Ivy League schools and other top schools definitely have the top notch scholars. Are they better at teaching, or more interested in teaching? That is a different story. The greatest benefit of going to an ivy is the opportunity to associate yourself with so many smart people.
How does any of this help HS guidance counselors whose job is to facilitate college admission for the vast majority of their kids who aren’t remotely competitive for high-reach schools?
You don’t think there are plenty of smart students outside the top ten schools? The saying goes, where do you think the super smart go to college if they don’t go to a tippy top? (And there are tens of thousands of bright kids.) You follow what schools are amassing top numbers of, say, Fulbrights? We aren’t talking Nowhere U, where breathing and tuition money are all it takes.
Your post made me look up where the most Fulbrights came from. I found this link: http://chronicle.com/article/Top-Producers-of-US/235384
I am not surprised to find a number of state flagships, but I wss surprised there was only 1 Ivy. Yes, the Ivies sre smaller, but I expected more given the concentration of talent.
Prabhu
Texas has a weird dynamic because of the top students being guaranteed admission to the state flagship. Those students often just rip of a bunch of Ivy applications, and figure if they don’t get in they have a guaranteed great match/safety that they ARE getting into. So they often feel no need to apply to any matches – just a bunch of reaches and UT.
Edited.
Hebe, scroll down. Not easy on a phone.
In the second set of research institutions, you’ll find more on Ivies. But do stop to enjoy the surprise colleges.
I agree that elite schools do not have a monopoly on good teaching, by any means. However, remember that that excellent professor, wherever he or she teaches, is going to be targeting a curriculum to a certain student body. Does that mean there’s a substantial difference between what is taught at a “super-elite” and what is taught at a simply “elite” school? No.But from what I’ve seen, there is a certain point where there is a real drop-off. Restricting my remarks purely to the humanities, I’ll say that I don’t think the difference between a lit curriculum/level of instruction at an Ivy and a flagship state school is so substantial that it should weigh heavily into admissions decisions; yes, you might be less likely to wind up reading Ulysses as an undergrad, but if you choose your classes right, you’re going to have a pretty impressive array of options.
I don’t think the same is true at most directionals. That doesn’t mean those schools don’t offer a good education – heck, I think I created a great course for my students at a directional this year. But given the population I was working at I had to go with a much less ambitious curriculum than we offered when I was a TA at an elite, and yes, I believe the best students in my classes are missing out – and in their case, I’m talking about missing out by not going to the flagship, not by not going to an Ivy.
Of course she is happy getting into Susquehanna, @MaineLonghorn. She knows herself, and has taken her lessons on breaking free from the crowd to heart:
@MaineLonghorn wrote, “When I texted her that she’d gotten it, she **called ** and said…”
“But given the population I was working at I had to go with a much less ambitious curriculum than we offered when I was a TA at an elite”
I think what your classmates bring to the table is an especially big deal in humanities or social science seminars where the main mode of instruction is discussing the text in a group and hashing out different ideas. If your classmates didn’t read it, or didn’t understand it, or have nothing of interest to say about it, that kind of class is crippled.
For those that don’t end up at a top 20 school for financial or other reasons, a very workable alternative is a strong school with an honors college. Depending upon the school, you are likely to get small classes with the best professors, priority enrollment, and specialized housing options. So yes, 100% of the student population at the university won’t be spectacularly smart. Does that matter if all the people who you interact with daily are? Plus many times you can get a full tuition or full ride scholarship.
Most of my close friends and I ended up at graduate school at Stanford, Columbia, MIT, etc. And my peers at the state flagship were every bit as smart as the grad school that I attended.
By all means… “break free from the crowd” and apply where it makes sense for your child and your family. Oh, how very noble you make that sound! Aren’t you glad your child isn’t a lemming and prestige who** like those who happily apply to and attend those lesser quality Ivies? You know, it’s possible to love and be proud of your child and her choices without trying to convince yourself and others that Susquehanna is better than schools that are universally recognized as among the best in the world.
Agree 100% that a humanities curriculum is going to depend on the level of prep, frame of reference, and ambitions of the students sitting around you. One of the “rock star” professors I had in college taught a course on Shakespeare which had kids sitting on the floor, crowded into the hallways, jammed on top of the radiators (in the largest lecture hall at the university) on the day he lectured on Hamlet. You didn’t need to be enrolled in his class to audit- and it was widely known as one of the pinnacle experiences of everyone’s college career.
But getting anything out of his lecture assumed that you had read Hamlet. And had a rudimentary understanding of the psychological dynamic between parent and child- perhaps a class on Freud. And a solid understanding of world history and could find Denmark on a map. And a solid vocabulary in the main tropes and themes of Shakespearean tragedy so that the references to Lear and Macbeth would make sense to you. Etc.
I still remember some of his lectures- almost 40 years later.
So yes- rock star professors- wonderful to have. But I wouldn’t have asked him to write a recommendation for grad school … I had “quieter” types who knew me well who were prepared to invest the time and energy into a kick-%^&* letter. So don’t overlook the kind of relationships kids can develop with the non-rock star faculty. All I’m saying…
I agree with a lot of what most posters are saying. What I don’t agree with is that too many people have trouble asserting that their child’s college is very good without going on to claim it’s better than X or Y higher-ranked school and worse, that their child is somehow more enlightened than a student who did apply or was admitted to X or Y. Sure, their college might be “better” for them based on their ability and interests, but it does get ridiculous when folks start saying that Ramapo State is “every bit as good as” Princeton.
I think the GFG has a valid point of view. There does seem to be some sort of defense mechanism that causes people to assume a mantle of virtue for their children who don’t apply to Ivies etc. This is really just the flip side of the other phenomenon of people obsessing about elite schools.
There is also a good deal of prejudice against parents of kids who do go to Harvard et al. Some avoid saying where their child went to school.
And graduates are plagued by assumptions about their abilities at work and comments like “Whoa you must be smart.” Or resentment from a boss. Some avoid saying where they went to college whenever possible.
There are students at Oberlin or Clark or Bennington and countless others who are just as smart as kids at Harvard or smarter, and creative. There seems to be an assumption that every student who is smart gets good grades and builds a resume. There are kids who go their own way and don’t have straight A’s. And there are students at Harvard who aren’t the stereotypical “good student” as well.
This whole discussion seems silly. The media does not write about “golden kids.” The media writes about homeless kids and sick kids and kids with other obstacles who get into 8 Ivies. They get into 8 Ivies because they are NOT “golden.” Read the Gatekeepers. Colleges prospect for kids from lower socioeconomic areas. The media finds these stories interesting and possibly helpful in selling papers or drawing advertisers.
Compmom recommends to read “The Gatekeepers”. I agree, but for an entirely different reason.
The key character in the book is a Wesleyan admissions officer who spends some of his time looking for kids who grew up in difficult circumstances. Unfortunately for everyone involved, most of these cases ended up flunking out of Wesleyan.In the meantime, a URM who could have handled the workload at Wesleyan was paid scant attention.
The Gatekeepers should be required reading for every new admissions officer in how not to recruit students.
Why do people always slide into the emotional argument of a tippy top versus an easier admit college with less prepared peers and pitiful grad rates? The point of the article was the very good colleges in between. There’s only so much weeping to be done over limited spaces at H.
And the Gatekeepers is old. But there was much more to it than URMs flunking out.
I’ve said one of my D1’s second choices was a school ranked around 50, at the time: for the very specific quality in her major, PhDs from top colleges and grad programs, who taught her specific interests. Why can’t families look at this sort of factor?
And no, the state flagship did not have faculty in this arena.
Did anyone read some of the comments after the article? People are simply rude. If I hear the term “flyover state” one more time I may say some thing rude back. 
(probably because I live in a flyover state) Obviously, there are many kids that attend state schools that live meaningful lives that never attended an Ivy league school. Having said that, the prestige associated with Harvard for example cannot be discounted. However, I attended state schools and my state law degree was adequate enough to win many trials against students that attended those schools. I truly believe the college you attend opens the door but it is what you do after the door is opened is what truly matters. We can talk all day and argue the pros and cons until we are blue in the face but what really matters is that kids are given a chance at a college degree and the opportunity to get that first job.
They slide into that argument because those “easier admit colleges with less prepared peers” are where their children were admitted. Thus, they feel the need to defend those schools. The noble school mentioned above has a 78% admissions rate, and 25 percentile SAT test scores of 510, 510, and 490.
It’s simple. Your kid’s school can be good, without my kid’s school being bad, and vice versa. Regrettably, people aren’t happy unless they make sure you know that their child had ZERO interest in attending one of those snotty elite schools, and for the record, he is getting every bit as good of an education where he is as those socially maladjusted/unhealthy/overly-ambitious/prestige lemming kids at said top schools. So there!
I have heard very nice things about many non-elite schools, and my D2 will likely attend one of them. I don’t doubt they have some great things to offer many kids. But that fact can be true at the same time as the fact that HYPS etc. are also great schools and, gasp, are probably even better.
I can compliment nearly any college choice, find something nice to say. The bottom line is how kid X gets an opportunity, not the negative fuss others may make. (So what if their kids weren’t interested?) I know tons of kids who went to 3rd tier colleges, if that, and did very well post grad.
At the same time, of course, I know the pitfalls of less prepped, less motivated peers.