No. I’ve read lots & lots of posts by int’l students who apply to HYPMS bcs they are needblind & meet full need for int’ls.
@snarlatron Something you mentioned in your original post caught my attention - about not being able to attribute “Ivy Fever” to popular culture, because pop culture is, if anything, anti-intellectual. I thought about that for a bit, because I agree with you on the one hand, but on the other, the aspect of pop culture that I do think is at play in the heightened importance of “Ivies”, is the importance of brands and branding.
Identification with brands is rampant in pop culture - think of all the pop songs that call out brands, giant logos on clothing, consumer brands that spend millions to become “household names” - I think a certain amount of the status signalling we see in consumer culture spills over (for better or worse) into higher ed, and some schools have become status (or even “lifestyle”) brands, at least in function, if not in fact. I think this holds true for parents as well as kids. Oh I drive a Mercedes (you must be doing well!) My kid goes to Stanford (she must be smart! = you must be doing well!)
And my guess is half the “how can I get into an Ivy” threads I’ve read are because after running the NPC’s for the Colleges Which Change Lives and that ilk, many kids realize that they are either going to their state U, or for less money, could go to an ivy.
Rational actors.
And when we speak of the Ivies and FA, I would note that Brown is not as generous as the others.
I join those who say using “Ivy” as shorthand for “elite” is confusing. And annoying.
Also true especially for low income families. Amherst and Bowdoin have better financial aid than Cornell and Brown Duke beats out Yale, Vassar better than Penn, etc. The only Ivy that doesn’t have a non-Ivy beating is in fact Harvard.
(http://www.firstgenerationstudent.com/find/29-elite-colleges-can-actually-afford/)
Tulane doesn’t guarantee it but can hit it out of the park need-based-FA-wise if it wants to, I know firsthand.
Very true that they say that but they are wrong. First, only 3 Ivies are both need blind and meet full need for internationals, the other 5 don’t. Of your list (which i note wasn’t “Ivies”) MIT does but Stanford doesn’t, and Amherst makes the list as well.
I reserve the most contempt for the obsessed ones who claim that going to ______ has been their dream ever since they were 5.
Kids at age 5 have a preference for Elmo over Ernie, not for Princeton over Pepperdine.
The book Branded by Alyssa Quart, written in the early 2000s makes the point of @thermom. I think that you are right that the branding extends to colleges.
I consider it neither ignorance nor a sign of entitlement nor myopic to apply to an Ivy League school as such. I would hardly do so since both of my daughters applied to and attended Ivy schools. But they also had well-developed, well-balanced lists that each included non-Ivy reaches plus plenty of matches and a couple of safeties. (My alma mater turned out to be a safety for both girls).
It’s the Ivy or bust or Ivy at all costs notions that are unfortunate. But when I encounter such thinking on CC or elsewhere I don’t find it aggravating, and I certainly wouldn’t dream of insulting those people by calling them such terms as ignorant, entitled, or myopic. I try to be more of a combination of cautionary and encouraging. Cautionary about the need to apply to a balanced list due to the very low Ivy acceptance rates, and also encouraging them to consider some of the many great, and I mean Great!, colleges beyond the Ivy League. If they’ve got a balanced list together that looks beyond Ivy then I say go for it. Go ahead and pursue your Ivy dream school. The Harvard lightning will strike someone and it just might be you. But just be fully prepared that it won’t be.
What I DO NOT do is try to shake kids (or parents) out of their Ivy fever by trashing the the Ivy League schools. I think that’s completely the wrong approach. Wrong if for no other reason than because it is factually incorrect. To the extent these things can be objectively measured, the Ivy League colleges are all excellent schools… And it’s both dishonest and futile to argue otherwise. Of course they are not absolutely wonderful in all respects. No place is. And they certainly are not a good fit for all students. No college is. But they didn’t get and maintain their lofty reputations for all these years by accident. If they were nothing but the famous-brand frauds that their detractors insist they would have fallen to earth long ago. Excellence in education is not a zero sum game. To promote the other great schools you don’t have to tear the Ivies down. There is more or less unlimited room at the top.
I tend to view someone dreaming of Harvard the same way I view someone dreaming of playing in the NBA or dreaming of becoming a rock star (except that your odds of getting into Harvard are a lot better). I say go ahead and keep working on your jump shot or practicing your guitar, but get that accounting or engineering degree while your at it - just in case. Similarly, go ahead and apply to HYPSM, but also check out the many fine opportunities a your state flagship or local LAC while you are at it.
It seems like there is an awful lot of Ivy bashing on CC for no good reason. I graduated from the state public flagship. I have one kid at the University of California. I have one at Harvard. Is Harvard the end of the world. No. Is it an excellent school. Yes. I don’t blame some one for dreaming about going there. I dream about being a pro golfer. That isn’t going to happen but I still dream about it. I think Harvard is worth every penny they charge for it. You get world class opportunities by going there and you meet some amazing people. So anyone who wants to try for an Ivy should. That is neither ignorance or entitlement but it is hope for a better future which I support even if it doesn’t happen
My older one dreamed of MIT for a surprisingly long time. He discovered their open courseware early on in middle school. And we may have joked at some reunion at Harvard that he’d probably prefer that place down the river. But he didn’t get in, and thankfully he discovered that there were many schools besides MIT that offered what he wanted - even the place up the river turned out to be much more appealing than he expected when he really did his homework and spent some time there.
As a first-gen American whose parents desperately want him to get an Ivy League MBA, I HATE the stupid Ivy-or-bust mentality. I think it’s all a complete joke. Shooting for an Ivy isn’t bad, but the notion that attending an Ivy is the only way to validate your parents’ legacy (a notion commonly shared amongst many immigrant families, it seems) is beyond ridiculous. I think the fact that I grew up in that area of the country also has something to do with that.
I have no intentions of returning to the Northeast full-time after graduation (only city I would consider would be Pittsburgh). I’d much rather stay in NC or live in VA. I would want my children to be comfortable with attending their state flagship without the fear of criticism from condescending classmates.
@maya54 - Kids are getting jobs even if they aren’t going to top 20 schools. My son had great job opportunities coming out of Case Western, a good school but not an Ivy equivalent. I don’t think kids need to have an ‘elite college or bust’ attitude even though I don’t think it makes kids ignorant or entitled if they want to go to an elite school.
I reserve the most contempt for the obsessed ones who claim that going to ______ has been their dream ever since they were 5.
My wife gives me a hard time when I say “I’ve always wanted to…”. She rightly points out the ridiculousness of that statement.
Well, the graduate Elite program may make much more sense than UG Elite college. My D. felt the same when she was choosing her medical school. She said it made a difference for her when she applied to the very selective residency. If she was not inspired to the selective residency though, any medical school would do just fine. If one is planning on graduate school though, do not aim at the Elite college, aim at the cheapest of your options to save family resources for the Graduate school, unless you are planning on obtaining your Graduate degree on the employer’s dime. My H. and I used the last option to obtain our MBA degrees. Our employers paid for both, they would pay for an Elite program also, but we did not want to travel for classes. I know some people who got their MBAs from the very top (like U of Mich and Harvard) while their employers paid tuition.
@MiamiDAP, tuition reimbursement, while still possible in a few places, is a perk that has been cut drastically at most companies.
I think there has been a much greater penetration of awareness about schools like Harvard into smaller cities and towns than there was in my day (back in the mid-70’s). At my high school at a town of about 20,000 in southern Virginia, smart kids went to UVa, or William & Mary. They didn’t even go to Duke. The only reason it even occurred to me to apply to out of state schools was that a friend of mine a year ahead went to Princeton, which was very unusual (he was a highly accomplished URM). I was so clueless that I applied to only four schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and UVa. But UVa could serve as a safety school for some applicants back then. The internet makes it possible to understand the process much better now.
And now, I’m going to go out on a limb and make the claim that Ivy League schools, and a few others (notably MIT and Stanford) actually do have magic dust. The source of the magic dust is the belief that they have magic dust. Unlike other kinds of businesses, the belief that colleges are superior actually makes them better, because they attract better students and better faculty, as well as money. It seems to me that more colleges have been able to latch on to that magic dust in recent years, though.
You are seeing both Selection Effect and Treatment Effect in action.
I’m a large employer of new college grads. I need both kids who are really smart and learn stuff quickly, plus kids who have specific knowledge in a couple of key areas/domains, and strong skills which they can deploy across a range of problems.
So hiring at Stanford is a no-brainer. The Selection Effect is that by virtue of the enormous odds in getting in to Stanford, someone else (the adcom’s) have plowed through a really big pile of applications and whittled them down. By and large, the kids they choose can write, have demonstrated a strong work ethic, are good at balancing multiple priorities, and are interested in something intellectual/hard (no leisure studies or event planning majors at Stanford). Then- I can also hire econ grads and engineering grads and comp sci grads and political science grads for roles which require specific skills and domain- particular capabilities.
So Stanford is a win-win.
THAT’s the magic dust. Yes, I can go to U Montana and hire the top three kids in the engineering program there. And then head to Stonehill and hire the top finance kid. And then zoom down to Rollins and hire one of the best English majors. And after months of this (and expenses, and time away from the office for line managers who interview but also have day jobs) I will assemble the class of 2017.
Or, I go to Stanford and its ilk (the magic dust) and call it a day. And when I analyze our recruitment effort every year, and can demonstrate that over the last ten years, we’ve cut costs per hire, are promoting and retaining the top performers in record numbers, AND that our division leaders are spending less money having to train/remediate new hires in basic skills like statistical analysis- what kind of moron would I be to abandon my successful recruiting plan and start doing onesies and twosies in Montana?
This doesn’t mean that I believe that you can’t get a fine education at U Montana, or that there aren’t brilliant kids on every college campus in America. But it means that the efficiency of recruiting in places where the pool isn’t as thick starts to decline pretty rapidly when I need both the Selection AND Treatment types of hires.
if I’m only hiring Mechanical Engineers, I can go to U Missouri at Rolla and call it a day. A fine, fine, underrated program (by the general public. Employers know it and love it).
Re #116. What you posted @blossom is what I’ve always considered rational. It’s good to have confirmation that recruiters of engineers do indeed care about educational pedigree (aka magic dust). Many on CC though vehemently dispute this.
There are probably a few reasons:
A. With rising costs of college in general (including in-state publics in many states), the well endowed super-selective schools become more financially attractive to many students and families. (However, those who would benefit most from their financial aid are only admitted in relatively small numbers.)
B. With the economic trend toward increasing inequality, and the preferential recruiting at super-selective schools by certain well-paying industries, financial incentives to chase the super-selective schools increase.
C. At higher levels of school selectivity, the impact of college major on job and career prospects may be lower.
I think I am pretty fortunate. My girls are smart, one of them even went through the gifted program from K1 =- K12, but neither of them were nearly accomplished enough nor driven enough to get into an ivy league or even a lower level elite school. They are both attending Florida Regional Universities. We are full pay, never would have qualified for a need based scholarship, not even at an Ivy, so didn’t try. But with the Florida Prepaid program, the tuition was paid for long ago. They are both in Sororities. Both loving college. Both taking their time. I.e., they are probably the typical college girls. Will they set the world on fire? Probably not . . but than neither will the majority of Elite college graduates.
This is the issue I see with the Elite Schools. I compare them to being given a great tasting slice of apple pie to eat for dinner. You finish the pie, are satiated, and you are rewarded with another piece of pie. When do the elite get a chance to sit back and smell the roses?.
I’m pretty good friends with a Harvard educated Lawyer. She is a very good person, obviously smart, successful at what she does, involved in her community . . . but she still laments the fact that her “peers” meaning guys like Senator Cruz, who was in her class, are way ahead of her in the success tract. If you are at the top in High school, and you go to the elite colleges . . . when does it ever end? When do you stop being hyper-competitive? Is your happiness directly related to your success in life relative to your elite peers?
I of course never had to worry about whether or what elite schools my girls were going to, nor am I all that worried about their getting jobs when they get out . . despite the fact they are majoring in non-marketable arts and science type degrees. One of my daughters, cute as a button, wants to move to NYC when she graduates. Then her real education will begin. My other wants to work in Public Relations. Neither of them are likely going to start out in jobs paying large amounts of money. But they will graduate debt free, and they will make their way in the world, just like the rest of us have done, and hopefully will compare themselves not to the purported best of the best to judge their own successes, but to other happy, and well adjusted people who are working, marrying and raising families. Parenthetically, I don’t want them to be doctors or lawyers or high caliber professionals. Life is meant to be lived. A job that requires great investments of time, education and effort with no end in sight until retirement. . . just not sure if its worth it. Others, especially people here, obviously disagree with that sentiment.
One other thing, I’m from the Northeast . . . Mainline Philly myself. I believe that “Ivy Fever” is far more prevalent up there than in Florida. Most people here strive to go to University of Florida and are happy to get there. But my friends from the Northeast . . . far more competitive about where their children are attending school.