<p>No, not everyone at the Ivies are brilliant. The admissions officers do the best they can, but with limited information they always have the risk of choosing a dud. I also agree with @xiggi that many very intelligent applicants may be very introverted and unable to promote themselves coming out of high school. This was probably me, although I don’t know for sure since I wasn’t a risk taker and applied to Penn ED. Once they gain confidence in college they are much more successful at doing this.</p>
<p>@GullLake, from what you are saying, I doubt you have even started college. I just graduated from Penn and know many people in Wharton, which by your logic has the best of the best business minded students. Guess what? Many of them aren’t so smart. I know a guy who did a ton of ECs in high school including research and got a perfect score on the SAT who ended up with below a 3.0 the end of junior year. He did not have the grades to get the IB jobs he wanted.</p>
<p>Also, you aren’t considering that there is considerable movement regarding graduate school. For example, in my field I know several students from MIT who went to Penn for there PhDs and several who went from Penn to MIT, Harvard, and Stanford. How does that fit into your theory? I also know a girl from Rutgers who didn’t get into the Ivies she applied to for undergrad, but was very heavily recruited at those schools that had previously rejected her for grad school (also had an NSF fellowship).</p>
<p>I also know grad students at Harvard who have TAd Harvard undergrads who came from other top schools like Penn. They did not see any difference in the quality of students except that a higher percentage received As because of grade inflation. There are also plenty of people who go to other schools, especially state schools for financial reasons. At schools like Georgia Tech, UF, and Rutgers it is very easy for smart kids to get a full ride instate. For people who need financial aid at private schools this may be the more sensible option for some considering these schools are also very good.</p>
<p>HYP certainly have a greater percentage of kids who were brilliant at the HS-level than UMich/UPenn/NU.</p>
<p>However, you’re young, so you don’t seem to understand that just because something is far harder to get (or far more costly) doesn’t mean that that something is far better.</p>
<p>The simple fact of the matter is that grads from Illinois (which, overall, isn’t at the same level of UMich/UPenn/NU, much less HYP, though UIUC Engineering certainly is), at the 75th percentile level 10+ years out earn more than Harvard grads at the median level 10+ years out.</p>
<p>There are several factors at work here. One is that, while there is some correlation, being brilliant while in HS doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be brilliant in college or after graduation (and brilliance isn’t automatically correlated with earnings). </p>
<p>Another is that adcoms
Aren’t divine gods who can tell who will be brilliant in college (much less in real life).
Aren’t even trying to maximize earnings of their alumni.</p>
<p>And then you have kids who could get in to a more prestigious school but go to a lower-ranked one because of cost or fit or what-not.</p>
<p>While what tier of school you go to matters to some extent (certainly in some industries, though they actually differ by industry & region), in the end, the biggest determinant of your success will be you.</p>
<p>It’s also the fact that the context of your undergrad application is much harder to understand than when you are applying to grad school. There is so much grade inflation in high schools that being a straight A student at a lot of schools may not mean much.</p>
<p>My personal experience came from attending a very competitive public school. While we sent a lot of kids to top schools, basically every Ivy got 30-50 applicats a year, nearly all who had very high SAT/ACT/AP scores (not as much grades since my school was very deflated compared to others). When I applied, I thought I would have a very hard time standing out since I had a tough freshman year and my ECs were in orchestra and science olympiad (where I was just a member). I didn’t do a lot of ECs in high school partly because I was very introverted and partly because I just wasn’t interested in high school ECs. You really could only do one or two ECs seriously since the top students had over three hours of homework a night since my school was rigorous and for some reason thought that was good and healthy for students.</p>
<p>For these reasons, despite being confident in my essays (not as much my recs because I wasn’t sure I really stood out, although one teacher chose me for a social studies award), I played it safe and applied to Penn ED. This was actually a great decision since I had a wonderful academic experience at Penn. However, I didn’t even think of applying to Harvard and Stanford since I was sure I wouldn’t get in. If I had gone to a less competitive school, I think I would have had a decent chance at those schools.</p>
<p>In college I did really stand out. Being very academically oriented I got along very well with my professors. I put all of my focus on research outside the class room and felt less pressured to be in clubs just to pad my resume. For this reason, I was a much more competitive applicant to grad school and I took a lot more risks than I did in undergrad. I ended up choosing between Harvard and Stanford, the two schools I never even dreamed of considering as an undergrad.</p>
<p>The main point of this story is two suggest that there are a lot of kids like me who may have been less confident as high schoolers and unwilling to promote themselves and their accomplishments but really came out of their shell in college. Harvard might have missed them in undergrad heavily recruited them for grad school (I say this since Harvard gave me an extra fellowship in addition to my stipend for being one of their top six recruits).</p>
<p>I just find it odd when people on CC that generally have zero first-hand undergrad exposure to elite schools can discount their ethos, outcomes and connections. Or post their straw man attacks to say YOU SEE the elite schools aren’t so special after all! Give it a rest and examine your motives. Truth be told, the connections are BETTER than you could ever imagine.</p>
<p>GullLake, what is YOUR personal experience with these elite schools? You claim to be a high school senior…clearly you haven’t experienced these elite schools yourself…or any other college for that matter. </p>
<p>You are doing exactly what you claim others are doing…making judgements based on no first hand undergrad experience.</p>
<p>This argument sounds remarkably like the same ones posted by several posters who seem to be permanently gone…also from Michigan. </p>
<p>I guess I don’t understand the lecturing from a high school student with zero experience in college or career. Why would anyone accept on face value what someone like this says over posters with decades of experience in the academic and professional worlds?</p>
<p>To say HYP et al get THE best students (let alone all of them) in the admissions is unfounded. The holistic review process makes the definition of “the best” a “fluid” one in the first place. Now, I do think that the <em>overall</em> quality of the students in HYP et al in terms of academic readiness is better than other less selective schools. In other words, if you compare the top 25% of the students in these schools, you could hardly tell the difference, but if you compare the lower 50%/25% of the classes in different schools, you might see the difference. The ED schools like UPenn that clearly give preference to early committed applicants <em>generally</em> don’t get the most competitive applicants in the ED round (Poeme made a strong case but that’s the story beyond the admissions process), and for those who choose to apply Penn together with HYP, it’s reasonable to assume HYP would have a higher “pecking order” in choosing what they think are the best for them both due to these applicants’ preferences when they have multiple offers and HYP’s more robust FA programs.</p>
<p>@GullLake: you’re the one making assumptions about people having “zero first-hand undergrad exposure to elite schools”. Actually, some of us have that exposure (and plenty more have exposure to their alums and have seen their ethos, connections, and outcomes).</p>
<p>For someone who hasn’t actually been out in the world yet, you’re mighty presumptuous.</p>
<p>H&S, anyway, do seem to get the pick of the litter (the line between Y&P and UPenn/Chicago/Northwestern/Duke is much more blurred, with plenty of students choosing the latter over the former). However, for your conclusions to hold, two things have to be true:
Adcoms have to be omniscient gods who can pick who will be successful in college and career.
The talent in the applicant pool can’t be that deep, with a steep dropoff after the first few thousand or so.</p>
<p>Neither are true, IMO. Doing impressive things in HS certainly ups your chances at H&S, but there’s an imperfect correlation there to doing impressive things in college or afterwards. The difference between HYPS and another elite often comes down to how impressive your ECs are, yet I’d say HS ECs aren’t all that great a predictor of successful afterwards.
As I’d mentioned before, in the US, there’s this discrepancy: while the disparity in chance of admittance is big at the top, the disparity in opportunity at success in life is fairly small. There’s far more intra-school (and intra-school inter-major) variation than inter-school variation of life outcomes in the US.</p>
<p>BTW, your argument is more valid if you compare the top giant state schools with the private elites, where maybe the top quartile (certainly the top 10%) at a school like UMich are comparable to the student body of a private elite, but the bottom quartile may not be.</p>
<p>Also, @Benley, what difference there is between HYPS and other private elites is likely to be at the very top. Note that all the Ivies and Stanford give an edge to athletes/URM/legacy and almost all give a big edge to EA/ED applicants as well (and EA acceptances make up almost half of all acceptances at Harvard). Harvard’s & Princeton’s EA acceptance rates are twice as high as UPenn and Northwestern’s RD acceptance rates, in fact. So you can’t assume that graduating from Harvard is a guarantee of quality (and I’ve seen evidence to the contrary).</p>
<p>You could insert the name of any college and that statement would be true. Getting in is one hurdle, but being successful in college is another hurdle and then parlaying that success into a happy, productive career/life is yet another hurdle. Getting out of high school and into college is the lowest bar - even for the ‘lottery’ schools. </p>
<p>“I just find it odd when people on CC that generally have zero first-hand undergrad exposure to elite schools can discount their ethos, outcomes and connections. Or post their straw man attacks to say YOU SEE the elite schools aren’t so special after all! Give it a rest and examine your motives. Truth be told, the connections are BETTER than you could ever imagine.”</p>
<p>Oh, let’s see. I went to an elite school, as did my spouse, and I have 2 kids currently at elite schools. But you, a high school student, magically know MORE about elite schools, their ethos, outcomes and connections than I do. How does that work again? BTW, what DO you know about connections at elite schools? (And how did your parents get so successful if they “only” went to MSU?)</p>
<p>Plenty of parents went to elite colleges either for undergrad or grad, but one of the things that you learn as you move through your career is that there are all kinds of successful people from all kinds of backgrounds. The other thing you learn is there are plenty of wealthy kids in colleges that are selectivity-wise just outside the elite - with all the connections etc. The only similarity at elite institutions is that all the kids were pretty smart in high school. But as people are trying to point out there are different kinds of “smart”…book smart, intellectual smart, creative smart and they don’t all chose the same 10-20 colleges to attend…they approach the process indivdiually. Now that’s not technically the “description” of ethos, but then again, I’m not sure I understand what you intended to mean with your use of the word ethos. </p>
<p>There is the luck of the draw involved. Two (or more) equal candidates and ones gets the spot while the other(s)can’t. Oversupply of top students relative to the available spots. </p>
<p>I know of Harvard/Harvard medical school grads who did the same jobs (physicians) in the same Midwest city- Podunk to all but those in even lesser places. Where did their elite education get them? The same place those from the state public U’s got to. There is life outside of the elite schools/cities/states/countries… Think- beauty is in the eye of the beholder analogy.</p>
<p>I think the 5 tips in the original post are pretty good. I found it interesting this weekend. We spent the weekend at an event where there were probably a hundred families we know at least casually. Our kids went to all different high schools or prep schools and are all pretty much around the same age. During the race they were identified often by their colleges as opposed to their childhood home towns and these kids were all over the country from sea to shining sea. It was pretty interesting. I don’t recall back in my day, this degree of diversity in college choices. I just don’t think there is a “given” anymore that you need to attend this or that university to be successful - the kids are just making very diverse choices about where they end up (at least in full pay families where the choice is not limited by finances). I just think the college choice doesn’t hinder or help even as much as it did 30-40 years ago. Just my opinion. </p>
<p>I’m still giggling at the valedictorian idea. My sons’ very competitive high school didn’t rank … Almost all of the students came from very highly educated families, and most took a boatload of AP classes while being involved in a host of ECs .</p>
<p>One parent whose son had “straight A’s” insisted on his student’s class rank because he dis not want his son deprived of his valedictorian designation on his college applications.</p>
<p>So the GC ran the calculations. The special snowflake was tied for # 18 with two others in a class of 162 at the end of junior year.</p>
<p>Aw, come on, people. This argument goes on and on, and it’s silly. Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and the other usual suspects do, in fact get really smart and accomplished students–more proportionally than other schools do. That doesn’t mean that every student at Harvard is a genius or that every student at Podunk is Gomer Pyle, but on average, the students who get admitted are “superior” to students who apply but don’t get admitted. So what? The people drafted to play professional sports are “superior” to those who don’t get drafted. The superiority is simply in the traits that the selectors are looking for. There are always people who think that the institutions, whether colleges or teams or anything else, are looking for the wrong traits. They can think that–it’s a free country.</p>