<p>Creekland,</p>
<p>When did this become about ME personally and not about the argument at hand? Why, with a degree from MIT and a lucrative career doing exactly what I want to do in my chosen field, would you imagine that I need to compensate for anything? I expect something better than this trite ad hominem. Not only is such an approach utterly devoid of academic rigor, but it’s disgraceful to those who hold the beliefs we all claim to cherish. </p>
<p>hoveringmom,</p>
<p>Your entire conception of my argument, and thus your list of fallacies, is mistaken. You continue to do “the Christian thing” and make arguments against why power/money are not to be strived for and continue to ignore the fact that I have continued (to no avail) to try and help you understand that in my argument I used those things are proxies for success in an effort to use an objective argument. I will try to explain it to you again:</p>
<p>Let us imagine that one has no ambition to make any more money then they need to simply sustain themselves meagerly. Let us also imagine that this person wishes to become a software engineer and write code that will help hospitals more effectively share information in ways not yet imagined and millions of lives will be saved as a result. And, let us also imagine that, alas, this person succeeds! Then what happens? Their genius is recognized and they become a highly influential person in their field (power) and their software is purchased for large sums of money. Ah Ha!, you say. What if our protagonist gives the software away for free? Well, then firms bid out for this persons consulting and to have them sit on the board (money) to ensure the proper dissemination of their software. Now, maybe they give all of this money away … but it is still their money to give away never-the-less. Thus, their success, causally, generates power and money. It’s the natural result of excellence in a capitalistic society. </p>
<p>You continue to conflate the proxy of excellence I generated with a desire for or intention to achieve the causal results if you want to, but until you accept that the argument that I am making and not the one that is easy for you to argue against (straw man fallacy) there’s nothing more to be said. I don’t know how much clearer I can make it for you, but you seem insistent on fighting that very weak straw man. </p>
<p>To your points regarding graduate school, less than 10% of Americans hold a graduate/professional degree. That number drops dramatically if you count graduate degrees from top schools. Simply saying, “I’ll go to a podunk university and then Harvard graduate school afterward” doesn’t make much sense to me. Graduate programs at top universities are exponentially more competitive than their respective undergraduate programs. It sure seems like a big gamble to me. </p>
<p>Finally, you simply declare and presume that the sole measure of myself is external and I have no internal measures. Pardon me for being so blunt, but you don’t have a damn clue about my motivations or desires and couldn’t be more wrong. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, I am simply trying to make people aware of the choice they are making in choosing a Christian university. Many top firms across industries (Google, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, NASA, etc.) will only recruit at top 10, or in some cases top 3, firms. Certainly experience is what matters in terms of job progression, but the thing that people with “lower” aims in life fail to understand is that many upper echelon jobs REQUIRE EXPERIENCE THAT CAN ONLY BE GAINED BY THOSE WHO ATTEND SCHOOLS WHERE THAT EXPERIENCE CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH ON CAMPUS RECRUITING. It’s like saying, “It doesn’t matter what school you went to, but we look for people who have previous experience at the top 3 engineering firms” and then finding out that the top through engineering firms only hire from their pool of summer associates, which is only recruited from Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Cal Tech, Harvey Mudd, and MIT. Can you just go anywhere and then hope to get into a top graduate program? Absolutely. And that can work - heck - it worked for me. But the odds of that happening are very low - I can’t count the number of 4.5 GPA’s in highschool that turned into 3.2 GPA’s in college and the MCAT, LSAT, GMAT etc. are much harder, proportionally, than the SAT. </p>
<p>Of course college is about the experience and of course that should be weighed in to the decision. I’m not denying that (and have stated as much already, you’re clearly not carefully reading my posts or else you simply don’t care to directly address my argument). I am simply postulating that (and forget the money, since you’re so hung up on that one component of my argument) that the CHOICES and OPPORTUNITIES within a chosen career can become very limited once one intentionally closes those doors. There are a lot of people who hate the idea of being limited in their future endeavors and so rail against the idea that the Ivy League is overrated and doesn’t matter etc. etc. Meanwhile, take a look at wall st, the supreme court, and all of the PhD’s at top universities and look at where they went to school. </p>
<p>Sure, many entrepreneurs don’t have top college degrees, and if someone is intent on becoming an entrepreneur then the Ivy league becomes much less advantageous (although the connections to VC and consulting firms would be huge). But forget about the money, the on campus recruiting and resume value add open doors that remain locked for students from other universities. Everyone on this forum can stand up and shake their fist at me all day, but you can no more change the truth of that reality that can a lunatic put out the sun by scribbling “darkness” on his cell wall.</p>