Why Ivies?

Applying to College
81

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I was just saying that, in some particular class (say physics for example) some students are better than others, and should be treated accordingly. The good ones should be encouraged to show their talent, by being invited to solve a problem in front of the class, or by answering a difficult question out loud. <em>shock</em> yes, in front of the whole class and the teacher. That way they can really stand out.

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Why would you possibly want this? Why would anyone in the class want this? Hey, let's make the whole class waste half the period watching one guy do a problem they don't even understand, and won't derive any benefit from, all to what? Boost the smart kid's own ego? Sounds like a desperate plea for attention.

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That is what I experienced successfully for 4 years at high school in my class (of 28). The results? Besides the 5 intl olympians, the 12 qualified in the national teams in physics, math, CS (out of 60 total places for my country), the result was a close knit class, where we all had fun together, and yet some of the country's brightest minds were encouraged to grow even more. It is a chain reaction: you see someone better than you, you are motivated to beat him. Competition is not something negative. In fact, my best friend is also an intl olympian, and so is my girlfriend. Also, all my other peers who weren't olympians now study at tier 1 local colleges, or lesser US ones. A total of 8 are at Ivies, and 3 others at tier 2 US schools. A pretty good class, don't you think, even though we had such a monstrous and time consuming system. The funny thing is this has been happening here for several generations now. I'm talking facts, you are talking suppositions and feelings, no offense.</p>

<p>Pretending we are all equal will lead us nowhere. This is school, we are students, not CEO's of a multinational company.</p>

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<p>sakky:
Stanford had an article several years ago on precisely the question of why their students chose Stanford over Harvard or why they decided not to apply to Harvard. Of course there were some who in fact had applied who didn't get in, but no one answered they didn't apply because they thought they could get into Stanford but not Harvard. I guarantee you that there are many kids who applied to Michigan, Berkeley, etc and not to privates not because they thought they couldn't get in but for one of mild preferences and not for big reasons. Almost all privates still have a preponderance of regional applicants who apply because they are more comfortable staying in their region. I'm positive that there are many kids who apply only to the University of Chicago and Northwestern and not the Ivys for reasons other than they didn't think they could have gotten into an Ivy or HYPMS. And if you take these kids and say ok we have magically gotten you into Yale do you want to go, the vast majority would probably say no because otherwise they would have applied there in the first place. I still think there is a humongous preoccupation here at CC on rank order lists, that is not the norm for students who apply to college. To many CCers thus it is unfathonable how someone could choose not to go to the school with the higher SAT scores. There must be a big reason. For most applicants, I dare say, perhaps they're still thinking where they would be most comfortable or fit the best in spite of the fact that one school has SAT scores higher than the other.</p>

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Well I know from Trivial Pursuit that Northwestern did give a degree to Charlie McCarthy the dummy who certainly couldn't read. Does that count? :)</p>

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I guarantee you that there are many kids who applied to Michigan, Berkeley, etc and not to privates not because they thought they couldn't get in but for one of mild preferences and not for big reasons. Almost all privates still have a preponderance of regional applicants who apply because they are more comfortable staying in their region. I'm positive that there are many kids who apply only to the University of Chicago and Northwestern and not the Ivys for reasons other than they didn't think they could have gotten into an Ivy or HYPMS. And if you take these kids and say ok we have magically gotten you into Yale do you want to go, the vast majority would probably say no because otherwise they would have applied there in the first place. I still think there is a humongous preoccupation here at CC on rank order lists, that is not the norm for students who apply to college.

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<p>Werner, I still don't see what your point is. Nobody is denying that there are regional preferences. Of course there are. But that doesn't discount the fact that there are also 'prestige-preferences'. You're constantly bringing in exogenous factors that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. For example, just because smoking is dangerous doesn't mean that drinking excessively and not exercising aren't also dangerous. Those are ALL factors that play into poor health. But at the end of the day, it is still true that smoking is dangerous, irrespective of other risk factors. </p>

<p>And in fact, the top private schools tend to be far less regional than the lesser schools. For example, Harvard has far more non-local students than does, say, Emmnuel College in Boston, for which almost all students are from the area. </p>

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I still think there is a humongous preoccupation here at CC on rank order lists, that is not the norm for students who apply to college. To many CCers thus it is unfathonable how someone could choose not to go to the school with the higher SAT scores. There must be a big reason. For most applicants, I dare say, perhaps they're still thinking where they would be most comfortable or fit the best in spite of the fact that one school has SAT scores higher than the other.

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<p>While I can't speak for others, I have never been one to say that everybody should just go to the school with the highest SAT score. Otherwise, I would have to be saying that everybody should just go to Caltech, which I am certainly not saying. </p>

<p>What I am saying is that there is a GENERAL understanding of quality. It doesn't align perfectly with USNews or any other ranking, but it's not far off. For example, by anybody's calculation, Harvard is not going to be the lowest quality school in the world. There is a GENERAL understanding that certain groups of schools are better than others. That doesn't mean that everybody's opinions are perfectly correlated. But it does mean that an aggregate consensus does exist.</p>

<p>Again, to use the analogy of smoking, I think we can agree that an aggregate consensus exists that smoking is dangerous. Now, we as individuals can disagree about the degree of the danger and so forth. And I'm sure there is a small minority of people who would argue that it's not dangerous at all. But from a statistically aggregated opinion set, I think we can agree that smoking is dangerous to some degree.</p>

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<p>^ Completely agree.</p>

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To many CCers thus it is unfathonable how someone could choose not to go to the school with the higher SAT scores.

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<p>I don't think that anyone here is arguing or suggesting that applicants should choose schools BASED on SAT scores. SAT scores gives one an INDICATION, one metric (albeit a pretty important one) as to where one would stack up against your typical successful applicant.</p>

<p>The fact that the average SAT scores for your average yield of students in any given year at say, HYPSM, is higher than your average SAT score across the nation, however, is no coincidence either.</p>

<p>But noone is saying, "choose A over B because A's SAT scores are higher than B's", as Sakky has pointed out, there are many reasons a certain person may choose A over B.</p>

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<p>b/c you will never be poor if you go to ivies! Name for me an ivy league graduate that makes less than 75,000 a year and you're wrong!</p>

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<p>^^^I like your optimism, paulfoerster, but there are plenty of Ivy graduates who make less than $75,000. My father is an architect (universally known as a poorly paying profession considering the amount of education needed)...he makes well over this now, but it took him a long time to build up to his current salary--you can bet that it wasn't always like this. There are plenty of professions like this (freelance journalists aren't usually pulling down the big bucks). There are people who end up poor from every walk of life--the Ivies aren't a magic pill that solves all of your personal problems/keeps you from getting sick/guarantees that your field will never be laid off--all things that keep people from making big money. </p>

<p>Many studies have been done on this, and in reality your statement would be MORE (not totally, but more) true if you just said "Name me a smart and driven person who makes less than X amount of money". The Ivies aren't what makes people successful--people makes themselves successful.</p>

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b/c you will never be poor if you go to ivies! Name for me an ivy league graduate that makes less than 75,000 a year and you're wrong!

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<p>Really? Then perhaps you'd like to tell that to the Career Services office at Princeton. In 2006, the average starting salary earned by Princeton grads was 55k. Hence, it seems to me that quite a few Princeton grads earned less than 75k. </p>

<p><a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/career/data/surveys/CareerSurveyReport2006.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.princeton.edu/sites/career/data/surveys/CareerSurveyReport2006.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Look, the truth is, salaries are actually more correlated with your major than by what school you went to. For example, in 2007 the average chemical engineering student, from all schools, made a starting salary of 60k. Granted, that data is from 2007 (and the above Princeton data is from 2006), but still, that probably means that the average chemical engineering student makes more than the average Princeton student. Let's face it. There are a lot of Princeton students who major in subjects like comparative literature that are just not highly marketable.</p>

<p><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/08/pf/college/lucrative_degrees_winter07/index.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/08/pf/college/lucrative_degrees_winter07/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>