@zoosermom,
My D had almost an identical experience at UNC-CH. Her mentor even recruited her to work in his lab and allowed her to contribute to an article which was published and gave her credit. I don’t know if this is common or unusual at a large public research facility, but declining her spot at a more “elite” college certainly didn’t close any doors to her, though of course there is no way to know how her life would have proceeded had she done things differently.
Similar for OOS wanting to attend UNC-CH. D1 got into some schools which in theory should have been much harder to get into, and only got into UNC off the waitlist, even though her stats put her at the top of the class. It was a head scratcher at the time.
I think this is an astute point. I also think we sometimes underestimate the elasticity of high school students.
Interesting discussion. It appears much of this is tethered to “it all depends”. My spouse, whom I am pretty certain where our daughters get their smarts from, is nice example of a very bright person, but without the familial relationships and social context to make the elite institutions a priority alternative.
So, while graduating at the top of her HS class in a small town in the SW, she applied to 6 schools: two in-state, CAL, WashU, Notre Dame and Dartmouth. She gained admission to all–however opted for an in-state school, which gave her, with what was once known in her state, as a regentʻs scholar–full tuition, r/b and a semester stipend. It was basically a program they had to keep in-state valedictorians and salutatorians home. I asked why besides the full package did she not consider these other schools–to wit she answered–I donʻt know anyone that goes to those schools, and I applied just because my counselor encouraged me to do so. She didnʻt think she was missing out, and there were certainly no familial or peer pressures that said otherwise.
She graduates 4 years later; B.S. biology–just the time we meet, and applies to 5 medical schools, gets into all–including, JHU and Penn. She chooses a school that at the time, was the top ranked primary care school in the nation-(with many many Ivy classmates)-where they gave her a merit scholarship (120k in the early 90s was serious money). She goes on to be triple board certified and two fellowships at UCSF. Now, in her case there was no narrative that elite schools were better, and given her goal ( medical school) it appears in retrospect, that they (elite schools) probably did not elevate or increase her opportunities in a profound way. But again, medicine is a specific creature–so, we get back to the original posit, perhaps, but it all depends…
@boolaHI: If you send in her resume to Blackstone, with a cover letter referencing this thread, I’ll try to get someone there to look at it. But no promises. Good luck.
The thorniest thing about such articles and statistics is the same problem that has plagued nutritional studies whose recommendations seem to make an about turn every other decade. Namely-- isolating the factor studied, and accounting, properly, for the influence of other factors.
When looking at CEOs of super-competitive corporations, you are looking at outliers to begin with. Few people fit that, so what part was a contribution of the school, their mentoring & social connections made there? What part does a well-connected parent play, regardless of the school? I don’t know, it’s w-e-e-e-e-l above my pay-grade.
Here is a reason to attend a very selective school— the school got to CHOOSE its students, and likely had a stronger (more capable) pool to choose from, over all. It’s not about perception, it’s about who you’ll hang out with for the next few years. Never more true than in the arts, but also in the disciplines that by their rigor are limited to only a small percentage of people.
Of course there are late bloomers and so outside-the-box folks that make stimulating anecdotes. Our kids do well to remember that in this country there are a lot of opportunities for do-overs. But it’s about time we stop trashing those ambitious enough to try for hard-to-get-into places.
Maybe what is called for is less hysteria, and less hostile trashing of this kind and that, and some balance plus sobriety. I have yet to find a study I felt told the story, so I pay little attention to those. But by all means, bring some good ones, or better yet, design and fund and publish better studies to help us understand what part makes the most sense and offers the most pertinent knowledge to help young ones and their families navigate.
@Dstark "Hunt, you are comparing a school of 2,000 students to one of 40,000 students.
One school is in the middle of nowhere and another school is located in a city.
I would listen to what the student wants in a college education.
There is no correct answer for everybody.
Some extremely bright students don’t want to go to Yale.
For example, some extremely bright students prefer to go to their state flagship schools.
Going to a school like Yale was important to you which is why you went there. :)"
It is true that a student is more likely to do better when they attend a school they are excited about and where they will get actively involved.
However, Hunt is correct that the differences between top 10 Ivy League schools and typical state flagships is significantly different in terms of opportunities. That does not mean you can’t have a great life no matter which one you choose.
I went so a state school, and DD is at Penn. The activities and opportunities that she is presented with on a weekly basis are just amazing. We never had the speakers and research opportunities and endless list of amazing activities in any volume that would remotely compare to what she has access to. Her biggest problem is that there are just way too many opportunities and she has to be very selective.
One example is that this summer, DD she received an invitation to apply for a 2 day Women in STEM program in NYC that was being sponsored by a hedge fund and was scheduled for a week before school began. They invited about 50 young ladies to attend, and all were from very top schools. They paid for the flights, the hotels, food, and all activities. We did not pay for any of it. She learned a lot about how hedge funds integrate the expertise of Finance, math, computer science, and engineering majors to construct their portfolios. A really good learning opportunity. At a state school I never saw opportunities like that where the host paid for all of it.
Thanks for the offer, but me and s. schwarzman are already besties…lol. I clean his backyard in Water Mill…
Much2learn, this is what I was saying, and it’s almost embarrassing to describe some of the goodies they get. As I said, a lot of them probably won’t have much impact on their future success, but they sure are nice at present.
I don’t think the question is whether private elite schools offer an advantage to one’s future. Of course they do. the question is, is that advantage so exclusive to the category of 4-yr colleges that those attending different institutions are locked out? THE EVIDENCE PROVES NO. And oddly, the parents who most press me, who are most obsessed about elite college admissions, are those who (1) graduated from relatively obscure U.S. colleges (2) are wildly successful (3) have a son or daughter not interested in financial consulting or law school.
During the admissions process, the parents are intense and “desperate” to an extreme degree. I will say it again: it’s irrational. There’s no other word for it. And when admissions decisions come in, and no private elite school is among those offering? The parents are completely calm. So, again, what was all the hype about? No one has yet answered that question for me: not those parents, not anyone here on CC.
The report at http://cristkolder.com/reports/summer-volatility-report.pdf compares number of fortune 500 executives with by sports conference and comes to a different conclusion. A similar number of fortune 500 CEOs attended Ivy Lague and Big 10 colleges for undergrad, with both near 10% of the ~660 surveyed. But the Ivy League conference was only 5th highest for number CFOs after Big 10, ACC, Pac 12, and Big East. While there is obviously a correlation between CEOs and college name prestigology, that says little about cause. For example, the correlation might more relate to elite colleges being highly selective, so a larger portion of the student body are exceptional students, Or the type of highly qualified students who are focused on climbing the corporate ladder with hopes of being an executive at a large and well known company may be more likely to choose an elite national college over their local college, if accepted to both. Or family background may come into play, such as families with connections that are very helpful in becoming a fortune 500 CEO are more likely to want their kids to go to HYP than a local college and assist in making that happen…
D2 just had a very similar experience, all expense paid. Biggest difference was it was not in NYC, but that’s not surprising since that is not the city which one would associate with this industry. She goes to a big state school, not the flagship, which probably sponsors similar things.
I would never attempt to hold up her school as equal to an IVY, but just to make the point that non Ivy students are not exactly left in the dust as some here would try to insist.
@LaxMum: The hypo of Ohio State vs. Williams literally isn’t a reflection of any reality. On no planet is a Williams qualifying applicant considering Ohio State.
Well, it’s not Williams, but Wellesley and Ohio State are both on my oldest’s shortlist (yes, she has the stats, assuming current high school trends continue), and are both high enough on the list that I’m pretty certain she’ll end up applying to both. They each have both of the (not very widely offered) majors she’s interested in, and they’re both quite good schools. She knows that it’d be a very different experience, but she’s cool with that. She’s not after a specific college experience, after all, she’s simply after a college experience—and I don’t think she’s anywhere near unusual in that.
I missed this somehow when originally posted, so I don’t know who to attribute it to (emphasis added):
I’d say that it most definitely used to be the case that these sorts of opportunities were more abundant at elite schools, perhaps even as recently as a decade ago—but due to a number of factors (generational shifts in the faculty, more research into high-impact postsecondary educational practices, more money thrown into things like undergrad research at even and maybe especially low-tier publics, &c.), this sort of experience is available pretty much anywhere for a bright student. In fact, it may actually be more available at lower-end colleges, where, to be bluntly honest, the bright student:faculty ratio is often lower.
I have to say the single biggest influences on both my Ds, were because of multiple on-campus exposures . Oldest D, she to tag along with her Mom, when she went to CAL to give lectures and presentations. Youngest D, use to accompany me when I had two-year appointment at an Ivy. So, while were not actively promoting the school, their ability to view the school, in a non-presentation manner, and be there whether it was on Monday, Saturday, day or night…provided a very candid birdʻs eye view of each respectful campus. When they applied to schools, while they made other applications, these schools were already at the top of their list.
I would bet that there are plenty of people who might be Williams-qualifying and who consider Ohio State. Most of them will be in Ohio, of course, and maybe West Virginia or Kentucky. I don’t know how many will actually apply to both, but that does not mean that they shouldn’t.
At my kids’ high school, a large urban public academic magnet, it’s not uncommon for top students to apply to two or three (or more) Ivy League schools and Pitt. Some of them get in everywhere, some get in to one or two of the elite places, and some don’t, despite being perfectly strong candidates, and go to Pitt’s honors program. All of them would have a reasonable chance of acceptance at Williams if they applied, and more of them should, but they don’t. (For the most part, they don’t apply to Cornell or Dartmouth, either, or Penn State for that matter. They tend not to want to be someplace isolated. Some make an exception for Princeton, or consider it not too isolated; others don’t.) If they did apply to Williams, they would still be applying to Pitt as a safety, and it wouldn’t be incongruous at all.
Of course there are kids applying to both. They’re called Ohio residents.
It’s very common for top students to use their flagship state university as a safety school because it’s both an academic and financial safety for them. They kill two birds with one application. Also, in some states, Williams-caliber students can even get merit scholarship money from their home state’s flagship state university, which can be a deciding factor in some families’ college decisions.
I don’t think the argument is pro ivy or anti ivy or pro elite-anti elite. What @Hunt says is very, very true, that at the Ivy and other elite schools there are distinct advantages to going there, including being around a bunch of high flying kids (well, okay, except for most of the legacy admits), the teachers, the facilities, I would be the last person to argue that going to an Ivy doesn’t provide benefits, including, yes, name recognition of the school when going for a first job (or rather, it can matter, it depends on the hiring manager, but there are plenty of hiring managers out there impressed by an ivy league kind of school).
What the argument is, though, that not going to an Ivy or elite college is a death sentence that will ruin your future and the like. The OP talks about a slammed door, but that is only in a limited number of jobs or careers. Sure, if a kid wants to be an investment banker, or thinks they want to go into law and become a Supreme Court justice, an elite UG or grad program is going to be a requirement, and if you don’t do it, you almost might not want to bother applying, same to a certain extent for McKimsey and so forth. By the way, the reason for this selection is primarily because those running those firms going back many, many decades, were Ivy League/Elite graduates and it is a very, very old boys network, they will hire someone from Harvard who played on the football team over the kid from the flagship state U with all kinds of honors and internships and such (in the financial industry, being on the football team is a biggie), it is a sad truth. The best students at the flagship state U are going to be equal to the kids at an elite school, a lot of this just comes down to a form of snobbery IMO, the assumption that “elite” universities turn out only "elite’ people (which is a load of bs, for a lot of reasons; elite universities turn out a lot of successful people, but they also turn out more than a few people who don’t do anything all that special).
What I object to is the idea that the ‘elite university’ is the be all and end all for anything, the mania kids have for getting into elite schools and so forth. As others have pointed out, there are tradeoffs to any school, go to school at Yale you are at a wonderful school in the middle of a pretty crappy area; go to state flagship school, you may be paying a lot less money than an elite school (though Ivies in particular are very good with financial aid, as opposed to a school like NYU), but it may not have as good a department you want to be in, may be in a rural area as opposed to a city and may not provide quite the networking opportunities an ‘elite’ school might. You may want to go to the state flagship because a chemical company donated money to build a state of the art research lab and brought in some top name talent to teach…
This argument goes on all the time on the music boards. There are those who proclaim that going to Juilliard or Curtis or another elite music school is ‘the only way to go’, that if you don’t go to one, you can never make it as a musician, and that is hogwash. The answer is that Curtis and Juilliard provide opportunities that may be unique to them, the kinds of teachers, networking to a certain extent, and the level of student, but there also are a lot of music schools that for a variety of reasons might be better for a particular student (that doesn’t mean a kid who couldn’t get into a top music school, couldn’t get through the audition process, and goes to a relatively non competitive program, is likely to do well either, with music if you havent’ achieved a certain level by the time you are ready for conservatory, your odds of competing against the level of talent out there is pretty small). It is all about weighing tradeoffs and figuring what is the best one.
And the other factor is that job paths for many jobs, many professions, are not set in stone the way let’s say investment banking is, in many careers it is going to be about what you do on the job. It could be that a student from an elite school might do better, faster, but in the end, what you end up doing has a lot to do with how they approach their job. In music, my son ended up choosing a school where we are paying pretty much full pay and turned down a school with full ride, because he felt that the program and teacher he got into would serve him better than the free ride school, and if a kid has a choice between an Ivy and having to pay X, and a full ride at a state school that doesn’t seem to offer what he/she needs, then I would say go with the Ivy if it wouldn’t be tough sledding with huge loans and such. If the kid wants to get into software development, in the end going to an ‘elite’ like MIT or Stanford or a ‘good’ tech school probably will end up mattering little, Stanford and MIT have excellent comp sci departments, but if you want to end up being a software engineer, while they will give you a good head start, if you graduate from MIT and then end up doing Java programming, as time goes on you won’t be able to tell between the Stanford guy and a bright guy from a lesser school (if you want to become a comp sci professor and do research and so forth, might be a different story).
Advantages tend to melt away where you went to school and talent becomes the defining characteristic, with the exception being self selecting jobs like investment banking and so forth where elite school graduates choose only fellow elite school graduates and that continues on if you change jobs and so forth).
The Elite schools are great schools with a lot of advantages, but in very few things does not going there ‘slam the door’…it can in many jobs help grease the skids in the beginning, or help you find a path when you don’t know, but in terms of it being “you don’t go to an elite school, your future is severely diminished” that is hogwash for all but a very small minority of jobs. I would rather kids look at the elite schools for what they are, and say “wow, they have this department,they offer this”, rather than “go to Elite school or be working at McDonalds”.
It has always been an “it all depends” type of thing. I think if you drill down to the core of the anti-elite arguments here, people take issue with the fact that every kid is told [via national college rankings] that such-and-such schools are the deemed the “best”, when in fact those schools might not actually be the best.
Equally silly is the “best hospitals” ranking list that USNWR puts out… Someone likely isn’t going to care if Joe-Schmoe Hospital is top rated when the top rated doctor for their condition is at Billy-Bob Hospital. So what’s the point of ranking hospitals?
“Ithink you’re confusing “not wanting to” with having zero chance to get hired. 99% of college students are excluded from the ability to even get an interview from bulge bracket banks or top consulting shops. And I’d say 99% of kids on any college in America would love $80K a year, plus bonus, plus a prestige company on their resume at 22-y.o. Just as 99% of law students at any law school in the nation would love a $160K offer from Sidley Austin. But <1% are even eligible for consideration.”
Are you serious? You really have got to stop projecting your own personal tastes onto the population at large. There is not some uniform list of desirability where bulge bracket banks and top consulting shops are at the top of the list for everyone. They are on the top of the list for SOME people, that’s all. This is about as silly as the notion that everyone, everywhere wants to go to Harvard as their first choice.