<p>Unfortunately I’d have to disagree with this. There is a certain class of people who attend top schools, for whom money is no issue, who simply don’t think that anyone could be deterred on grounds of cost. It just doesn’t occur to them, so they think people who didn’t attend must just not be smart enough. I have encountered this attitude a few times.</p>
<p>Same as how George W Bush suggested that people with insurance problems should discuss it with their doctors: it didn’t even occur to him that people might not be able to afford a doctor appointment. You can see a mild echo of this on here in another thread where people suggest that a $120k income is ‘not rich’.</p>
<p>But you’re right that people who did not attend top schools projecting attitudes is more common.</p>
<p>I became a member of CC 3 years before the application process. I never thought in my wildest dreams that she’d end up there!! She was always COMPLETELY against it. </p>
<p>What? You do realise this is just an internet forum and we’re just trading subjective impressions, right? How would one even go about proving that … a huge survey with thousands of participants?</p>
<p>I’m also getting a bit tired of your shifting goalposts.</p>
<p>The simple reason I wrote “prove it” is because I have been criticised on this thread for insufficient evidence in support of the Harvard “wow” factor. No one can give a comprehensive 1,000 page peer-reviewed study conducted over multiple counntries, years, and interview cycles on a chat room, but I have tried to supply some examples. So, whenever someone asserts – without any evidence, even anecdotal – that “you’d name Stanford,” I feel that I am within bounds by turning the tables on that person (who insists I supply them with evidence or that I can never supply them with sufficient evidence) to ask for their evidence. That’s not “shifting goalposts,” that’s just saying, let’s see what ya got, buster!</p>
<p>The best way for any of you Harvard-skeptics to get the evidence you need is simply to go out in the world, initiate a college discussion, and tell people you went to Harvard and see what reaction you get. Then, initiate that same discussion, and tell them you went to ENA or Oxbridge or the University of Witwattersand (or whatever floats the boat in your own home country) and see the reactions. Given the evidence of the OP as well as the anecdotes shown in the various video clips (“I went to school in Boston . . .”), it is clear that [some] people believe that “Harvard” provokes a reaction in a conversation. I am agreeing with that. What is interesting is to try and figure out why and, more to the point, why ONLY Harvard (as it seems). I don’t see similar provocation-avoidance for names like “Stanford,” ergo there must be something about “Harvard” that engenders it. What is that? </p>
<p>So, as I say, go out in the world and experiment. That’s a kind of personal “survey” and you will get the answers without relying on youtube.</p>
<p>Who cares? Who would ever do this? People have heard of and not heard of lots of things–cities, sports teams, celebrities, corporations. I cannot imagine a bigger waste of time.</p>
<p>Sorry, but with an anecdotal survey you’ll get anecdotes, nothing more.</p>
<p>I remember back when I was a student (when I lived in MA but before I attended Harvard) and I did an exchange in Italy. As gifts I brought some Harvard t-shirts, figuring tourists bought them while visiting Cambridge so they’d be a fun representation of my home to present to my host family. The recipients were gracious but puzzled. They’d never heard of Harvard. When I told them it was a famous university their response was “Like the University of Michigan?” </p>
<p>Wow, @makennacompton you have a problem. You’ve been called out on making your claims without eveidence; just accept it and move on. Nobody is denying that Harvard has special ‘wow’ power in the US … do we need a survey for that, too?</p>
<p>I seriously hope that whatever is making you so argumentative about this isn’t that bad. Did you get rejected from Oxford or MIT or an IIT or something?</p>
<p>*The best way for any of you Harvard-skeptics to get the evidence you need is simply to go out in the world, initiate a college discussion, and tell people you went to Harvard and see what reaction you get. *</p>
<p>I am trying to imagine anyone who had the benefit (or at least the opportunity) of a world class education being willing to spend (waste) her or his time in this way. </p>
<p>It’s still not clear whether makennacompton is a parent or a student. Most of her posts appear (ostensibly) to be from a parent perspective but she references a bad MIT interview she had. </p>
<p>She writes in that ‘absolute certainty, my opinions are facts and yours are just opinions’ way that I’d associate with someone younger, perhaps a student in a discipline with a very rigid mindset like engineering or medicine.</p>
<p>You’ve got to be pretty unsophisticated if you even think that any brand of college has the same amount of power in all regions of the US, much less the world. </p>
<p>I know this might shock people, but I have friends and relatives who - gasp - have NOT gone to college. I think the rub is with people who went to second-tier but top colleges, near-Ivies as it were, vs. people who went to State U. or didn’t go to college.</p>
<p>With my relatives and friends who didn’t go to college, it doesn’t really come up. No one actually cares what your kid is doing after high school. Most of my nieces and nephews are working or going to a trade school after high school. My BIL is lucky to have a decent union job, especially with drinking and mental health issues. His six kids have zero interest in going to college.</p>
<p>In my experience, no one asks where you went to school at work. It comes up occasionally in conversation. We have tiny offices with no wall space for our diplomas. The university doesn’t list our educational backgrounds.</p>
<p>I suppose before my brother went to an Ivy, I never really thought about Ivy League universities other than something that rich people and people in the movies attended. By the time I got into a non-HYP Ivy, I had visited multiple times and no one there had a halo or walked around wearing a mortarboard. I’ll agree “Harvard” has a certain name recognition, but I disagree that it is so much more than Yale or Princeton, <em>except</em> among people who have NO IDEA.</p>
<p>Thus, when I was at WDW this summer, I counted at least 20 Harvard shirts, often sweatshirts oddly enough (being that it was AUGUST!). Over people’s shoulders, wearing them, and so on. The rest of the shirts that were branded by a college were all over the place - one from Boston College, one from Georgia Tech, etc. I can recall one Princeton shirt. Say you went to Harvard, and the people standing in line with you at Disney World might be impressed. Or someone who went to Amherst or Williams might think you are a snob.</p>
<p>"The best way for any of you Harvard-skeptics to get the evidence you need is simply to go out in the world, initiate a college discussion, and tell people you went to Harvard and see what reaction you get. </p>
<p>I am trying to imagine anyone who had the benefit (or at least the opportunity) of a world class education being willing to spend (waste) her or his time in this way."</p>
<p>Makenna has that high schooler view of the world that the grownup world consists of one giant cocktail party, and if you say you went to Harvard, people gasp in awe, offer to buy you a drink, their eyes widen at the Very Important
Person you must be, the men want to be you and the women want to date you, and everything you then say is treated as Gospel Truth because look, He went to Harvard so his opinion on whether Gone Girl is worth seeing or how good is the new restaurant in town or whether it’s going to rain this weekend carries Undoubtedly More Weight than the poor schleb who went to State U. </p>
<p>I’m convinced that for a long time that everyone had heard of Harvard because of Love Story - it was on the best seller list for years and then was made into a very popular movie. Anecdotally, many eons ago, I had a friend who was about to attend Stanford while I was going to Harvard. People in France had heard of Harvard, but not Stanford. Stanford’s name recognition has gone up a lot since then, especially if you are in a techie field. I got a job in Germany based on having Harvard on my resume, even though it’s not where I studied architecture. My boss had barely heard of Columbia.</p>
<p>If you ask people what is the greatest painting in the world, they will say the Mona Lisa. Is it, technically, the best? Who knows? But something has to fill the gap of “what is the greatest painting” and the ML fills it. It doesn’t mean that the people who say it have any actual basis for evaluating the quality of paintings or that they aspire to see or own the Mona Lisa themselves. </p>
<p>To say something is the best because the average Joe thinks it’s been anointed the best is sloppy thinking. </p>
<p>Were they all teenagers trying to impress Donald Duck or Snow White characters running around? :)</p>
<p>My older kid who IS in college, wears every other college’s t-shirts, sweatshirts, caps etc. when she is traveling or running around except her own school’s. OTOH, the younger one in high school sticks to big name schools only, recognizable easily by other aspiring high schoolers. </p>
<p>When I was in high school in a far away country, the only college in US that anyone I knew cared about was MIT. Our only goal back then was to get into an IIT and MIT was considered the only peer around the world. My kids don’t believe me when I tell them that a lot more kids in India are in awe of MIT than any other school in US but such is life. </p>
<p>Having not read the 10 pages of comments here, I will jump in on one real-world example…i’ve worked at a series of start-ups (some of them did well) through the years and Harvard was sometimes a positive on a resume (with the idea that it’d help with venture capital raising to show the background of the founding staff) but it was also seen as a negative (“the last thing we need is a harvard guy in here with a big head”)…</p>
<p>i throw out this story to say that the word “harvard” carries weight even decades after graduation…sometimes good, sometimes bad…but always remarked on. </p>
<p>The whole idea of “eyes open wide, omg, you are the greatest, I am so impressed, I defer to you on everything” because you go to ANY school, anywhere, is very immature IMO. </p>
<p>If I meet someone who is smart, he doesn’t come across smarter because he went to Harvard or dumber because he went to average U. Likewise, if someone’s a blithering idiot, who cares that he has a Harvard degree? </p>
<p>Frankly the only places where I’m uninformly impressed (and grateful) are the service academies. THAT demands my automatic respect, not going to Harvard et al. </p>