<p>I agree with Brooklynborndad’s post a few pages back about immigrants having a greater need for the validation of an elite college degree than those of us who were born here. And wasn’t there a study recently which showed that an Ivy education offered the greatest advantage to minorities?</p>
<p>PG, we attended an admitted students send-off party yesterday. One foreign-born couple explained how they had tried, unsuccessfully, to explain to their friends and relatives the benefits of their son’s chosen university over Harvard, where he also got in. So I think people do try to educate their families, but often they are too set in their ways. My own American-born parents have finally accepted that D is going to a very good school, but feel it just can’t compare to the small, relatively unknown LAC which is in their own backyard and where my mother and two sisters attended. People are going to think what they’re going to think based on their own frame of reference. No amount of “education” will change that too much because the relatives will only conclude you’re making excuses for your deficient progeny. It sounds to them as bogus as claiming Green Giant Junior College is just as good as Princeton.</p>