Deliberately underachieving?

College Search & Lists
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<p>Shall we explore some more data? I would never say, categorically, that all elite schools have more talented faculty than all non-elite schools. But look at the numbers for average salary. If you think salary does not matter, look at the numbers for significant awards such as Nobels, Pulitzers, MacArthur or Fields prizes. Look at studies of research volume or citation densities.</p>

<p>Hawkette has posted some lists on CC for average class sizes. The so-called elite schools tend to have much higher faculty:student ratios. Each student (or parent) has to decide whether small classes matter very much. Personally, I don’t know how a good seminar discussion could be managed well in a class of over 50 students. So if Berkeley (undergraduate) really is just as good as Yale (which I think is debatable), I would suppose this is in spite of larger classes, certainly not because of them.</p>

<p>Hillary mentioned wonderful libraries. What makes a library wonderful? The number of volumes must be one important factor. Some highly regarded, large state universities (Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin) do have large libraries, but by and large, elite private universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Chicago) disproportionately have occupied the top of the list. To your average undergraduate completing a term paper, maybe this does not matter. To attract the best faculty, it matters.</p>

<p>What about money? It matters for scholarship aid, it matters for facilities, it matters for all sorts of things. With one exception (Bryn Athyn College), every one of the top 25 schools ranked by endowment per student is a prestigious “elite” school.</p>

<p>How about innovation, invention and discovery, historically? Let’s not even go there because the list of major contributions by elite universities would get rather long indeed. </p>

<p>Yes, you can get an excellent education at many lesser known schools. I’m all for looking far beyond the Ivy League. I definitely would not want any child of mine picking a school for the name alone. I recommend the Colleges That Change Lives list often. But, to a high degree, there is good objective data to back up the reputations of America’s elite schools.</p>

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<p>A huge part of the education you receive anywhere will come from your peers. While an honors program or another entity may help at average schools, I think it would be hard for most excellent students to get an excellent education at a school filled with average students.</p>

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and an

will probably have many opportunities and do well in his/her career regardless of where he/she went to school. That is because of the ambition and drive.</p>

<p>BUT…

is ALSO true.</p>

<p>Lower ranked schools to not get the recruiters at their school. Students have to really excell, have connections or extreme perseverance to attain a position in certain occupations or graduate schools. </p>

<p>I know an extremely excellent student who was told by doctors at the hospital he worked for that even w/ his almost 4.0 and URM status, his state school undergrad education would hurt him with med school admissions.</p>

<p>Non-target school (meaning not the top schools) grads have a very difficult time getting internships and offers from the investment banking firms and banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, etc.) The tech firms (Google, Micresoft, etc. ) mostly recruit at the top schools.</p>

<p>So I think both positions stated in the above replies are true and are not worth arguing. Neither really answers the OP’s question. It seems he/she does not want to be around overly ambitious students who are concerned w/ their GPA, prestige, etc. </p>

<p>Neither of the above arguments really answers this. The OP has problems w/ some of his HS peers. Unfortunately, you will most likely come across these any where you go. All personality types exist at every school.</p>

<p>So basically the OP needs to grow up!</p>

<p>(Sorry this response is a bit slow to above because I got side tracked]</p>

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<p>This really is the issue. For the OP to go to a lesser school for his stated issue will most probably not accomplish anything positive and will almost certainly have negative repercussions.</p>

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<p>You are not being an underachiever. You’re being smart- you’re choosing not to make yourself miserable for the next four years by surrounding yourself with people you can’t stand. It’s perfectly fine to go to a lesser-known college. Studies even show that in many cases, an Ivy label means nothing.</p>

<p>Don’t be like my dad. He went to Notre Dame because it was his mother’s, not his, dream school, ended up hating it and being homesick 2,000 miles away from home, and out of college, had no better job opportunities than his friends who attended state colleges, and a whole lot more debt.</p>

<p>I see it this way- you can either go to an Ivy and blend in with the crowd, even be at the bottom of your class, wasting $50,000 a year to make yourself miserable, or go to a state school/local lesser-known private basically on a free ride, with laid-back people, and be the king of the college.</p>

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<p>I attended an ivy, have a child at a second ivy, one at MIT and another at a very top LAC. DH is the only one in our home who attended a state school undergrad. He is also the only one that reports fellow students hid books needed for exams, would not share notes, studied night and day and did a lot of back stabbing. He said he had no idea this was uncommon until he got to grad school at Stanford.</p>

<p>So many myths.</p>

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<p>You can’t assume all state/lesser-recognized colleges have students like that, and that all Ivies/more-recognized colleges have none. Every barrel has its bad apple.</p>

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<p>Here’s the thing about ivies–in large part they all have grade inflation so no one is too worried about their GPA. You’ll find grade grubbers anywhere, but at ivies it’s kind of like the Japanese system, most feel they’ve made it just by being there. They know they’ll get the interview. Also, these are people who know how to make themselves stand out in a crowd. </p>

<p>In my experience, you’ll find many more wild parties than study sessions at any ivy and most of their peer schools.</p>

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<p>Well, some programs at state universities may be more cutthroat and competitive because students can be dropped from them if they don’t keep their grades up.</p>

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<p>Exactly. And because kids know they need to graduate at the top to have a chance for many jobs and grad schools. So assuming they will be more laid back makes no sense.</p>

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<p>The simple and undisputable fact is that there is NO top law, medical, business, or Ph.D. program that has a student body composed entirely of people who went to an Ivy or similarly elite school for undergrad. Every top professional or graduate programs has student representation from lesser known and less prestigious schools.</p>

<p>To any high schoolers reading this thread: YOU WILL NOT DIMINISH YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING INTO A TOP GRAD / PROFESSIONAL PROGRAM BY GOING TO A LESS PRESTIGIOUS SCHOOL!</p>

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<p>Note that even the OP has adopted a new tack…</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/747695-ivy-vs-non.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/747695-ivy-vs-non.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Pardon my posting, ma’am.</p>

<p>This thread just seemed to get quite off track, but I’m still keeping an eye on it. It has provided me many, many more opinions and insights into my question than I had ever hoped. I really do appreciate it.</p>

<p>With the new post I was looking for a bit more specific information. I was strongly inclined to post it on this thread at first, but I didn’t want to provoke an already hot debate :)</p>

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<p>You needn’t apologize for posting, bike. A good many students share your sentiments – hence the fish analogy. Some people prefer to be small fish in a big pond (virtually all CCers at elite universities), while others prefer to be large fish in a small pond, often with merit money as an incentive. There’s also the option of being a large fish in a big pond, but naturally such students are few and far between (poster [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/members/joe-caltech-04--30852.html]Joe[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/members/joe-caltech-04--30852.html]Joe[/url</a>] on the Caltech forum was one such student).</p>

<p>It’s really up to you and how you think you could learn and perform best. Some people are driven by dedicated peers to succeed; others are discouraged.</p>

<p>Since you are in SC, I highly recommend checking out Furman, Wake Forest, and especially Davidson. They have highly talented but exceedingly laid-back student bodies.</p>

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<p>There is some element of truth to that statement. It is not such a big
element to deserve all caps and an exclamation mark.</p>

<p>You will not diminish your chances to zero. You probably won’t diminish
them by half, maybe not even by 25%. Some students may even
increase their chances, for example if the choice could involve large debts. However, the correlations cited in post 43 (for feeder schools and Ph.D. productivity) appear to be so strong, it is unlikely that the school choice won’t affect the chances at all, for most students.</p>

<p>None of us can say for sure what the difference in chances might be, under precisely what circumstances. This uncertainty characterizes many grown-up decisions. A good liberal education can help you to cope with that.</p>

<p>I do know a couple of kids whose stories seem to support Hillary’s position. One reluctantly chose a not-so-special state university over a top-10 private, strictly for financial reasons. 4 years later he graduated as a commencement speaker and will be attending a very famous British university for grad school. Full ride.</p>

<p>Another graduated from a hippie-dippie little LAC and was admitted into the competitive Teach for America program. He is relatively thriving in it. Some of his Ivy-graduate peers in the same program are not.</p>

<p>But both these kids are very unusual in some way. The first is exceptionally brilliant. And, he is working in a theoretical science field in which success does not greatly depend on teamwork or fancy equipment. The second overcame significant stresses in life, is very socially astute, and has a wickedly funny sense of humor (like, Saturday Night Live caliber).</p>

<p>I don’t think it’s coincidence that the person who founded TFA developed the idea at Princeton, or that a similar program (Student Partners?) has been started up at Yale. The fact that Yale or Princeton attracts smart ambitious students has something to do with it I’m sure, but most likely, so does the school environment.</p>

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<p>Yes, it is important to note that many students may increase their chances of getting to a top grad program by going to a less prestigious school.</p>

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<p>Again, lets talk odds. I can only speak to top business and law schools. Every top school in these arenas has a disproportionate percentage of kids from top college. Wildly disproportionate. You can even take a great public like UCLA and look at it’s representation at Harvard or Yale law or business compared to a tiny mid tier ivy to see how shocking the difference is. For business schools a key reason is the importance of work experience post college. Kids from top college had a much easier time getting the jobs the schools like to see.</p>

<p>I think the college you went to is considerably less important for med school and most PhD programs, but someone who knows more than me and Hillary on this front may want to chime in.
Hillary, can you start supporting your statements with relevant facts? I think you will see this a bit differently when you get out into the world. We all wish what you were saying was true, but it’s simply not how the world</p>

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<p>I am a medical doctor and went to a state university that would not even show up on the site. I have exactly the same income and other trappings in my field as someone from an Ivy and I had NO school debt. My son will be a senior next year and has a good ACT (34) and although it would be nice to go somewhere with “name” recognition, he may very well go to a public university for fiscal responsibility. There are so many great schools to choose from and I personally would not do well in a pathologically competitive environment that some schools have. Some of these hypercompetitive applicants are kind of scary. I applaud your desire for balance and insight.</p>

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<p>hmom5,</p>

<p>The reason that elite undergrad schools are represented in disproportionate numbers has already been discussed. It’s because the students at those schools are going to do better on the standardized tests and are the types of students who will work hard and be very ambitious.</p>

<p>It’s not because they came from a prestigious school.</p>

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I can vouch for the same for PhD programs. Letters of recommendation are extremely important for graduate admissions, far more so than for undergrad or professional school, and LORs from well-known professors (who tend to teach at top colleges) count for a lot more in the admissions process. </p>

<p>Although this is only anecdotal evidence, the other applicants at the recruitment weekends in my program came from Penn, UCLA, Oxford, Duke, Johns Hopkins, the College of Charleston, UBC, and UNC.</p>