<p>Well they are all in the Northeast, which is appealing to many students that are targeting schools there. Also, my cousin (who got into a number of ivies as well as public honors programs) said that one of the deciding factors for going to Harvard was because of the fantastic network he found with just one trip to the alumni office.</p>
<p>I applied to two liberal arts colleges, two public universities, and a bunch of Ivies and their peers. I’d say what drew me to [some of] the Ivies were:
- The students and professors (although there are countless wonderful students and professors at every college)
- The sheer number of resources: money and administrative support for many research projects or clubs or trips that students choose to make
- An enriching but not overbearing collection of graduate students and schools (I want to learn from and interact with grad students occasionally, but I also don’t want graduate students to take away from the undergraduate focus)
- Close proximity to my hometown
- Less bureaucracy than in many public universities (but this holds true for any private)
- The history, beauty, and traditions of the buildings, campus, institution, etc.
- They’re among the best universities for my major
- Good financial aid
- The diversity that results from good financial aid
- Emphasis on a liberal arts education rather than a pre-professional one (again, I’m only talking about some of the Ivies)
- Small classes for the most part
- Overall objective excellence–sure, some people will thrive better at other colleges, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with acknowledging that the Ivies and their peers are famous for their excellence and that one should feel lucky to study at one of them
- Increased opportunities after college</p>
<p>ksinke, education is not expensive. </p>
<p>a college degree is expensive. the piece of paper called a diploma is expensive. the name of the institution you put on your resume is expensive.</p>
<p>education is free. if you really want to self-educate yourself, go to the library, log onto a computer and use the internet. wikipedia and other companies stand to make knowledge free with the internet. Dont have internet? pick up any book you can find. a lesson will be learned from any book whether it be a how to or fiction.</p>
<p>Point is, besides the on-hand training, hands-on experience, maybe studying abroad and an internship, college is a waste. (not including the “college experience” in this post)
Really, i wish i could just use the internet to educate myself and get credit for it. but that will never happen. unless i found my own company using the knowledge from the internet. (MAYBE i will be the next cornelius vanderbilt - a self-made self-taught man, but instead of using books, i’ll use the internet) LOL</p>
<p>I was thinking that people should take the ivys only if it is something they’d really love to do rather than…</p>
<p>But then I was thinking… getting prestige and being in the environment etc could be something a person really loves to have… So go for it.</p>
<p>Didn’t have the desire to. Besides Harvard and Penn they’re all in the middle of no where, and for the sake of eliminating all of them, I’m not going for business so no for Penn and… I guess I have no good reason for Harvard, but Boston isn’t my first choice of a city for college.</p>
<p>LOL awk, completely forgot about the one, IDK, where I live. Maybe that in itself is saying a lot.</p>
<p>I think the better question is why an ivy league school (Columbia) has the likes of Kathy Boudin teaching there, who if anyone doesn’t know, was a radical terrorist previously convicted of felony murder and bank robbery. She probably couldn’t get a job at McDonalds with that kind of record, but Columbia hires her? Is that really the place you’d want to go to school?</p>
<p>BL4- I agree with you. No matter if she has done her sentence or not, she is a convicted murder and she should not be teaching the new generation (do not care if this is an elective class or not) of this country.</p>
<p>I dont, it sounds like academic hell…lol</p>
<p>Sent from my YP-G1 using CC</p>
<p>For me, the main motivation for getting into an Ivy league is the fact that it almost guarantees you a good, if not a great career, “almost” because it also depends on how hard you work for it. I know, you are paying a lot, but I think it is worth it.</p>
<p>Also, none of my parents ever went to college. Now that I am planning to go to one, they want me to get into the best possible one. </p>
<p>Even if you forgot all of what I said above, still, Ivy League would be my No. 1 choice given the kind of education and opportunities that it provides a student with.</p>
<p>“Besides Harvard and Penn they’re all in the middle of no where”</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>^See the rest of my post :D</p>
<p>I’ve heard people describe Hanover and Ithaca as “the middle of nowhere,” but Princeton is only 50 miles or so from New York City, and Yale’s about twice that distance from New York, and less than an hour from Hartford, with a metropolitan area population of over a million. Brown is in Providence, a metropolitan area with 1.6 million people, and is less than an hour’s drive from Boston.</p>
<p>Even Ithaca is a little more than an hour’s drive from Syracuse, part of a metropolitan area of over 600,000.</p>
<p>I think for prestige.</p>
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<p>Yea, Columbia is in that obscure backwater called New York.</p>
<p>I think maybe wayyy back in the day Ivy-league was as good as your college education could get, but I think these days with the advancements in education and all, there are many other schools just as good as the Ivies, if not better, depending on what career field you are wanting to go in. The one thing the Ivies (especially Harvard and Yale) will always have going for them is their alumni, and the donations they receive because of their alumni. Many other colleges have a lot of benefactors too, but when I think of people donating money, I think Ivies.</p>
<p>I think the allure of the Ivies is why people truly want to go, because the media and society portrays them as THE colleges, the ones that are tough to get into (that’s true), and the ones that are just so much better than any other college. </p>
<p>For me, I don’t think I’d like the Ivies for undergrad…I’m the kind of person that doesn’t like to attend the schools everyone wants to go. The Ivies also aren’t suited for what I’d like to do after college. I would consider Harvard or Yale for law school, and Columbia for grad school (for journalism) because they all have top notch programs for those fields, and I think that if I’d be spending money for an extra degree, I’d want a school like that.</p>
<p>As for undergrad, I’d be much more happier at a good school, but not on the elite status as the Ivies, like UVA, Northwestern, etc. </p>
<p>But I tip my hat to anyone pursuing any or all of those mythical schools up north…they probably have a better shot of getting in than me. ;)</p>
<p>I’ll echo what a lot of people said before, which is that my dream school happens to be an Ivy. Not all Ivies would fit my requirements, but this one does. It’s top in the major I want, grads get great jobs in the field I’d be going to, so very specific to my needs. Plus Ivies have a lot of money, so they give a lot of need-based aid (which will be fantastic if I happen to get into one…lol), they can afford nice facilities like labs and auditoriums, and they sponsor and open up tons of opportunities to travel or for internships. And pretty much everyone you meet is a top student, which is the kind of motivation I need to keep myself in check. But it really depends on what you’re like. Some of the most intelligent people I’ve met have turned down Ivies.</p>
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<p>You’ll get the life you deserve.</p>
<p>What you do at an undergrad college is more important than which undergrad college you go to.</p>
<p>I think Harvard’s and even Yale’s rejection letter says something like this. Yeah, maybe it’s to be nice and all, but it is true. If you go to even a decently respectable college that not EVERYONE in the entire world knows and work really hard, you’re in a much better place than people that got into Ivies and became lax because they thought they were the best of the best.</p>
<p>I only applied to Yale, got rejected, and after a little disappointment, I’m excited as ever for college.</p>
<p>But for anyone that did get into an Ivy and is attending this coming fall, congratulations! I tip my hat to you.</p>
<p>For me, I’m drawn to the many opportunities that they provide (research and such), the beautiful campuses, the alumni network, and the quality education (although there are MANY really good schools that would provide an education that is on par or better). I also feel that being surrounded by overachievers would push me to be better :P</p>
<p>But the BIGGEST reason has to be that they (well Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth anyway) are one of only 6 schools (the other two are Amherst and MIT) that are need-blind and provide full need for international students (including me). If I decide to go to the US for education, they will probably be cheaper than almost any other school.</p>
<p>The only thing that you can only get at the Ivies that is absolutely impossible to get anywhere else without a small to significant amount of effort is prestige.</p>