<p>I know this may sound like a stupid or obvious question, but why exactly do students want to go to prestigious and top schools so badly?</p>
<p>What made me come up with this question is the people in College Confidential. There are tons of overqualified students here whose extracurricular activities and academics are absolute top notched. Nearly everyone here wants to go to top schools badly.</p>
<p>How does top schools differ from your average schools? I'm pretty sure that there are many
average/decent schools which are on par or slightly lower to top schools which offer good facilities as well as dedicated lecturers.</p>
<p>Just fyi, I'm not jealous or trying to disrespect anyone here, I just want others' views and opinion on this rather "obvious" question.</p>
<p>I am expecting answers like great academics, highly renowned staff etc etc.</p>
<p>Prestige: I feel proud telling people I went to a good school, and people will assume you are intelligent
Financial Aid: Lots of the top colleges have more money to give out due to larger endowments
Job Prospects: The top schools get more elite companies recruiting on campus
Classmates: I like being surrounded by other highly motivated/smart people, it makes you want to push yourself harder</p>
<p>At an elite school, you get so spend the four most formative years of your life collaborating and interacting with brilliant professors and students who will stretch your intellectual capacities, inspire your imaginations, and encourage you to reach for the sky. If you wish to maximize the chances of reaching your potential, there’s no place quite like an elite American private school to do it.</p>
<p>Usually the smartest people congregate there. Also, job opportunities directly out of college are second none. Banks, fortune 500 companies, and engineering firms all go to Ivy’s first.</p>
<p>Because the gatekeepers discriminate against those who lack cultural capital. Or exercise preferential admission practices for those who possess it in abundance.</p>
<p>I don’t think that all ivies are equal. Google is only interested in the top 50 students at MIT, top 100 students at Stanford, and top 10 students from the rest of ivies. :)</p>
<p>As a high school student, timetodecide and goldenboy are spot-on. We want our minds to grow among those who are considered some of the brightest students in the nation. But, in all blunt honesty, we want to be accepted into a top school for these 3 reasons which almost no senior will admit (other than me lol):</p>
<ol>
<li>It’s one big ego boost.</li>
<li>We want to impress whoever asks</li>
<li>An acceptance is a trophy, an indicator of our intelligence and abilities.</li>
</ol>
<p>This whole admissions process to top colleges is like taking any test. Most students will be happy with a B, but it’s an insult to the top students because they know they’re capable of getting an A. And if any of the “normal” students finds out that a top student didn’t get an A, the top student will be self-conscious that others won’t think of him/her as smart as much as they did. Forget the fact that we’ll be successful in life no matter which school we go to - that’s a very distant thought most of us can’t conceive yet. We get accepted, we can finally prove that we are indeed smart and something special.</p>
<p>Silly? Yes, but we are high school students who still care about what other people think. Personally, I (NOW) don’t see these top schools as indicators or idols as much as I used to, and I can honestly say that I will be happy in my matches/safeties, but that feeling of wanting to get into a top school still hasn’t gone away - I don’t have to go, but it WOULD be awesome if I did.</p>
<p>Actually, engineering companies likely go to the best, largest, and nearby engineering schools (including state schools). Most of the Ivys (other than Cornell and Princeton) are unlikely to make these lists.</p>
<p>While elite investment banks favor recruiting at elite schools, it is likely that most Fortune 500 companies are more like engineering companies in not being particularly enamored with Ivy League recruiting – there are just too few students to recruit there to satisfy their hiring needs.</p>
<p>Yield for Ivy League recruiting is probably low for non-finance companies, due to finance companies outpaying all other companies.</p>
<p>
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<p>Neither MIT nor Stanford are in the Ivy League (an NCAA Division I FCS conference). MIT is in the NEWMAC (an NCAA Division III conference, except for rowing in NCAA Division I), while Stanford is in the Pac-12 (an NCAA Division I FBS conference).</p>
<p>Google has a rather large list of universities that it recruits at and does not restrict hires to “elite” universities. Besides, it is so well known that anyone at a non-targeted university can just apply.</p>
<p>Also, the little Silicon Valley startups probably don’t have the recruiting resources to make a lot of Ivy League or other out-of-area visits. They probably get much better yield recruiting locally, including the schools other than Berkeley and Stanford.</p>
I did not say Stanford and MIT were ivies. You implied, as many people do automatically for ivies about everything… :)</p>
<p>P.S., the rest of ivies meant the rest of 8 ivies… Google did look for the top 50 students from MIT, 5% of employees are Stanford grad, and they recruit the #1 student from all other schools including Canadian schools. It is not even easy to get in from Stanford if your major is not CS, and you have to be top 10%…</p>
<p>Why are there Honors Classes at many colleges? What makes those classes different? It is because the students are higher performing, and can be taught at a faster pace. All else being equal, the Professor has to teach to the slightly below average kid in the class, else most of the kids in the class will fail. That means the above average kids are not learning as much as they can.</p>
<p>“But”, you respond, “they are being taught the same information.”</p>
<p>Not quite. Yes, they may cover the same topics, but the Honors classes (prestigious/top schools) can teach the topic in more depth because the Prof does not have to spend as much time teaching the basic concept (kids get it the first time). With that increased depth of teaching comes an increased depth of understanding.</p>
<p>At the professor level, you can also have quite a difference. Would you rather be taught by the professor that just learned the new theory in Genetics from the Genetics Conference (or trade journal), or would you rather learn from the professor that is finishing up the paper on a new theory that may take a year or more to get published in the trade journal?</p>
<p>There’s not much purpose in going to a more prestigious school. The biggest, most evident “pro” is that you get to say that you went to an Ivy League school.</p>
<p>Prestige itself is the big reason, and a very limited improvement in employment prospects in a very short list of careers (investment banking, corporate law, and some medical specialties). There’s 30 years of solid research that shows conclusively that prestigious schools offer no better educations and, for most people, no better job prospects. In spite of the chorus of voices on CC claiming otherwise.</p>
<p>There are students meant for Harvard or Yale. They will be admitted without much drama, and there will be a reciprocal fit. I have known many of these students. They didn’t obsess over their applications and they never once used the word “prestige” when talking about their college search process. There are also many students not meant for Harvard or Yale. They want to go there because they superficially think that college is a prize that you win and they want what they (in an unoriginal way) think is the biggest prize.</p>
<p>I chose my school, Harvard, because I thought it’d be fun, a chance to learn more, and my classmates would be more like me. All have proved true, I think! (The prestige was a turnoff, actually. I wanted to be contrarian and go for “fit” over conventional wisdom and prestige. Unfortunately for that hope, the most prestigious was also the best fit.)</p>
<p>A lot of high school applicants want to go to prestigious schools because they’re prestigious. (The prestigious ones also do tend to have the best financial aid.) Among the students who get admitted and choose to matriculate, though, you’ll mostly find pretty different reasons. See OperaDad in post #12 for a perfect analogy. Why would one want to be in an honors college at a less prestigious school? More opportunities, more fun/motivated classmates, etc. The same reasons that honors colleges are appealing apply to the Ivies and their peers.</p>
<p>For me, it’s so I can be with a group of people who really care about school! My high school is mostly full of people who laugh at you if you care about grades and think learning is dumb. I want to be at a place where the majority of people care :)</p>
<p>I’m not looking at ivies though, but schools like Rice and WashU</p>