<p>It is going to be interesting with people making different choices because of finances. Perhaps it will “normalize” the attitude. and then perhpas they will look at the apptitude of the applicant instead of where they went.</p>
<p>Just for the record. One of my kids visited Stanford. She hated the place…didn’t like the “feel” of it. Fine with us. She attended another very nice, and well regarded smaller university smack in the middle of the Silicon Valley. </p>
<p>The other kid went to college in Boston. He had NO INTEREST whatsoever in anything that MIT had to offer. Just wasn’t on his radar screen…and it wouldn’t have mattered if it was tippy top at all…he didn’t care about it.</p>
<p>It’s fine if your kids LIKE and WANT to attend Stanford, MIT or any other school…but PLEASE don’t make it sound like these schools are the be all and end all. They are not.</p>
<p>Sometimes on cc a poster drones on and on a ON so much about a particular school that it sometimes has the opposite effect than was intended. This was politely pointed out by several posters to one particular poster, and she got it. She stopped. She listened. She learned that she wasn’t doing her school any favors by doing that.</p>
<p>I’m perturbed that long time posters add to this “debate”. It seems to me that everyone agrees about “fit”. This includes not only environment, but expected major. For example, & I truly hope not to offend, for a CS major, CMU’ SCS trumps Harvard, as would Stanford & Caltech & MIT, and about 4 or 5 state schools. Department strengths get even more defined by graduate schools.</p>
<p>Biology majors have a broader field. Classics would have their own standards, & IR & journalism, etc. Its not the name of the school, but the department and the environment.</p>
<p>Stanford & MIT are not the only schools in the country, going to prep school is not a guarantee of success in life.</p>
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<p>Hint Hint</p>
<p>Ha ha…I don’t think the poster that drones on and on will GET a hint. He’s been told point blank that he is droning on and on about a particular school…sometimes posting very biased information about THAT school only. If he doesn’t “get it” when he’s told point blank, it’s HIGHLY unlikely he will recognize that the “hint” is directed at him!</p>
<p>Only want the things you already have, you have everything you want.</p>
<p>Love the school you attending, you attend the best school for you.</p>
<p>I don’t have any problem for people who think their school is much better than Ivy +. However, I do have problem for people saying that because they never got admitted into one. </p>
<p>Many have tried to justify their UG schooling was great by “many of his/her classmates are graduates from all IVY schools”. Well, not all IVY school graduates were the top 2/3 of the classes.</p>
<p>When people keep asking these questions about ivies, I would like to take run some numbers. Let say an Ivy admits about 1500 students a per year and with 8 ivy’s, we are talking about 12000 students or so graduating per yer. Of the 12000, some will go to graduate school, take a year off, go back to their country, start a business etc, so let us say only about 10,000 students from ivy’s are looking for jobs, being very conservative (I would think the number would be smaller). </p>
<p>Currently, job creation is not very strong, but five years back it was very good and about 12 years back, it was phenomenal. Even in bad years, I am sure there are over 300,000 jobs created over spring/summer time frame (when students are typically looking for the first full time position) for which students, fresh out of college can apply. Again, these are just rough numbers that I came up with (for example 208,000 jobs were created this month and it is bad number, so over a six month period let us say 1.2 million new jobs were created at the minimum, off which 25% did not have experience requirements etc.).</p>
<p>So if my numbers are any where close to being correct and there are 300,000 (or even 250,000 positions, even though I think the number is much larger) and Ivy’s churn out only 10,000 eligible students, how do those other positions get filled up? So this negates the whole argument that only an ivy will get you a job. Again, there are confounding factors and I do not have actual numbers etc., but the point I am trying to make is that job market is much larger than the output of ivy’s, so you are not scarred for life if you do not go to an ivy (or MIT or Stanford). Yes some students may benefit from an ivy education but an employer in Birmingham, AL or Tuscon, AZ is not going to be actively soliciting ivy league graduates.</p>