“Post-grad, if a job applicant or new hire comes from an elite, there may be jokes, and there certainly will be higher expectations of this new employee, which can be burdensome.”
Oh please. They are going to have the same expectations of two hires for the same position and where one went to school is going to be a trivia question pretty soon. CC so over exaggerates the extent to which people in the real world obsess about college brands the way we all do.
@NJSue Thank you for the insider’s view in Post #1. It is unfortunate that some bright students are under-matched due to family/financial situations.
@colfac92 speaks of ‘the level of ambition and the sense of possibilities’ for students of elite colleges, and I believe this is exactly correct. After my wife and I put OOS private schools on the table for our younger 2 daughters, in addition to a choice of j3 or 4 potential in-state publics, their entire outlook has broadened, both in excitement about college and what they can do/where they can live after graduation.
Concerning OP’s question of advantages of elite colleges NOT related to job/career/pay after graduation: most of all, a love of learning. Also, a more likely chance to return to school for second year, to graduate in 4 years (vs 5 or 6 or not at all), different pool of students for friendships and dating, maybe a likelier chance to go further from home and experience a different region of America, more money spent per student. The main disadvantage is the cost.
The question of choosing an elite college probably affects about 1% of HS grads. Most will go to publics, and I agree that many flagships are elites, and not just the usual club of UCB, UCLA, Mich, UVa UNC. Any state’s flagship will be more elite than its directionals. The ‘elitism’ is relative, as it is real.
Many top students will choose a college for reasons other than the academic environment. Specific programs like pharmacy. Many want a school with big-time football and basketball. Or a big school with a huge alumni network. The great majority of students go where they can get in, where they can afford.
For the few students who want a rich academic college experience, and who can afford this (usually because parents can pay for it, because how many brilliant kids from low income families getting full rides at top 30 schools are really out there), why not go to the best school you can get into?
Being around an environment where the vast majority are academically highly engaged and performing or genuine geniuses may affect self-esteem. However, the flipside to this is actually experiencing “being more average” and having to put in the requisite effort(developing a decent work ethic) rather than easily coasting because one is at/near the top of their school academically*.
I say this as someone who experienced this harshly as a 13 year old HS freshman and in retrospect, benefited from the experience in undergrad/grad school and work settings.
Also, not all elite/respectable colleges have “ridiculous workloads”.
It’s very much YMMV depending on student, school, department, etc. For instance, HS classmates comparing notes found on average, students at Reed, UChicago, Cornell, MIT/Caltech/CMU(engineering/CS) and similar schools known for their high workloads and rigor had much higher workloads than students at HYPS.
And even then, it depended on the individual student. For instance, my HS salutatorian friend who admittedly is a genuine genius student who ended up at MIT found he had much more free time to hang out, party, and sleep at least 8 hours each night during undergrad.
He also never pulled a single all-nighter at MIT** whereas he pulled a few at our HS Ended up graduating near the top of his MIT undergrad class with a BS/MS in 4 years and later went back to MIT for an EE PhD.
** Accounts from his MIT roommates who were amazed at how he was one of the few classmates who got at least 8 hours of sleep every night for all 4 years.
The higher expectations on the basis of attending a respectable/elite educational institution can be motivating for some as well.
As for jokes, that can come IME regardless of the elite/non-eliteness of the school.
As for the last part, only becomes an issue if the boss and/or elite/respectable school alum employee choose to exhibit jerky behaviors toward each other on that basis…and that’s unprofessional.
Greater likelihood of that, possibly. Guaranteed it will always happen, not necessarily.
For instance, my uncle who was a junior-senior engineering executive at a tech firm at the time and an elite school alum himself found himself saddled with a Harvard engineering graduate who was retained at the firm and foisted upon my uncle as his secretary only because the secretary’s uncle was a highly influential senior firm partner. The level of incompetence and poor work ethic was such if it wasn’t due to firm nepotism, he’d have been fired immediately. And once that influential senior executive left the firm, the remaining partners felt free enough to allow my uncle to finally fire him.
Also, at one previous firm, one temp employee received a fair amount of ribbing for working in that position despite being a HYPS graduate during a booming economy. He ended up not lasting very long due to poor performance.
There was also a CC poster who posted an account about an Ivy graduate he/she knew who ended up in dire straits due to unforeseen drug addiction issues.
@Marian that brings up the cliche that when you ask someone from those institutions where they went to school, they answer with the name of the city. “New Haven.” or “Boston.” I guess it doesn’t work for Princeton though, but I’m not sure that Princeton folks feel the same embarrassment. Someone here can fill me in.
“What about aspects other than job/career/pay after graduation?”
The education.
I did like this, from cobrat: “a sufficiently large critical mass of academically engaged intellectual students” and would have to add, “kids not just focused on job-career-pay.”
Why are so many stuck thinking it’s just about job training?
And, of course you can get this in non-elite schools. You can be surprised at the pockets of intellectualism anywhere, if you’re intent on finding it.
With the exception of one friend* who graduated from Princeton sometime in the '80s and concealed the fact he went there to even his closest friends until his younger sister blurted it out while we were dining in his condo, none of the Princeton alums I knew were reluctant or embarrassed to state where they went.
One reason why I included “intellectual” is that most academics or those who genuinely are interested in the life of the mind regarded excessive prioritization or worse, exclusive focus on jobs/career/pay as inherently anti-intellectual.
Being a genuine intellectual by that definition means learning new things and broadening one’s horizons through intensive reading, reflection/thinking through ideas, debating them civilly with others, etc should be considered rewarding enough in its own right.
Personally, I’ve also been of the view that an excessive focus on jobs/career/pay in choosing one’s major/career shows a lack of faith in one’s own capabilities…especially mental capabilities to figure things out and adapt as the situation calls for it.
And my post-undergrad life reflects that. Majored in history because I felt college was supposed to be an intellectual journey…not job training and ended up working in the IT/IS field despite only taking a handful of classes in it*.
Still keep a foot in the history/poli-sci field…especially with grad school and doing a stint as an substitute community college lecturer in the social sciences when an adjunct friend had a family emergency.
@Pizzagirl I graduated many, many years ago and where I went to school is still not a mere trivia question. It gets mentioned when I get introduced to new people. The oohs and aahs are annoying. I was recently in the job market and I had more than one recruiter question why I would want to work for their company given my educational background. It gets to be beyond annoying. I never mention it unless asked directly, and it always makes me a little embarrassed/uncomfortable because the reaction is almost always the same. I was embarrassed to divulge that information on D’s college applications for similar reasons. My friends have had similar experiences.
I think the idea of changes in self-definition and the sense of possibility is an excellent one. I’ve seen it with my own kid, who tends to define herself as “average” wherever she is. She (and we) always considered her an average student through grade school. But along the way there have been indications that she might be selling herself short. When she went to CTY “nerd camp” for the first time, she was surprised that she was “average” in a group of supposedly “gifted” kids. And that spurred her to think about taking harder courses. When she took AP courses, she assumed she was “average” there, but when her AP and ACT scores were better than average, she set her sights higher again. At her “moderately elite” school she’s in classes with some pretty high-powered students and holding her own. I expect that her next round of applications to grad schools and med schools will probably reflect that. At each stage, her definition of self has been recalibrated, which has been a good thing for her.
Employers do not stop the presses when an applicant from HYPSM walks through the door. In some places it may cause suspicion of hiring a “know it all” who may be difficult to train and to work with others. Many employers are very happy hiring bright grads from their state schools. I don’t see an elite diploma as a golden ticket. The guy who welded new floor pans into my VW a few years ago was a Princeton grad.
Elite-I assume this word means Ivies, MIT, Stanford, 100% meets need schools, and the like?
Oldest son graduated from MIT. I would say #1 reason why it was the best choice was the people. I am not sure he could have gotten that kind of energy/atmosphere/people-relationship elsewhere. Meeting all his friends-most from MIT- at his wedding (his wife also graduated from MIT) was very touching.
Middle son is only in week two at Penn, so I have no clue how it will go. I can tell you a few things that I really like about it, and I would guess these things aren’t available at the local state university.
An employer reluctant or unwilling to hire a HYPSM grad, not based at all on the candidate but simply because of the pedigree, because they do not want a ‘know-it-all?’ Why would a HPSM grad even want to work there?
And as for whatever led a Princeton grad to work as a welder, that has nothing to do with him getting that Ivy degree. Sure, he could have gone to any local private or state school, or not at all. That would have meant a different life experience from ages 18 to 22, for better or worse who can say, except the grad himself?
For a different scenario, what about a grad from somewhere like Reed or Kalamazoo going for an interview, and the interviewer says ‘Never heard of your college.’ And the grad sees the interviewer’s degree from the nearest state directional framed on the wall, and wonders how much luckier he’d be, at least for that job, if he could’ve said, ‘Hey, we went to the same school!’
I was trying to present some of the paradoxical negatives as a balance here. Of course there are many positives.
Pizzagirl, my thoughts on work experience were not speculative but based on real events. In some ways, I have come to think, graduates of elites may sometimes be more comfortable in environments where they are surrounded by similar people, which is a darn shame.
fwiw, as a graduate of “elite” Williams College, I’ve always liked the fact that most people haven’t heard of it, but–perhaps hypocritically–I’ve always benefited from the fact that people in charge of hiring have, haha.
Well there are bragging rights that you get with having that diploma from a fancy school. Also, I knew a woman who sent her son to a private school then to the top LAC. She told me that the biggest benefit was the people he met/the connections he made. He had friends with very successful parents who were able to get him internships, etc.
I am not sure whether the public schools that meet full need fall under this category, but I will post because my daughter attends one as an OOS student. Maybe her school falls under “moderately elite.” She chose not to apply to an Ivy- was nervous due to the fact that she is type A perfectionist and wanted more of a balance (right or wrong, this was how she felt). She also turned down an offer to an “elite” non-Ivy school because she decided it was not for her.
Right now my daughter does not care about her salary or career following graduation (she is a sophomore). She already told me that she is not driven by money and although she knows that she needs to pay her bills, she intends to do what she loves rather than focus on earning a high salary. If the two meet up, fine. What she loves about her school is the spirit, energy, the engaged and smart students, and the collaborative rather than competitive atmosphere. She loves the research and internship opportunities, the activities on campus, and the fact that she gets invited to special invents such as brunch with visitors to the school. She loves talking anthropology with her professor for two hours on a Friday evening.
My daughter will likely be the “dreaded” bio major combined with something in humanities, and a double minor. People are already asking me “what does she plan to do with this…”? Truth be told, she will be fine because she is driven and will take her degree ( and probably grad school at some point) and run with it. I am not concerned. She already has an internship lined up for the summer if she wants it.
It’s not a shame if you like the job.
My husband has a PhD from a university that is among the top 10 in his field. He has always worked in industry rather than academia. He has had jobs for which a PhD was a requirement and jobs for which it was not. He has worked in environments where all of his peers had an elite education and in environments where almost nobody did. It never mattered. What mattered was the work and the people. Those are the things that make a job something you look forward to every day or something you dread.
His current job is in a research environment where all of his colleagues have doctorates from top schools and impressive records of professional achievement. He likes it there. I don’t think this is a shame. In fact, I think it’s great that he has the credentials that make it possible for him to work there.
“In some ways, I have come to think, graduates of elites may sometimes be more comfortable in environments where they are surrounded by similar people, which is a darn shame.”
On another thread, there are posters arguing that parents are universally disappointed if their kids graduate from an elite college and end up teaching HS.
Newsflash-there are graduates of elites everywhere. Teaching school, serving patients with AIDS and malaria, leading a platoon of marines in a dangerous place, managing teams in a factory. Where do you guys come up with your logic? I entered a management training program after college and ended up managing 30+ union workers. The training program hired young grads from both elite and non-elite schools. The only two immediate “wash-out’s” were from Hofstra and Fashion Institute of Technology- they couldn’t handle the hours and the intensity. I don’t think the graduates of the elite schools were any different in how they related to the people they managed. Some hourly workers are jerks; some managers are jerks; some union shop stewards were magnificent people and others were lunatics. Some members of management (both elite school and non) were magnificent people and others were lunatics.
Just like in real life, right?
Agree that this question has been debated here ad nauseam. Not sure why someone who has likely participated in this discussion before starts the debate again. Where is. @annasdad when you need him? :-@
“I don’t think the graduates of the elite schools were any different in how they related to the people they managed. Some hourly workers are jerks; some managers are jerks; some union shop stewards were magnificent people and others were lunatics. Some members of management (both elite school and non) were magnificent people and others were lunatics.”
Of course! This is common sense, which is often sadly lacking!