<p>Need some perspective this week on a disappointing Ivy verdict? Read this article from The New York Times by Bucknell University English prof Claire Vaye Watkins. It’s a lovely piece that will remind you that there are many roads to happiness and success.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be from Pahrump to think the Ivy League is another planet. Although I live in an area where people are generally well-educated and our high school has plenty of college recruiters, lots of people here in CA think the Ivies are like another planet and couldn’t care less. Just the other day, a friend said to me, “I don’t know why you would send your kids to college out on the East Coast, when we have so many great schools here.” (My Ds went to H & Y).</p>
<p>Sadly, whenever colleges do mail out info packets and the like, you get a bunch of whiners from Short Hills saying that it unfairly raised junior’s expectations and blah blah blah. Small price to pay, IMO, in terms of getting the word out to the kids from backgrounds who haven’t heard of these schools or think they are only for blue-blood elites or people “not like them.”</p>
<p>Interesting article. The comparison between the recruitment tactics of high-end colleges and the US military was particularly interesting. If social mobility is truly a goal and value of elite institutions, those schools ought to look at how the military recruits talent from all sectors of society.</p>