<p>"One is at an Ivy League school. They party 7 nights a week. Their GPA is below average and just barely keeping them in the school. All they do is go to class and then go get wasted. Or go play video games. Whatever they please.
The other is at a school that’s not in the Top 50, but they work unbelievably hard. They maintain an incredibly high GPA, are active in extracurriculars and campus events, get prestigious internships, participate in outstanding research opportunities (and maybe even publish their own paper), and earn a great deal of respect from all of their teachers (who will, in turn, write glowing recommendations).
Both of these students are applying for the same job. You’re telling me the student from the Ivy League school is going to get chosen over the student with the research and the internships? "</p>
<p>There is definetely a good chance that the kid at the non-top-50 school will get the job. However, if that kid had gotten a degree from a top-tier school, he would be virtually guaranteed of getting the job.</p>
<p>"A lot of Ivy Leaguers only got in because they were blacks, athletes, Native American descendants, Mexicans, or legacies.</p>
<p>But they still reap the benefits."</p>
<p>In my opinion, that’s a racist comment. I know more than a few African Americans with 2250+ SATs and practically perfect GPAs that go to non HYP top schools. Are you going to say that they didn’t deserve it either?</p>
<p>i’m sick of people assuming that we get things handed to us on a silver plate. We don’t. And when we finally accomplish something, we’re told that it was solely because we are Black. How wrong is that?</p>
<p>Why are you complaining about something so stupid? It’s a waste of your time, and now that I think about it, a waste of mine too.</p>
<p>Look, I’m not saying that the system is fair. Some kids at lower-tier universities are amazingly intelligent, while some students at Yale are bozos. But just because the system is not completely fair does not mean this system does not exist.</p>
<p>You have no idea how many people I know who say that they have gotten high position jobs through connections through their top-tier alma mater.</p>
<p>Also, if you’re saying that the prestige of your school doesn’t matter, then you’re essentially saying that nearly every single college bound senior is wrong.
Every single person with a 2270 or higher is applying to top-tier schools. Every single one. If it honestly did not matter the prestige of the school you’re going to, the majority of really smart kids would be applying to cheaper schools instead of the prestigious ones.
Let’s be honest here, if 99.9999999 percent of students had the choice betweeen Princeton and a really low ranked public school, they’d choose Princeton. So you’re saying that 99.99999 percent of kids are wrong for thinking that the prestige of your school matters?</p>
<p>And when I say prestige, I mean going to a top school. There isn’t that much of a difference between a Brown degree or a Northwestern degree or Hopkins degree or UT plan II degree. As long as it’s a top school, you’re ok.</p>
<p>I agree that it’s unfair that having a diploma from a prestigious school gives you such a huge leg up, but that is the way life is, unfair.</p>
<p>I never said that blacks only get into Harvard because they’re black.</p>
<p>Plenty of blacks were smart enough to get in anyways. But it is an undisputable fact that a large number of blacks, latinos, native american descendants (and legacies and recuited athletes for that matter) would not have had a shot of getting in if it weren’t for their hook.</p>
<p>People who say you only got into a top college because you’re black are ignorant and repulsive.</p>
<p>Poor examples. Dartmouth grads are currently occupying many of the most powerful financial positions in the country. Dartmouth also has the Thayer school of engineering, which is respectable at the very least.</p>
<p>Most of the top schools in the nation do not have a major in “business” in the first place.</p>
<p>Dreamingoutloud,
I think you may have missed his point in what you quoted.</p>
<p>Firstly I don’t think the OP’s comment was intended to be racist. You can’t selectively pick one part of his comment and then say it’s racist–the OP did mention legacies and athletes, too. I believe the point was to comment on the idea that university admissions should be a meritocracy that supports merits of intellect, not race, not money, not athleticism. At least in a methodically fair process that is how it should be.</p>
<p>Of course still other problems arise if there was this type of system because it’s pretty easy to see that the government doesn’t do a good job of leveling the playing field beforehand (poor areas have underfunded schools, resulting in little hope for impoverished).</p>
<p>Hopefully education will start being reformed from the ground-up in the next decade or so, that way the next generation of college applicants will hopefully have decent enough chances from their schools so that a “smart person” at one school will be considered smart even in comparison to a “smart person” at another school.</p>
<p>i used to feel that standards for athletes’ admission to d 1 athletic schools like stanford and vandy and d1-aa schools like harvard should not be lowered, but I changed my mind.</p>
<p>Many people think that athletes have it easy getting into top-ter schools like duke. the thing is though is that it is still really hard to get an athletic scholarship to duke to play football. yeah, it’s easy when you’re one of the top 50 prospects in the country, but most of them go to schools like ut, ou, and usc anyways.</p>
<p>the competition for scholarships is extremely fierce. athletes have to do well at extremely stressful combines, and they have to train for many many hours to be good enough to get the scholarship/ preferential admissions. They are under lotsof pressure to perform well, and they have to or else they won’t even get an offer.</p>
<p>It is just as hard for a football recruit to get into duke as a non-athlete, it’s just hard in a different way. People just have no idea how hard it is to actually get a scholarship offer; hundreds of thousands of players are competing for very very few offers.</p>
<p>The world of athletic recruiting/ admissions and the world of academic admissions are 2 completely different worlds that cannot be compared. </p>
<p>Anyone who says, oh this football player got into harvard so easily has no idea what he is talking about or how competitive the recruiting process is.</p>
<p>I can understand how a kid might be angry that he got rejected by duke when a football player with a 1300 got in, but that is no reason why athletes should not be given preferential admission.</p>
<p>And what about people who train in martial arts 9 hours per week and compete at state tournaments (me) but don’t get any scholarship consideration like athletes of so called “legit and all-American and therefore better” sports like football. *** is with that?</p>
<p>im gonna have to disagree with the you^^^on ur point about athletes.<br>
The purpose of universities is knowledge related, not athletics related.</p>
<p>the point im making though is that people keep complaining that athletes get into top schools so easily (while others get rejected with lower scores)</p>
<p>but athletes had to work just as hard to get into that top school as nonathletes did to get in.</p>
<p>people who say that a star quarterback has it easy when he applies to Stanford is just plain wrong and doesn’t know what he is talking about.</p>
<p>of course that would be nice is all people had access to great education^^^</p>
<p>While I personally am actually glad top privates DO help ethnic minorities and athlete get great educations, I do not believe it is very fair at all, and in some cases the system is abused. However despite unfairness, when a top school education helps a person to success, that’s awesome for them, and awesome from a compassionate standpoint, giving more hope and prospects for someone that may not have otherwise had either.</p>
<p>But Fortify,
That is also just a matter of opinion. Would you like to back your claims? The reason why they should not allow top athletes into top universities for their athletics is (imo) because when somebody whose goal growing up was to pursue knowledge, and intellectual merit-wise he was above the athlete, he should succeed over the athlete in getting a spot at a true institute of “higher education”</p>
<p>No he’s actually right about Ivies. I had two friends, both smart, one went to an Ivy and the other didn’t. Now my Ivy friend has three yachts and a car made of a giant diamond and the other, well, you can find him down at the gas station by the interstate with a handful of dirty newspapers and a lice infestation.</p>
<p>Why are we even gracing this with a response? This OP gave no evidence to back up his claims, not even anecdotal evidence. That’s because there is no evidence…the most important thing on a resume is previous experience. If a business person was choosing between two people – a Harvard grad with no internships and a Penn State grad with two internships in the target business, they’re probably going to pick the Penn State grad who has experience. Studies show that your undergrad college helps you get your first job, but after that the effect wears off.</p>
<p>“Studies show that your undergrad college helps you get your first job, but after that the effect wears off.”</p>
<p>This may be true in and of itself.</p>
<p>However, the first job, in turn, matters greatly in getting the second job. If a good undergrad college helps you get a better first job, this indirectly leads to a better second job. Conversely, if a questionable undergrad college leads to a questionable first job, this indirectly leads to a questionable second job.</p>
<p>I don’t think the OP is necessarily arguing that an Ivy League degrees will trump all other degrees (no matter how each one is used); I think they’re just trying to acknowledge that a degree from a big-name school is helpful, and that those who dismiss the “name” of the college as completely unimportant may be surprised at the boost it could give…?</p>