<p>“Of course Dartmouth and Brown are a rung lower- they’re part of THE LESSER FIVE!”</p>
<p>LOL! When my niece was accepted at her first and only choice, Bowdoin - a 200-year-old school that has always been considered one of the best schools in the country, and always in USNWR’s top ten - a “friend” who got into Swarthmore commiserated with her: “Why didn’t you apply to someplace BETTER?”</p>
<p><em>GASP</em> Nedad, how could you let your niece apply to Bowdoin?!?! She has lost all of the chances that she might have had to be successful in life! Bowdoin must be sooooo many rungs below Swarthmore!!! Your niece will be lucky if she makes minimum wage flipping burgers at McDonalds!</p>
<p>Yes, yemaya13 — there is no “Circle of Life,” only a ladder - and woe betide he or she who is on a lower rung!</p>
<p>However, as the saying goes, one must be careful about whom you step on when going up the ladder, as you may meet them coming down…there’s many an Ivy grad who has a boss with a degree from Central Connecticut State College or some such place! (and that’s a factual example!)</p>
<p>I may well be in the minority here but based on my experience with my oldest and the kids we know locally…the students accepted to Yale are “better” (however you wish to define it) than those who got into Wash U who in turn were better candidates than those at Wake who are better than those at…</p>
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Great point. So what we need is a slightly different vocab which emphasizes that we are referring to the size of the bottom of the funnel, not necessarily quality.</p>
<p>I hope DD reads this thread and comments, GS1028, where are you?
She began her college search during junior fall by saying, aaahh, I mught want to go to aaahhh YALE!!! Parents response = ACK!
Through many permutations (including a 3 week summer program at Yale) and much advice from you guys, she gradually came to realize that she was sort of a LACoid person, and didn’t even apply to Yale. She, did, however apply choose to go ED at the only other Ivy League school she explored, which was really an afterthought on the college tour (thanks to her dentist, her Dad’s interest in geology and Mom reading in the Fiske guide that it was comparable to some of her other choices). She had some solid reasons for choosing this school, but it was a trade-off - I wonder how much the Ivy League name played in her decision?</p>
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Can we then assume that I (a Stanford/UCB/Wellesley triple alum) am “better” than others here on cc who went to “lesser” schools or no college at all? From what I have read in my short time here, I don’t think so. </p>
<p>I don’t believe there’s any correlation between the college attended and either the breadth of knowledge, depth of wisdom or quality of advice exhibited by those here.</p>
<p>“I may well be in the minority here but based on my experience with my oldest and the kids we know locally…the students accepted to Yale are “better” (however you wish to define it)”</p>
<p>better HOWEVER YOU WISH TO DEFINE IT???</p>
<p>Surely, surely you don’t mean this!</p>
<p>jmmom, generally, the better students attend the better schools. The schools and the students seek each other out.</p>
<p>What I have a problem with is this… do better students end up better people? Better employees? Better entrepreneurs? </p>
<p>What happens to mediocre high school students who become great college students?
Should these people be hindered in life because of the way they behaved in their teen years? Should the name of the college give people a leg up in adult life? </p>
<p>Should someone who gets into PENN or Cornell as a great student and then parties his/her way through school have an advantage later in life over someone who works his tush off at State U?</p>
<p>Omigod…I almost pressed the “report an offensive post” button!</p>
<p>As a woman with an Ivy degree married to a man with an Ivy degree, with a lot of relatives with degrees from Ivies and MIT, and as an Ivy interviewer of many years standing, all I can say is…I’m flabberghasted!</p>
<p>I’ m SPEECHLESS! Well, almost! Our top-of-the-line public school has a number of Ivy acceptances this year, and yes, they are “better” in some ways - sometimes ways that count for very little, such as having a 1580 on their SATs or some such thing.</p>
<p>And I am not merely objecting the very obvious - that people are “better” or “worse” in a thousand different ways - but even going by what is undoubtedly YOUR criteria, you are wrong, despite your anecdotes!</p>
<p>MANY EQUALLY excellent kids are turned down due to lack of room. We had several peopple drop out of Ivies because they couldn’t hack it. We had a few drudge-like grade-grubbers get in, while the geniuses, the super-creative thinkers, went to <em>a-hem</em> LOWER ranked schools. </p>
<p>Then look at the work world. If I had a dollar for every Ivy-educated person who sent a resume to my company looking for a low-level job…</p>
<p>I’d go on, but I feel dizzy with disbelief!</p>
<p>I think it has to do with selectivity, however one chooses to measure it, more than anything else, at least as far as these college admissions discussions go. It hasn’t got that much to do with what the best place for a given applicant is. There isn’t anything surprising about the “rungs” (Curmudge has a livelier sense of metaphor than most of us), and they havent changed much since the days you went to Wellesley, Berkley and Stanford, Jmmom</p>
<p>I don’t think the “rungs down problem” really would be so evident on a board such as this. CC people know all about there being alternative great schools to HYP. Personally I don’t see much difference between HYP and Brown, Georgetown,etc.</p>
<p>But outside CC, the average person believes there’s a drop after HYP because they are unfamiliar with all those great schools a “rung” or so “below” HYP. They’ve never heard of them. And they don’t know AWS. HYP are famous to the average man or woman, and if you go there you are automatically real smart.</p>
<p>I find when I tell people my son is studying CS at Carnegie Mellon I have to sometimes be prepared to tell them it’s in Pittsburgh, etc after the blank stare (lots of people of course know it but plenty don’t.) Here on this cc board it’s OK but in real life you might have clarify if it isn’t HYP or a big state school. Interestingly my brother says he also gets that blank stare once in a while for his S at Dartmouth. No explaining with HYP, just oohs and aahs.</p>
<p>nedad- You are just upset because your niece** only** got into Bowdoin!;)</p>
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<p>Yes, oldman, you are in the minority here. HYPSM rejects many qualified candidates. First of all, it is very hard to define “better”. Is an incredibly smart but lazy and arrogant person “better” than a hard-working and passionate individual? What about students who would be competitive applicants at HYPSM, but who choose not to apply either for reasons relating to “fit” or because of financial aid?</p>
<p>To make a point, and not to beat the Sewanee horse to death (yes, it is a lower rung school), I decided to go there stone ages ago because my father, a Swarthmore grad, said that when he went to seminary, the students who were best educated had attended Sewanee. Then he said, “too bad it’s a boy’s school,” not realizing it was by then 50% men/50% women. A great education can be had at many, many colleges. FIT is what counts.</p>
<p>I too object to the word better in comparing entire student bodies of different schools. The HYP kid has the hook, be it sports, music, etc. There is no guarantee this hook, tho it got them into that school, will help them later in life. And this hook sure doesn’t make them better. In my book, there is some overlap between schools. I guarantee you there are kids at WF every bit as smart, etc as some of those yale kids.</p>
<p>AWS? Definition please?</p>
<p>I predict that the kids at the “lower rung” schools will have the last laugh. In a few years, when our kids are in the workforce, there will be a better job networking system from schools like Emory-Wash U.-CMU-Rochester etc. Many metro NY kids are going to school elsewhere but they’re the one’s with the NYC job Connections as their mother’s, uncles, & neighbors work in NY. This can be helpful in getting them their first job. It always comes down to-- it’s not what you know but who you know.</p>
<p>AWS= Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore</p>
<p>I would like to see Wash U or some other school with bucks just say something like. We will accept the following: 1600 top 25%, 1500 top 15%, 1450 top 10%, we will accept urms with x% score and top y%. An interview is required to weed out complete crazies.</p>
<p>Note the scores and grades should be high enough to make the Ivies worried.</p>
<p>We will give out 50% merit aid to all, (or an easy to compute table as some smaller less prestigious school use) except we will meet need for the first 500 or 1,000 to apply who need aid. A 1,000 dollar seat deposit is required to preserve your admission. Those who don’t pay their seat deposit within two weeks will lose their spot and it will go to the next in line.</p>
<p>No need for ec building, reporting, essays or references etc. Rolling admission. Decision within one week of verified transcript, interview and SAT.</p>
<p>Admission rescinded for less than a “B” average senior year… </p>
<p>“Those who want to play the IVy game, go for it with our blessings. However, our class will be filled before they read the essays, so beware” " Note we will save $1,000 per student in marketing which will be used for financial aid instead. Enjoy your senior year and take some interesting courses"</p>
<p>I think it might take just one prestigious rebel to blow the whole game apart. Better yet , Wash U, Duke whomever could conspire together much like HYPS have done with the single choice early decision thing.</p>
<p>When sales techniques get out of wack someone always comes around with a better technique. Much like the “no dicker sticker” days at the car lots.
Of course it would lead the Ivies with more and more game players, but they might prefer it that way.</p>
<p>Texdad: No offense, but I hope we never see a school do what you propose - reducing students to nothing more than an SAT score and gpa. (By the way, Wash U is an odd choice to pick in terms of saving marketing dollars. If I had a dollar for every mailing we got from them – despite fact that D has no interest and made no contact with the school - I could retire 3 times over!)</p>