied to one Ivy because my parents pressured me to do so. Didn't care one bit when I didn't get in, and I'd definitely feel the same way about the Ivies even if my stats were good enough to get into all of them =D</p>
<p>I’m not interested in the Ivies at all. I am going to take my #1 rank somewhere in NC and be content with my life. I don’t need an Ivy school to achieve my goals.</p>
<p>It’s irrational to apply to a school simply because it’s an ivy. However, the same can be said about not applying to a school simply because it’s an ivy.</p>
<p>The prestige would be great, but honestly I cannot imagine fitting in at one. I’d imagine Ivy League schools are 80% preppy, white/Asian, very wealthy kids who grew up in well-to-do areas to affluent families. I’m a Hispanic, lower-middle class guy who grew up in the military. Not really a good fit, lol.</p>
<p>OP wrote “Pretty much every high-achieving kid in the grade below me wants to go to an Ivy, ESPECIALLY Harvard.” - The hardest schools are schools you are rejected. There are plenty of kids nowadays got rejected by all of Ivy schools they applied but Harvard. For them Harvard is easier than other Ivy schools or equivalent.</p>
<p>I love Brown, and if I could get into Brown, I’d definitely go, but I know I can’t, and even if I could, obsessing over it would be pointless… I can understand loving a school – it seems Yale and Dartmouth are the Ivy League schools people tend to want to attend for legitimate reasons, they love the school, they aren’t just obsessed with prestige – but the majority of people who are obsessed with “the Ivies” only care about the prestige… If you love a school, that’s great, but if you’re just obsessed with the name for shallow reasons, that’s well… Shallow. And annoying. =P I have a friend who genuinely loves Stanford, and another who genuinely loves Duke… I’m glad they have high goals and love the schools for actual reasons (they’ve both visited and sat in on classes and everything), but I know some people who are really just obsessed with ALL of “the Ivies,” MIT, Stanford, and other Psuedo-Ivies because they think it’ll give their life meaning to attend one… I find that disgusting.</p>
<p>^ “I know some people who are really just obsessed with ALL of “the Ivies,” MIT, Stanford,” - I am not sure if you can call those kids are obsessed with ALL of the Ivies. You can not fall in love with a specific ivy school say Brown when you may get rejected by Brown but get surprise admission to Harvard unexpectedly. It’s not easy to predict the outcomes more than you think nowadays.</p>
<p>Hm. Well, I fell in love with Brown freshman year, but except for that, no I’m not interested in the Ivys. </p>
<p>I didn’t even know what colleges made up the Ivy League (except for Harvard and Yale). I found out the remaining Ivys over the course of lurking here, and I hadn’t even heard of any of them.</p>
<p>PCMusicMom, I don’t mean they’re obsessed with all of them as in each one individually… I mean obsessed with them collectively. And some of these people are fairly ignorant about top schools too… One of these people thinks Stanford is an Ivy League school, and also pronounces Dartmouth like Dart-Mouth. These people I’m talking about aren’t obsessed with all of the schools, or even one or a few of them… They’re obsessed with the collective idea of “the ivies” and the greatness attending one will surely (in their eyes) bring.</p>
<p>I’ve never really been too fond of any of the “Ivies”. Frankly, I’ve always considered them (and the equivalent) to be “sink or swim”, “pressure-cooker” type institutions. Collectively, they’re incredibly competitive, pretentious schools that are overly consumed in elitism and prestige.</p>
<p>I’m not interested in most of them mostly because they don’t suit the major I’m looking at. Cornell’s pretty much the only one I actually am interested in.
However, I do really, really want to go to MIT. So that’s not an Ivy, but it might as well be.</p>