I think it is both, and I also see it all the time with non-Ivy schools that are very competitive.
@menloparkmom I thought so too until I read the discussions of the hacked/leaked Columbia Studio emails where many elites want their kids/friends in Harvard or Brown or others. Given that Asians are about 15% in Ivy schools, the rest students are there wanting to be there I assume.
Being an Asian and not too recent immigrant, I’d love to send my kids to an Ivy+ mainly for economic reasons as @GMTplus7 stated. I thinking I’m not far off due to the kids I luckily have.
I think that posts in the Harvard forum here, for instance, that start with “Harvard has been my dream since I was 5”, are often products of lack of sophistication. Whether internationals, immigrants, first generation, for whatever reason, these posters often lack knowledge of the many many good schools out there, and have heard of Harvard so…And yes, the media contributes to the idea that Harvard is the best, the “golden ring.”
It is interesting to me that these posters think it is healthy, even admirable, to have “dreamed of Harvard” since kindergarten. It seems to represent, for them, having appropriately high aspirations. Many seem willing to gear their entire high school life toward admission, when chances are probably (or obviously) slim.
The scenario is entirely different from the well-off, well-educated elite kind of family who assumes Ivy admission. Some are quite right: they do end up being admitted, partly due to the ability to attend the best prep schools, pursue interests at the highest level, and so on. Often these are legacies as well. But this group is now much more anxious, because admissions now takes a different kind of accomplishment level, and also because socioeconomic diversity is now important to the schools.
Ironically, another group, often lower middle class, does not apply to Ivies because their guidance counselor tells them to apply to state schools for financial reasons, or they just don’t know about Ivy financial aid for some reason or other. This is changing as more people finally get that an Ivy may be the most affordable way to go for some.
Overheard at a youth (probably 12 year old) fencing tournament several years ago, parent to child, after child lost a bout:
“How do you expect to get into Harvard if you continue to fence like that?!”
Ugh. Speechless.
There are many reasons why people build the college lists they do. I don’t think chasing elite schools stems from ignorance or entitlement in most cases. I think, for some people, it comes from fear. Many people are chasing the money. Families want schools that give great aid to students going in, and that increase the chances of getting a well paying job when they graduate. The poorer the family, the higher the stakes. The financial fate of the entire family can rest on these kids’ shoulders. Sometimes they’re directed there by well meaning counselors and family members who don’t realize high stats for their high school may not make them competitive for elite colleges. But they have nothing to lose by trying.
Students from more well-to-do families generally have a broader range of options (if the parents are willing to pay), so it’s understandable that the more expensive, well known colleges appear on their lists. They may have had family members who graduated from an elite college, so why wouldn’t they think it could be an option for them too?
Part of the trouble on CC is the mixed message we send. There was a thread recently about prestige. The OP seemed to believe that people should choose the most prestigious college from their acceptance list, not the one with the best program for their major or the one they felt was the best fit for them; name trumps everything. Some posters (and threads) argue that opportunities can be had in lots of places, while others waffle. Name might matter, families are told, unless it’s not affordable; but if the poster senses money isn’t as much of an issue as they previously suspected, all of a sudden the more well known school is definitely the best option. Is it surprising families are confused? Not really.
As an educator, the best thing you can do is meet each student, and their family, where they are. Generalities don’t matter; individual circumstances do.
I feel like we were cut from the same mold, @snarlatron 
Regardless, I think the desire for exclusivity plays a big part in everyone’s psyche, and possibly more so when we are younger. Teenagers, as we know, like to impress people. They like to impress their family, their friends, themselves, and anyone else around them. Some go about this in a humble way, while others crave the attention.
I think a lot of teenagers see acceptance into an elite school as sort of the “end” to a long chain of “means to an end” hardships and sacrifices. It’s the final result of years of hard work, and they want people to know that all of their craziness paid off.
So yeah, that’s my theory as to why kids are inherently drawn to Ivy/elite schools. For some it’s the social acceptance, and for others it’s the self-satisfaction. Either way, the commonality in both cases is exclusivity, IMO – they want to feel special somehow, like they are better than the average person.
I don’t think elite college prospects are necessarily ignorant or entitled simply because they want to go to an elite school.
I remember reading an article many years ago about how behaviors are passed through/mimicked by society and classes. The article was primarily about ailments that were unheard of a generation ago except in the upper class but was becoming an “epidemic” in the middle class but I think can be applied in other behaviors. Things that the upper class do are perceived as good and acceptable and the middle class are the first to mimic these behaviors and they eventually are mimicked by the lower class. Going to an Ivy is one of these things. It is perceived as something that all upper class children do so it’s good and acceptable and the thing to do if one wants to be “upper” class.
And these kids that have had the dream of Harvard since Kindergarten can thank their parents. Unless the kid is a true prodigy they didn’t originate that idea themselves. Philadelphia Magazine (which anyone from Philadelphia knows should be named Mainline Magazine since it’s really an affluent suburban magazine) had a cover/article “How to get into Penn” many years ago with a picture of a grade school age kid on it. It validated that group of Yuppies that let their children do anything as long as they kept their grades high and didn’t get caught. I remember when my D started elementary and being at the school at a PTA meeting and talking to some parent of a 4th grader and her telling me how happy her son was as he always dreamed of getting into Masterman (the Philadelphia high acheiving magnate middle school) for 5th grade. I just wanted to say I never met a 10 year old that wanted to leave behind his friends and security to go to his dream school - just smile and nod.
I agree that the Ivy-or-bust mentality is ridiculous. I was an outlier who did go across the country to attend an Ivy in the 1970s. I wasn’t even thinking Ivy for my daughter, though, until I started going to meetings at her high school and I saw that some kids form that school do go to Ivies. And I admit that I was bitten by competitiveness. Part of my brain went, “If they can get their kids into a tippy-top college why can’t I?” Mea culpa! But I didn’t succumb all the way and neither did my daughter. She applied to some Ivies and a lot of other places and she’s ending up at a LAC that I think will be a good fit.
Just to clarify some point I think I was trying to make - it’s not really the kids but the parents. These are children and the vast, vast majority just don’t have the wisdom to come up with this on their own. Sure a lot of it is peer driven but by peers that got it from their parents. Ask a 10th or 11th grade excellent student that has just started thinking about college and they’ll rattle off the Ivies because that’s just the place they are suppose to go.
I don’t think it’s ridiculous for a kid who has spent K-12 being called the nerd or the geek because he/she actually reads the book that’s assigned in English class, or does the math homework, etc. to want to be in an intellectually enriching environment for college. And depending on which state the kid lives in, telling the kid to just suck it up and go to the state college down the interstate highway with all the kids who’ve been mocking him for 12 years- well, I get that a family might not think that’s the optimal path forward.
The fact that an intellectually “thick” environment exists in lots of places is a message which the Higher Ed industry has not done a lot to promote, to be frank. My own state flagship is exceptionally proud of its sports teams, the new stadium, the fun tailgate parties, the annual Halloween bash (which literally ends up with cars being bashed in) etc. That’s the PR. You don’t see stories on the local TV stations about the kids in the labs or the kid heading off to London to work on a historic restoration project at Westminster Abbey, or the kid who sold a patent to Google for a braking device for a driverless car. No- it’s all sports all the time.
So who can blame the kid who thinks that it’s Harvard or bust? Especially when Harvard will cost that family less than our state flagship? Sure- the kid can live at home and commute to the local branch. And if he or she wants to be a K-12 teacher or a nurse or major in “business”, that’s an affordable solution. But what about the kid who wants to study classics or Renaissance literature or history or nanotechnology?
It’s sort of elitist for folks like you and me to decide who gets to aspire to study what based on our own perceptions of who is ignorant or entitled. And based on the number of Recreation and Leisure Studies majors I’ve met this May/June graduation season- it’s hard to criticize a kid or wants something else… and the PR from a wide range of colleges and universities doesn’t exactly trumpet that something else. Even the schools like Chicago, Bard, Harvey Mudd- formerly reliable sources of “we love nerds” have gone mainstream in their messaging.
@austinmshauri, but there’s still ignorance at play. If finances are a concern, those in the know understand that there are many places you may attend tuition-free or even get a full-ride from if you have top test scores. And a well-paying job may be more dependent on major. Achieving either of those this isn’t dependent on how well you fence.
@blossom still most of those kids had someone point them to the “we love nerds” schools. If that kid is in a lower SES at a poor public high school he most likely doesn’t dream of going to an elite school because no one ever told him. It’s the reason those schools are investing so much trying to find those kids.
Of course. I applaud those schools for working to find those kids. But my point is it’s tough to criticize a kid who is interested in dreaming big, even if the “sophisticates” here think that logic is ignorant.
Re # 27: I should keep out of this. But I am a Philadelphian, too, and I know plenty of kids who were very happy about getting into Masterman. Sure, the parents were, too. But public elementary schools here can be a very mixed bag, and it’s not necessarily the case at all that a 10 year-old would see going to a magnet middle school as leaving behind his friends and security. In lots of cases, it means staying with his friends and a meaningful improvement in security. That’s just the unfortunate truth. One friend’s second child did not get into Masterman. He stayed at the K-8 school he had attended for the previous three years (he had lived in another part of the city before that). It was awful – he had few if any friends, and with the kids who had gone to Masterman sucked out of the class there was very little peer support for academic challenge. My friend wound up sending him to a private school she couldn’t afford for the three years until he was eligible for a magnet high school.
So, yeah, it’s silly to talk about a 10-year-old’s “dream school.” But it’s not silly at all to recognize that a 10-year-old can tell the difference between a good learning environment and a bad one.
Needless to say, that does not translate into the difference between, say, Harvard and Generic State Flagship. But does anyone really doubt that, for roughly the same price as most alternatives, Harvard offers some superior value? For full-pay families, Harvard costs the same as pretty much anywhere else except an in-state public, and while some states have high-quality in-state publics, others don’t. For families with incomes in the $70,000 - $200,000 range, Harvard (or a college like it) may be the most affordable option, or at least equivalent to an in-state public. For non-wealthy internationals, Harvard and its peers are perhaps their best chance of a high-quality U.S. college education. So it’s hard for me to blame anyone for applying there.
Agree with @fractalmstr that a lot of it is due to kids (and parents) wanting to feel special.
Another exacerbating circumstance is that the private elites here have relatively small undergrad populations while the US is a big country. I count 30 American unis and LAC’s as as Ivies/equivalents, but add up all the undergrad places in all those schools, and it is still smaller as a percentage of the population than the per capita places at Oxbridge+LSE+Imperial in the UK or UTokyo+Waseda+Keio in Japan.
Oxford, Cambridge, and UTokyo offer as many or more places than the biggest Ivy (Cornell). Imperial is equivalent to our Caltech but many times bigger. LSE has no true American equivalent, but you could say it’s close to Wharton, except it’s many times bigger than Wharton. Keio and Waseda are the size of our giant state schools. And both the UK and Japan are much smaller countries.
Plus, in the UK, someone is only able to apply to 1 or 2 of Oxbridge/LSE/Imperial for almost all subjects, so people understand that terrific students end up elsewhere while in the US, with 30 Ivies/equivalents and a bunch of near-Ivies, there’s the illusion of opportunity when it may actually be tougher to get in to an Ivy/equivalent in the US than Oxbridge/LSE/Imperial in the UK.
Harvard: Threat or Menace?
I agree that there is an Ivy-or-bust mentality among some people, but I do get tired of the idea that anybody who is interested in elite schools is either ignorant or a prestige hound.
If you are asking for the honest opinion, here is mine: “Ivy Fever” is caused by BRAINWASH. The kids who recognized it clearly, simply push it away, ignore and pursue their own goal. One of them was my own D. who totally ignored her GC advice after realizing that the goal of GC is not placing the kid where the kid wants to attend but rather to report that so many were placed into the top schools. I bet that the GC is evaluated on this number as it is being used by schools as a great marketing tool. This is how I see it. However, my D. went to the very rigorous the most expensive in our area private HS and the reputation of her school definitely depended on this one number. Well, after graduating #1 in her HS class, she decided not to be part of this scheme and pursued her own goal. Looking back, it has worked for her very well, with the results well beyond expectations of all three of us, her parents and her own.
Sometimes parents have nothing to do with it.
My son announced that he was applying to magnet school because everyone else was applying and he wanted to show them. My daughter wanted to go Ivy because everyone else in her circle wanted this too.
No doubts this hysteria was caused by parents but not by the (immigrant) parents of our kids.
Post #1 by @Scipio feels really on target to me.
From my own perspective, when the smartest kid in our class (this is growing up in deep south in the late 1970s) got into MIT, people were happy to his face but also wondered, “were there no colleges closer by that would let him in?”