@ucbalumnus, I NEVER stated that having African-Americans in high-level positions will “magically create racial equality everywhere.” Those words are yours, not mine.
My point is that we need more African-Americans who can serve as influencers and role models, and otherwise have their fingers on the levers of power, all by being in high-level positions. That should help promote equality and is a necessary step towards having equality. But there are clearly lots of factors that will help create equality, and lots of other factors that preclude equality. So my point is that having African-Americans in high-level positions is necessary, but not sufficient, to create equality.
@marihorror, I benefited the most from enriching experiences at an Ivy League school far away from where I grew up. Don’t keep misreading my words.
In addition, according to numerous studies (see the New York Times debate series about whether or not where you go to college matters, for example), unfortunately you’re flat wrong about which groups benefit from elite diplomas.
URM groups do more than whites, and URM groups from less-affluent areas do in particular, which is why I am saddened by the student in question’s choice of Alabama. A white kid from Rye or Greenwich is already exposed to circles full of financially successful, driven people. An URM from small-town Tennessee is not, or at least not to the same extent. So if you let both into Princeton, the white kid has already effectively “been there, done that” due to the circles that he’s already been exposed to; the URM has not and will be exposed to those circles for the first time.
Am I the only one a bit concerned over the recurrent sentiment here that a student that wants to go to med school is silly to attend the most academically competitive colleges? Personally I would like my Drs to be highly competitive perfectionists that are able to maintain a top gpa in any environment. I am a bit frightened…
I am also very curious as to why CCers are obsessed with high schools, but when it comes to colleges so much disdain is shown toward those that tout the academic superiority of the elites? “Highly competitive suburban school,” “top ranked public school,” private school, prep school, boarding school, test in school, magnet school. Guess what, noncompetitive, underperforming public schools in low SES neighborhoods have honors sections. Does anyone really believe that the caliber of students and the academic experience in those honors classes is comparable to a regular class at big name prestigious high school?
WOW, Of all the responses posted on this thread, this is the most inaccurate! I can’t even respond to the sheer madness of this statement. I will have to check with all of my black professional friends who went to elite schools and ask them what strings did they pull to not be forced into a degree in Black studies. …smh
Source? My S received all of those top merit offers and many, many, more with a lackluster 2290, which incidentally he took in the fall of his Jr. year with no prep. He saw no point in spending even the 4 hour test window to try to raise his score. Sure, we could have paid for a pricey test prep service and he could have spent months prepping and taken it 2-3 more times but he was dead set against it. Maybe there is something to this new-fangled holistic thing, lol?
@HappyMomx3, I agree with you. There is a lot of “reverse snobbery” on this board.
I think that the reason for it is that people who did not attend elite colleges (or college at all) just like to justify their own lives and outcomes. That’s a natural human desire: to want to show that how you did things in your life was fine.
There are a few people who attended elite colleges and didn’t think that they were worth it, too.
For college and grad school, I went to 2 different places. One was an Ivy; the other is listed in the “top” schools forum (not the alphabetical list of schools forum), but I didn’t consider it “elite” like the Ivy; there was a huge difference in the quality of the student body, opportunities, etc.
Well lets see my husband and I are college educated we are black, 4 degrees , including one professional degree. We have countless friends that went to ivies, and elite schools. I don’t know one person who has a degree in Afro American studies. I have a child at an HBCU and one graduating today from a PWI. Never has anyone been steered towards any particular degree. You are stating as a fact that elite schools don’t let minorities pick their own majors and that is just patently false!
The young man’s parents are an engineer and a manager. The article doesn’t clarify level or educational background of his parents, but it could very well be that they are public university grads who are perfectly content with the outcomes of their education and lives. It could be the young man in question sees his parents lives as successful and sees no negatives to their educational background.
It could be as simple as weighing $0 and $200,000+ and his not believing that the difference in outcome was worth the price tag.
He wouldn’t be alone. Our position wasn’t as extreme, $0 and $120,000+, but we couldn’t see the difference as worth it.
Please read my statement again. I said they are brainwashed, not “don’t let”. This is predominantly done to the poorer kids who have been attending on full scholarships lately.
My definition of elites includes mainly Ivies and a few others. What are your child’s friends in Ivies majoring in? OTOH, they all may be upper middle class don’t fit the group I am considering.
I hope this doesn’t turn into another race relations thread. The kid happened to be black. The article seemed to me to be a human story about his human-ness, not a story about his blackness. In the article, “African American” seemed to be beside the point. Which, to me, is respectful of the individual and his accomplishments. Imagine always being “the black kid.” With some people, all that one is is often overshadowed by one trait, the color of that person’s skin. I would hate that if I were in his shoes.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek, understood; I wasn’t talking about the guy who turned down the Ivies to go to Alabama as someone who is just trying to justify his own lack of attendance at an elite school or lack of attending college at all; I was referring to plenty of posters on this board (PizzaMom, romanigypsyeyes and others).
Does attendance at Ivys guarantee greater representation at the upper echelons of power and influence in this country? As an Asian-American, I’m very puzzled why is it that we’re not overly represented in all areas of corporate boards and government cabinet positions given that we’ve been ‘overrepresented’ in the Ivys for decades. And didn’t we not have had an African-American President for the past 6+ years, along with an African-American Attorney General? What more role models can we expect than those that have already achieved those distinctions?
@ucbalumnus, a “low-level” position is one that both (1) pays significantly less than the person could have been paid and (2) does not require an elite degree to obtain.
To be clear, a job like the one PizzaMom has thus would not be a “low-level” position because I’m sure that she’s doing her best. Some of my classmates’ jobs, though, would be “low-level” positions because they’d be below what the person could have gotten for pay.
Gee, I go away for a year, and when I come back, the same people are posting the same specious arguments they have flogged for years.
Okay, I’ll chime in with some FACTS, for the benefit of those on this thread who are newcomers (the regulars have heard it all before and aren’t interested):
Thirty years of solid research - over 5,000 peer-reviewed studies - have failed to prove ANY connection between where one goes to school and the quality of the education received. There is a SLIGHT correlation between the prestige of the school and lifetime income for SOME professions. [Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini, “How College Affects Students, Volume 2: A Third Decade of Research.” San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005]
Now, as it turns out, medicine is one of those professions: “evidence suggests that attending a selective a selective college enhances occupational attainment in specific professions such as medicine and law. … [one study, after controlling for various factors, showed] the academic selectivity of the college attended had a statistically significant, positive influence on admission to medical school. … the effect is nonlinear and generally accrued only to those students attending the most selective or elite institutions in the country. … Such institutions, at most, educated about 1 or 2 percent of all four-year college students in the national postsecondary system. For the remaining 98 percent or so of all four-year college students, the selectivity of the institution made little or no difference.” [op. cit., p. 469]
So in the instant case, based on the research, going to a public school instead of an Ivy League school might reduce the student’s chances for medical school admission. The question a rational parent would ask is, “Is a slight increase in the probability of my child getting into a ‘top’ medical school worth almost a third of a million dollars?”
@annasdad, there are lots of studies on the topic of “does it matter where you go to college?” You can post just one, but there are lots more, summarized and cited here:
It is well-documented that that to the extent that there is a benefit from an elite degree, lower-income people, particularly lower-income URM groups, benefit more than whites and upper-income people.
Meaning, for graduates of elite schools, jobs other than investment banking and management consulting?
Some people are not in it for pay maximization. It also is not obvious that the average person knows or would care if the Wall Street investment bankers or management consultants telling his/her employer to cut more jobs are members of an underrepresented minority group.