<p>Ivies and state flagships have overlapping roles, since the quality of their students overlaps. The Ivy League kids may be smarter on average, but I think the best kids at the flagship state schools are competitive with anyone. There are geniuses from Iowa who have parents that don’t want to pay for Harvard, and given the current level of college costs, I don’t blame them, even if I might choose differently.</p>
<p>Besides the issue of cost, there are other reasons to prefer a state school. I doubt there is much benefit to studying engineering at Harvard rather than say Penn State, and I also don’t think it makes much difference for getting into graduate or professional school. For investment banking and management consulting, going to an Ivy does make a difference, but not everyone is interested in those careers, thank goodness.</p>
<p>Wow, I suspect if Pizzagirl reads this we may find ourselves with a third party candidate winning the election on a platform of climate change in hell, and riding to his or her inauguration on a flying pig.</p>
<p>Because I think this is something she could have posted.</p>
<p>Nice way to put a thread to bed? Probably not. This thread is just too buoyant.</p>
<p>"
That’s the kind of stuff that isn’t measured by SAT scores, but that’s just as important in this world, if not more. Completely missed by the “but top schools neeeeeeed to reward the 800 math SAT’s of the world else it’s not faaaaaaair!” crowd.</p>
<p>So now you think elite admissions should be an award for those who are the most important in the world?"</p>
<p>Huh? I have no idea why you thought I was making any commentary on what elite college admissions should or shouldn’t be. I was making a comment that if we are going to talk about making a difference / being important, there are numerous ways to be important to others and make a difference – some of which involve Big Brains and some which don’t.</p>
<p>"Top schools are geared specifically toward educating the future elite, a group of people with higher (the highest) abilities compared to the rest of the population. </p>
<p>If you’re willing to follow the reasoning that each person should contribute to the best of his ability, then you might agree that those with the greatest ability should be making some of the most difficult and needed strides. "</p>
<p>What constitutes “should”, IYO? Let’s say I am a talented doctor. To “make the most difference,” should I put on sackcloth and ashes and work for peanuts in a foreign country? Or should I become a researcher and work on the cure for cancer? Or teach in med school to pass my talents on to the next gen? But what if I just want to be a good, competent doctor who does a good job, is good to patients, and then I go home and live a quiet, unexceptional life? I reject that there is really any “should” that I should do, other than to do whatever it is I do well and with pride. </p>
<p>What of elite college grads who “just” become at home parents? or teach at community college instead of elite colleges? What if they go part time? What’s the “should” behind any of this? </p>
<p>I would have no problem if my kids had decided to become, say, electricians or hairdressers, as long as they did their jobs well. I wonder how many people on here could say the same.</p>
<p>Actually, there is a point behind the quotes Pizzagirl is trying to skewer (although the skewering seems more laden with emotion than compelling logic).</p>
<p>The “should” does not, I believe, reflect a moral imperative. I think it reflects one view of an optimal allocation of societal resources. It’s not my logic, but let me run through it for you. </p>
<p>At one level, we as a society have a limited amount of resources to allocate to education (or at the very least, a limited amount that we choose to allocate. The top 15 schools are a scarce resource, in part because of the education they provide (although I think one can do as well elsewhere in many fields) but because of the connections they provide and the platform that they help create for their graduates. In an optimal world, all of the graduates upon whom society is bequeathing would be worth our investment of scarce resources in them. You may recoil at this, but imagine the extreme. All of the Ivy League graduates, whom we’d just given this scarce bundle of education/connections/platform, decide to work as construction workers or sanitation workers or checkout folks at Staples or Wal-Mart. We as a society would feel like we’d done poorly on our investment. Would you think this was an optimal (or even acceptable) allocation of societal resources? I personally would not be neutral between this outcome and many others in which they take a variety of leadership roles in society. Or to take a more controversial example: What if all of the women admitted to the Ivies became stay at home moms and never returned to work? Would you think that was an optimal or desirable allocation of societal resources relative to other alternatives?</p>
<p>The issue isn’t how you feel about your kids’ specific career choices or how I feel about mine. It is about how effective our overall allocation of (both public and private) resources in higher education is at obtaining the kinds of results that we as a society would like to see.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Pizzagirl that there are a) lots of definitions of success; and b) lots of ways of being successful without having attended elite institutions. But, I do believe that the allocation of a scarce resource like an elite education matters and the fact that one might be comfortable that one’s child becomes an electrician does not mean that our society would be equally well off if all the Ivy grads were to become electricians.</p>
<p>Getting a good return on our social investment does imply a “should.” Not for any individual, but for the group as a whole.</p>
<p>Philovitist, you’re young and bright and full of potential. I think I read somewhere on this thread that your parents expect you to attend a USN Top-20 college. Is this fair? Does this put an unfair burden on your head? Sure you’re “capable,” but the competition is fierce – what if you fall short and have to “settle” for the 21st on the list? Are you then a failure? What if you choose to attend #21 over higher-ranked options based on fit and choice of major? Have you then abdicated your obligation to do your best?</p>
<p>Expecting one’s kids to make a world-class difference is every bit as bad as expecting one’s kids to get into HYPSM, no excuses. I think it’s enough just to try – to do one’s best and hope the stars align; if not, there will be many other opportunities in the decades to come.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl has already quite eloquently addressed the question: what defines success? It can simply be helping those near to you – not everyone can change the world and not everyone needs to.</p>
<p>Everyone does change the world, one way or another. </p>
<p>Philo-- You are right that everyone will be happiest if they have a “meaningful” life. In fact, the most interesting and compelling studies on what creates happiness in life point to the fact that feeling your life is meaningful, in some way, is one of the most important aspects of those who are happy.</p>
<p>I hope you will make what you consider to be a meaningful contribution, but I hope, too, you will define that meaning and contribution on your own, and not from somebody else’s version of what “matters.” If you truly believe, in your heart, that only the massive accomplishments matter, you will never get there. All the great accomplishments come from tiny little steps along the way. Also, it is important, more important, to know how to ask the “right” questions, than it will ever be to know how to get the answers we have already gotten from the thinking we have already been taught.</p>
<p>For whatever it’s worth, I as a naive student, and as a practitioner of Hinduism, believe that one should do his “duty” as in try to be the best parent, child, [insert name of job here] that you can be.</p>
<p>I agree with Philo on some level, that if people cared more about their fellow man than about themselves, the world might be a better place. That’s not to say NOT going to Africa and devoting your life to poor people is bad, of course! Having good ___ whatevers is important. It’s just that many people only put themselves first. </p>
<p>Personally, I am not very optimistic about humanity as a whole. Dostovetsky has soured me on it. As an adult, I will do my very best and try to give as much as I can; however, I can not and do not expect anyone to do the same.</p>
<p>Better more stay-at-home moms than more investment bankers!</p>
<p>Lots of loving one-on-one time with young brilliant children can make the difference for the next generation, in developing world-class minds interested in solving societal problems. Stay-at-home moms can also be great networkers, heavily involved in advancing charitable causes. One doesn’t have to hold a formal 9-5 job to provide value to society.</p>
<p>So, let’s talk about the hypothetical class of 2015 at Harvard who are all going to take jobs as construction workers or checkout folks. While I agree that in the aggregate it might be a waste of what are presumably very talented people, I’m not sure that they wasted “my” resources (unless my kids are in that class!). I guess I don’t see that I as a member of society “own” the resources of elite universities such that I should be disappointed if those grads don’t do great things. They haven’t wasted my dime, so to speak.</p>
<p>I think that question is irrelevant for any given woman who is making the decision to SAHM. She’s got to think about her own circumstances, family, desires, etc. – not bear the aggregate burden of “what women from elite colleges should do.”</p>
<p>I buried a dear friend 2 months ago, with fancy undergrad and grad degrees from a top 20school, who spent the last 20 years taking care of her children at home (including a special needs son) and teaching occasional classes at a comm college. That wasn’t my path, I chose a career path, but I cannot say that she “did wrong” or had some obligation to take my path just because we were both elite college grads.</p>
<p>If those women are marrying smart men that they met because of their education, either at college or later, and if they have large numbers of bright children (we know intelligence is highly heritable), then their spots at selective colleges were not wasted. College-educated mothers will be better able to help their own children develop their talents and navigate the college admissions process, continuing the virtuous circle. Wanting your children to marry well is not an often-discussed reason for sending them to a selective college, but I think many parents are aware of it.</p>
<p>To be a SAHM and still afford a good school district or private school and all the lessons and activities that upper class parents involve their children in, it helps to be married to an investment banker.</p>
<p>IYO, if you’re going to take your elite education and head home, you might as well make sure you have many children! I don’t think that’s really what you meant to say – is it? I tend to think a woman should have as many or as few children as she and her partner desire, not pop out more children just to not waste her elite education.</p>
<p>Or any one of a number of lucrative careers. It’s fascinating how all over the country, there are people who live in quite nice school districts and / or send their children to private schools, who have very nice upper middle class lives and can afford private lessons and activities and so forth, who aren’t investment bankers.</p>
<p>Actually, there is lots of public and private support for kids at almost any college. If you believe the fund-raising spiels of elite schools, tuition covers something like 50% of the cost of undergraduate education (I don’t remember the number). What closes the gap is public and private support. You may not give directly to a particular school, but as a society we allocate considerable resources beyond tuition payments. </p>
<p>On the stay at home question, I cast no negative judgment on an individual female or male choice to stay at home, especially if due to circumstances like Pizzagirl’s friends. There will be lots of reasons for people to make various choices. However, the argument is not about an individual choice. It is about the group. And, if all of the women who attended Harvard chose to become SAHMs, I believe that we would be misallocating the scarce resource of the seats at Harvard and the societal resources behind those seats. Harvard would react, I am sure, over time by adjusting their admissions choices to increase the proportion of female students who did not stay at home.</p>
<p>I haven’t worried about the IQ pool argument. However, Beliavsky, the number of children a woman has seems to decline with income, so maybe marrying i-bankers isn’t such a good idea.</p>