<p>Implicitly or explicitly, quite a few posters here indeed act as if there are two universes. The elites and the surfs, the surfs of course having no brains, no motivation, no interest in education, no passion, interested only in football and beer chugging parties. Not even the ability to understand the nuances of a damn movie. And woe to any elite who might get stuck dating a surf. That alone is reason to avoid the non elite schools. How much lower could they go?</p>
<p>And as much as I have contempt for elitism, its NOT sour grapes. I am easily a one percenter and have been for a long time. Perhaps the elitism of my old girlfriend . . who I long ago surpassed in the success arena, really did have significant influence on the anti elitist attitude I now have. In my job, I deal with 'elites" all of the time, as defined by those who graduated from “elite” schools. They are generally run of the mill people, just like all of the surfs I deal with. If lawyers, they are no better than any others, although sometimes unhappier because they feel more entitled to what they have. If non-lawyers, they have just as much trouble understanding simple legal concepts as any others. That has been my experience. There are few people coming out of the elite schools who end up being stars. If you are an engineer, you are an engineer. A teacher is a teacher. To think that those who teach in the elite schools are all wonderful compared to the non elite schools shows ignorant elitism.</p>
<p>That being said, I fully understand how people have to think of themselves and their children as special. As snowflakes. It almost always however isn’t so.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You mean you wouldn’t have been proud if she had not gone back to college? Is it really a big deal going to college? heck, I am thinking of going back for a Bachelors in Philosophy, just for the heck of it. I like to learn. School is fun. I don’t deserve any kind of accolades because I might have the time and interest for going to college. Simply respect for doing what I want to do.</p>
I’m certain it is somewhere on this thread. It is on every thread on this subject, since I started reading these threads shortly after I joined here. Some of the names have changed, some are still around from those bygone days. People who don’t seem to know any recent graduates from state schools with jobs other than Starbucks. It strains credulity. Just as there are some posters who seem to know dozens of Ivy grads delivering newspapers or greeting at Walmart.</p>
<p>Yes, thus the reason I want to go back to school. My schooling at both my State Flagship and Professional school was all, for the most part, very practical. I learned about business, finance and law. It all helped make me the success I am today (as defined by income only of course). Now I finally have the luxury of education for educations sake and I want to take advantage of it. And yes, Surfers are big where I am :-)</p>
Maybe I’m projecting my attitudes too much, but I don’t think we see that view too much from parents who, themselves, attended some of these selective colleges. Hopefully, most of us know better. I think this “HYP or I’m a failure” attitude is most prevalent among recent immigrants, and it may be, in part, an artifact of systems in other countries where there really are only a few top schools, and you get into them through high-stakes testing. I hope that one thing that CC accomplishes is to educate those folks that there are lots of great colleges in the U.S. Indeed, there are a lot more than 8 “elite” colleges. I think there are 40 or 50 colleges in the top 10, so to speak.</p>
I think the basic point I’ve been trying to make is that these selective colleges allow you to get the practical education at the same time as some of these luxury elements.</p>
<p>No, sorry, that’s your own projection. No one has said there aren’t very bright people at non-elite schools, who may be there for all different reasons: needed to stay close to home, just weren’t interested, money issues, whatever. Plus, some of us live in places like the midwest, where going to (say) a U of Illinois or Indiana U or whatever is a PERFECTLY fine / appropriate choice for a smart student, and no one blinks twice. I have said repeatedly on CC that it’s not as though if you drive down the street of any exclusive suburb, all of those people went to fancy colleges – many of them didn’t. It may make you feel better to pretend that we all said “elites vs serfs,” but don’t you tar me with that brush. The truth is a lot more nuanced than that. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, duh. No one has suggested that when you sit in a business meeting, that everything the Harvard grad says is brilliant and everything the State U grad says is silly and meaningless. Of course in the real world it’s the person, not the degree. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You know, you might want to chill on this. I was proud of my mother because she had badly wanted a college education, she wasn’t able to get one when she was young, she was at one point a single mother working full time and going to night school, and so when circumstances were such that she could focus on getting a degree even with 2 kids at home, yes, that was a Big Deal to her, and I was proud of her because she was doing something she really had always wanted to do. I think it’s more than a little churlish on your part to suggest I shouldn’t have been proud of her for her accomplishment. She could have been a lady who lunched but she went and got a degree and then worked in that field. Normally, most sensible people think that’s reasonably admirable and don’t have to get as huffy as you did over it.</p>
<p>This is such nonsense. I know a dozen kids who went to Northern Illinois University who got employed fairly quickly after school with “good” jobs, and there are other kids from far-fancier schools who are still waiting to be employed. We don’t think that employment is the sole reason to value an elite / excellent school education, though. </p>
<p>I’m wondering how people who went to school in the 70s and 80s arrive at the conclusion that they were attending an “elite” school at that time. What is “elite” now was likely not considered “elite” then. I don’t remember people using that term really. Sure, HYP, MIT, Caltech, Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst - these are listed as the most selective schools in my good 'ol Cass and Birnbaum circa 1974. But schools like Vanderbilt, Penn, Duke, Emory, Northwestern - these schools had median SATs around the 1200 to 1300 range (maybe 85 to 90%ile) and often accepted nearly half the applicants. Is that elite? Well above average, certainly, but “elite”? I’m not sure.</p>
<p>My Mom was a high school dropout who had her first child at age 17, divorced after the third one, and got her GED. Remarried, had 2 more kids, all the while regretting some of her decisions and thirsting, absolutely thirsting for more education. This woman went to college and worked her way through her Master’s Degree all while working and raising both teenagers and toddlers in the same house, and you can BET we made some noise at her graduation ceremonies! Her achievements were far more impressive than mine-not as hard to get a degree when it’s the only thing you have on your plate. And when she passed away unexpectedly right before Christmas, we darn well mentioned this in her obituary. So yeah, it really is a “big deal going to college.”</p>
<p>I don’t remember that, but if so, I guess I could have gone Ivy. Of course my father never would have approved given the cost relative to the State School, even then.</p>
Just like now, just because you had the median SAT scores was no guarantee you would get in. And most of the Ivy League schools were well above this. Only Penn was a laggard. And Columbia to a certain extent.</p>
I think those schools (except maybe for Penn, which was part of the Ivy League from the start) were regional elites back in those days. That’s certainly how people from my area (southern Virginia) thought of Duke. What’s changed is that they have gone more national.</p>
<p>Most kids who want an Ivy education because frankly they want a different experience. However, many don’t want to pursue careers that are highly rewarded monetarily. However, I believe if you are at the top of your game, whatever your career is, you will do well. Making such a blanket judgment, in my opinion, is ignorant and pretentious. Most people I know who went to top schools, would never make such a judgment.
After all,most people asking this “worth it” question are looking at it monetarily ‘paying a premium’.</p>
<p>Don’t forget those were different SAT I and II scores. Both SAT I and II have been recentered. For example, a 730 or better on the old SAT I verbal would be an 800 today.</p>
I’m going by the percentile, so recentering doesn’t really factor in. Is a school median 85th to 90th national percentile SAT score impressive? Yeah, I guess so. Elite level? Well, I know there are other criteria besides SAT.</p>
<p>Depends upon what region of the country you lived in. Absolutely, in my high school experience in St. Louis in the mid eighties, WashU, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke, etc. were considered as elite as the Ivy League schools. I know it’s popular on CC to think that these other schools are “up-and-coming,” but that’s only if you define the world by what the northeast thinks. One might make the argument that Brown and Dartmouth are just as much “up and coming” in the midwest just as much as one might make the argument that WashU and Vandy are “up and coming” in the northeast.</p>
<p>Oh Pizza. I spent the early part of the 70’s in HS and the latter part of the '70’s in college-first in a Boston suburb where Harvard ruled the day, and then at Brown. We all thought that Wash U, Northwestern and Duke where pretty much the Midwestern and Southern counterparts to Brown. Please.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt was a different story as memory serves. It was not perceived as a welcoming place for Northeast “ethnics”- whether Jewish, African American, Italian, or any other immigrant (not so Duke, Wash U or Northwestern) so I think it belonged in an entirely different category. Not because of its intellectual chops- but just the “scholarship students” as they were then known wouldn’t have seen it as interchangeable. </p>
<p>But to describe Wash U as "up and coming’ in the northeast now is absurd. I knew dozens of kids who had it at the top of their lists even back in 1974. Some made it in, some not, some had parents who didn’t want them that far away (a force to be reckoned with then as it is now) but not for any lack of prestige.</p>
<p>In my college guidebook (1973) there are about 40 or 50 schools classified as most selective. None of the schools in this list is in that category. All of these schools fall in the next bracket - “highly selective,” along with places like RPI and UC Santa Cruz. There are about 100 of these “highly selective” schools. Apparently this guidebook was fairly well respected at the time (although I never heard of it then).</p>
<p>Obviously, these schools are not “up and coming” now. But I don’t think they carried the same “cachet” across the country at the time. Regionally I guess things were different.</p>