LakeClouds

It seems that many of the CCs are clamoring to get into an Ivy - hence all the "Chance Me" trends. Are these schools really worth it or is it just the prestige value of saying I'm going to Harvard, Yale, etc.? It seems many of the Ivies are not very undergrauate focused with large lecture classes taught by TAs, indifferent professors focused on research, and hordes of over-achievers looking to out do each other.

Is it the case that the ever increasing selectivity is the real attraction to these schools rather than the education or post-grad prospects?

zobroward

harvard has a NAME that is without question! but, to think you will get a better education their is highly questionable at best! most of the people obbessed with the ivies do not know why, they just know they should be! many of them who get in, and wind up going to one of the ivies never realize how much they are missing not going to a college with a tight knit, non cut throat happy student body of students who see college education as more than a status symbol!

coureur

>>Are these schools really worth it or is it just the prestige value of saying I'm going to Harvard, Yale, etc.? It seems many of the Ivies are not very undergrauate focused with large lecture classes taught by TAs, indifferent professors focused on research, and hordes of over-achievers looking to out do each other.<<

Sounds like you've already got your mind made up. And if, as you say, CC is full of Ivy-obsessed people, then asking on CC may not be the best place to get the anti-Ivy responses you are clearly looking for.

My answer is that the eight Ivy League schools are among the best schools in the country, and they are institutions where you can get an excellent undergraduate education. But there are also plenty of other schools where you can get a comparable education. Ivy or non-Ivy, choose the one that fits you best and that will best help you achieve your goals.

Sikorsky

Are they worth it? Depends what it is, I guess.

For most Ivy alumni, college was a fantastic, life-changing experience. In the classrooms and the labs, and also in the dining halls and the residence halls. Could you have a similar experience in another college that doesn't happen to play ice hockey against Cornell? Sure. Does that cheapen the experience? No way.

Is it worth the stress and hassle of trying to get in? IMO, absolutely. Is it worth traveling a long distance? Again, I say yes. Is it worth the money? Yes, if you have it. Is it worth modest debt, when you could go to your state flagship for less, or for free? I think it is.

Is it worth borrowing so much that you mortgage your future? No.

happy1

The Ivies are excellent schools which offer a ton in the way of a great education, wonderful classmates etc, interesting professors etc. Personally, I had a great experience in every way at an Ivy university.

However, there are non-Ivy schools which I would consider to be equivalent. If you are looking for a more undergraduate based experience (which it sounds like you may be) with smaller classes, no grad students, and no TAs then there are liberal arts colleges (LACs) which rival the Ivy League such as Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Swathmore etc. I'm not big on rankings but if you look at the USNWR list of top LACs it will give you a start for researching those schools.

annasdad

Exactly right.

There is no evidence - in fact, there is copious evidence to the contrary - that the selectivity or prestige (or the USNWR ranking) has any bearing on the quality of the education a school offers.

The same evidence also establishes clearly that what a student does when he or she gets to college is a lot more important than is what college the student attends. There are colleges and universities that support the kinds of activities that lead to college success, moreso than at other schools. But there is no correlation between these schools and prestige, or selectivity, or size, or type of control, or any other publicly available metric; and unfortunately, there is no list of these educationally superior schools to which one can point.

Research does show, however, a career advantage to attending one of the most selective schools in the country, but only for certain highly prestigious career paths that require professional school certifications, like law or medicine or MBA programs. Even then, the long-range income differential is much less than many people suspect (or, hereabouts, loudly advocate).

Now, no doubt someone will respond with a pointer to a list of Fortune 500 CEOs or prestigious graduate school admissions or the like, which will show a preponderance of Ivy and other most selective school graduates. But these don't do what the research referenced above does do: control for the entering capabilities of the student body. Of course, Harvard has more Fortune 500 CEOs than Eastern Michigan does; but the data shows it's because Harvard has more highly intelligent and highly motivated freshmen than does Eastern Michigan, not because of anything that happens at Harvard that doesn't happen at Eastern Michigan.

LakeClouds

Any sites that provide more of this information?

How do you define excellent? Student:teacher ratio? %TAs teaching versus profs?

annasdad

Unfortunately, most of it is not online. It is summarized (in 700 pages) in Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini, “How College Affects Students, Volume 2: A Third Decade of Research.” San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

http://www.amazon.com/How-College-Af...rds=pascarella

From the above source, page 642 (emphasis in original):

Unfortunately, as I said upthread, there's no list of schools that do all that. From the same source and location within:

A more recent publication (Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2011) uses results from the Collegiate Learning Assessment and National Survey of Student Engagement to assess learning outcomes.

http://www.amazon.com/Academically-A.../dp/0226028550

Their conclusions are broadly similar to those reached by Pascarella and Terenzini in their review of 30 years of earlier research. The CLA and NSSE are promising tools for assessing education effectiveness. Unfortunately, the so-called "top schools" either refuse to use them to assess how they're doing, or if they do use them, refuse to release the results.

exultationsy

CC is not a very balanced place: there are a ton of high-schoolers who OMG will just DIE if they don't get into an IVY LEAGUE because ANY other school (except possibly Stanford) means they are a FAILURE who will be HOMELESS FOREVER. On the other hand, there are more contrarian-types who play up HYPS-etc.'s flaws. As a natural contrarian, the first never convinced me, but the second did get to me. However, neither extreme is true. The top 20 universities (to pick a number) are all wonderful places to get great educations, and I'm much much happier here than I would be most anywhere else, regardless of Harvard's effects on my "life prospects. That said, of course they're flawed institutions, and absolutely none of them is the right school for everybody, as some of the CC hypers seem to believe. You needn't accept the hype to find more good in them than your quote up there suggests.

tk21769

^^ Hmm. In listing characteristics of educationally effective institutions, it sounds like Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini are describing typical features of an Ivy League college.

Check out some of the threads on average class sizes. This one for example:
Avg Class size?

Notice that 6 of the top 12 universities for classes < 20 are Ivy League schools. The other 2 Ivies are still "very very good" by this metric. For percentage of classes > 50, 7 of the 8 Ivies are in the "very very good" category, with no more than 10% of classes having more than 50 students.

Hordes of over-achievers? Sure. What else would you expect at the most selective schools in America? Whether they are all looking to out-do each other in a mean undignified way, what's your evidence for that?

Indifferent professors focused on research? There's bound to be some of that, along with many learned, inspiring teachers who are very committed to undergraduates. But if this is a concern, and you want maximum focus on undergraduates, then choose a LAC.

annasdad

Only in the mythology. Because they also say:

--Ibid., emphasis added

tk21769

Annasdad, that quoted paragraph does not demonstrate your "only in the mythology" claim. It only suggests that these two investigators, using their methodology, found no correlation between certain typical ranking factors and certain educational outcomes. It has nothing to say about whether Ivy League schools are (or are not) characterized by high levels of student involvement in the academic and nonacademic systems of the institution, etc.

It's quite possible that a school could have all those desirable features and all the highly ranked features as well. Now, maybe the majority of applicants care only about the latter, because they are deluded into thinking the ranked characteristics are more important than they really are. That in itself would not necessarily mean these schools lack the truly desirable features.

annasdad

^ So you have been a student at all eight Ivy League institutions, and also a student at a representative sample of non-Ivy institutions, and that qualifies you to ascertain the "typical features of an Ivy League college," as differentiated from non-Ivy League colleges. Right?

Or, alternatively you have some independent evidence that Ivy League colleges have statistically significant greater "student involvement in the academic and nonacademic systems of an institution, the nature and frequency of student contact with peers and faculty members, interdisciplinary or integrated core curricula that emphasize making explicit connections across courses and among ideas and disciplines, pedagogies that encourage active student engagement in learning and encourage application of what is being learned in real and meaningful settings, campus environments that emphasize scholarship and provide opportunities for students to encounter different kinds of people and ideas, and environments that emphasize scholarship and support exploration, whether intellectual or personal."

Right? Can you cite it?

If the answer to either query is "no," then I submit you're merely repeating the mythology.

In the category of anecdotal evidence, BTW, there is evidence that at at least two Ivy League institutions, nothing could be farther from the truth:

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-di...ite-education/

tk21769

^ No, of course not. I have not been a student at all eight Ivies.
However, there is a vast middle ground between having comprehensive scientific knowledge of a subject and merely parroting mythology. That's the ground on which most of us are compelled to muster the best judgements we can, given limited evidence and experience.

From my own and family members' experiences at a fairly wide variety of Ivy and non-Ivy schools, years of reading, talking to people about their experiences, examining published data, etc., I conclude that the list of desirable features you cited seems to be fairly characteristic of the Ivy League colleges. Your antipathy to college rankings, even your evidence against the significance of those rankings, does not address the presence or absence of those features at those colleges.

Does a small number of colleges (including the Ivies) represent them absolutely better than all others? That's not what I said above.

I've read the Deresiewicz piece before, even cited it here fairly sympathetically (compared at least to some of the vitriolic responses from other posters). So o.k., Yale is a flawed institution in some respects.

annasdad

The point is that it is these characteristics that differentiate superior educational results from run-of-the-mill outcomes. So if the Ivies don't reflect them better than other schools, then what's the point of putting the Ivies on this mythical pedestal?

And since the Ivies stand at the pinnacle of the student selectivity curve, surely the finding that selectivity does not correlate with improved educational outcomes is relevant. Could it be that membership in an athletic conference confers some special educational advantage, compared to the handful of the equally selective schools that are not members of that conference? I rather doubt it.