<p>truthseeker, your impressive quote is meaningless to many of the posters here, because none of their kids have jumped through a hoop in their lives. Everything happened au natural. The audience you seek is not here.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And the number of research studies reported in juried publications that have failed to find any educational advantage that correlates with selectivity far outnumber those that have. But what they hey, unsupported opinions on CC are so much more definitive.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, of course. Which is evident to anyone who has ever attended one of these not-so-prestigious schools. But since that’s one of the few arguments that the prestige defenders have, they continue to make it, ad nauseum.</p>
<p>
Agreed.
Armed with just an undergraduate degree, my son was offered a job 7 months prior to his graduation. He has been interviewed and quoted by WSJ, CNBC, Reuters, Businessweek, NPR, NYT, Bloomberg,NBCnews etc.He is very widely known and respected by the top management of all the public companies in his industry. He also has accumulated liquid asset well in the 7 figures and he is only 29.
He will never need to spend a dime on grad school nor need any financial help from me.</p>
<p>Now, was that $200K well spent on his Elite undergrad? You betcha !!</p>
<p>This guy went to UW-Oshkosh for a fraction of what you spent and he retired at 30!</p>
<p><a href=“http://fortfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Edward-Karrels-Computer-Science-Scholarship.pdf[/url]”>http://fortfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Edward-Karrels-Computer-Science-Scholarship.pdf</a></p>
<p>When someone who is the first in their family to graduate from college (any college) and he/she describes that feeling with great pride (and perhaps some tears) of course there is some implicit hope for a brighter future and some material success, but there is also a huge feeling around status…having reached a step on the ladder that no one else has reached. Now multiply that and you can understand why the “worth” of “prestige schools” can’t be calculated in terms of just cost and ROI. The “culture” at large doesn’t tend to view college as something akin to high-powered HVAC training, although with the economy this may be shifting a little, and the engineering craze does seem to be moving things a bit in this direction.</p>
<p>All of us like going through the day feeling a little bit superior…feels better just like feeling a little hypomanic feels better than a little depressed…allowing that some depression sometimes is substitute fuel for feeling superior (coal energy instead of some good, clean solar stuff). And ALL of us are very talented at making our narrative fit with the optimally desired narrative.</p>
<p>Great post 143, marysidney.</p>
<p>Final child -meet Annasdad. The poster who sent his daughter to an elite math and science high school but insists there’s no difference between elite / excellent colleges and those appreciably lower. Now if you please, the popcorn is popping.</p>
<p>truthseeker2–You don’t get to be offended on behalf of my high school boyfriend. We were very fond of each other and he was not at all insulted by the incident. In case you didn’t read carefully, HE was the once who expressed the difference between us–not me. </p>
<p>I find it fascinating that we as a society have no problem talking about one person being more talented, skilled, or successful than others at a whole host of endeavors: hitting a baseball, playing the violin, fixing a carburetor. But if you say that some third party is smarter in a certain way (discussing ideas) or is a better student, people get very insulted–even on behalf of strangers, and even 30 years after the fact. This is why this college issue gets so heated.</p>
<p>My youngest started out her school career in self-contained special education classes. She still has many issues. I don’t love her less or think less of her as a person. But she is NOT as smart as her siblings or as the majority of her peers. As a result, her needs are different, her colleges options will be different, and our criteria for selection will be different. This fact is not insulting. It just is.</p>
<p>Yes, fantastic summary marysidney. I grew up in a small PA town too. Most of my high school classmates still live there, by the way.</p>
<p>
</a></p>
<p>Those are outliers.You can also point to Gates and Zuckerberg who did not finish their education. Or that first janitor that Google hired who did not finish high school and is retired as a gazillionaire.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Huh? Are you talking to me?</p>
<p>No, I have no idea who you are, where you went to school, or how far you got. The example was used to indicate that EVERYONE cares about status and places themselves in relation to others constantly, so being the first in a family to complete college MEANS SOMETHING beyond the possibility that maybe he or she will get a better job. Stasis is a myth. Everything is always moving, and we are always orienting ourselves in terms of the movement, but within that is a strong self-preservative and reproductive instinct (hence, the power of the dating metaphors).</p>
<p>" Now if you please, the popcorn is popping."</p>
<p>No comprende.</p>
<p>Yes, Pizzagirl, continue to try to refute 30 years of juried research on the effects of colleges on students with your ad hominem remarks about where one parent chose to send his kid to high school. Is that really the best you can do?</p>
<p>OK I see. You will be the first one in your family to go to college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because in their heart of hearts, they know that their kids were special enough to have succeeded anywhere. It’s not the college that made the kid successful, it’s the kid who did…and would have, even slumming it with the legions of “lesser” kids at a Just OK State School.</p>
<p>GFG, this is not personal animus on my part. I have been far more successful than I ever expected to be when I was younger and don’t have an underlying need to prove myself by voicing my opinions. But I will tell you this. I to this date have considerable contempt for a woman I once loved, a girlfriend from college who ultimately rejected me because she did not think I was ambitious enough or would be successful enough for her. In the end, I attained the same level of education that she and her husband attained and surpassed them significantly via financial success, and I did it as my own boss. But nonetheless, my contempt for her in the present runs deep because of the way she thought back then, the shallowness of her judgment, and we are talking about more than thirty years ago. Don’t be so sure your old boyfriend would not be highly offended by your comment.</p>
<p>IMHO, highly-ranked/exclusive schools remain highly-ranked/exclusive because
- People are sheep and are led, or misled, far too easily. </p>
<p>Rank and exclusivity result in more applications which just perpetuates the exclusivity without additional reason.</p>
<p>2) The accepted ranking system, USNews, is subjective and does not measure meaningful metrics. </p>
<p>C’mon… a ranking system totally based on opinion surveys and subjective interpretation of data from a foundation that never meant the data to be used for ranking? It just amazes me that such supposedly smart people never even bother to understand the garbage they are basing their decisions on. </p>
<p>If these institutions were truly as wondrous as many clearly assume, the salary numbers would reflect it. They simply don’t.</p>
<p>And I’m not talking about payscale.com, although data there says the same thing. I’m talking about the salary numbers straight from the schools themselves. </p>
<p>As an example, the average starting salary for a Chemical Engineer from MIT was 66,842 in 2012. Average salary for a WPI ChemE was 62,216 in 2011 (the last year they have data for).</p>
<p>I think anyone on this thread would admit there is a SIGNIFICANT ranking/prestige/exclusivity difference between these schools! But the starting salaries are off by a mere seven percent… probably less since we can probably assume salaries went up a little in 2012 for WPI. </p>
<p>The numbers simply do not support the assumptions about these high end schools. If the education were as superior as some imply… if the networking opportunities were as abundant as some imply… if any of the wondrous things people imply about these schools were true, the salaries would reflect it. …and they don’t.</p>
<p>The actual numbers seem to say a child, on average, can be similarly successful graduating from a top 100 school as graduates from a top 10 school.</p>
<p>Yes, cbreeze, if that works for you. I have no idea what you are talking about.</p>
<p>Beware of Goat! Go WPI!!! :)</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>Sounds pretty personal to me, truthseeker2. Pizzagirl does a good job up-thread describing how some folks feel about the difference in schools. I concur.</p>