@Chardo, I was a public school teacher before becoming a nurse. I think I made 16K!
If it is true that students see the primary function of elite colleges and universities as feeder schools for jobs at top investment banking firms, then I feel sorry for the professors teaching there. Fortunately, I suspect the students at elite (and indeed all) institutions are more wide ranging, and in some cases even idealistic, in their interests and goals than many on this thread seem to be assuming.
This is a nice lucid example, of being in tune to the market you desire to work. I have a very similar example of a person, a very good friend, with a very analogous situation: Harvard, BA, LSE, MA, and Stanford JD., was also a former assist US Attorney, and did time with Gibson, Dunn, and had a WH political appointment–all before age 35. Went back home to the SW, and poof, other than the larger firms in town, had a fairly difficult time finding a job. Meanwhile, professional legal headhunters I know, are calling me multiple times a week, to convince him to come join any number of top 50 firms/and or start-ups. The lesson, know your region and market…
On CC, there seems to be a recurring religious dispute. There are some folks (let’s call them the pro-Ivies) who passionately hold to the belief that life will end if they or their child does not attend an Ivy or equivalent or at least that these schools are so much better than all the others that it makes a huge difference to attend them. There are others (let’s call them the anti-Ivies) who passionately hold that there is absolutely no advantage whatsoever to attending an Ivy under any circumstances. They further argue that you would go into debt at an Ivy but not at Flagship State or Directional State and since it doesn’t matter, it would be the height of stupidity to attend an Ivy (often neglecting the fact that at least some of the Ivies have extraordinary FA plans). These seem to be deeply held, emotionally driven beliefs in a lot of cases and so, logic is not really a meaningful part of the discussion.
Indeed, a subgroup of the anti-Ivies reluctantly recognize that the elites do indeed open up opportunities but then dismiss them – “Well who would want to be a Supreme Court Justice anyway?” or “Wall Street is evil” or “Money isn’t everything.”
Guess what? As typically argued, both sets of assertions are not quite right. Life is a little more subtle. Life is a game of probabilities. Some environments are opportunity-rich and others less so. Whether a kid takes advantage of the opportunities that are there is up to him/her. But, kids at Stanford will have a much higher probability of working at a hot startup than folks for University of Madison Wisconsin or University of Alabama. The Stanford kids will still have to be proactive and seek the opportunities. Finance jobs are much more likely to be available to HYP, Columbia and Wharton kids than Berkeley kids of equivalent talent. Again, the probabilistic advantage is there but the kids will have to be proactive to get the advantage. Note that this doesn’t mean that kids from other schools will not get startup jobs or finance jobs – they can but the probabilities are lower even if they are proactive. Again, one response here is “Well why are startup jobs of finance jobs any better than other jobs. You are deluded if you think they are.” Those making that argument are again acknowledging that the elite schools do open up opportunities but are asserting that these don’t matter. Maybe they don’t matter to the asserters but they do for some. And, each such job gives kids a set of skills and a network of contacts that make the next job easier to get and probably better. After the first startup, the Stanford kid is in the network to be pulled into the next.
A variant of the anti-Ivies subgroup talks about success – “Money isn’t everything” or even in @Sue22’s post about how she is equally happy running a dinky non-profit as her corporate CEO husband (not saying she is anti-Ivy either). Defining success is important, because in fact, money is indeed not everything, although it is not nothing either (as some here would have you believe and as those who are trying to elevate from working class or poor backgrounds know is not true). But, it is really important that you guys point out that a fulfilling career is not about money but about feeling good about what you do at the end of the day.
Nonetheless, having enough money matters for most people. It may not matter to @Sue22 now because jointly with her DH she has enough money, but might matter to her if she were a single mom trying to raise kids and send them to college on her dinky non-profit salary. Behavioral econ research suggests that happiness rises with income to a certain level, which is probably a lower middle-class level, but then does not increase with income. Income beyond that, if saved (which most Americans aren’t good at) creates security – you can take care of problems when they arise with your kids, your health, etc.
The fact that money matters does not mean that everyone should strive to be an investment banker. But again, having experience as an investment banker does give you a set of skills and relationships that can lead to other high-level jobs that someone who doesn’t want a career in i-banking would still cherish.
Every choice (whether Ivy or not or school in the South versus school in the Northwest) opens up opportunities and closes down others. A physics PhD student who leaves academia to work for a hedge fund will have a harder time going back to an academic career than he would have had his first job been as a post-doc or professor. A kid who goes into procurement is less likely to become a venture capitalist than a kid works in a startup. She is in fact less likely to get into a high-end business school than a kid who went to Bain. That doesn’t mean she will have a less fulfilling career, but each choice does change the probability of different options being available afterwards.
I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school, and I did get into some very fine institutions, but my parents said college was not for people like us, so they didn’t fill out the FAFSA, so I couldn’t afford to go. Probably some doors closed, but life is what you make of it, and being rich or having a prominent job means those are your priorities, and bully for you - it doesn’t mean you can’t have a meaningful, productive, happy life if you have different priorities than that.
I love these discussions! I can’t help jumping into them.
I am a little bit hesitant, because I don’t want to seem too elitist–still, I think I can articulate the value of an elite school to the majority of students who might choose to go there: attending and graduating from an elite school will tend to maximize your options as opposed to a less elite school. Not in all fields. Not for all individuals. But that is the general tendency, and it’s worth considering, especially for the student who is undecided about a major or career path.
Now, I know that there is a person who graduated from Lower East Directional College (while working four jobs) and is now a supremely happy whatever, but anecdotes like that don’t alter the fact that elite schools provide more options. There are more recruiters, there is more access to certain graduate programs, more and better internships are available, there are more opportunities to be mentored by well-connected people, etc. The concentration of highly able students also provides advantages in terms of later contacts.
Plus, in my opinion, the education you receive is on averagesuperior if your classmates are all highly able students.
But I think one thing that always confuses people in these discussions is that there isn’t a small group of elite colleges, and then a steep dropoff to a much lower tier. Rather, it’s a relatively gentle slope, and there isn’t that much difference in eliteness between #5 and #55. There is some difference, yes, but it is a gradual difference. (This may not be as much true for law schools, by the way, sadly.)
Why are they calling you, boolah? The headhunters have tracked you down as a buddy of his?
Possibly/probably if you plan to stay in the general area after graduation. Might not be the case if you “go back home” to a place which has a pretty chummy alumni network of local colleges.
A lot of prospective college students–including and perhaps especially those considering attending elite colleges–may not have very strong ideas about where they will want to live after they finish college. I (for example) thought I would be likely to return to my hometown–but my ideas about that changed after a couple of years in college.
Again, if your goal is maximization of options, then it might make more sense to go somewhere with a national alumni network as opposed to a regional one. (It may also impact whether you go to a research U or an LAC, but that’s another longstanding debate.)
@shawbridge many what you call “anti Ivies,” in my experience went to an elite school but see past the mythology. They saw classmates rejected from all grad schools. They know hometown friends who went to flagships go farther than them. The elites are a sorting system for high performing high school students. They are not magical places that create success.
We have to remember that the world of CC is tiny compared to society at large. MOST people don’t want to move away from all of their family. They want to maximize their options relatively close to their support system, so those people are served just fine by going to the flagship or other big state school.
Texas A & M is famous for their supportive network. If you want to work on Wall Street, it might not make sense to go there, but if your plan is to work anywhere in Texas, you can’t go wrong even though it’s not the top public.
“Again, if your goal is maximization of options, then it might make more sense to go somewhere with a national alumni network as opposed to a regional one. (It may also impact whether you go to a research U or an LAC, but that’s another longstanding debate.)”
Agree.
No, that’s not what we’re saying at all… We’re simply challenging the meaning of “advantage” and what that word means to certain people. Your opinion of the best restaurant in town may not be my opinion of the best restaurant in town. Similarly, what you consider the happiest way to live life may not be what I consider the happiest way to live life. We all have unique interests and goals in life.
It has been proven time, and time again, that you do not need a degree from an elite top school to be both financially well-off, and/or happy in life.
Sure, if you know you want to stay in Texas, it makes a lot of sense to go to UT, or Rice (an elite, by the way), or A&M. Just as if you know you want to be a STEM major, you might choose to go to MIT over Harvard, or if you know you want to be a music major, you might choose to go to a conservatory.
My point is simply that if you don’t know those things, the eliteness/selectivity/prestige/whatever of a college will, on average, equate to a broader set of options for you. Indeed, if you want to stay in Texas, it probably makes sense to go to one of the three schools I mentioned vs. a much less selective school–assuming you don’t have some specific reason to choose the less selective school.
I don’t think what I’m saying should be controversial. People might wish that it wasn’t true, of course.
I missed this quote along the way somehow and don’t know who made it. Is this referring to anyone posting here? Because I can’t imagine how anyone on CC could “passionately” hold that statement to be true.
Speaking only for myself, if one of my Ds wanted to attend an Ivy and was accepted, I would happily pay for them to do so. These are great schools, and while it may or may not pay off better for them to go there in terms of salary, if it were determined to be a great fit for them, I have no doubt they would get a fabulous education there. I don’t know many people knowledgeable about colleges who could reasonably argue differently unless we are talking about them not offering a particular major a student was interested in. D2’s major is only offered at 7 institutions, only one of which is a private elite. Wouldn’t have done any good for her to go to Brown under those circumstances.
I’ve seen a couple of people refer to NYC as crime-ridden, and it’s actually pretty safe as far as cities go. If you want dangerous cities, there is Detroit, Camden, NJ, St. Louis, MO!
(I still don’t want to live in NYC - I love to visit, but I’m always happy to come home, too.)
So if you have to go to an elite school to work at Goldman Sachs, does that mean elite schools don’t teach ethics?
Cemetaries are full of dead people, and when those people were alive, they thought they were elite.
To clarify, they were headhunters I previously knew either personally or professionally.
But you’re making the assumption that nobody knows what they want to study which is simply not true. It is true that many kids don’t know what they want to study, but what if someone really does know what they want to study, and chooses a less-selective college that specializes in that area? Furthermore, what if said kid really likes that less-selective college on a personal fit level? Would that not be the better college for him/her?
Please re-read what I wrote. I am making no such assumption.