<p>Yup. Looks like east coast bias.</p>
<p>I just got a table for 2 at 21 Club 2 weeks from now via Opentable. I guess I am a shaker. 
It is much harder to get a table at trendier place like ABC Kitchen. The only table I could get is a month from now at 5:30. We ate there before and we were able to get a table there through D1’s friend, who worked there.</p>
<p>All this talk about “improving” one’s reputation, trying to make a restaurant better knowing it is not “as good” as others, they all take money and not everyone is willing to spend the money. Why do people go to one restaurant vs another? Because of the food an ambiance. What makes food taste good? Believe it or not, it is the ingredient and freshness/quality of the food (the idea you could get a nice piece of steak at a restaurant for 10-15 is ridiculous). Guess what, to have the best ingredients, it costs money!! A lot of time, people can’t afford to pay for that kind of food or they don’t want to.</p>
<p>It is no different than colleges when it comes to quality of education and reputation of an institution. It takes money and time to build a reputable college. Yes, it has to do with scarcity because money and time are scarce. There are not that many HYPS because not that many institutions have that much endowment to fund compatible learning environment or foster strong alumni network. On the other hand, not every student needs HYPS type of education or want to spend the money for it. Just like there are people who want to eat at 21 Club and a lot of other people who like to eat at Olive Garden. We do talk about fit on CC quite a bit.</p>
<p>I may be stupid, but I am really not understanding the point of this thread at all.</p>
<p>Does everything have to have a point? I like watching zombie apocalypse movies because they are pointless but entertaining.</p>
<p>No, of course not. But I’m finding this thread annoying, so I’m off to peruse other threads that may be more to my liking.</p>
<p>I’m with VH. And I’ve said it upstream…what IS the OP’s point…and real agenda on this thread. </p>
<p>Yes, college is expensive. Yes there are many different types of schools. Yes, some are held in higher esteem by SOME people. SO WHAT?</p>
<p>I think I’ll look at the Good Buy of the Day thread.</p>
<p>“True, but is there only enough room in people’s hearts for a small amount of colleges?”</p>
<p>What the bloody heck does anyone’s “heart” have to do with this? It’s about a cold, rational business decision: take the smartest and hardest worker, and do your best to find those people in an efficient manner. College is a signaling mechanism.</p>
<p>Besides, unless the population of the U.S. skyrockets, we won’t have “100 times” as many college students, seeing as approximately 30% of high school grads go to college.</p>
<p>I think Yogi Berra said it best, when explaining why he no longer went to a particular restaurant:</p>
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<p>ROFL, GMT, you then selected east coast boarding schools. Don’t you get that not everyone cares what east coast boarding school kids like and don’t like? Their preferences are irrelevant to anything. </p>
<p>Really, Hanover NH is just as out there in the middle of nowheresville as Grinnell IA. But wait, on CC, that’s “different” somehow.</p>
<p>I acknowledged I have an east coast bias. Guilty as charged. (For the record, Trinity is a NYC day school)</p>
<p>I honestly am not sure where Grinnell is.</p>
<p>What’s in Hanover, NH?</p>
<p>Dartmouth is in Hanover, NH. Grinnell is in Grinnell, IA. I’m sure a sophisticated world traveler can find it on a map. Here, find Pennsylvania. then going west you’ll hit Ohio, then Indiana, then Illinois, then Iowa. See? Very easy. </p>
<p>I still think picking a top 10 LAC vs Georgetown (a top university) was a poor choice for this kind of analogy.</p>
<p>Ohhhh, that Iowa. But on the east coast we always mix it up with Ohio ;)</p>
<p>Apologies for picking on Grinnell. I only chose it in my analogy because is alliterated w Georgetown and cost the same.</p>
<p>This whole thread is silly. Back to my serious zombie apocalypse movie now…</p>
<p>r/rambling</p>
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<p>Pointing to “but more people think xxx …” is about the least desirable way to talk about prestige as far as I’m concerned. Because that’s about man-on-the-street prestige, not about prestige among the cognoscenti. If I ask what’s the best watch, the man on the street is going to say Rolex because that’s all he knows. I’d be a fool to rely on the man-on-the-street’s word about what’s the best. I’d go to the cognoscenti, those who are truly in the know when it comes to watches, and I’d trust their opinion more. The same goes with colleges. </p>
<p>Part of being in the know means knowing the hidden jewels that not everyone knows. That’s the person whose opinion I care about. Not the person who just knows fancy car = Mercedes, fancy watch = Rolex, fancy college = Harvard.</p>
<p>Just pick one. Stanford vs. University of South Dakota. If that doesn’t work, think of another pair. Now we can focus on the point of the illustration.</p>
<p>21 Club and ABC Kitchen have been presented as analogies to exclusive universities. I like that. It shows that, contrary to what I said, the food service industry does experience the same phenomenon of people flocking to a select few places and competing for them even though elsewhere they could get food, service, and ambiance that’s just as good. Those other places just aren’t the same thing.</p>
<p>But what stops them from becoming superior alternatives?</p>
<p>It seems that the differentiating factor here is a history behind a name that just accumulates on its own outside the control of the business. People want to go somewhere that is popular among famous people. A restaurant can’t just decide to become like that.</p>
<p>Funding and alumni networks were mentioned and this is a fundamental difference between restaurants and colleges. Very little of a not-for-profit college’s funding/support comes from sales (i.e. tuition). How much control does it have over other sources of money? Is a low quality not-for-profit college a victim of circumstance? Could it have made itself a more attractive option for investments and better prepared its alumni to become rich donors and prolific networkers with the little money it had, and did it just fail to do so? Is it competing with other colleges for a very limited pool of resources it could use to hire better faculty and acquire better facilities for education and research?
It’s interesting that it’s possible to miss the point so badly. Not shocking, but it’s one of those times you go “how does that even happen?”</p>
<p>I was asking if the range of names a someone would respect is limited by how many can be kept straight mentally. There are few enough colleges in the world that a *cognoscentus<a href=“thanks%20Pizzagirl!”>/i</a> would know off the bat whether or not a college is considered “elite” in the context of his profession. I can’t believe I have to explain this, but that’s what “room in people’s hearts” means. If there were 100 times as many names to keep track of, it would be impossible to have that kind of intuitive response without either pruning the list of elite colleges to be 1% of its former size (changing the definition of “eliteness”) or being gifted in remembering names.</p>
<p>Thomas Malthus said food production grows linearly while the population grows exponentially, which would lead to catastrophic starvation. Whether he was right or wrong isn’t the point here; the point is: can his reasoning be applied to good colleges? It seems to be consensus that part of what makes a college good is the respect its name carries. Is the amount of names that command respect growing at the same rate as the college-bound high school population?</p>
<p>More importantly, does it grow at the same rate the amount of colleges offering an education deserving of respect?</p>
<p>In five decades, the quantity of people attending college in the US grew by a factor of five. How was that demand met? By five times as many schools as good as Harvard, five times as many schools as good as Stanford, and five times as many schools as good as Podunk U? Or was it disproportionately met by lower quality, lower prestige schools?</p>
<p>Sure, different students have different goals and much of the increase is due to students who wouldn’t have been serious about college in 1950 being interested in it today because it’s what everyone seems to be doing. But you can’t deny that the population is growing and so is the percentage of high school students who aim high and work hard toward their goals.</p>
<p>“There are few enough colleges in the world that a cognoscentus (thanks Pizzagirl!) would know off the bat whether or not a college is considered “elite” in the context of his profession. I can’t believe I have to explain this, but that’s what “room in people’s hearts” means.”</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t. Hearts and brains are different organs, both literally and metaphorically. I can’t believe that I have to explain this.</p>
<p>“In five decades, the quantity of people attending college in the US grew by a factor of five. How was that demand met? By five times as many schools as good as Harvard, five times as many schools as good as Stanford, and five times as many schools as good as Podunk U? Or was it disproportionately met by lower quality, lower prestige schools?”</p>
<p>Again pointing out the obvious, the percentage of top 1% kids is exactly the same as it was fifty years ago. What has happened is that kids who would have gone straight to work (lacking the chops for college) are now going to college. The growth in attendance is largely, although not exclusively, due to people in the middle or left-hand side of the bell curve. That is why an elite college becomes more, not less, important as college enrollment increases. Back in the day, having the BA or BS was enough; these days, the smart kids need the elite name to distinguish themselves from all the slackers who go to college.</p>
<p>The metaphor has served its purpose because you now know how I used it.</p>
<p>Pointing out the obvious (for my second post in a row):
- The US population grew by almost 70% in the last 50 years.
- High school students are becoming more competitive – while a higher percentage of slackers are applying to college, a higher percentage of students are becoming what would have been considered overachievers last year.</p>
<p>Again, you’re missing the point. I’ve been hinting at how obvious it is that each year, there are more college students than the previous year who would be considered excellent students by the previous year’s standards. This growth is at least as fast as the exponential population growth. All you’ve done is try to contradict my hints. What I’ve said is merely an attempt to get people who don’t live under a rock to think “oh yeah, I know what you mean”. I don’t intend to debate about the increase in qualified students; I intend to consider different perspectives on the growth in students’ options – perspectives of people who agree about the increase of qualified students.</p>
<p>I’ll state my point yet again: are there twice as many schools considered excellent since the time when there were half as many college students considered excellent as there are today?</p>
<p>If not, why not? Does population growth outstrip the growth of resources (counting prestigious history, alumni networks, etc. as resources) necessary to constitute a college that commands respect of the cognoscenti? Or can subpar colleges just not be bothered to put effort into an education that prepares students to compete with Ivy alumni in the same way that Olive Garden can’t be bothered to put effort into competing with the local authentic gourmet Italian restaurant because fine dining just isn’t their niche?</p>
<p>I think what the OP is trying to get at is an answer to the question, “Why haven’t institutions that are not at full enrollment tried to compete for the students who are turned away from the most selective colleges?” The OP seems to think that if these schools would focus on providing an educational experience that rivals the educational experience at the most selective schools, disappointed Harvard rejects would flock to them. The OP seems to think that there is a market opportunity out there that under-enrolled colleges are overlooking.</p>
<p>There are, however, a number of problems with this question. The first problem is one that I pointed out earlier. There is no easily quantifiable measure of the quality of an educational experience. In order to take advantage of this supposed market opportunity, colleges have to make changes that will cause potential students to believe that they are Harvard’s peer, namely improve their rank on the US News lists. Sadly, hiring great teachers will have little immediate impact on this perception. It will, after all, take several years for improved teaching to pay off measurably in graduation, employment, and grad school admission rates. Additionally, low faculty turnover means that improvements in teaching quality will always be incremental.</p>
<p>The quickest and most certain way to move up on the college ranking lists is to increase selectivity. Improving graduation rates is a slow process, but a college can significantly increase its selectivity with a single freshman class. Increase the number of applicants by going to the common app, or dropping supplemental questions. Offer free applications to students who perform well on standardized tests. Raise the stats of incoming students by wooing high performing students with offers of generous merit aid. None of these strategies improve the quality of the education offered by the college, but they can result in a near immediate improvement in the school’s ranking.</p>
<p>Another problem with the OP’s question is the assumption that under-enrolled colleges are not making changes in order to attract more students. The increase in schools accepting the common application and offering merit aid is an example of how schools are going about trying to take advantage of this market opportunity. They may not be making the changes that the OP thinks that they should, but they are making changes. They are making the changes that they and the consultants they hire think will have the greatest immediate payoff.</p>
<p>Another problem is that competing for the students who are turned away from the most selective schools will not allow these schools to rise to the stature of those from which their students are being turned away. So long as selectivity is the popular measure of a college’s quality, a school cannot become “the new Harvard” by targeting the students who cannot get in to Harvard. It will always be a step below.</p>
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<p>I’d say yes, but mostly because of the increased student population, and not because of efforts the schools have made to change their product. Today schools like Georgetown and Chicago are considered to be excellent in large part because they are more selective than they once were. That is a product of increased population and strategies designed to increase selectivity.</p>