@annasdad, I did read your post. You cited one study that alleged to summarize 5,000 studies. The study that you posted is by two well-known authors who are pretty well known as very ideological. (BTW I’ve read both their most recent book and the early 1990s version in full.)
The experts in the New York Times make statements contrary to your generalization, and they point out specific areas where going to an elite college does matter. Given the choice between them and you, I pick them as being correct.
@ucbalumnus, no, some of my law school classmates took low-level, 9-to-5 jobs in government that pay only a fraction of what they’d make if they were in a mid-tier law firm or even a mid-tier corporate job.
@albert69 “I mean, what if his only option would have been a gasp community college? Or someplace dreadful like a non-flagship university in the midwest? There would have been no hope for him EVER having a successful life.”
OK, now you’re getting personal. I mean I chose the flagship route, but my father went to Ball State (IN) and DePaul (IL) and is currently a CFO. But perhaps the fact that my parents pay cash for their cars, own two homes, and travel at will doesn’t meet the definition of a successful life?
@jrcsmom Goodness no. Without an elite college experience, success in life is unlikely at best, and even if attained, it can never approach the quality that would be the result of graduating from a school the caliber of Harvard.
SAT of ~2220 and ACT ~31 are the 99%ile points, so said topic of discussion is well within the top one percent, yet many CC posters refer his stats as lackluster or such. Pretty sad commentary toward the 99.5% of the student population who do not meet those stats (not that they or their parents show up much here anyway).
@PurpleTitan “However, I believe that 'Bama spends more money on their football team than on all research combined”
You may want to research this again. Bama’s football program not only brings in enough income to pay for itself, but also to donate back to the school. Not to mention the money that is poured into the local economy by the people coming into town for every home game ‘experience’.
@albert69 I was pretty certain I recognized the sarcasm, but had to defend our ‘dreadful’ non-flagships here in the midwest because I’ve been a member here long enough to know the sarcasm will go WAY over some people’s heads.
@ProudMomx3, you seem to be making the assumption that these particular “other schools” that some of us are talking about (Alabama in Nelson’s case) are uncompetitive, unchallenging colleges that offer a lackluster education and are filled with uninteresting, unqualified people – that, for instance, Nelson is one of very few of his caliber who will be attending Alabama; that professors are less than well-qualified; that course material may not be up to snuff; and therefore, kids who attend these universities won’t be challenged; any advancements or accomplishments they make will be “less-than” because their universities were less than challenging.
But from my perspective and experience, your assumptions simply aren’t true.
Many kids of Nelson’s caliber and higher already attend big state schools. As I mentioned, several kids of my son’s caliber turned down “elite schools” to attend his state school. His professors were well known in their fields. He struggled for his A’s. He got scores in the 50’s and 60’s on plenty of his exams, which just turned out to be the highest grades in the class. His program was very challenging. Four students out of ~300 graduating seniors in his department earned 4.0’s. It is only your assumption that all schools outside of your own list of “elite” colleges are academically uncompetitive. To me, you’re “a bit frightened” of something that is in your own head and not real.
(I think you meant to address ProudMomx3, not HappyMomx3 – but maybe not.)
@HappyAlumnus , I find your comments so interesting because they’re so different from my own perspective! I guess that in your book, I’m one of the “reverse snobs.” But I haven’t read these CC boards as full of “reverse snobbery” at all! On the contrary, I perceive that the CC majority are more drawn to “the elite colleges,” and discount so many of our country’s other great colleges, without fully researching all of their options. Many people seem to make assumptions like @ProudMomx3’s. I also find that the majority of people here want nothing more than to get into an ivy or one of the big-name U’s like Vandy, Duke, Stanford, etc, just because of the name, without regard for whether those schools are a truly the best fit for them.
Having a dissenting opinion and choosing to not blindly follow ‘the crowd’ doesn’t make us reverse snobs. And I can assure you that these reverse-snobs aren’t revealing their stories in some attempt to justify their “less-than” lives and outcomes! Haha!! How snobby and self-absorbed and holier-than-thou is that assumption? I perceive that us reverse-snobs choose to share our stories because they’re different than what appears to be the majority opinion, and because we think that our alternative experiences may by helpful to others.
(Besides, how interesting that the term for our perspective is “reverse-snobbery.” Wouldn’t that mean that the opposing ideas are rooted in snobbery?)
Again, I don’t see the “disdain” that you’re talking about, @ProudMomx3. I see the dissenting opinions, but I don’t perceive the disdain.
Unless I had no other options at all, I would not consider sending my kid to a noncompetitive, underperforming public school with an honors section in a low SES neighborhood. I doubt that anybody here believes that the students or the experience in those honors classes is comparable to a regular class at a big name prestigious high school. BUT, that has nothing to do with the kinds of comparisons we’re making at the college level – big-state school versus one of the supposed elites. Apples and oranges. Not worth arguing.
Many people in my area do send their kids to super expensive, “elite” private schools even though we have really top-rated, high performing, highly competitive public schools that they could choose “for free.” You can guess what I chose to do … mine went to the large public. They each got an amazing education. They had top scores on all standardized tests. They connected with super bright faculty who were influential in their lives. They were rewarded with great colleges and numerous full-tuition and free-ride scholarships.
I don’t have to justify any outcomes. I just happen to genuinely believe that a great education can be found at a large variety of schools. And that students should choose schools that are the best fit for them and their circumstances. And that a huge sticker price doesn’t necessarily mean a hugely better education.
@TerryB15 I totally agree with you. He took 15 AP classes and must have impressive accomplishments outside of just the classroom b/c he was accepted to top schools and into UFE (which requires serious commitment to your community to be considered). To suggest that his stats are lackluster is just plain ridiculous. 2260 and 34 are in the 99th percentile as you stated. Only on CC would someone with his profile be called lackluster.
By “snobbery”, I mean “viewing oneself as better”. Snobbery from elite school graduates is not acceptable, period. Nor is reverse snobbery. There are multiple posters on this board who sneer at people who are different than they are, and there are a few people who didn’t go schools that are “elite” (based on various measurements), or to college at all, such as PizzaMom, who, in my opinion, show intense animosity towards people who did, and particularly people who went to elite schools and have certain professions. That’s reverse snobbery.
My own view is based in part on my own experience; I have degrees from 2 very different schools. One was an Ivy and one was not (although the non-Ivy is usually in the top 10 in US News). There was a huge, huge gulf between career opportunities, student body selectivity and motivation, and more; the Ivy opened up a whole new world to me. It makes me sad when someone gives up those extra opportunities, particularly when the person is an URM.
“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."
WTF are you talking about? You don’t know what I do for a living. Unless you’re stalking me off line.
If you define success as money (I don’t, but you clearly do), I’m easily a 1%-er. If you define success as attending a top school, both my H and I attended an elite and my kids are seniors at a top 20 u and top 10 LAC that we sent them to at full pay. Both have jobs waiting for them that are in their areas of interest. I travel the world for work and have been successful enough that I’m retiring at the end of this year at the age of 50.
So I don’t know where you’re heading with your accusations; my guess is you’re not worldly enough to understand that people can make lots of money outside the world of Wall Street finance.
Btw, Afr-Amers at elite college aren’t under any more obligation than anyone else to take so-called “high prestige” jobs. They should do what they like, like anyone else.
“no, some of my law school classmates took low-level, 9-to-5 jobs in government that pay only a fraction of what they’d make if they were in a mid-tier law firm or even a mid-tier corporate job.”
So what? Are they happy? Do they find the work interesting and personally fulfilling? Did they need to impress you or something?
@SimpleLife wrote: “Many kids of Nelson’s caliber and higher already attend big state schools. As I mentioned, several kids of my son’s caliber turned down “elite schools” to attend his state school. His professors were well known in their fields. He struggled for his A’s. He got scores in the 50’s and 60’s on plenty of his exams, which just turned out to be the highest grades in the class. His program was very challenging. Four students out of ~300 graduating seniors in his department earned 4.0’s.”
Is this what students are finding at UA? All big state schools are not the same. Students preparing for medical school should be challenged. Part of the blame lies with the medical schools which go by numbers alone.
@Pizzagirl, my father retired at age 52 and is well above a 1%-er, at least now based on assets. My brother is retiring in his mid-40s, is well above a 1%-er based on assets, and my grandfather retired in his late 30s, and was a 1%-er at the time. All of them work(ed) in fields far outside Wall Street and in locations hundreds to thousands of miles away from Wall Street. My brother works in a field that is certainly not a traditionally prestigious field, and he certainly didn’t go to an elite school; he turned down several of them, actually. I’m pretty clear on how money is made in other industries and that people who didn’t go to elite schools or work on Wall Street can be very, very successful.
You’ve posted your profession before on this board, and you’ve also posted your school. I am correct in my assertions.
“There are multiple posters on this board who sneer at people who are different than they are, and there are a few people who didn’t go schools that are “elite” (based on various measurements), or to college at all, such as PizzaMom, who, in my opinion, show intense animosity towards people who did,”
You are delusional or confused. I went to a school easily characterized on CC as elite. I loved my experience there and I am a college snob. But I’m a college snob about academics, not money-made-at-the-end-of-the-day. That’s only tangentially the point of college IMO.
It’s really straightforward. It comes down to Alto-Sax applicant and Sally. Both have similar stats, ECs, etc. Who do we give it to? Sally is your standard middle class female who wants to become a doctor. Well we have to give it to Alto-Sax applicant because he’s a URM. Sally gets waitlisted (at best) or rejected. It’s unlikely that she’ll come off the waitlist. We all know how difficult it is to get off a waitlist at one of the Ivy league schools. If Alto-Sax applicant had never applied because let’s face it, he always knew he could not afford it or would not sacrifice financially to pay for it, the choice might have come down to “do we choose Sally or do we choose Harry”, both of which really, really wanted to go to Ivy School X. By applying to and being accepted to a school that he never intended to go to, he took the offer that would have gone to Sally/Harry. Ipso facto, he took the spot that Sally/Harry would have cut of their right hand to get.
If you really, really, want to go to a school, you will find a way to make it happen. Alto-Sax applicant never wanted to go to any of the prestigious schools on his list. He was looking to have his ego stroked; either by the “way to go Alto-Sax applicant” crowd for getting into such a prestigious school or by the “excellent financial decision” crowd for choosing Alabama.
@jrcsmom, I didn’t mention net income. Expenditures on football exceeded expenditures on research (as of a few years ago) at 'Bama.
Football revenues also exceeded research funding brought in at 'Bama in the years that I looked.
That football is a money maker there doesn’t negate the fact that football is a greater economic engine at 'Bama than research is (unlike at the schools that spend around a billion dollars or more a year on research).
Freely admit skipping most of the posts in the thread, because how many times can one go over this same territory, what I want to know is who in hell goes to the press with this kind of stuff? So you got into all of the Ivies, none of which you could afford, so you decided to take big bucks at UA instead. Big deal. Why is this news? Who cares?
@simplelife “I hope this doesn’t turn into another race relations thread.”
Too late…when I saw the thread I thought, “oh please, please, please tell me he isn’t AA,” but he is, and sure enough it didn’t take long for the race related commentary to start, even though it isn’t relevant to the post.
I wonder, what IS the bar that a URM would be considered “worthy” of acceptances?
