There are a lot of kids applying to the Ivies for a lot of reasons, and I find it not just tiresome, but actually offensive, for anyone to label them all as ignorant or prestige-seekers or brainwashed.
Consider the hardworking, brilliant kid from New England whose financially strapped family has to rely on the RD process, because they have to compare any offers, they cannot rely on ED. They have already had the odds stacked against them by applying RD. Run the NPC and at every one of the Ivies, their net cost comes out lower than the state flagship honors program. Some of these kids are easygoing and realistic, and won’t dare to fall in love with any of the Ivies until they are accepted because they understand the application process is a lottery. They are the type of kid who will do well anywhere, but because of their family’s finances they want the best option overall - which includes consideration of cost. It makes PERFECT SENSE for them to include multiple Ivies, if not all.
It makes perfect sense for them to include multiple elite schools with generous financial aid, of which 8 of them happen to be in a certain athletic conference. It’s the belief that those particular 8 have some kind of magic dust that is quite odd to me.
^^But belief in that magic dust preceded the existence of the athletic conference by many years. The term “Ivy League” was in common usage for at least ~30 years prior to the formation of the Ivy League conference. The Ivy schools and Harvard in particular have reigned atop the college pecking order in the public’s mind literally for centuries. It was the existence to the magic dust that led to the creation of the conference and not the other way around.
What is more modern is the notion that it’s feasible any smart kid anywhere in the US to apply to and possibly attend an Ivy League school. As I said back in post #2, it used to be so much more local. Back then most smart kids went to flagship state U in their own state or maybe a neighboring state. In my HS class in Oregon a couple of boys tried for service academies and one got in. One girl who was kind of artsy and eccentric went away to Macalester, which no one had ever heard of before. A couple of Mormons went to BYU. And nearly everyone else who went to a 4-year college at all went to either Oregon or Oregon St. or perhaps a smaller school in Washington. To the best of my knowledge, the number of kids who applied to an Ivy League college from my high school during my four years there was exactly zero.
^^Pretty close to universally. Even back in my old HS that produced no Ivy League applicants, and was located on the opposite side of the country, pretty much all kids knew of Harvard and the Ivy League and knew that they were considered to be hot stuff academically. They had heard of the Ivy league and its reputation; they just didn’t consider it to be something that applied to them personally.
@Scipio, actually, it’s fairly recent and you have to differentiate between social status and academic status. Go back a hundred years and
The schools with social cachet tended to be more local (the gentry in VA sent their kids to W&L, the upper-class in NC sent theirs to Davidson, etc.) Harvard may have been nunero uno in Boston and New England, but that doesn’t mean it was nationally. Look at where the string of OH presidents all went to college.
At that time, the new-fangled German research U model and PhD production was all the rage in academia. That was how a university was judged to be academically elite or not, and besides schools like MIT, JHU, Stanford, UChicago, and Cornell that were set up on the German model, many of the Midwest land-grants were as well. Wisconsin was seen as an academic powerhouse. Most of what became the Ivies were trying to catch up.
Getting in to an Ivy just wasn’t that difficult. For the most part, you just showed up and enrolled.
@3puppies, as has been stated, besides full-ride scholarships (including some that give you extra money as well as a full-ride, so covers even more than COA), there are non-Ivies with financial aid policies just as or more generous than various Ivies, so focusing on just one sports conference is still myopic.
And if you’re really poor, Berea is completely free.
Back in the day (when my eldest was applying to college) there were a bunch of schools which offered great merit awards for the donut hole families. I recall a kid who turned down Dartmouth for Brandeis- the merit aid at Brandeis was moderately better than the need-based aid at Dartmouth (which was generous) and for this family- times four years, with other kids still to be educated, it was a no-brainer.
That award at Brandeis is gone.
Back in the day there were a reasonable number of merit scholarships at Wash U for the kid who might get a reasonable need based aid package from Penn- but a much better merit award at Wash U. Those awards are gone. There are a couple of “roll the dice” fantastic merit awards at Wash U- but it would be a lunatic guidance counselor who could assume that merit aid from Wash U was a sure thing.
So it concentrates the furor onto the short list of schools with predictable and non-capricious need based aid. Stats based merit awards like Alabama are terrific. But the “YMMV” awards from the private U’s are an iffy game. So I sympathize with a parent who runs the numbers at Brown AND Dartmouth and says “go for it- maybe we’ll get lucky”.
And guess what- Brown grad here, and I loved Dartmouth (I visited with a friend but they weren’t taking women the year I applied- that happened the next year).
@PurpleTitan, What do you have against the Ivy’s and for that matter Harvard? If a student can get into one then jolly for them. If they get into multiple Ivy’s even better! The cost at local State U’s can be expensive if you have more than one child in college at the same time. Privates often give a discount if you have more than one student in college at the same time. My oldest D’s private LAC gave us a huge discount when D 2 started college at her Ivy. A state U would never give this option. D2 was fortunate to get into 2 Ivy’s. No, she didn’t apply to all of them. One Ivy, the financial aid package was more generous than the other Ivy. My D called the Ivy that was more expensive and they said they would match the cost of the other Ivy. The two Ivy’s were Dartmouth and Harvard. Bet you can guess which one gave her the better financial aid package. By the way, we are very middle class. The local state U offered her $2,000 per year and that was it. Her dream was never about attending college at an Ivy. She wanted a great education and wanted the best financial aid package.
@TessaR, I have nothing against the Ivies or Harvard. I do have something against myopia, though. I find it interesting that you seem to think that the only alternative to an Ivy is a state U (which, BTW, could give tremendous merit awards, though it depends a lot on the public) even though you have a kid at a LAC. Or is it laziness which leads to you calling every rich generous private an Ivy?* I have a problem with that too, as it helps perpetuate the erroneous belief that all Ivies offer better fin aid/opportunities/etc. than any non-Ivy (and there are kids on CC and no doubt in the real world who believe that).
*I mean, the LAC that increased your fin aid wasn’tactuallyanIvy_, so how do the Ivies get credit for that?!?
Purple, in an ideal world someone would sit down with a kid at the beginning of sophomore year and craft the perfect list. It would include sure fire safeties which the family can afford; would include colleges which MIGHT be affordable depending on how things shake out; would include colleges which would still be realistic if the kids grades tank junior year, or if mom loses her job and takes one which pays 80% less just to keep health insurance.
We don’t live in an ideal world. So if it offends you that the Ivy envy doesn’t seem to include CMU or JHU or Swarthmore- get over it. Ivy is shorthand. Most folks who use the term have no idea what it means anyway. My Catholic neighbor thinks Georgetown is an ivy; my Jewish neighbor knows that Brandeis is not an ivy but thinks it should be; the Californians across the street keep insisting that Stanford is an ivy.
Of course it’s myopia. Most parents of HS kids have no idea what an EFC is, or the difference between “scholarships”, or that Yale won’t give their kid a free ride for playing basketball. You expect them to understand the nuances of need based aid???
“The admissions market for elite colleges used to be very local/regional. Now it is fully national/international.”
Elite Ivies like Harvard have been fully national/international for many decades, since well before the 1980’s and the internet era. In the 1970’s, Harvard was accepting students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, and had already been doing so for quite some time prior to even then.
TessaR. Can you clarify. When you use the term “Ivy,” are you referring to …
Those particular 8 schools - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown
OR
Shorthand for a bunch of other elite schools - the above plus MIT, Stanford, Duke, Caltech, U of Chicago, and so forth (or perhaps even some elite LAC’s such as Williams, Amherst, etc.)
“Elite Ivies like Harvard have been fully national/international for many decades, since well before the 1980’s and the internet era. In the 1970’s, Harvard was accepting students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, and had already been doing so for quite some time prior to even then.”
Well, actually, no. Bclintonk and I crunched the numbers about 2 years ago and almost every single elite school – including all of the Ivies – over indexes by a factor of 200 to 300 to its home region. That is, just to pick on 2 schools as illustrative, Harvard is just as “overskewed” to the Northeast as Northwestern is to the Midwest. Yes, all / most of these schools admit from all 50 states and many countries, but no, their student pools are all quite strongly skewed to their home region. Of course, that’s likely a function that their applicant pools are all quite strongly skewed to their home regions, because … all “prestige” is local.
So, no, they are not “fully national.” Far better than the majority of state schools, of course, but the sphere of influence is still home-region centered. The “hushed intake of breath” mention of the Ivy League schools is greater in some parts of the country than others. That has nothing to do with quality - obviously they are all highest-quality schools. But you are all kidding yourselves if you think that brand power doesn’t differ by region.
@PizzaGirl,sure I can clarify. I was using Ivy in more of a broad term to include other elite schools such as MIT, Stanford, and elite LAC’s. My oldest D attended a LAC but it is not an elite LAC like Williams or Amherst.
I agree that Harvard is overskewed for students living in the Northeast. State U’s in the past have given more consideration to students from their home state but in a recent trend some State U’s are accepting a greater percentage of OOS students because they are full pay. State U’s are having a difficult time with funding and don’t give as much merit as private colleges.
The problem with using Ivy as a short-hand is that it leads to misconceptions. Such as, for instance, that the Ivies (and I’m referring to the 8 in an athletic conference in this case) offer the best financial aid, which actually influences kids’ application decisions. Possibly in a negative manner, even, if a kid thinks that it’s Ivy or bust when it could be the case that they’d get the best possible financial setup somewhere else (such as a private like Tulane or Miami, etc.).
“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.”
Not always true in many cases. I have a cousin whose parents wanted him to attend a small college close to their home in a small town in the Midwest. Not well regarded and virtually non-competitive in its admissions. He set his sights higher and opted to apply at Harvard, his first choice, and a few other top schools around the country. He was disappointed after being turned down at Harvard, but ended up getting his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan.
His academic record at Michigan was good enough to get him in Stanford’s International Business graduate program. He went on to be very successful at his job with a multinational corporation. There’s no doubt whatsoever in his mind that he fared better in the business world thanks to Michigan and Stanford, than if he had gone to a tiny no-name college.
These kids today are more resilient than people think. They may babble excitedly about Harvard, but virtually all of the approximate 94% that get turned down each year for admission there will get over it and go elsewhere, as my cousin did. I’m not going to bash any of them or their parents because they set their original goals high.
Purple, the world is filled with misconceptions. There are thousands of kids set to graduate from HS next week who think that Japan was our ally in WW2, who can’t find India on a map, who don’t know what the Bill of Rights is, and think that a Euro is a fancy pastry.
IMO, the misuse of the term Ivy to refer to a whole host of elite colleges with generous FA causes much of the disconnect here. Because the bright kid who applies to a range of top schools in hopes of getting FA is pursuing a smart strategy - but if he misuses the term Ivy to describe that and says he’s applying to all the Ivies, people who actually know what the term means will conclude that he arbitrarily chose those particular 8, which is silly.
Of the hundreds of “how can I get into an Ivy” posts I’ve read on CC over the years, I think 0% mentioned a concern for family affordability as their reason for wanting to attend those schools.