For those of you who feel so strongly about gaining admission to an elite college, please tell us why that is so important to you.
Your response cannot exceed four words.
Thanks!
Depending on what you mean by āeliteā, my S24 applied to a lot of them, and will probably pick one to attend.
But his reasoning, as I understand it, could not be fairly summarized in four words.
Indeed, the game as you have defined the rules seems designed to only elicit bad answers to the question of how the person formed their college preferences.
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What is your point if this canāt exceed 4 words.
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For the record, ToS place no limit on post word counts. Feel free to āplay this gameā at your own discretionā¦ or not.
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Much ado about nothing.
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I define my undergrad as elite when I attended, and my my four words are:
Pearl Washington Bob Costas
Or Pearl Washington Marv Albert
Or Pearl Washington Ted Koppel
OK - thatās more than four - I went because I loved Pearl Washington and my school put out a whoās who of famous journalists.
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Does it matter what the reasons are? Specific program, curriculum, strong academic peer group, parental/social pressure, to boost self esteem, want to go where X person went. It might not be what would motivate me but it doesnāt make it any less valid of a reason. Think of how many people choose colleges based on football teams when they donāt even play football.
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Unforgettable:
āIāmā¦ Ted Koppel. And thisā¦ is Nightline.ā
I always wondered if maybe William Shatner did a seminar at Syracuse while Ted was thereā¦
Not playing your game.
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In your response to my post above, you said this:
āIndeed, the game as you have defined the rules seems designed to only elicit BAD ANSWERS to the question of how the person formed their college preferences.ā
One has to wonder what your mindset is to make such a statement. Are you thinking that there are more bad reasons than good ones, as to why a student might be so focused on elite colleges?
One can indeed use four words or less by saying POSITIVE things like this:
Recruited athlete
Like-minded students
Exciting campus atmosphere
Strong pre-med program
Boosts self-esteem
Leads to good job
Prestige
Stimulating classroom discussions
Highly-qualified professors
High-achieving student body
Etc., Etc., Etc.
Just curious, NiceUnparticularMan, as to what made you automatically assume that my post was rigged to only elicit BAD ANSWERS? Further, in your mind, what might some of those BAD ANSWERS be? (Please list them below)
Thank you.
I will ignore the 4 word limit.
For undergrad, I attended an elite university. I am not sure whether or not it was worth the expense and the stress.
For graduate school (specifically for my masterās degree), for me it was worth it.
Elite universities have a lot of very good professors and a few bad professors. āAverage / Very Goodā universities (say ātop 200ā) have a lot of very good professors and a few bad professors. I do not see a difference here. There are research opportunities and internship opportunities at a lot of universities.
The difference I did see (at least when I was in university, I do not know how true this still is): At the elite universities, the professors can assume that the students are all very strong and all very motivated. This means that they can give more difficult homework and more difficult exams.
I remember a homework assignment at MIT that was an unsolved research problem. No one in the world knew how to solve it. It was a homework assignment for undergraduate students in an introductory class. I remember a question on an exam at Stanford where the professor told me that only two students in the class (out of about 200) even tried to solve the problem. It looked like he was trying to figure out whether anyone in the class deserved to get a ā+ā sign after their A. If trying to solve these problems is fun for you, you are more likely to find these sorts of challenges at an elite university.
Of course failing to find an answer to the unsolved research problem was okay. If you failed, it was okay because it was expected that probably everyone would fail. If there is a question on an exam that only 2 students out of 200 even tried to answer, it is okay to not solve it because there are going to be more than 2 Aās given out in the class. You did not need to solve the last question on the exam because you could still do well in the class without solving it. If you think that it is fun to try, then MIT or Stanford might be a good fit.
This provides an opportunity for the students: We find out whether we can do it.
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Best thing about attending an elite school I suspect is that you donāt have to decades later jump through hoops claiming you went to an elite school. At least that is what I hear but canāt claim first hand knowledge because I attended an ordinary school.
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Secret handshake
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I thought āhandshakeā was two words? Another benefit of attending an elite, you can enlighten us dullardsš
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pretty sure Skull and Bones only recruit specific people.
On that note, 2 more words: shadow government
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I think that list actually illustrates my point. Of the phrases you named, the only ones that seem to plausibly rationalize a generic preference for an āeliteā college would be:
Boosts self-esteem
Prestige
All the rest are not really exclusive to āeliteā colleges, unless you have a very broad definition of what that means.
And yes, I would say both of those are bad reasons to choose a college. I know that is a little blunt, but both of those involve essentially making a decision about which college you will attend based on the premise that a high institutional reputation will automatically transfer to you in some important way, and I think people with that mindset are inevitably disappointed when the reality of the situation hits.
Of course the other possibility is you might mistakenly believe that, say, stimulating classroom discussions only happen at āeliteā colleges. I think that is bad in a different wayāI donāt think it is wrong to value that, I just think it is wrong to think only āeliteā colleges have that.
In the end, college choice in my view should be a very personal process, and one that is well-informed. So the four-word answer I think everyone should have is something like:
Exciting good fit (affordable)
But that again is not specific to āeliteā colleges, and it immediately just raises the question of why you thought the colleges you liked were exciting good fits. And I donāt think it makes sense to think of that as a simple question amenable to simple answers.
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