Yes, sorry, you weren’t unclear. That was a rhetorical question on my part. I am suggesting that there are different forms of ambition I might actually prefer for my children, in themselves and in their closest associates.
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And the answer is: They don’t really get many chances to interact with undergraduates once they become students. Occasionally, they’ll read about someone in the school newspaper, usually after they’ve achieved a great honor of some sort. Then, they’ll be tempted to retrieve their notes to see how prescient they may have been. But more often than not, they just don’t have the time.
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I have a somewhat different view based on my experience (which arguably is dated) and those of my kids (1 SLAC, I Ivy).
There is no question that you can find super accomplished and driven students at any college. There is sure to be a good concentration in honors programs (which I think are great) and certain selective majors/programs. The difference I see is what makes up the “middle” (and even bottom) of the class in every major, including God forbid, classes in the Humanities. These kids (barring some breakdown) would be in the top half, probably 20% and higher, of most all other programs. My close friend group from college includes, doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers and a journalist who worked for a national publication. My kids’ friend groups were equally accomplished and diverse in academic interests. In most colleges, public and private , there is a huge gap between the top vs the bottom. Within the Ivy+, the bottom, with rare exceptions) are still pretty stout in any major.
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I never thought of the “steel sharpens steel” theory in this The Atlantic article as solely, or even mainly, in service of a remunerative ambition among Ivy Plus kids.
Wouldn’t you agree that adult ambition takes many forms, including wanting to reach heights of power (federal judge, deputy secretary at World Bank, senior prosecutor) or heights of influence (NYT reporter or commentator)? Yes, and some want to reach the Top 1% of wealth as well.
If you’re a high ambition kid (of any form), then sharpening your steel at an Ivy League school makes a lot of sense. Can you do the same at UIUC or Berkeley or UCLA or UNC? Sure, but the prevalence of “steel” to bounce off against is not nearly as concentrated as at Harvard or Princeton.
This observation cannot possibly be in dispute. Can it?
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A bit. I think it depends on the program you are in at those publics. Obviously there is a wider range of students in the undergrads generally, but I would suggest if a lot of those kids are not actually in your classes, in your friend groups, and so on, that should not particularly matter.
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Sure, if one can get in, or afford it.
Because the Ivy League schools can’t take a significant proportion of the top graduating HS students each year, many high achieving/high ambition students must go elsewhere. And remember….it is not the mission of any of the Ivy League schools to admit only the ‘best and brightest’…they are admitting well rounded classes, so there is actually a rather wide range of academic ability (although I do agree the average if high.) I will note again an athlete I worked with went to an Ivy who had a 3.0 in HS with not one honors/AP course, and a 21 ACT. And they did great academically in their college.
There are also many high achieving students who can’t afford meet full need schools that give zero merit aid like the Ivy league (and many Ivy +)…many families can’t afford their SAI/expected family contribution or they don’t want to be full pay (because they know their high achieving/high ambition kid can get large merit elsewhere.)
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Agree. There are so many more students at these large publics than at Ivy league schools. If you are in engineering or CS or business at UIUC (just grainger engineering is 15K students) or UCB, you are surrounded by high achieving students. Many of whom will also be high ambition too.
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Interestingly, I am not sure if this is verifiable with data, but by reputation, more of the engineering students at many Ivy Plus (if they have undergrad engineering at all) may be interested less in being career working engineers, and more interested in eventually going into some form of business career where an engineering degree might be useful.
Of course even then, there are engineering + business programs at some publics which might have a similar population.
But otherwise, this could be another “what sort of ambition?” question, where a lot of graduates from the traditional engineering powerhouses end up fulfilling their ambition to have a fun and rewarding career as working engineers, but that nonetheless would not count as a “tail” outcome in the Chetty sense. Whereas at least a higher percentage of Ivy Plus engineering graduates may have the “ambition” to do something that would count as such a “tail” outcome (C-level executives in a tech company, or whatever).
Unfortunately we really lack the data to know, but I personally find that sort of hypothesis more plausible, less so the idea that the difference in “tail” outcome percentages is a function of talent distributions and “steel strengthening steel” in the talent sense.
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By the way, this is a VERY weak form of evidence, but that also tracks what I have seen in social media conversations over the last few years. Like, to be blunt, there are kids who are really interested in engineering and who are happy to consider the top public powerhouse programs, and then there are the kids who say they are interested in engineering but still want to go to an Ivy, a US News T20, or so on.
And in my experience when adults who are working engineers and such explain to the latter that the traditional powerhouse programs can be a LOT of fun for kids who love engineering, that they get great internships in engineering, and so on, that can often not budge them, they may still have a mindset that they want to go to one of the most “prestigious” colleges generally.
So to me, it is not hard to understand how if kids like that are targeting these “prestigious” colleges, and then some are successful and as a result they are concentrating and reinforcing each other in these sorts of values at those colleges, more “tail” outcomes in the Chetty sense will be the result.
I just balk at the idea these kids are necessarily more “talented” than the otherwise similarly-qualified ones coming out of HS who are happy to choose a top engineering program even if it isn’t at an Ivy, US News T20, or whatever. Or really even more “ambitious” overall. Again, to me that is just a different type of ambition, not “more” ambition.
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That’s because they aren’t more “talented” - with some exceptions, of course. There just aren’t enough spots at Ivies for all the talented and ambitious kids out there. And, of course, some kids are admitted for reasons other than academic talent - legacy, famous parents, athletic recruit etc. And, as you’ve said, sometimes kids who are admitted can’t attend - my older son has a friend that went with the Robertson at UNC over several Ivy acceptances. He’s now at Duke law school (which he selected over Columbia because they gave him some $$). I don’t think this kid’s trajectory would have been any better from an Ivy - and considering he wants to do public interest law (bless him), keeping costs low will allow that.
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One of mine did go to Harvard, back several years. I read at the time that 40% of grads were going into finance, consulting etc. As a student in the performing arts, it was an alien environment and the only reason for attending was financial aid. Of course you can find your people anywhere, but it can be harder for creative types in a place full of “hyper ambitious” people. Not that you can’t be hyper ambitious in the arts, and that hyper ambition did tend to leak into those areas too. Some of these young people have lived their whole lives like this, and just move on to the next competition in the job market. As for money, it is good to have enough.
Harvard and other top schools have large lectures with TA’s. In my 30’s I took some English classes at UMass Boston. The class size was 20 and the professor taught the class, no sections, no TA’s. Class on Chaucer and class on Flannery O’Connor were fantastic. UMass Boston is hardly a target here on CC.
Since my kid was exposed to peers whose families were focused on HYPSM admissions, we were shocked at the efforts they made for admission. One family purchased a condo in Cambridge so the teen could go to Cambridge Rindge and Latin, which has a high admit rate to Harvard. Some used rowing, squash, tennis and spend high school years traveling and competing, even when the kid wanted to stop.
While there is a pretty high proportion of students receiving aid, my kid was surprised when a classmate suggested going to Siberia on winter break. There was an assumption of money that could be hard to deal with.
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I observed this to be true as well.
I think this is a matter of optionality. Meaning that those Ivy college engineering students can take traditional engineering jobs if they want, but also have (usually higher paying) opportunities open to them that may not be as readily available in the engineering powerhouses. It’s no surprise that many students choose those higher paying options.
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Similar evidence (and probably no less weak) of kids whose only motivation for attending an Ivy+ college is to gain access to alum in IB and M&A. There, at least, the choices are rather stark. What I find fascinating are the knock-on effects on non-target, overlap colleges where the Ivy+ rejects often wind up for similar reasons - they are the most prestigious colleges that accepted them. Many of them have neither business schools nor finance as a major. What some of them do have is a patina of “old money” associations or perhaps, a “vibe” associated with pre-professionalism (however they may define it.) Finding the right mix often seems to tie the kids into knots and presents a problem to the non-target schools where they wind up: how far do they contort themselves into “Ivy reject schools” in order to cater to these matriculants who arrive on campus still licking their wounds? I’m betting that a lot of these kids don’t survive the “holistic admissions” process at some of the smaller colleges.
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I think it certainly can be, and in fact optionality in my mind is potentially one of the very good reasons to choose a highly-resourced private research university or LAC, assuming it is affordable. They basically have the resources available to make sure every program they offer to undergraduates is a high quality version. And sometimes just as critically, at least most of their programs likely have enough resources not to be capacity capped, such that you can freely choose among them (although there can be exceptions, like say Wharton).
And this means if you are going in without a firm path in mind, or just have the wisdom to understand plans can change, it makes sense to choose one of these colleges if possible, because then you will likely still be happy academically regardless of how your interests evolve.
But that’s still “main distribution” thinking so far, not “tail” outcome stuff. And I do think if your mindset when it comes to options is more, “Well, maybe I will agree to work for NASA or Google, but maybe also I will do IB, or possibly a startup, I haven’t decided yet,” then OK, yes, you might think about optionality in terms of “tail” outcomes specifically.
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In fact you might well be sketching a model that helps explain why some of these kids end up dismayed their only choice ends up being a large public “safety” they really never imagined having to use, and so didn’t choose particularly carefully.
Incidentally, my sense is that some of the “Ivy reject” kids are at heightened risk of burn out. Like, they go to some still-very-selective college that they see as basically beneath them, indeed they might well be thinking they will try to transfer to one of the sorts of colleges that just rejected them (a regrettably not too uncommon sort of conversation this time of year).
And then they hit the reality of who is actually at this very selective college that they deemed beneath them, and they are no longer able to just outwork all these other kids to a 4.0. They may actually be looking at just being kinda normal students for that college. And I think that can sometimes trigger a really bad spiral.
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I think you are spot on about it being a different kind of ambition!
We toured a lot of schools to get a sense of “fit” for our D. She ended up with a highly subjective “happiness” rating and Cornell and CMU tied in her mind for having the most unhappy and stressed out looking students (despite all our protests to the contrary (we are a family of Cornellians)). She also nixed a bunch of schools for having too much of a “country club vibe”. After 15 visits she realized she wanted a collaborative, happy, hands on, pre-professional, academic environment. The top of her college lists were some of the big public flagships and Purdue was her #1 from the moment she set foot on campus. (She nixed some other flagships for not being academic “enough.”)
As most know, she was in the Honors College at Purdue and graduated with her honors medallion so completed all the honors requirements (classes, research, leadership). Most of her friends were in her honors cohort but they comprised only about 10% of her regular chem e classes so plenty of exposure to other students. The chem e major required a 3.2 GPA to be guaranteed the transition to major. Classes were not for the faint of heart. These kids were all talented academically to get through the rigors of the major. She felt like she was surrounded by smart, high achievers like herself.
D had exactly the undergrad experience she wanted - hands on classes from day one, ton of work experience every single summer and through her co-op, she was able to add a minor/concentration in polymer and material science, a certification in collaborative leadership, had her research published, did study abroad, plus she got to continue her theater and music performances, went to see big college sports, etc… And, she is now exactly where she wanted to be positioned with her career - on a quick track to ops leadership. An MBA is likely in her future.
Of her friends - many were hired for ELDP positions in their companies (leadership tracks), many went to aerospace companies, some did go to start ups, and a bunch went on for PhDs. There are a handful that are happily working “regular” engineering jobs too and some have gone on to med school, but they are the minority of her cohort.
We have family graduating from a school discussed in the Atlantic essay and they are reporting similar outcomes for their friend group.
I can’t speak to the IB landscape at Purdue. D didn’t have any friends in the business school. Our family member has one friend going into IB (math/econ double major).
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According to two of my children who are each at a different Ivy, the “grinder” students are abundant and really insufferable. This type of student has increased at these schools and based on my attendance at some alumni events, they aren’t learning how to network or integrate socially and they think that having gone to an Ivy alone will help them with jobs and social mobility, but their attitude and grinder personality is off putting and probably hurting them in many interviews and social interactions. Just my limited observation.
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Well, maybe these hard working students don’t come from the same privilege as many Ivy admits. Perhaps their “grinding” is what got them there as opposed to having a family that could shepherd them through with connections, networking opportunities etc. And, you are probably correct that they won’t realize the same social mobility as kids who aren’t already connected which just further underscores the idea of it’s not what you know, but who you know.
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What I was trying to say is that many students think just being really smart and attending a great school with great grades is a golden ticket, but most things in life require a multi faceted approach and if they don’t present themselves as interesting and engaging people to be around, that hurts them. Being interesting and engaging does not require privelege. I know plenty of boring people with privelege and engaging people who did not have it.
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My experience (which again is weak evidence to be sure) is often with the “grinder” kids I have known about, there are parents operating in the background, but they are not necessarily the sorts of parents who are themselves in the middle of a stream of generations attending elite US colleges. And they may be pushing the idea that outworking your peers can lead to a “golden ticket”, and indeed that kids unwilling to try to outwork their peers are lacking in “ambition”.
Unfortunately, I think this contributes to the stresses that can ultimately increase risk of burn out, and not just in college. Again, we’ve had plenty of conversations with kids who experienced some sort of serious mental and/or physical break in HS, possibly stress related. And sometimes they are asking something like that if they can be perfect from here, can they overcome this episode and still get into an Ivy/T20?
From my perspective, it is obvious they need to step back from all that and start focusing on healthy, sustainable development. But then I don’t really believe in golden tickets, so I don’t believe sacrificing healthy development has a compensating payoff.
And then people see these studies that say there is an increase in tail percentages, they think some form of, “Aha, there IS a golden ticket!” And their campaign continues.
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