<p>I think some of it is due to which circles they run in. The mentality of that thinking that I came to learn about when I joined CC and read the student posts, plus meeting people who live in certain regions or communities is just so different from where my kids grew up. My kids were not concerned with prestige or rankings. They do like challenging learning environments. But the name brand thing is not big in our neck of the woods. When you think about it, the kids who are comparing rankings and which Ivy is better or best, likely live where kids wear some designer jeans or have designer pocketbooks and the brand of their car that they get at sixteen is something to write home about. </p>
<p>Where we live, I think the most expensive “designer” brand would be Abercrombie, and Birkenstock and no girls have designer handbags and if a kid has a car in high school it is either a hand me down, a used car or nothing overly expensive if new. Few kids are applying to the top schools in the land and even the few that do are not comparing their college lists with anyone and these conversations I read from kids on this site are NOTHING like around here. I recall when I found this site and showed it to D1 and showed her the student posts, such as the “what are my chances” ones or the ones talking of prestige, she simply could not relate. And she is a very good student who did land at an Ivy but the idea of “wanting Ivy” was not her line of thinking. She had certain characteristics she wanted in a school and ONE of these was a challenging school with motivated students but she has many other criteria and the name factor wasn’t the thing for her and she never ever was aware of rankings either. If you asked her where her school was ranked, she couldn’t tell you. So, I think some of this college talk and elitism way of thinking goes hand in hand with some kids’ backgrounds in other areas, be it designer brand jeans or pocketbooks or cars. While my kids have friends in other regions who have lived those lifestyles and they like these kids a lot, they’d be the first to tell you how radically different their home communities and environments were to where their own upbringing took place and the experiences of those kids are night and day to their home friends. I grew up in suburbia and have a clue of what some of that is like, though it wasn’t that “ultra” with respect to college issues, but I am glad my kids grew up in rural Vermont, in part, because this whole competitive mentality just was not present. I do not mean this to offend but simply pointing out the differences in background that may contribute to the prestige line of thinking with regard to colleges, as it is not that different to the mentality with other prestige name brands in certain kids’ lives.</p>