<p>It’s really not. The people that have the preconceived “hypomanic edge” per se, are going to succeed whether they’re at Ohio State or Yale.</p>
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<p>Nope. The term “Ivy League” was in common usage long before the athletic conference was founded in 1954, so it’s clear it means something beyond that in the minds of many people.</p>
<p>Wikipedia puts it this way:</p>
<p>"The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. The term Ivy League also has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism.</p>
<p>The term became official after the formation of the NCAA Division I athletic conference in 1954.[3] The use of the phrase is no longer limited to athletics, and now represents an educational philosophy inherent to the nation’s oldest schools."</p>
<p>[Ivy</a> League - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League]Ivy”>Ivy League - Wikipedia) </p>
<p>That’s why you commonly see kids and even a few adults on CC who mistakenly think that say Stanford or MIT or a few other high-end colleges are in the Ivy League: not because they play Princeton and Columbia in football and basketball, but because they share similar reputations for academic excellence.</p>
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<p>“Moving towards”? We’ve been there for years. Only dinosaurs think that 1) the Ivies are sure tickets to financial success and 2) no one without an Ivy degree (or precious few) ever achieves financial success.</p>
<p>Leaving aside the measure of financial success as the definition of success, of course.</p>
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<p>Well, I mean when the last US President to even attend a state school was Jimmy Carter, maybe we should be looking elsewhere for leadership…</p>
<p>Quick Note: Jimmy Carter attended two public schools in Georgia before attending the Naval Academy (technically public). The last president to graduate (undergrad) from a state-run school was Gerald Ford (from UMich).</p>
<p>I don’t hate the “Ivy” schools but they aren’t the fix-all people act like they are. And they aren’t where you find the most talented people. They’re where you find certain types of people. If you actually want to find the people with raw talent, you’re probably looking towards people who could never get into an “Ivy”.</p>
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<p>Also from Wikipedia, 19 years isn’t really “long before” in my opinion.</p>
<p>“The first known instance of the term Ivy League being used appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on February 7, 1935.[35][36][37] Several sportswriters and other journalists used the term shortly later to refer to the older colleges, those along the northeastern seaboard of the United States, chiefly the nine institutions with origins dating from the colonial era, together with the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Naval Academy, and a few others. These schools were known for their long-standing traditions in intercollegiate athletics, often being the first schools to participate in such activities. However, at this time, none of these institutions made efforts to form an athletic league.”</p>
<p>Its original use was still in the context of athletics.</p>
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<p>Why’s that?</p>
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It is more … the schools have agreements about issues like timing of admissions announcements and aid policies (no merit aid), for example.</p>
<p>Here we go again with the claim that kids who attend top schools are not normal, and worse are snobby, arrogant, entitled, and psychologically damaged. </p>
<p>As a group, Ivy League students are just as “normal” as any other large group of young people. Elite schools students don’t tend to be AVERAGE, however. So if average is your ideal, then by all means avoid HYPSM etc.</p>
<p>Good grief, it’s amazing how many people think their own personal choices for their own lives should dictate what everyone else does. Some people think an Ivy League education is right for them. Others think a public education is right for them. Somehow this has led some to decree that students at Ivy League schools are arrogant, snobby, and overconfident in their chances of achieving future financial success; and others to claim that students at public universities are dumb and doomed to a life of mediocrity or failure. Can’t we all just choose what is right for our own personal situations and let others pick what is right for them? Why do so many people feel it is right for them to judge whether others chose the right college? I know I chose my college because I believe it offers a good education and I like many aspects of it. Many other people would probably chosen differently from my options, and that probably would’ve been the right choice for them. This doesn’t mean that my choice was the wrong choice for me. This is why there are so many colleges in the United States and in the world. Everyone has different wants and needs. Ivy League and state schools are neither good nor bad. They’re just right for some and wrong for others.</p>
<p>I’m sorry but this is a joke. The last four presidents have had Ivy league educations. Going to an Ivy League school isn’t just about the quality of the education. You can get a quality education at a lot of schools. The biggest benefit of an Ivy league school is the connections.</p>
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<p>Sure, but to say that the term “Ivy League” means 'nothing more" than an athletic league or is used only in reference to athletics or in the context of athletics is simply incorrect. If Ivy League were merely an athletic league we wouldn’t keep getting endless Ivy league threads on CC such as this one. We’d see the term used about as often as we see say The Mountain West Conference or The Big 10.</p>
<p>It’s obvious that the use of “Ivy league” in the title of the article linked to in the OP and hence in the title of the thread is not a reference to college sports.</p>
<p>Nope.
Gee some would say it was the end of the ivies to admit women and people of color.</p>
<p>Silly. </p>
<p>Select a program that will be the best place to learn/grow in your chosen field and make the most of all of the resources there. Consider what region you will live in after graduation.</p>
<p>My K1 is happy at the ivy…doors open…
and My K2 won’t be looking at any…we hope to choose wisely.</p>
<p>I thought the Ivy League ended when, in their collective wisdom, the members stripped their halls of that ubiquitous, creeping vine that adorned the outer walls (something about saving the mortar from drying out and, thus, crumbling)!</p>
<p>I live near one of the colleges and there is nary an ivy leaf to be seen…</p>
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<p>I’d love to hear this poster explain her thinking.</p>
<p>“The last four presidents have had Ivy league educations.” LOL!! 'nuff said! But seriously…</p>
<p>I, for one, don’t have anything against the Ivy League in particular. I think they are great schools… great schools with over-the-top FANTASTIC reputations… fantastic reputations that the actual stats simply do not support. But they are great schools all the same.</p>
<p>My beef is with the ranking system that perpetuates the status quo. By focusing solely on the perceptions and opinions of educators, and with absolutely no regard for a student’s performance AFTER they have been equipped with this “fantastic” education, the popular ranking system essentially perpetuates a lie to families who seek the best for their child. </p>
<p>So called “Top schools” (not just Ivy League), although EXCELLENT schools, are built up to be the end-all / be-all of education. This past year I’ve personally witnessed a young girl (with amazing stats) truly hysterical that she didn’t get into an Ivy League. She felt her life was a joke… that she had failed miserably. Her well educated parents (both math teachers) were just about equally devastated. C’mon. Seriously!? Even the parents lacked perspective? It’s a result of propaganda, plain and simple.</p>
<p>The over-the-top reputations of some schools (again, not limited to Ivy League) is ludicrous. </p>
<p>The success of a school’s graduates should certainly be part of any ranking system. Not anecdotal examples, but a full population report… or as close as they can get to one. Only after a COMPLETE picture of a school is available will parents and children be able to make truly informed decisions.</p>
<p>I just want to see an even playing field where colleges can be truly evaluated for the experience and value they provide.</p>
<p>maikai – If you think about it, a “full population report” is unlikely to help your argument much, if at all. The Ivy League colleges (and similar institutions) graduate practically everyone who matriculates, overwhelmingly within four years. Even in a tough economy, the vast majority of students develop decent careers, and do it fairly quickly, often after a round of graduate or professional school. Not everyone goes for the big bucks – lots of Ivy graduates wind up in public interest / social change sorts of jobs, at least for a while, or jobs whose main function is further education and world travel. But once you get five or ten years out, hardly anyone lacks traction.</p>
<p>Public universities, even the best ones, have much higher attrition rates for entering students, and much longer average time to the bachelor’s degree. The best students at public universities – what someone upthread, I think, or in some other thread called the “embedded Harvard” at UMichigan – probably look pretty much the same as their Ivy counterparts, but the majority of students at any public university aren’t competing on an equal footing with Ivy grads in terms of sheer intelligence and personality traits like perseverance and focus, and their career histories will tend to show that.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean anything about the quality of education or experience in public universities, or their value. But you would have to have much more refined data than currently exists anywhere to do a meaningful statistical comparison of public vs. private. And without that much more refined data, you will be left with broad population comparisons that do nothing more than confirm that the Ivies educate a narrow range of extraordinarily low-risk students who are all very likely to succeed, or at least not to fail, or comparisons that are so narrow as to be meaningless. (Like all the studies that exclude anyone with a post-baccalaureate degree. I may have some classmates who failed to pick up a graduate or professional degree somewhere, but I don’t know any of them. An earnings profile of my college class that excluded people with graduate degrees would be a profile of bizarre outliers, and tell you practically nothing about the careers we have had.)</p>
<p>Well said, maikai.</p>
<p>It seems we cannot claim the death of absolutism when one group of colleges is consistently held above all others for no apparent reason other than “it’s always been that way…”</p>
<p>I believe in Mom, Apple Pie and the Ivy League – hmmm, sounds nice, why change it?</p>
<p>Better connections?! Those alumni who were the ‘right people’ are now sending their offspring to many other colleges because they can’t get them in at ‘alma mater’. These days you may find better connections at the state flagship…</p>
<p>JHS - It’s relatively easy to pick on the ‘mass’ of students at public universities as being ‘beneath’ the typical Ivy student, as you are fairly going from one extreme to another, in terms of the type os applicants the Ivys and state colleges attract. But, when you compare the merits of an Ivy student to those of any number of excellent private (and some state) universities I think that the coloring between the two become virtually indistinguishable.</p>
<p>My mom’s doctor when I said I’m going to Northwestern, before saying the normal “Congratulations, that’s a good school” type thing said, “Oh, College of Charleston has a great physics program” (note: that’s not even what I’m looking at doing). I’ve always wondered why people feel the need to say “save money, go to a public school” if the person can afford, or has enough aid for, a private school they want to go to. You shouldn’t just go to a school because it’s private or public, you should go there because the academics match up with what you want, because you fit in with the culture of the school, and because you can afford it without going into too much debt.</p>
<p>The Ivies do not have locks on intelligent study bodies or successful alumni. A few people being incredibly successful and hailing from non-Ivies/top schools does not mean an “end” to the usefulness of said schools just as the bums coming from these state schools does not mean the schools are utterly worthless. Let’s not be extreme.</p>
<p>The obsession with the Ivy League does need to stop. It’s getting ridiculous. Whether it be the wanton attacks from insecure students/parents that want so badly for the Ivies to be knocked down a few pegs or the ceaseless praises from die hard Ivy fans, the fascination and attention given to a few institutions is asinine.</p>
<p>One problem is that everyone is blending top students with top schools or elite students with elite schools all as if they are one and the same.</p>
<p>Kids who attend elite schools are generally believed to be elite students but there are exceptions to the rule. Also, kids who attend non-elite schools are generally viewed as non-elite students but there are exceptions to the rule.</p>
<p>Higher education is a marketplace. The Ivy League caters and specializes in educating kids of wealth, privilege and giftedness, with more emphasis now on giftedness from diverse backgrounds regardless of income.</p>
<p>Top public and privates cater to those in a tier or 2 below that. Intelligent, talented kids with strong work ethics.</p>
<p>There are schools that cater to the mass of middle class kids of slightly below average to slightly above average intelligence, potential, effort and financial means.</p>
<p>Those that cater to adults, people looking for second chances and career changes and to people who are poor.</p>
<p>It’s a brilliant, free market system at work. No need to compare, compete or judge one another though. Everyone is trying to elevate their station in life and we all have different starting lines and finish lines.</p>
<p>No one can take down the Ivies a notch in terms of brand recognition but not because there is a system enforcing a status quo on our thinking. It’s because they are a different type of school for a different type of student. They occupy an in demand niche and are the leaders in that niche. Others cater to different sets of consumers of higher education and can’t cater to elite students without risking losing their less than elite, but loyal brand customers. It’s like going to a convenience store for a Rolex watch. Everyone will doubt the authenticity of the watch because of where it was purchased and the low price.</p>
<p>While all colleges are in the education industry, not all colleges serve the same markets.</p>