<p>What is interesting is that the data doesn't support what Bigbrother is saying. When you look at CEOs, second tier UW Madison has more than any one of the Ivies. When you look at young fund managers, more of them are from Madison than any one of the Ivies. Just because a school is big, or has a lot of students who party, doesn't mean that you can't get an excellent education there. And the old saw that the top banks and firms don't recruit except at the Ivies just isn't true anymore.
The person and how her or she interviews and then does his job is much more important to a persons ultimate carreer success than what college they attended. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have to go to a top 20 school or you are doomed; it isn't true.</p>
<p>UW is a Top 35 school and hardly second tier.</p>
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What is interesting is that the data doesn't support what Bigbrother is saying.
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<p>Uh, the data ABSOLUTELY supports what I'm saying, and that's that Ivy Leaguers are disproportionately represented as CEOs. </p>
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When you look at CEOs, second tier UW Madison has more than any one of the Ivies.
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<p>The last time I checked, UW had around just as many CEOs as Harvard does; the figures were fairly close. But quite frankly, so what? This is still a big plus in favor of Harvard, because it's a smaller institution. But that's neither there nor here. All I simply stated was that the Ivies have more than their proportion of CEOs, unless you wish to dispute that the Ivies on a whole, have fewer than 5 Fortune 500 CEOs. I think you will have a difficult time proving that. More to my main focus, Ivy League students tend not to go into corporate management anyways, so the point made about there being a lot of "average" CEOs is fairly trivial.</p>
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Just because a school is big, or has a lot of students who party, doesn't mean that you can't get an excellent education there.
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<p>Oh come on Packers1, I think even you know the flaw of this statement. Are you really going to go to college for the "education", or are you going just to get a degree? What if colleges didn't have degrees, or other incentives such as heavy networking? </p>
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And the old saw that the top banks and firms don't recruit except at the Ivies just isn't true anymore.
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<p>I believe banks and consulting firms also recruit at many other universities, but that simply was not my point. It's still better to network at the Ivies, since Ivy Leaguers are still grossly overrepresented in numbers at the top firms. You're not 'doomed' if you go to a State school, it's just that you have to look for ways to increase your probabilities at success. If you can do that from a lower-tier school, then more power to you.</p>
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Uh, the data ABSOLUTELY supports what I'm saying, and that's that Ivy Leaguers are disproportionately represented as CEOs.
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<p>I wouldn't call 10% as being "disproportionately represented". And I doubt that's necessarily a testament to their intellect, either. Isn't it true that a lot of CEOs come from money? And I don't mean Rockefeller amounts of money but just...they're from very well-to-do families.</p>
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I wouldn't call 10% as being "disproportionately represented".
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<p>By definition, 10% is a disproportionate representation of Ivy Leaguers, since they make up only about 1% of the number of college students here in the United States, if even that.</p>
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And I doubt that's necessarily a testament to their intellect, either. Isn't it true that a lot of CEOs come from money? And I don't mean Rockefeller amounts of money but just...they're from very well-to-do families.
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<p>It's not always about sheer intellect, but so what? </p>
<p>I highly doubt that "a lot of"' CEOs come from money, since an acting corporate officer still has to be skillful enough to generate profits for the company. I can see a lot of old-money folks becoming head or chairman of a company, and even a CEO if they're skilled enough. After all, I don't think Paris Hilton has the skills to run the Hilton Hotels Corp. </p>
<p>I can see what you're trying to say, and you're assuming that some companies have an Ivy League lineage. Well, that's just an assumption, as old-money families can still come from other colleges as well. But then again, so what?</p>
<p>"g-h-e-t-t-o-" high school? what a snob</p>
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"g-h-e-t-t-o-" high school? what a snob
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<p>And what an irate. wutangfinancial explicitly called his own school ghetto (or the area he came from - Boston, which is no doubt, ghetto). I am simply reiterating what he said.</p>
<p>You're not distinguishing between correlation and causation. A lot of kids at Ivies come from families that are already powerful and influential.</p>
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You're not distinguishing between correlation and causation. A lot of kids at Ivies come from families that are already powerful and influential.
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<p>And a lot of kids come from the other schools, or even NO school, come from families that are already powerful and influential. Take Paris Hilton for example. So what's your point?</p>
<p>I think what you REALLY wanted to know was how much of those Ivy kids that "come from families that are already powerful and influential" are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. That I don't know, but if you have the data, then I'll be happy to have a look at it here. But so what if Ivy League children with a lineage are CEOs? So what?</p>
<p>It means more than you think. The Ivies are the oldest schools in this country, most of which pre-date the Civil War. Old school = more alumni, living or dead. At any given moment, only 1% of college grads attended an Ivy league university, but how many prominent alumni do they have?</p>
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It means more than you think. The Ivies are the oldest schools in this country, most of which pre-date the Civil War. Old school = more alumni, living or dead. At any given moment, only 1% of college grads attended an Ivy league university, but how many prominent alumni do they have?
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<p>What are you trying to say though? That the Ivies have an established network of corporate and political success? I think that's at least what you're trying to say, but you seem to be beating around the bush.</p>
<p>Just say it.</p>
<p>And even if that was true (which you have no proof of), why does it matter anyway? The point is, Ivies get more than their "fair share" of "success" in this country, whether you like it or not, and whether or not you think this is fair or meritocratic. It doesn't matter.</p>
<p>Actually, it does matter. Because if you're an extremely intelligent student accepted at harvard with no rich or powerful parents or grandparents, you shouldn't get fooled into believing that you and those like you have the exact same opportunities as your peers at the ivies that DO have rich or powerful families.</p>
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Actually, it does matter. Because if you're an extremely intelligent student accepted at harvard with no rich or powerful parents or grandparents, you shouldn't get fooled into believing that you and those like you have the exact same opportunities as your peers at the ivies that DO have rich or powerful families.
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<p>Well what can I say. Life isn't fair. We could also make the same statement that those Ivy students didn't "deserve" those I-Banking jobs because there were a lot of more qualified people from the State Us, or that the outgoing manager doesn't "deserve" his position more than the actually intelligent engineer, but so what?</p>
<p>And nobody has provided proof of this whole family-related Ivy CEO conjecture. So this is a toss-up right now, but not like it actually matters.</p>
<p>To the person who said the Ivies pre-date the Civil War, yes they do. But they aren't the only institutions that do. My so called "party school" has been around since 1794.</p>
<p>All the Ivies predate the civil war by more than 100 years (except for Cornell-founded 1865)</p>
<p>And I think that comment was supposed to be in support of the "average party school" by arguing that said schools were founded later and therefore had less alums. But I guess that isn't entirely true...</p>
<p>I love my school and wouldn't trade my experiences there to go to an Ivy. Sorry. There are too many things about UT that make it an amazing place to go to college. :)</p>
<p>Honeslty, does anyone on this site (apart from kids who attend decent schools) understand statistics? The only counter arguments consist of silly, anecdotal non sense that has no place in this discussion. </p>
<p>Read Fooled by Randomness. Basically, the outcome of our lives follows a stochastic sample path, one path chosen from an infinite number. A degree of randomness is involved, but certain variables skew where the majority of sample paths lead. Thus, in attending an Ivy, you increase the expected value of your life outcome in probabilistic terms. </p>
<p>Also, the whole "I don't want debt" exposes a common heuritstic bias-hyperbolic discounting. Basically, you are overly discounting future events into your present value equation.</p>
<p>Thank you, hotpiece. Your name is funny. That is what I meant.</p>
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And I think that comment was supposed to be in support of the "average party school" by arguing that said schools were founded later and therefore had less alums. But I guess that isn't entirely true...
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<p>Of course this isn't entirely true, and I highly doubt if it's even true at all. Keep in mind that the "average party school" is many times the size of a regular Ivy. It would make sense that these schools have way more living alumni.</p>
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Thank you, hotpiece. Your name is funny. That is what I meant.
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<p>I highly doubt that's what you meant, because then you made an implication that's not relevant to the point. So what if the Ivies have more or fewer alumni? What's supposed to be your argument here?</p>
<p>Actually, those who go to top schools for undergraduate engineering usually want to kill themselves, because they realize only at the end that the overrated academics and the consequentially diminished GPA are big factors, considering that their is a magical entity called an "accreditation board" that tells employers all graduates know the same stuff. If you go to a top ranked school in engineering or information science for better job prospects, you're kidding yourself, and possibly wasting money.</p>
<p>Furthermore, undergraduate education in the US is generally better than that in Europe. Not only are the top insitutions better here, but the average institutions are on par with the average ones in Europe. There are rankings of the top 500 or so world universities, and most of them are from the US, including most big-named state schools here.</p>
<p>Success is what you make of it. Doesn't matter where you go, within reason. Anyplace with a decent library, a decent faculty, and nothing to do but study will offer a fine education.</p>