@Mom2aphysicsgeek writes "Are most kids really only motivated by external factors?
How does internal motivation factor into this? The desire to learn simply bc they want to know? The challenge to increase their knowledge bc there is world of things they are curious about that they want learn more about and thrive in increasing their understanding? The desire to participate in research bc that is what makes them tick?"
I think, unfortunately, that school actually “educates” that out of 'em.
@Happytimes2001 writes “The meritocracy is no longer reality let’s stop pretending that it is.” It never was a meritocracy. Not ever.
It is time to tell your kids (my kids are all out of college) that you love them and proud of them no matter what. Tell them they will be fine. If they are not happy with their admission results, life is not over. They could still do well at where they are accepted and transfer later if necessary. The worst thing we could do is to lie to them. You really going to them at this time that it doesn’t matter where they go to school? Really?! Did they miss that memo freshman year? If that’s really how you felt (nothing wrong with that), you should have made that clear much earlier on.
@oldfort I made that quite clear to my D well before freshman year. She worked hard because that’s just who she is and in hopes of landing a merit scholarship. She was successful. And as we like to say, milks the scholarship for all it’s worth so that when she graduates, she can say that she took advantage of every opportunity available. She has taken that to heart and is doing just that. If she keeps up the effort, she will have no problem landing the job she chooses, including the romanticized IB or management consulting job. Many others at her school with her scholarship has and she’s alrady started the recruitment process as a freshman. So from my perspective, again, there is absolutely no limit on how far she can go because she turned down Harvard for a full ride to a school ranked below the top 50z I have seen no proof whatsoever that where you go is important and I’ve been around the block a few times and did attend 2 top 10 schools.
As long as we continue to conflate college with job opportunities, this sad debate will continue. IMO, it misses the mark by a galaxy. Take any consideration of employment out of the equation, and I think we can talk more genuinely about the value of education and where success and happiness come from. And perhaps remove some unnecessary pressure from our kids.
@oldfort We pretty much live there. Our kids don’t approach high school with colleges in mind. The courses they take and the ECs they pursue they do bc they are internally motivated. We homeschool and my kids help me design their high school courses. They are naturally intellectually curious and succeed bc that is who they are not bc adcoms will be looking at what they did on the other side of 4 yrs of high school. Ultimately, we match them to merit scholarships and affordable colleges based on their high school achievements vs selecting colleges early on and getting them to match what colleges want to see.
Our kid’s lives already reflect the message in the article, so I obviously I agree with its premise. The approach has allowed them to be successful, so I equally agree with its premise that the school they attend as UGs isn’t as important as the majority on this site propose. For our kids it has really been about knowing what they want for themselves and going after it as young adults. They pursue opportunities bc they are internally driven.
Thankfully, my kids didn’t have that self-directed motivation “educated out of them.”
@allyphoe “Where you go to college matters in much the same way that who you marry matters.”
True. And where you go to college often impacts who you marry. College grads tend to marry college grads, and often they marry grads of the same college.
@Much2learn That’s true.
In addition, if it didn’t matter than why would people 22-102 still be talking about where they went to college?
IMO, life is a trajectory and goes in a couple of different directions with wild changes due to unforeseen circumstances, luck and hard work. Some colleges have higher trajectories, so do some jobs. No one is stating that you cannot be happy if you don’t go to the college you want ( for some reason people always bring that in).
I also agree that school today breeds out intellectual curiosity in favor of GPA. So sad. Not everyone can/wants to home school, but I can definitely see advantages there in the intellectual sphere.
Some of the arguments in this thread don’t wash. There are plenty of reasons to go to tippy top undergraduate colleges but probability of career success is not one of them. Three books - “David and Goliath”, “Excellent Sheep”, and “Where You Go is Not Who You’ll Be” pretty much nail this issue.
Plus, let’s remember that correlation is not causation:
Cal State Long Beach
FIU
Grand Valley State
Knox College
Mercyhurst
Mississippi State
Oklahoma Christian
Pace
Univ. of North Texas
all sent student to Harvard Law in ONE CLASS (2017-2018). If you check the lists for other years, the results are similar.
There is very little evidence that where one goes for undergraduate college impacts career outcomes. Grad school is another matter in certain fields. So are the service academies. This cult of elite undergraduate colleges is a belief system based on assumptions without proof.
Maybe the college you go to for undergrad doesn’t matter if you go straight into your career. As someone who works in admissions for a medical school for a public university, the applicant’s undergrad university and even non-degree courses matter and preference points are part of the screening score.
A few thoughts from my experience - between DH, DD1 and I, we have attended 8 institutions of higher learning ranging from community college to an Ivy.
Both DH and I transferred during undergrad from a high-priced OOS or private LAC to our local UC. Part of why we were miserable was understanding how much our parents were stretching to send us there, and how much pressure was on us to "be blissfully happy & achieve amazing things cuz we're spending all this money." We were both much happier at the UC which was totally affordable at that time (1980's). I also found my private LAC to be a soul-crushing amount of work & rarely got off campus to have any fun.
My daughter - DD1 - is finishing up at a school where she received full tuition plus stipend. She has called us up more than once in wonder that she will finish up without debt, while her friends are fretting about finances both during school & after. She had plenty of time to maintain a 4.0 GPA, and immerse herself deeply into a club activity.
In my career (and I'm sure this is not universal) - no one cares where I went to college. They do care that I WENT and what I majored in, but once those boxes are checked, that's it. It's the same with people we are interviewing and hiring today. It's all about experience and a lot about what the people say about you who have worked with you before (whether you were a good co-worker & pulled your weight).
Younger D is a senior and a NMF. She will likely take one of the full-ride opportunities and we will hand her her college fund to use in some other way. When she graduates, she can buy a house right away, or go to grad school, or travel or whatever she wants.
So I guess we’re pretty firmly in the “Get that degree, be happy & not too stressed at your college, have some fun and graduate without debt” camp. As always YMMV.
@happytimes2001
“In addition, if it didn’t matter than why would people 22-102 still be talking about where they went to college?”
I think many people think school choice matters more than does. I think that in general, someone’s choice of a major will impact them more financially than their choice of school.
In some majors, mechanical engineering, for example, salaries of grads seeking jobs in mechanical engineering tend to have a relatively narrow range that is not substantially impacted by the school they attended.
@Much2learn Great point. I had never thought of that. If you are not in the STEM fields, I think the school matters much more. I have been able to jump into three very different careers based on an undergrad and grad degree in a field that can be widely interpreted but is known to be solid. Someone else might have a harder time with some degrees ( Russian studies, philosophy etc). I do know that the schools I went to factored into my career success. They opened the doors to opportunities I never would have had otherwise. In some states it doesn’t matter in some it matters a lot.
I would guess a math degree would be like engineering. If you have it, they can easily ask details and figure out if you have the goods.
@Agincourt - how many does Harvard take from those schools each year vs number of student they take from top tier schools. Do you want to be that one or two from those schools or one of 10 to 20 from HYPS. I know test scores and GPA are the biggest factors when it comes to law school admission, but I will also say D2 has gotten into top law schools with weak LSAT scores because the UG school she went to opened doors for her internships and GPA at her rigorous UG school also carried more weight.
HYS no longer publish how many students they admit from UG schools, but 5+ years ago they did. Harvard took disproportionate number of students from Harvard and Yale, and numbers dropped off very quickly for lower tier schools. One may argue students from HY would get higher LSAT scores, maybe relative to other lower tier schools, but it would hard for me to believe students from any top 20 schools wouldn’t be able to get as good of LSAT scores as HY students.
@oldfort A disproportionate number of applicants are also applying from those schools. A top grad from UT, for example, who is interested in law school is likely aiming for UT or SMU law, especially if they want to stay in Texas and practice. And it’s the same all over. Law is very regional. If you want NY or DC big law, that’s when you get a huge advantage from going to HYC. Want to practice in CA big law, Stanford or Berkeley. Most students at Harvard and Yale law are from the Northeast and went to colleges in the Northeast. That’s not a coincidence.
And no offense, but your kid as an outlier rather than the norm. I’m not aware of any adjustment for undergrad. The students at HYS are the top of their class with top LSAT scores and interesting work, internships, and life experiences.
@itsgettingreal17 - I don’t agree with you. Stanford law students do not necessary aim for CA big laws, and Harvard law students do not rule out startups in CA either. It is rather narrow to assume those top 14 law school students are that regional. NU and Chicago law students do not necessary stay in midwest.
And students from NU, Duke, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown…do not? If you are looking strictly at LSAT scores, I would have to think majority students from those schools could do just as well as students from HYS. Therefore why has Harvard taken a lot more students from HY than from other schools?
@Agincourt Yes, there are a few non-top schools of the 182 that Harvard Law School has represented in the total 1Ls of 562 students meaning that some schools have more than 1 student represented. I don’t have those numbers but I’m pretty confident that a disproportionate number of the 562 come from tippy top schools (top 25) versus the field. And remember there are over 2,200 colleges in the US and yet most of the colleges represented are in the Top 100 or less than 5% of all schools.
Can an outlier, like a kid from CSU Long Beach get accepted, yes but the deck is stacked against him/her as no other CSU is represented. That’s 23 CSU colleges representing 100,000 plus kids each year.