<p>or as I like to think of it A=Amherst, W=Wellesley, S=Smith (just kidding)</p>
<p>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>This is absolutely right. In my career I have known a number of kids accepted at Ivies who went elsewhere. Just four examples out of many: a girl who turned down an Ivy for a non-AWS LAC because she felt the fit was better, as well as a boy who transferred out of an Ivy for a non-AWS LAC for the same reason; a student accepted at Harvard who went to Northeastern for the financial aid; a student accepted at MIT and Yale who went to a state school for the same reason.</p>
<p>Also - again, as an Ivy grad with great respect for my school - I knew some truly despicable people at the school; as well as people who simply did not have the intellectual eyes to see anything broader than their own agenda. I recall a Yale psychology PhD who recently wrote an Op-Ed piece for the NY Tmes that was so intellectually off-the-wall wrong that, sitting in the privacy of my own home, I cringed with embarrassment.</p>
<p>Taxdad … interesting proposal … all that money spent on merit aid most likely means less money spent in financial aid … while I understand you rational I’m not a fan that reduces financial aid (and will lower the precense of low income students on campus).</p>
<p>I realize it is a generalization but by BETTER I do not mean better people, or my likely to be happy with their lives,or of greater worth to society or whatever…I mean better candidates…higher grades, higher board scores, more “accomplished”…I’m a Virginia grad and have a child there and the kids I know at Yale, Penn,Duke ,etc. in my opinion are sharper than the kids I’ve met at UVA…as a whole. Is that a silly statement?</p>
<p>Believe me I’m well aware of the marketing expenses at Wash U. They almost got ds’s app. They could have had it with the scheme I proposed.</p>
<p>jmmom: I think of it as A=Smith (I don’t know how that works ;)), W=Wesleyan, and S=Swarthmore because those are my three favorites!</p>
<p>This thread made me think about School of Dreams by Edward Humes. In the school that the book was about, the students’ parents let them apply only to the “Holy Trinity” (HYP), Stanford, or the UCs because their relatives would not have heard of Amherst.</p>
<p>texdad- while I’m not a fan of your reform proposal, I applaud its spirit. It would be great if some *deus ex machina[/] could strike the system in a thunderbolt and shake it up once and for all. Don’t know that anything will work though. As one poster said, the “rungs” - at least at the top - have stayed pretty much the same even since my time. And that was back when men still wore fedoras.</p>
<p>When we were all 20-somethings just starting out in New York, there were tons of top LAC and Ivy grads all over…I hate to admit this (my college was considered “second tier” so I’m not including myself in this) but they were different…They were polished and had a way with words that was unparalleled…You could just tell that they didn’t go to “Keokuk U.”…They were just…impressive. They could be arrogant and thick as all get-out when it came to people skills sometimes, too…but they stood out.</p>
<p>A=Albertson, W=Whitman, S=Smith.</p>
<p>As an Eph guy, I agree with Dke’s comments, at least as the school existed 30 years ago. My fellow students tended to be suave, worldly (and well-traveled!), intelligent, polished, and good gameplayers. I think some of it rubbed off on me (though I’ve tried to keep the New York accent!) But I’m not sure how much of it was “value-added” as a result of the school (I think it probably did more for me - being from a different socio-economic class - than it did for many of my classmates).</p>
<p>Oldman- it is ridiculously hard for Metro NY kids to get into UVA (unless you play Lacrosse). Of the 4 kids who applied ED to UVA from my D’s class last year-all were deferred and later rejected. My d and one of the boys are now in Cornell. One in Tufts & other UNC-Chappel Hill. So for us Northerners it appears to be easier to get into an Ivy than UVA.</p>
<p>The college consumer has only to look in the mirror to find the cause of the ranking hysteria that has done serious, and maybe irreparable, damage to the quality of our higher education system. USN&WR came up with a gimmick to increase sales. It was novel and interesting, but no less a marketing ploy than the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.</p>
<p>Combine a quantitative, though bogus, rankings assessment with overcompensating parenting in a designer world and you create a market where branding drives consumption. The hysteria rolled along at a tolerable level until the past several years when the baby bounce placed huge numbers of overscheduled, micromanaged teens into the fray. The result is a battleground of unrealistic expectations and, too often, undeserved feelings of failure that have no relevance to either education or success in life.</p>
<p>What is fast becoming too many years ago, I did my graduate work at what today is ranked as a “top” engineering school. A classmate who came from a large southern state school was being fully funded by his employer. He continually remarked he didn’t know what all the fuss was about (and there wasn’t nearly as much fuss back then). He was glad he wasn’t paying the sticker price because relative to his alma mater, the school was not a good value. Today that classmate is a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and his opinion has remained constant, while the cost of the school has skyrocketed.</p>
<p>Cute anecdotes aside, we’re collectively driving ourselves (and our children) through the looking glass. I’m responsible for over 200 employees and, though I don’t interview as much as I used to, I personally review each hiring decision (as well as each annual review). If a degree from the top ranked schools was a discriminator for success, we must have been very lucky achieve record profits and growth last year. I can count on two hands the number of people I employee from “top” schools. It’s not that we discriminate, it’s just not very important. With young people in particular, work ethic, attitude and command of written, oral and technical skills matter. Those attributes are more the result of personal decisions made by students while they attend college, than the products of the colleges themselves. I haven’t counted, but I’ll go out on a limb and suggest there are over 200 schools in this country that have the infrastructure, faculty and culture to cultivate the key ingredients to career success.</p>
<p>I know, success on the job is but one aspect of a college education. I attended a liberal arts school as an undergrad, so I’m required to embrace the holistic view of education. I don’t think the basic equation changes very much. However, until the consumer starts balancing that equation by tossing the paper tiger out with the junk mail, we’ll continue allow the first really important life decision made by young people to be framed by a bunch of nonsense that makes as much sense as Jabberwocky.</p>
<p>Correct me if I’m wrong, but just a mere 20 years ago or so you could get into top state schools like UT Austin, Michigan based on essentially a GPA plus SAT formula. Law schools still function more or less like that. As far as I know society functioned just as well if not better under such a simple scheme. For all I know Yale, Harvard etc. have always had a much more complicated procedure.</p>
<p>I think the problem is that you have schools like UT Austin and others aping Harvard and then being faced with the need to read tens of thousands of essays when the overall outcome is probably the same as before. </p>
<p>Sometimes I think the main purpose of the essay is to simply answer the question: “how come I didn’t get in when my grades and scores were just as good” It always leaves them wondering that their essay wasn’t as good and saves the admissions office a bunch of complaints and phone calls."</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting quote from College Unranked - from the president of Colby College:</p>
<p>"The higher education choices in America are unrivaled in the world. There are nearly 4,000 community colleges, four year colleges and universities, enrolling almost 15 million college students. Over the last two decades, however, we have become less eager to celebrate this abundance of choice. Prestige has become the coin of the realm in college selection and marketing, and both prospetive students and institutions are competing more and more aggressively for a greater share of that most rare and alluring of all commodities in higher education - reputation.</p>
<p>Part of the reason for this shift can be found on campuses like that of Colby College, where, in subtle and overt ways, prestige has become integral to our identity. Our students and their parents want to hear - and are told - that they are several cuts above the pack. Our college magazine features stories that foster pride of affiliation among alumni. Our handsome admissions publications imply, in statistics and prose, that only top students need apply…</p>
<p>Can we regain a healthier perpsective on the college admissions process and improve the decision-making of prospective students, parents and institutions? I think we can. But we need to be prepared to abandon the notion that the qualities of a particular institution can be summed up and translated into a prestige rating. As nice as it might seem to stressed-out students and their parents to simplify college seletion to some cookbook recipe or statistical formula, we need to return the focus to where it belongs - on the individual needs and characteristics of the student, and on how those attributes align themselves with the complex attributes and opportunities that different institutions present…"</p>
<p>cangel,
Ditto for my D. (Well, not really an “afterthought” an Ivy, but definitely Early was the afterthought.) Like yours, my own D was seen by me & others as very much an LAC type, as much as a partic. Ivy type, but she was uninterested in most of the Ivies, due to the respective campus cultures or other defining aspects of many of them.</p>
<p>dstark,
Well, I don’t know about “hindered in life,” but there was discussion on the BWRK thread about being <em>rewarded</em> with admission to an Ivy BECAUSE of slacker behavior in h.s. – versus rejection from that same Ivy for the opposite, consistent behavior. In my estimation, the only word for that thinking is WRONG. (There was definitely a pattern on the part of this particular admissions officer/author to accept applicants specifically based on wayward behavior. This was either a redemption urge on her part or a deliberate or subconscious drive to sabotage the process, or Duke U. itself – if it wasn’t plain old whacky attitude.)</p>
<p>Yes, I think mistakes should be given second chances, where there is motivation on the student’s part, etc. That could be a top college, but frankly it could also be lying-in-one’s-bed-after-making-it. My older brother & sister both behaved badly in h.s., got poor grades & were discipline problems at school & at home. Both also flunked out of the first 4-yr colleges they attended (both publics). While they eventually turned their lives around, those 2 first mistakes on each of their part were extremely costly in time, emotion, & money. It took them YEARS to work their way back to a 4-yr degree after yrs. of going to comm. college + working/saving, etc. The whole process was much longer than they believed it would be, even “back then” when college admissions did not have today’s pressures, & public U’s were far easier to get into & transfer into & graduate from. They definitely learned the hard way that you don’t get to repeat high school, or erase major mistakes.</p>
<p>Processed out. Good post, </p>
<p>Maybe they could offer a class at the University of Houston in how to pass yourself off as a member of the Eastern establishment.</p>
<p>If need be make it two semesters with a lab.</p>
<p>Processedout: I liked your post very much, but I don’t see the serious, maybe irreparable damage to the quality of our system of higher ed: as I see it, we have many, many superb colleges. Nowhere else in the world, or in history, even comes close to the opportunities available here and now.</p>
<p>oldman,</p>
<p>Being “better” at what it takes to gain admission to Yale & Harvard does not equate with being better in general: succeeding in life, changing the world, setting an example for your children, loving others, contributing to your community, having a great marriage, evolving spiritually, being a sterling friend, being creative… you get the point. </p>
<p>There are many components to “greatness.” Not to take anything away from the very impressive kids who go to HYP but HYP admission is only one yardstick.</p>
<p>SBmom,</p>
<p>I agree.</p>
<p>idler - maybe irreparable damage is a bit of hyperbole. However, one only has to wander around the campus of some very fine schools to be exposed to the caste culture that is consuming college education. </p>
<p>Several years ago, when I was in the first iteration of the college search process with my son, we spent an afternoon walking around the University of Rochester (a very fine school in my opinion) trying to get that “sense” of the school. In the course of a couple hours of enaging students in idle conversation, no less than a half dozen recanted stories of how they were either admitted or waitlisted at Ivies (well, there was one MIT in the mix) and chose Rochester because of the scholarships and/or financial aid. It somehow seemed important to them that we knew they were “just as good” as the students attending the more “prestigious” schools. </p>
<p>The other area where I have concerns is the perceived need by colleges to commit signficant resources to move up the rankings. I currently pay tuition at two different colleges and will be the first one to complain about sticker prices. However, although it’s a small fortune to me, the truth is tuition, room, board and fees don’t fully cover the costs of educating a student at a private college. Instead of spending scarce dollars toward improving the quality of their products, schools believe that targeting the rankings metrics represents a better potential return on investment. If you talk to the adcoms they’ll readily admit it gets a bit absurd, but they believe they’re playing the cards they’ve been dealt.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is unusual to desire that which is elusive and enigmatic, whether it be manifested in homes, cars, jewelry, or colleges. Many products are marketed so as to appeal to this apparently common emotion, particularly HYPS. </p>
<p>DH and I are about an unmaterialistic as they come. Our family has ALWAYS been the most important thing, and we’ve put our lack of money where our mouths are–in six AMAZING kids. And yet, who doesn’t want “nice, top-of-the-line” things once in awhile. </p>
<p>My birthday was a week ago, and I was stunned at one of my gifts from my kids. I had been looking at UGG boots longingly for over a year, but given our family’s means and the fact that five out of six of my kids have winter birthdays, I considered it just a pipe dream. But, when I opened the last box, it was a pair of <em>genuine</em> lilac UGG boots! And yes, they ARE as wonderful as they are widely described to be.</p>
<p>There are many great boots out there and many, many GREAT schools. I don’t find the fact that large numbers of highly intelligent, creative, ambitious kids long for HYPS. As a culture, we continue to feed this desire.</p>
<p>The OP, as someone who was educated in this fashion, has the luxury of asking this question. The rest of us may never get the opportunity to find out for ourselves that such schools are not the be all and the end all. ~berurah</p>