<p>As Will explained to the NACAC listserv readers:</p>
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<p>Over the years, there has been much heated debate on CC about the value of a pricey and/or “elite-college” education. My goal here isn’t to spark yet another melee but just to direct CC members to an interesting and inspiring story and yet another reminder that there are many roads to happiness and success.</p>
<p>The parents did a great job of raising their children. It would be interesting to hear whether the 6 siblings wished they would have gone to college elsewhere. </p>
<p>I believe they would have benefited from attending a more selective undergraduate university. And, they would have had a better experience for those four years. </p>
<p>But, I also know specific examples of friends and family who went to “above average” schools and wound up with PhDs…my brother, my neighbor, a HS classmate who went to SUNY while I went to an Ivy and now we are both working on PhDs at the same university. However, I detect subtle differences which I attribute to undergraduate education.</p>
<p>I think you mature faster and farther at a more selective university, academically and personally. You are exposed to a different culture for four important years.</p>
<p>I know a family quite well. The parents both graduated from high school. The dad was an electrician, the mom a secretary. They have 8 children. Of the 8, 5 have PhDs. Two attended Allegheny, one Oberlin, one Mercyhurst and one Catholic U. Three currenlty work in pretty prominent positions. </p>
<p>The parents always valued education. The kids needed scholarships to be able to attend any colleges. The two who attended Mercyhurst and Catholic both had full scholarships. The one who attended Mercyhurst also has the most prominent position as a tenured professor at a highly regarded university frequently mentioned on these boards. </p>
<p>Collegehelp–I don’t know what more you could expect from six people who have earned PhDs and are world-renowned leaders in their fields–all of them. The inherent snobbery of your reply (“I believe they would have benefited from attending a more selective undergraduate university.”) really irritates me and flies in the face of reality. Again, what exactly would you have them be doing? </p>
<p>Your rather sad belief that an Ivy education is somehow superior to others (you detect “subtle differences”) and in fact confers a kind of (moral? academic? social?) superiority, says more about you than about the amazing and amazingly successful Sereno family or your SUNY friend. Come down from your cloud and mingle with the mortals.</p>
<p>It is fallacious reasoning to draw a general conclusion from one family’s example. This family is a rarity. What I said is true: they would have benefited from attending a more selective school. More selective schools provide advantages. This one family does not change that fact. This family shows it is possible to succeed despite attending an average college. America is a great place.</p>
<p>Would Wisconsin Madison be classified as a “Snazzy” or “Not a Snazzy” place to get an undergrad degree. Or is it somwhere in between. Just curious what people think.</p>
<p>They would have spent four years in a more sophisticated culture surrounded by intellectual equals being taught at a faster pace at a higher intellectual level by more accomplished faculty. It is a tribute to our educational system that they did not fall through the cracks. It is also a tribute to their parents and to their own character. I suspect a lot of smart kids do fall through the cracks because of poor mentoring from faculty and poor role models from peers. Would Barack Obama be President if he attended Podunk?</p>
<p>Warren Buffet - University of Nebraska (transferred from Wharton, though)
Jimmy Carter - Georgia Southwestern College/U.S. Naval Academy
Gerald Ford - University of Michigan (certainly a good school, but he was in-state)
Dwight D. Eisenhower - U.S. Military Academy (selective, but not exactly an Ivy)
Harry S Truman - didn’t even go to college (took two years of class at University of Missouri-Kansas City)
Oprah Winfrey - Tennessee State
Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) - University of Maryland
Larry Page (co-founder of Google) - University of Michigan
Michael Eisner (former CEO of Disney) - Denison University
Bob Iger (current CEO of Disney) - Ithaca College
Kenneth Lewis (CEO of Bank of America) - Georgia State University
James H. Quigley (CEO of Deloitte) - Utah State University</p>
<p>I could go on. It’s not hard to find high-profile people who didn’t go to highly selective universities. In addition to that, if you look at the faculty pages of any university you will find that the majority of them did NOT attend highly selective colleges.</p>
<p>And let’s not forget the CEOs who dropped out of college, like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison.</p>
<p>The assumption that more selective colleges are a more “sophisticated culture” that produce more “intellectual equals” is a fallacy, quite frankly. There’s no way to assess whether students are really being taught at a faster pace, or a higher level. I’m at an Ivy League school earning my Ph.D right now with students who attended Ivies, students who went to Podunk State, and students who didn’t even go to undergrad in the U.S. We’re learning the same things on the same level and I am at no disadvantage. Actually, no one in my cohort of Ph.D students went to an Ivy League school. (The closest went to Wellesley.) There is no objective way to compare the intellectual capacity of the students at each school, so we’re left making assumptions based on some organization(s) that has(ve) a lot to gain by attempting to rank-order schools and maintain certain schools at certain rankings (what an uproar would there be if U.S. News put Duke or Emory - great schools both - in the #1 slot? Or University of Michigan or Minnesota, even? People wouldn’t even believe them).</p>
<p>Environment has a lot to do, too. You know who is the top producer of black Ph.Ds in the country? Howard University. Spelman College is #2. As a matter of fact, 8 or 9 of the top 10 schools on that list are historically black colleges - and that’s proportionately, not based because HBCUs have large numbers of black students.</p>
<p>College is what you make it. Selective universities can help, but it’s presumptuous to say that an already successful family would have been MORE successful or better off if they attended some expensive private selective college.</p>
<p>The idea that it doesn’t matter where you go to college defies common sense. I have seen these examples before of successful people who went to average colleges. These examples don’t change the general fact the more selective schools are better schools in measureable ways. Telling prospective students that their college doesn’t matter sends the wrong message. It is a recipe for mediocrity. Prospective students should aspire to enroll in the most selective college they can as long as the school meets their needs.</p>
<p>The top 30 PhD producers (adjusted for size) are selective schools.
1 35.8% California Institute of Technology
2 24.7% Harvey Mudd College
3 21.1% Swarthmore College
4 19.9% Reed College
5 18.3% Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6 16.8% Carleton College
7 15.8% Bryn Mawr College
8 15.7% Oberlin College
9 15.3% University of Chicago
10 14.5% Yale University
11 14.3% Princeton University
12 14.3% Harvard University
13 14.1% Grinnell College
14 13.8% Haverford College
15 13.8% Pomona College
16 13.1% Rice University
17 12.7% Williams College
18 12.4% Amherst College
19 11.4% Stanford University
20 11.3% Kalamazoo College
21 11.0% Wesleyan University
22 10.6% St John’s College (both campus)
23 10.6% Brown University
24 10.4% Wellesley College
25 10.0% Earlham College
26 9.6% Beloit College
27 9.5% Lawrence University
28 9.3% Macalester College
29 9.0% Cornell University, All Campuses
30 9.0% Bowdoin College</p>
<p>(credit to interesteddad above)</p>
<p>I think the differences between selective schools and lower-tier schools become evident when you have experienced both, as I have, but the differences are not always quantifiable. The differences have to do with the way the human mind develops.</p>
<p>Yes, I am saying that the six siblings would have benefitted from attending more selective schools. Success is a product of both nature and nurture. These six siblings were innately talented (nature) and they had the benefit of excellent upbringing (nurture) but the nurture advantage would have been even stronger had they attended more selective schools.</p>
<p>“Prospective students should aspire to enroll in the most selective college they can as long as the school meets their needs.”</p>
<p>Your methodology is skewed. Don’t you mean "As long as the students meet the school’s needs and standards? It’s not about the school catering to the student first. It’s a matter of if one could actually thrive in a selective college with intense academics. Highly selective colleges aren’t for everybody. Theres a reason why people don’t apply to them. Not everyone can thrive. Some people need to go to mediocre colleges for undergrad until they can build up that work ethic to do well in great grad schools. yes, I agree that the most selective collegs tend to provide the best quality of education but it is still boiled down to how yo carry yourself at any college.</p>
<p>collegehelp - w/all due respect, i think you have it backwards: it’s obvious from the content of the article that it’s the Ivies themselves (and any other selective college they might have chosen) who would have been the net beneficiaries of their presence on campus, not the Serenos.</p>
<p>Selective colleges only take students who are already highly accomplished, motivated, and most likely to succeed – wherever they might attend. There’s nothing wrong with that, but given this fact, it’s much more of a fallacy to attribute the post graduate success of these students disproportionately to the institution from which they graduated. </p>
<p>I think there is a certain qualitative threshold where the choice of college matters, but the cutoff is nowhere near collegehelp’s false assumptions. The fact that so many ivy students are sitting in classrooms today being taught by professors who went to “regular” undergraduate schools makes that quite evident.</p>
<p>“Warren Buffet - University of Nebraska (transferred from Wharton, though)
Jimmy Carter - Georgia Southwestern College/U.S. Naval Academy
Gerald Ford - University of Michigan (certainly a good school, but he was in-state)
Dwight D. Eisenhower - U.S. Military Academy (selective, but not exactly an Ivy)
Harry S Truman - didn’t even go to college (took two years of class at University of Missouri-Kansas City)
Oprah Winfrey - Tennessee State
Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) - University of Maryland
Larry Page (co-founder of Google) - University of Michigan
Michael Eisner (former CEO of Disney) - Denison University
Bob Iger (current CEO of Disney) - Ithaca College
Kenneth Lewis (CEO of Bank of America) - Georgia State University
James H. Quigley (CEO of Deloitte) - Utah State University”</p>
<p>You post some very selective schools to prove your point, and it doesnt quite work. USMA, The Naval Academy, Michigan, and Denison are among the best schools in the nation. USMA is about as close to being an IVY and any school not in the Ivy League, they have has a close accociation with may IVY’s for decades.</p>
<p>College Help is on the mark. He is saying someone can be successful no matter what undergard school they attend-- this is 100% true. Also he is correct in saying that the undergard experience is importnat and not equal everywhere. Where you attend school in some way shapes your young iltillect and outlook.</p>
<p>The PhD numbers are especially relevant to those HS students interested in research (think biotech these days) and/or academia. Students often self-select to these schools; think correlation if it’s not outright causation. Students are in classes where the level of teaching is set knowing they hold the highest proportion of future PhD earners, and a research thesis is often a graduation requirement. Thus, the school attended can make a huge difference in post-graduate success, if only for this small sub-set of HS students.</p>
<p>I guess being a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, a CPA and a lawyer with undergrad and grad degrees at schools outside the USNWR top 130 and top 40 equates with failure then. For shame, CC, for shame.</p>