Skip an elite school, and doors will close

Parents Forum
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Of course, every time you make a decision you’re opening some doors and closing others. That’s just a fact of life, and just because some doors are opened doesn’t mean that others aren’t closed. Choosing not to go to an East Coast prestige university may close off the IB chances. But, in the same vein, choosing to go to an Ivy instead of a big-time sports school is probably going to close a lot of doors for the NFL or NBA hopeful, too. (And, in my world, there are more professional athletes than investment bankers, so the comparison isn’t was weird as it may seem—both are high reward, demanding careers that require talent, hard work, and a lot of luck.)

My daughter has never wanted to be an investment banker or professional football player The fact that her choice of college may make a successful career in IB unlikely means about as much to her as the fact that she won’t be playing in the NFL.

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Maybe this thread should have read “Future IB hopefuls: Skip an elite school, and doors will close.” It’s just not true on a general level. My DH didn’t go to an elite school. He wanted to work in the business world here in Texas. He got the first job he applied for, did outstanding, and went off on his own, only to do even better. No doors closed. He is “successful” in that he is a great person, good husband, wonderful father and total gem as a son. Gives back to the community with time and money. A very social person, he has a lot of friends who would go above and beyond if he ever needed anything. Makes a lot of money. Most of the other successful people in his industry went to big state schools or a couple of the Texas privates. Just what exactly are we supposed to believe they have all missed out on?

I’m a nurse and have gotten every job I applied for. Went to the state flagship. It’s not an issue in my career at all.

D1 turned down a top 15 school to go to a large well thought of but public university. She is now in grad school at one of the top programs in her field after having been chosen over other students who went to schools ranked higher than hers. Don’t see how any doors closed on her.

ETA: this post is not a knock on elite schools. I fell in love with Stanford when D1 and I toured it, and there is no doubt that many of the “elites” are in point of fact excellent schools. I’m always happy for any student who wants to go to one of those schools and gets in. Good for them I say. But other paths can lead to the same happy result in the end.

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I’m with @Sue22. @Kilbeez012‌, since you made the assertion and are accusing people of not reading, please point out where Wei separates out elite undergrad schools from elite grad schools? In at least one graph I saw, he conflates the two.

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“Investment bankers make the super bucks for a reason: they don’t shoot from the hip. They have analytics to back up every decision. In other words, they know how to make money for their employer.”

What is the point of this statement? Plenty of people in business have analytics to back up their decisions and know how to make money for their employers.

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@Pizzagirl to help your post count.

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" But the issue is re doors that close without an elite undergrad and that is one of them. It is a door that is considered very important on the east coast and in the business world"

No, in SOME parts of the business world. The lack of awareness of multiple aspects of the business world is just absolutely stunning.

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So, in conclusion, SAT test scores are a powerful predictor of future success in US society.

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“Actually not true at all. There is huge overrepresentation of elite private colleges at the medical school level. Elite private colleges make up less that 1% of medical school applicants but 50-70% of students at top 20 medical schools.”

@Kilbeez012‌, your blatantly wrong assertion of a fact that are easily checked up on is making my head hurt.
Here’s the number of total med school applicants: https://www.aamc.org/download/153708/data/

Over 30K if you count only first time applicants. Over 40K if you count everyone.

Here’s a list of applicants by school: https://www.aamc.org/download/321458/data/factstable2-7.pdf
Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Cornell, UPenn, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, JHU, WashU, Northwestern, Georgetown, ND provide around 4300 applicants (and that’s with half the Ivies uncounted because they’re not on the list).
Harvard, Stanford, Yale, & the 2 big Ivies Cornell, UPenn by themselves provide over 1600.

OK, from here, we can see that Brown, Columbia, and Princeton add another 600+ med school applicants.

Now, the elite privates definitely are over-represented at the top med schools . . .but they also have a higher concentration of the best students. I still see no evidence that, assuming that you can get the proper research experience, recommendations, and ECs, where you go for undergrad matters for med school.

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/56143/wai-americas-elite-2013.pdf. This paper lists undergraduate and graduate institutions.

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@Pizzagirl – last post from me on this issue since I am SO stunningly ignorant about the business world. God knows how I managed to stumble through Wharton. For the last time I am not saying that it is a professional requirement to do investment banking. It isn’t. Ever. BUT you’re just being ignorant/stubborn/difficult if you believe that getting 2-4 yrs of Goldman Sachs experience on a resume is not going to help you get other jobs down the road. Will it help you get EVERY job in the history of the universe? No. But there are many many employers than see a resume that’s a combination of Ivy + IB and that resume gets pulled to the top of the pile; I’ve seen it happen time and time again and not just limited to financial services, Wall Street or NYC – it happens when someone wants to leave those arenas and get a different business job someplace else in the country. So some would say that particularly trajectory is helpful to SOME (but not all) students and it’s a trajectory that isn’t available if you’re not coming out of an elite pipeline.

But whatever. Feel free to send your kids to community college if it all doesn’t matter.

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The average age of the Davos group is 61, which means their career trajectory started 40 years ago. Maybe the world is the same now with regards to career paths of “best and brightest” but I doubt it. You look at the MacArthur genius awards, or the Time Top Under 30 List and they are from all over. The movers and shakers of the next 40 years are likely not going to look anything like the Davos list.

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How do we jump from extreme elite to community college?

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Note that at some but not all top colleges (especially ones with a well-known affiliated med school or with a strong BME major), less than 50% of med school applicants are white. The number of white students at some college applying to med school could be a misleading number. Some top college like MIT, it could be the case that they have more international students who generally will not fare well in med school admission given the same credential.

Also, I speculate (without the data to support it) that if a college has an abnormally higher portion of students from a very wealthy family, fewer percentage of their students will likely apply to med school.

Not sure why is this and what are the implication of this. (If you compare the applicant number between two UCs like UC Irvine and UCSB, it will show the difference. But in this case, we will know one reason behind this.)

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My wife somehow does not believe in the existence of late bloomers. She said that they may exist but she personally has never encountered one in her life.

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Weird. The only families I know with double PhD or otherwise advanced degree families are sending their children to places like University of Iowa, Michigan State University, a couple to University of Michigan, Albion College, Kalamazoo, etc.

I almost wonder if maybe, just maybe, it’s because of the schools I went to (not elite prep) and the people I’ve grown up around (the kind that went to elite places for their advanced degrees but not undergrad degrees).

Singleparent, so you happen to think you just might have a biased sample due to the fact that your son goes to a prep school… Where their mission is to, you know, “prep”…

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Lol. So those are the choices? Elite or community college? Okay. Go big or go home!

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Who says you cannot do both (and also have a state university long the way)?

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/05/10/medalist2011/
http://sociology.fas.harvard.edu/people/aaron-benavidez

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Oh come on ucb, you know that poster meant not to bother with elite colleges if they’re all the same. They weren’t saying to use the cc as a stepping stone.

And you know as well as I do that the transfer acceptance rates at tippy top schools are extremely low, even in comparison to their freshman admission rates.

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Or, because sending their children there will not bankrupt them.

Our household income for most “base years” when our child was in college was roughly in the middle of the"upper-middle" income range which is defined as from $75,000 to $150,000 according to an article I read recently. If we had two children, we could not afford to send our child to his alma mater, a private college. We actually told our child that if you had a sibling, you would not be able to attend that college.

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The student in question started at a community college, transferred to and graduated from a state university, and is now a PhD student at an elite university. While transferring to most elite universities is rare, going to PhD or other post-bachelor’s programs at an elite university after attending a state school or something like that is more common.