Is Prestige Still about Ivies and Rankings?

Applying to College
41

I think for most people, prestige is simply a name that makes people go, “wow,” or “you must be brilliant!” People who aren’t well informed about today’s college landscape tend to think mainly of traditionally prestigious schools like the Ivies.

Many people, for example, aren’t aware that Georgia Tech’s out-of-state acceptance rate is comparable to that of many elite private universities. Similarly, many think of UIUC as just another state school without realizing that it’s considered elite by tech and engineering employers. Or consider that the Morehead-Cain Scholarship at UNC is arguably more selective and prestigious than admission to some Ivy+ schools.

So yes, there is often a gap between what employers and informed people consider prestigious and what the general public perceives as prestigious.

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42

Getting into a highly selective school is an achievement in and of itself. So that tells someone instantly “you have (already) achieved something impressive, something most people cannot do.”

It also tells the bystander that you are at a certain level. Now, students at that same level can absolutely be found at many other schools. But they are mixed in with other, less impressive, students. So when they say they attend, e.g. SUNY Albany, it doesn’t signal to the listener that the student is a high achiever. (Of course, other things might!)

To me, that’s what goes into prestige, and why some schools are more prestigious than others.

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43

Here is a practical measurement of prestige — potential employers in your field of interest ghost you less if you come from a prestigious school with the rest of the resume the same. You have fewer hoops to jump through to get jobs. Sometimes few layers of interviews or testing. Some of these layers of testing are very hard — hard enough that kids from the prestigious schools won’t pass either, but are usually not subjected to.

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44

There’s another thread - a kid wants to take a gap year because he got into WUSTL but his family can’t afford. He got into UIUC CS + Econ and his family can afford.

But Northwestern is the desired and he was WL and dad says next year he can afford.

So he’s thinking about maybe taking a gap year to have another crack at WL.

All for prestige….which to me is made up - given this example of wanting NU over UIUC and you are a CS major.

He wants “finance”.

45

I think most people still think of the usual suspects - HYPSM/other Ivies/some SLACS/other T20/25 schools - when they envision prestige. That perception is formed by a bunch of factors - external ratings, reputation for academic excellence, association with famous/wealthy alumni, low admit rate etc. If your kid attends one of these schools there is the perception that they are a high achiever and they may be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to hiring etc.

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46

Totally get it. I grew up in New York and can remember when NYU was an easy admit.

Funny relevant story: Was talking just yesterday to a friend of mine who grew up in Boston and he told me is son would be starting at Northeastern in the fall. He joked that Northeastern had somehow become tough to get into, but when he tells friends from around here the news, he gets some variant of “Oh man; that’s ok. He’ll make the best of it,”

I don’t know anyone from around here beyond a certain age who considers Northeastern prestigious. Point is, there’s gotta be more to it than manipulating ranking algorithms.

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47

I think income inequality has been a confounding factor for years now. And I’m not even talking about between the very poorest and the very richest (the K-shaped economy) just between the upper-middle class and the upper 2% of families in the country. When I attended a NESCAC back in the 1970s, the richest guy in my class was the son of a well-respected, Boston physician; tuition in constant 2026 dollars was around $35K; only 20% of graduating seniors actively pursued entry-level jobs of any kind - the rest were hoping to get into med, PhD, and law school programs, probably in that order. Basically, how many kids went on to grad school was a sign of prestige and the guys getting jobs in the mailing rooms of investment banks, the stock exchange floors, or middle management positions in the Hartford insurance companies, were largely overlooked.

Compare that to today: Medical doctors are saddled with 100s of thousands of dollars in debt while an internship with a consulting company is considered a golden ticket to early retirement. And, it has turned the Ivy League (or “Ivy Plus” schools, if you expand its universe to include a certain university in California) into something close to synonymous with so-called, “target schools”, meaning Wall Street companies recruit from them.

Among the knock-on effects of this is that it has allowed the top coastal colleges and universities to charge whatever the market will bear for full-pay tuition, leaving everyone else well-advised to expand their college search to schools offering merit-based aid. Such schools are - by and large - outside the traditional stomping grounds of the Ivy Plus schools but do fill a significant need for an expanded universe of high-quality, “academicky” colleges, especially LACs (NESCAC is happy to take the overflow of smart, rich kids who don’t get into HYP.)

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48

Many in my area have Northeastern on their list. Why from TN? The published acceptance rate - and I mean to Boston.

So yes, many do use selectivity as a method of prestige.

But that’s the point - prestige is opaque - it means different things to different people.

Prospective students, parents, employers, etc.

49

To be blunt, I am generally very negative about the term “prestige” as applied to institutions of higher education.

I think sophisticated, savvy consumers of higher education shouldn’t really see a need to use that term. Not that institutions of higher education are all the same, quite the opposite, but the details matter, and the details are complex.

For example, I think it is fine to talk about, say, which departments or programs or speciality schools have a good academic reputation, or which institutions have more resources for other things of potential value to a particular student. And to be fair, some institutions have so many resources (particularly per student) they can afford to have many strong departments, many excellent facilities, many well-funded activities, and so on, which allows for a potentially desirable flexibility during undergrad. Still, more sorts of colleges have the resources to do that than some people seem to realize, not just the ones with very low admissions rates. And also, sometimes an institution which really focuses its resources on something of particular interest might make sense for some kids.

I also think it is a very good idea to understand the role networking can play in further education and career development, and to investigate which institutions might provide more or fewer opportunities for networking in any specific ways of particular interest. Again, some institutions have a lot of at least pretty good networks in a lot of different fields and geographic markets, and that is again good for flexibility. But also again, sometimes some focus can be viable, or even superior.

To illustrate both points by way of example, I would suggest a kid interested in going into the film industry should really be looking for which colleges actually have robust film schools, and specifically film schools that are actually really well networked in the film industry. That sort of thing.

So to me, at BEST the concept of prestige is a gross oversimplification of all this. And more commonly, in my recent experience, it is basically a rationalization for thinking in a quite different way about college choice.

Specifically, I think some kids want to impress their current peers with where they are admitted and/or enroll. I think some also want to please their parents. And sometimes their parents may want to impress their own peers with where their kid is admitted and/or enrolls.

So “prestige” functionally is a measure of whatever they think would most impress their peers, parents, and/or parents’ peers.

And sometimes they openly say that, but sometimes I think they are reluctant to admit it to us. Or maybe even themselves.

So, they claim “prestige” means something more defensible, like they tell a story about how going to a more prestigious institution will benefit them in the future. And for sure, there can be overlap between what institutions will most impress these people in their lives and which are relatively well-resourced, have strong relevant academic departments, present a lot of potentially useful network opportunities, and so on.

But, sometimes some of the institutions that would impress these people in their lives may in detail not be a particularly good fit for that specific kid. And sometimes there may be other institutions that would be a particularly good fit, but for various reasons might not immediately impress these people.

And in such cases, this concept of “prestige” can become a rationalization for a college application list that in various details could be a lot better, given that individual kid.

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50

This is the real answer.

People don’t like that ‘target schools’ exist, but they do.

Jeff Selingo says this at the 3:45 mark of this video. “Does it matter if you go to Yale? Of course it does.” “You are going to get access to certain jobs.”

And then at the 5-minute mark he says, “Go to the most selective college you can get in to.”

Selective colleges deliver real results. It is not a golden ticket, you still have to put in the work, it won’t happen for everyone, but prestige matters when it comes to real world results.

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Admissions platitudes that annoy you?
51

It means that you were a high level achiever in high school, perhaps with an extra boost of parental support (including financial) and/or inherited advantage like legacy at certain colleges.

But people do change between high school and college, and from college to years of work and career later. Do mid career people brag about their high school grades, SAT/ACT scores, or other achievements? Or is the prestige of your college a polite way of doing that?

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52

My experience having attended a very well-regarded undergrad is if later in life it comes up purely naturally, you might get a quick bit of positive reaction.

If you are the sort of person who seems to be bringing it up FOR the positive reaction, particularly repeatedly, that can quickly count as a way of satisfying the condition of “unless and until you demonstrate otherwise”.

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53

The problem is that many people have a poor understanding of the targets in various industries.

TU (yes, in Tulsa OK) has a top program in Cyber. Nobody has heard of it, because its graduates get scooped up by the NSA, CIA etc. which are organizations which don’t like their employees posting on Linkedin about the mission-critical and “prestigious” work they are doing.

U Maine has one of the top programs in paper engineering. Kids might say “Yuk, paper” but the program teaches process engineering, sustainability, and other highly transferable disciplines.

Don’t go to Yale undergrad to study nursing- its highly regarded nursing school is a post-grad program. Don’t go to Princeton because you think attending as an undergrad will give you a leg up for its law school, because it doesn’t HAVE a law school.

Etc. Every week I hear some dumb comment about target schools. Which IMHO reflects the fact that lots of people love a good hack or a shortcut, but don’t actually want to spend any time understanding what that shortcut will or won’t do for you!

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54

True. But see blossom’s post for the broader picture.

He tends to forget that most college students have financial constraints. Level of selectivity has little to do with most student’s college search and ultimate list, and that’s ok…budget has to come first for most.

It’s telling that many don’t hold in higher regard the schools that rank highest in social mobility, and of course that’s not the Ivy league schools with their relatively small undergrad class sizes and high proportion of affluent students.

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55

I note there isn’t even a consensus definition of “most selective”.

Some people rely on things like admissions rates, but there is a LONG list of problems with that approach.

You can look at something like 25th percentile test scores, but people can be dissastified with that as well (all the more so in an era where some excellent colleges are (seriously) test optional or test blind).

And of course then many institutions have separate admissions for different undergrad programs, different admissions for different types of applicants, and so on.

As usual, it doesn’t take long when seriously thinking about all this to realize any sort of simplistic “rule” isn’t really going to work. That doesn’t mean you can’t care at all about what other sorts of students are likely to end up in your classes. But to meaningfully evaluate that as applied to your particular circumstances is going to take some real effort.

And yes, what any such benefit will COST you in particular is almost always an important consideration (for all but the wealthiest families). Doesn’t mean you have to always choose the lowest cost, but you can be reasonable about the tradeoffs and limits of what actually makes sense in your specific circumstances.

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56

This! :clap:t3: :clap:t3:

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57

The funny thing is I truly believe one of the most enviable things about the US higher education system is the sheer variety of potentially very good options available. Access and affordability are still serious concerns, but often if you look around with a sufficiently open mind, you might have more viable options than you initially expected.

And some people understand and happily make use of this. But then in certain circles, there is this constant effort to force that system back into a rigidly hierarchical model where all institutions are generically ranked along one dimension.

And to be fair, that may still work out fine for a lot of those kids. But others are going to miss opportunities to get more out of college, and possibly for less cost as well (possibly a lot less).

58

Also makes it hard to brag about what your kid does for a living. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

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59

IMO, a lot of kids are attracted to highly selective schools because they want to be around other high achieving kids. Sure, you have high achieving kids at every school but the most selective colleges have already done the work for you by screening out those with high academic accomplishments.

Of course it doesnt mean you’ll mesh with all (or any) of your classmates but you already have some commonality.

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60

I get the theory, I just think it ends up being complicated in practice. Like, that screening is not necessarily 100% effective, in part because the admissions process isn’t infallible, but also because their mandate is typically not as simple as just choosing all the best students.

And people do change in college. Like some former A+ students discover whatever they were doing before isn’t working so well at a college full of other former A+ students. Or they just lose interest in even trying to achieve academically like that. And they start having a very different relationship to their classes.

And I think majors, particularly at places on an exploratory model (which includes most of the most selective colleges) end up serving a self-sorting function. And so on.

Of course where this really starts mattering is when you are looking at tradeoffs. If you can comfortably afford going to a relatively selective college where you think you would be happy non-academically as well, cool. But if cost is an issue, or non-academic considerations are an issue, and so on, it might make sense to think in a more nuanced way about all this.