Yes. One person who didn’t get his bachelor’s until the age of 31 (also not a route the vast majority of top students take).
C’mon ucb, you can’t continue to cite extreme outliers like they’re representatives of anything.
I had no idea what a complete f***off loser I’ve been all this time for not being a Senator or being on the Forbes list of billionaires.
I agree with commenters that not everyone has the desire to be listed or be part of the Davos or Forbes jet set even if they have the elite educational credentials and wealth.
In fact, for some I’ve known through relatives and work, even the contemplation of being listed would be the subject of their worst nightmares. They prefer flying under the radar doing their bit to make a living and contributing to the world anonymously.
This depends very much on country of origin and whether the child/family intends to permanently immigrate to the US or not. For instance, if a Japanese student has ambitions of working in a Japanese conglomerate or moreso, the more respectable/elite public sector agencies like the ministry of finance, their undergrad degree better be not only from a Japanese university, but a top 4 institution at least in a few key majors…and that’s an improvement over 15+ years ago when the most prestigious ministries like MITI/METI would only accept graduates of UTokyo’s Law department.
If a Japanese student tries going back with a US/foreign undergrad degree to get a job with an elite/competitive Japanese public sector agency or conglomerate, he/she’ll likely have similar difficulties as an '80s era Bucknell U graduate in an article who found the same conglomerates which wouldn’t give him the time of day even with an MBA from a #3 Japanese U were falling all over themselves to hire him once he followed the advice of one of their hiring managers to enroll at UTokyo as a “advanced undergrad student” and got his UTokyo BA.
@mon2and, see post 3; I already acknowledged what you claim I “fail” to see. I also am very familiar with Harvard graduate school student body composition.
@ucbalumnus, having gone to an “eligible” school, at least those lists aren’t completely closed off to me. If I had followed the bad advice of some people on this board and gone to a low-ranked school with the view that “rankings don’t matter” and “go wherever you want and you’ll do fine”, then those lists would be completely out of reach.
@HappyAlumnus, seems, like Wei, you’re conflating grad with undergrad.
Do you see people on here saying that it doesn’t matter where you get an MBA or JD (or PhD if you’re aiming for academia)?
Now, I would say that certain paths are more reachable through certain undergraduate schools (though they differ by your goals, and it’s not always a direct mapping between cost or prestige or university’s average SAT score and opportunity). However, the difference likely isn’t as big as you make it out to be for a kid who is already smart, hard-working, driven with the requisite value system and decent SES background.
@singleparent1, or they could just be lemmings.
Check out the cars that they drive. Please report back.
Then tell me if what make and model they drive also matters or not when it comes to the success of their children.
Whatever back at you, aj725. Your comment about “send your kids to comm college” is rather silly. I went to an elite school and my kids are seniors at elite schools - a top 20 uni and top 10 LAC. I value elite educations highly. But not because of “access to Wall Street.”
Btw, I turned down Wharton 30 years ago.
Just for the record, if you look at table 2 of Wai’s Psychology Today article (p.206) you’ll see that “Elite School = person attended one of the top schools in Table 1 for either undergraduate or graduate school.” The “graduate school” and “college” categories are for people whose terminal degrees were from institutions Wai does not define as elite. He does not tease out undergrad from grad school attendee in his elite category. As romanigypsyeyes noted ealy in this thread, Wai seems to be conflating correlation with causation.
The undergraduate schools represented in the HBS class of 2015.
http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/undergraduate-institutions.aspx
Ivy League and other elite schools are represented here, but so are places like Bentley College, Brooklyn Polytechnic (acceptance rate 75%), Arizona State (acceptance rate 80%), Case Western, Colorado School of Mines, Howard University, FSU, St. Joseph University (acceptance rate 79%), Randolph-Macon, University of Maine (acceptance rate 80%) and Georgia Southern University.
Clearly Harvard, or at least the business school, values more than the name of the school on an applicant’s undergraduate diploma.
Attending college <> graduating with a four-year degree.
45% of all students attending college are attending two-year schools. Only 15% of students in two-year degree programs go on to complete a bachelor’s degree within six years of starting CC.
So yes, I guess in the past thirty years, now more kids are attending college (no, none of my BIL’s kids are or could, out of six children around HS age plus or minus five years), but comparing CC to “elite schools” is still off many people’s radars.
Comparing CC to a four-year school when attending the four-year school would result in significant loans and CC would not is what most people are doing,. Not comparing an elite school cost to a non-elite school cost.
It is a luxury to be comparing an elite school, if you are one of the few who get into one (less than 25,000 students were accepted to Ivies in 2014: http://theivycoach.com/2014-ivy-league-admissions-statistics/ ).
So for those 25,000 students, out of 20,000,000 who apply to college, they can wonder if the article is important to them.
0.0125% does not seem typical to me. In fact, that number is inflated because of so many excellent students applying to and being accepted to at least two Ivies.
(the number of student entering college by October of their HS graduation year is high, but the number of 18 to 24 year olds actually in college is far lower: 65.9% for the former, vs. 41% (in 2012) for the latter. Thus, retention of the “typical” college student is much more of an issue than making sure the top 1% of the 1% is making the best choice of many excellent choices.)
Happy #85: you acknowledge that not many people make those lists, but not that the vast majority of elite school grads are going to end up working along side kids that went to schools ranked below the elites. It sounds like you chose an Ivy over a less expensive alternative and are looking for ways to support your choice. Good for you. Yes, there are advantages. Nobody disputes that. But the advantage may not always be enough to overcome a huge amount of debt for the student or to have parents empty their retirement accounts.
A better argument is that going to an elite school is a very impressive achievement and opens a few doors more widely than going to a non-elite but still good college. However, with very few exceptions, a kid that goes to a good flagship and is at the top of the heap is still going to be successful.
OK, ucb, if we are going to cite single data points or outliers, I am going to repeat that my bro attended an Ivy and he is a complete jerk. Whether or not he is “successful” by whatever definition one wants to use is up for debate (he had to learn a foreign language and attend an offshore/out of country med school) but if personality counts at all towards success, he failed miserably.
@rhandco, considering that there are 3.3M HS grads in the US each year, there aren’t 20M applicants to US colleges each year, even if you count foreigners (and they’re generally in a different pool anyway).
Close to 15K matriculate at an Ivy each year. Add in Ivy-equivalents and that number comes close to 25K. Add in Near-Ivies (including the giant state schools of Cal, UMich, and UVa), and that number about doubles to 50K. And that’s not counting the various programs that can provide opportunities that are similar to those at an Ivy/equivalent in specific fields like Stern@NYU or CS@UIUC.
I agree with @mom2and that a better title of this thread would be “Go to an elite school and doors may open for you”, as most would agree with that sentiment.
One could also say “Go to your state flagship if you want to work in your home state and doors may open for you.”
Or “Go to the big state school with the lively alumni network if you plan to work in your home state and doors may open for you.”
That’s the great thing about this country. It’s BIG. And if you don’t want to live in the northeast or Chicago or San Fran, there still can be a great professional future for those who can’t or choose not to attend an elite college in the northeast or one of a handful of highly ranked schools elsewhere.
“Go to an elite school or you won’t make the SCOTUS or be a billionaire” just isn’t that compelling for the majority of students.
I think it’s more “If you’re not the sort of person who can be admitted to an elite school, doors will close for you.”
My husband was elite school material but because of family financial difficulties, he attended his flagship state university for his undergraduate degree. He went on to get a PhD from a graduate school that was ranked in the top 10 in his field and has had a fine career (in industry – his degrees are in math).
Similarly, a friend of one of my kids turned down an elite school to accept a full ride at her flagship state university. Later, she had no trouble getting admitted to medical school (which was affordable for her family because they didn’t spend a dime on her undergraduate education). She will get her MD in a few months and go off to her first-choice residency.
A few things to note here: (1) Neither of these people was an average student at the colleges they attended. They were top of the heap at their undergraduate colleges and were recognized as such (by admission to honors programs, etc.). (2) Neither of these people had to go out into the world with their undergraduate degree as their only degree. They earned (or are about to earn) more prestigious graduate or professional degrees later. (3) The undergraduate colleges they attended – although not elite – weren’t Western Podunk State or community colleges, either. They were flagship state universities. That’s a step down from the elites, yes, but it’s not a big step down.
The above reiterates that if a person has the potential to shine and pursue knowledge for the sake thereof, they will do it wherever the are.
Rhandco, any discussion of college attendance patterns must take into account the enormous number of older, adult students appearing in the statistics. There were not 20,000,000 high school graduates last year.
The community college associations which publish on the web seem to gloss over this point.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm
So, 60% of recent high school graduates enrolled in college attend 4-year schools.
Discussions of US college students can be complicated by the fact that the traditional, 18 to 22 year old group of students are only a portion of the overall group of US college students. Many older students, usually in the work force, opt for colleges offering evening classes, or attend community colleges part-time. There is a discussion of college-going patterns in this report: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008174.pdf On page vi of the executive summary, there is a chart breaking down the difference in choices (2-year vs. 4-year) by student age.
Unfortunately, not completing college can be due to a lack of academic preparation, as well as family finances. You are correct, retention is an enormous issue.
“All students in college” is a far wider set than the set of “college students between 18 and 24.” The set of “elite college students” is far smaller yet.
HELP! I can relate to this thread. I just can’t get over the fact that I will never be a Bonesman.
Despite having gone to good schools and doing all the right things, I don’t think I will ever qualify for admission to the organization that has spawned US presidents, simply because I didn’t go to Yale.
I’m not complaining, mind you, but sometimes, I can’t sleep at night when I think about how unfair it is that I’ll never be able to get the same advantages that members of that elite society do.
Is there some way to appeal that Yale admission and get another opportunity at Skull and Bones?
And, before anyone says that my life isn’t over, I’m pretty sure there are studies which show that 100% of the members attended Yale. If anyone knows what it takes to get in, it would be helpful.
Disclaimer: Total sarcasm, of course, but this is about 2% of what runs through my mind when I see threads like this.
@singleparent1, that is definitely true.
What chance do you think that you have of realistically making those lists?