No. Actually, I prefer to keep a low profile in the world.
Besides, my work doesn’t really interest people (though it should as it is a continuing, on going issue.)
Also, I must admit that I have an enormous bias against IQ tests, standardized tests, etc. They have been, at best, a way to gatekeep the haves and the have nots in society while making it seem like we live in a meritocracy. At worse, they have been the basis of atrocities including the forced sterilization and murder of millions of individuals… including up to this very day.
If a high school kid is picking a college based on getting a job that is available to roughly three lawyers per generation, he doesn’t need advice on elite schools; he needs a swift kick in the ass.
" I’m simply stating the truth: that notwithstanding the numerous people on this board who claim that where you go to school doesn’t matter, to the contrary, for some things, where you go to school most certainly does matter, and that doors may be closed to you without an elite school degree, no matter how smart you are. "
Yes. But so what, though? Yes, we ALL know (ad nauseum) that there are certain fields where the barriers to entry are high if you don’t have an elite school degree. But big whoops! There are tons of other fields where that isn’t the case at all.
The “problem” only comes in when you have the provincial the-world-consists-solely-of-jobs-on-Wall-Street mentality. People of sophistication know that isn’t the case. People of sophistication are well-traveled enough to know that it’s a big world out there and lots of opportunities for smart, motivated go-getters.
I value an elite education highly - but ewwwww, not because of some misguided belief that a) it’s the only way to make big bucks and / or b) big bucks is the measure of life success.
@SomeOldGuy, there are lots of opportunities available to elite law school graduates that are not open to non-elite law school graduates, such as positions in academia. Just a few Supreme Court openings aren’t all.
Any high school kid turns down a school that can lead to those opportunities and goes to one that doesn’t, he needs a swift kick, yes.
Even if this is true, it would be the difference between getting hit by lightning and then getting eaten by a shark and getting eaten by a shark that is simultaneously being struck by lightning.
Neither one is especially likely to happen, and really shouldn’t be a massive consideration.
Ugh. More conflation of grad school and undergraduate.
Look, I’m of the opinion that if you go to b-school or law school, where you get your MBA or JD definitely makes a difference.
Likewise, if you want a career in academia, where you get your PhD (and actually, more importantly, who your faculty advisor is) also makes a difference.
However, the data is far from conclusive that where you went for undergrad matters that much for someone who is bright, driven, hard-working, and from a stable middle-class-or-up family. If anything, the data shows that it doesn’t matter so much where you go for undergrad (so long as the school offers the resources and opportunities needed for you to succeed and you have the characteristics that I described).
Tell this to people in some other countries (e.g., Japan, S. Korea, etc.) where the opportunity is not so ample and the social mobility system is more rigid! We should count our blessing when we can say this. (I think that nowadays people become more obsessed about getting into a “good” (in the eyes of lay persons) college is partly because some more paranoid parents (who in turn influence their children) think the opportunity that their offsprings have may not be the same as what they had in the previous generation. Some less paranoid parents do not think so. The debate is somewhat similar to the one about whether the quality of time with the kids alone will be sufficient in a good enough parenting if the quantity of time is not there.)
Remember those good, old days when a bright, hard-working and driven high school graduate (wothout a college degree) could still raise a solid middle class family? Can we go back to those days?
Happy: What you fail to see is that the odds of an elite school graduate getting on one of these lists is vanishingly small. The odds may be much much better for a grad of an elite school than of a non-elite, but almost no elite school grads will go on to that level of acclaim. The doors to almost all careers do not slam shut if one goes to a less than elite college. That was Bruni’s point and it remains true for the vast majority of qualified students.
Of course, going to an elite is a great thing. But kids that don’t quite make should not be made to feel like failures.
By the way, Harvard law school accepted students from 172 different colleges for the 2014-2015 1L year according to their website. The list obviously includes other Ivys and elites, but also Georgia State, Boise State, Drew University, Farleigh Dickinson and others that are well below the elite level. It is certainly easier to get in from Princeton than Drew, Rutgers, or FDU (to look at NJ school) , but clearly it is possible to get there.
I meant to say is that although it may not be the case for people in our country, it could be the case for people in other countries: Over there, where you went for undergraduate could be more important than where you went for graduate school. Maybe people there (but not here) take it for granted that the graduate school is for training those elites in the academic circle only but the leaders outside of academics do not need a grad degree.
There is also a strange phenomenon there that goes like this: What work you have done before getting into an elite college is more important. What you do after you have been there is less important! (The high schoolers in those countries might be expected to work harder than the students in US med schools do if their goal is to get into a prestigious major/college. It is sick.)
"Tell this to people in some other countries (e.g., Japan, S. Korea, etc.) where the opportunity is not so ample and the social mobility system is more rigid! "
Right. That’s why people from all over the world come to America (and a subset are clamoring to get into our colleges). Part of the reason why America is the land of opportunity is that we don’t have the rigid social mobility systems of those other countries where your college degree determines your future.
Heck, half of CC is trying to give students from these countries the power to be able to say to their parents - you’ve got to stop treating me as a failure for not getting into a small handful of schools. This isn’t your home country anymore. We do things differently here in America.
It helps to define terms. The researcher, Jonathan Wai, defines “elite college” fairly broadly. It’s a longer list than the Ivies, Stanford, MIT. In a 2013 work, there’s a list of the schools: https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/56143/wai-americas-elite-2013.pdf. For undergrad, it’s the top 28 colleges and universities, when ranked by math and critical reading test scores, on USNews.
By that list, one could say that a student who turns down Harvard for Pomona or Bowdoin has nothing to worry about.
Glancing at the paper I linked to, but not reading it in detail, I would say that elite school attendance correlates with great test scores. If you have the great test scores, I don’t think he defines what an elite school adds to the potential for success. In my opinion, it is not proven that turning down “an elite school” will close doors.
I think that anyone who says “where you go doesn’t matter” is kidding themselves or is cushioning the blow of a kid who may not get in or finances. I’m not suggesting that you can’t ever open your own doors, but by not going to a top school – certain doors WILL close. And that is not limited to jobs like Supreme Court justice or Surgeon General. If you want to get to Wall Street – in investment banking, not sales and trading or research – where you go undergrad absolutely does matter. The whole “open your own doors” thing will not work when recruiting departments at the top 20 banks will not look at a resume unless it comes from the top 10-20 schools in the country. For big law firms, where you go absolutely does matter if you want a top east coast law firm; I don’t even mean if you want to be at Wachtell, but I mean if you want to be at a firm ranked #75. There is such a glut of top attys, that firms ranked in the 30s or 50s are absolutely saying they will not look at a resume unless it’s from a top 10 (and often top 7) law school. Sure you can go to Boise State and end up at Harvard Law, but chances are slimmer than if you went to Bowdoin or Princeton or Penn undergrad.
That’s not to say that “regular” schools are so terrible or the education is any less or that you’re unemployable in any way, but the reality is that more and more people are going to college every year. So it’s not like it was in the 60s or 80s where having a college degree set you apart. So now employers differentiate where those degrees come from – right or wrong – a Seton Hall degree is viewed differently than a Pomona degree. Just something HS students should be made aware of instead of being told “it doesn’t matter where you go, every single door will be just as open to you as to a Harvard undergrad.” Sure your kid may have no interest in I-banking OR he may get to college, discover it, realize that it’s good money and is seen as a plus on many business resumes and decide to go for it – only to realize that it’ll be a near impossibility with a George Mason degree whereas Georgetown may have opened those doors. I’ve seen these kinds of things happen to kids more than once, even though some people here want to cling to “it makes NO difference at all.”
I am glad my own child did not suffer through that kind of system. He has had a relatively more balanced life as a student here. However he once in a while “complained” a little bit about his (public) high school life, and, yes, his college life as well. The latter is mostly not because of his college choice (he has no complaints about being there); rather, it is more because of his course path - so he intentionally distanced himself from most of those who claim, as a middle schooler, “I know exactly what I want to do when I grow up”. The concentration of such students is abnormally high at his college so it is not easy to avoid them completely. (It could be even higher now. LOL.)
I agree with Fall Girl’s commend #32. On College Confidential, the word “elite” is often gradually restricted over the course of a conversation to a handful of colleges. It’s important to remember that many colleges enroll extremely able students.
“I think that anyone who says “where you go doesn’t matter” is kidding themselves or is cushioning the blow of a kid who may not get in or finances. I’m not suggesting that you can’t ever open your own doors, but by not going to a top school – certain doors WILL close. And that is not limited to jobs like Supreme Court justice or Surgeon General. If you want to get to Wall Street – in investment banking, not sales and trading or research – where you go undergrad absolutely does matter. The whole “open your own doors” thing will not work when recruiting departments at the top 20 banks will not look at a resume unless it comes from the top 10-20 schools in the country. For big law firms, where you go absolutely does matter if you want a top east coast law firm; I don’t even mean if you want to be at Wachtell”
But again, whoop-dee-do. There are so many different possible career paths for our kids – many of which are just being invented now! – that it’s just of no consequence whatsoever if their particular school isn’t a feeder to investment banking in Wall Street. Why is that more important than any other particular career?? It’s just so odd to elevate that to some profession of major importance when it just isn’t. It’s just one career path among hundreds, thousands. If that one is closed to them, big deal. And my kids go to schools that “place” on WS and I have a nephew there - so it’s not any kind of sour grapes. It’s just that I don’t see my nephew’s life on WS as anything to envy in any way.
The “typical person” is not having these discussions. The “typical person” is not sending their kid to college, they are either surprised that their kid is going to college, or their kid is not going to college.
For example, my MIL has NO IDEA of what an amazing achievement it was for my spouse to get into (let alone thrive at) an Ivy League school because of his background - not just that his family was poor, but uneducated and plain old ignorant (college = Animal House or people wearing pince-nez or monocles). We’re not talking about college as an option, it wasn’t an option until my spouse had a few teachers ask where he was going to college, and recommended the local Ivy as one of the few places he applied to. Conversely, I was told in my suburban town to be happy with the state school I was automatically in based on my PSAT score. I only knew about the option of an Ivy because my sibling had attended, working class kids were not encouraged to apply to elite colleges.
There is rarified air here on CC, and perhaps among certain demographics. I have other demographics in my family on one side, one or two out of twenty grandchildren going to college at all, with no disabilities or other reasons not to attend. The other side, the opposite trend, the ones who brag about their kids’ SAT scores at family gatherings, before we were old enough to take it. Which side of the family do you think is more successful?
“Doing just fine” as in happening to take over the family business without having gone to an Ivy is moot. I would postulate that the biggest hurdle for the child of the “typical person” is not getting into or affording an Ivy, it is having support and the background to apply to and attend college successfully. And in that regard, the question of “doors closing” ends at the street, not the front door, for the “typical person”.
Re: “what an amazing achievement it was for my spouse to get into (let alone thrive at) an Ivy League school because of his background”
So, the “first generation to go to college” is not easy and deserves to be a hook (at least a small hook.)
Where you came from determines how many hoops you need to jump through. All college applicants are equal, but some college applicants are more equal than others (Borrowing a sentence in a middle school level book DS was reading a long time ago, I play with the words as a joke here.)
