<p>Since there is no universally accepted definition of excellence in higher education, a blanket statement that the Ivies are excellent or mediocre is too vague to be argued intelligently. Three measures I would use to define excellence (adjusting for measures of incoming student quality) would be
(1) student performance on the GRE (general and subject), MCAT, LSAT, and Collegiate Learning Assessment
(2) student success at getting into graduate and professional school and doing well there
(3) alumni earnings
Other people think that racial, socioeconomic, and geographical diversity are important. The leading universities act as if research output is most important, since they hire professors primarily on this basis.</p>
<p>If you adjust Harvard’s student outcomes not only for the credentials of its incoming students but on how much it spends (and how much it is subsidized by tax breaks for donations and untaxed gains on a $30 billion endowment), you might conclude that it is an underperforming institution.</p>
<p>^I agree with #1 and #2. But wouldn’t #3, earnings, be closely related to the fields in which the preponderance of graduates from any one school got their jobs? In other words, an institution that sends more grads straight to Wall Street is going to look better in this measure than one that has a great track record getting its students into philosophy PhD programs.</p>
<p>As far as I know, only the U.S. doesn’t follow the rest of the world’s practice in defining academic excellence. Even multi-cultural nations like the UK admit on the basis of A-Levels.</p>
<p>May I add a different train of thought to the conversation?</p>
<p>There has been some discussion on CC about the value of uncommon EC’s (well, yes, partly that’s been me . . . but still).</p>
<p>Over on the thread titled "As Rejections keep rolling in . . . " AlwaysNAdventure has posted some comments (#253 on that thread, comment posted last Friday), including:
AlwaysNAdventure suggests that a “tightrope walker” who plays an unusual instrument has a better chance, given “similar grades and scores.”</p>
<p>(I would like to emphasize that I am not making a veiled anti-AA comment, although AlwaysNAdventure mentioned playing an “unusual African musical instrument” specifically. For one thing, I strongly support AA as a matter of social justice. For a second, AlwaysNAdventure attributes to the same hypothetical tightrope-walking applicant having been educated by Tibetan monks, having lived in the Yukon, and having finished high school while working with “ranching cousins” in Wyoming–so that’s covering a lot of territory.)</p>
<p>So, I’d like to post some thoughts about the choice of piano or violin–which do seem to me to be fairly common instruments played by applicants to “top” schools.</p>
<p>"Yes, there are a few posters that denigrate the top schools, but most often they are ornery kids, trolls, or crackpots, and they are typically immediately descended on by hordes of posters with the opposite opinion ready to show them the error of their ways. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most prolific anti-Ivy zealot, annasdad, is probably one of the most reviled posters on here. Every time he posts his Deresiewicz esay (and he does that a lot) he is posted down probably 99 to 1."</p>
<p>Took the words out of my mouth! THAT’s who is doing Ivy bashing, coureur. Not those of us on this thread. You’ll never find me Ivy bashing. I will bash those who think that ONLY the Ivies are the key to success, and I will bash people who argue over the superiority of schools ranked two points apart on USNWR, but I will not (and could not!) bash the Ivies. </p>
<p>Bashing Ivy obsession is not bashing Ivies.</p>
<p>Beliavsky, I can’t possibly see using earnings as a measure of excellence. Such an approach “rewards” finance jobs, engineering jobs, and “punishes” schools with major arts programs. The quality of Harvard’s education is the same whether all its grads go to Wall Street or if, tomorrow, Harvard announced it was no longer allowing those employers on campus. </p>
<p>Our hypothetical Harvard economics grad is not one whit less successful in life if he decides to become a minister or start a non profit versus going to Goldman Sachs. And at my own school, my NU theater major friend who designs costumes for Broadway shows is not one whit leas successful than I am with my business career. I find it troubling that you think money is a barometer of success. It’s shallow. If education prepares you for what YOU want to do, that’s what counts. It doesn’t matter if that thing is lucrative or not.</p>
<p>I think that there is a lot to be said for learning to play the violin or piano very well when young. (For the moment, I am focusing only on the benefits of these instruments, and not contrasting them with any instruments that might be regarded as less “common.”)</p>
<p>For one thing, it requires a lot of focus and hard work. Our local high school has a very strong orchestra program–the type where those who are first-chair typically practice their instruments for 4 hours a day on average, and go to summer music camps or intensive summer music programs that require an excellent audition (or maybe programs that are purely “by invitation”). Even the “typical” orchestra member spends at least as much time practicing as the typical varsity athlete–speaking of our local school only and acknowledging that it could be different elsewhere. But it’s probably the same at the “city IB high school.”</p>
<p>Second, performing with an orchestra requires interacting and cooperating with a group. It connects the young musician with his/her community, and often leads to many volunteer opportunities, playing in nursing homes or for elementary school children, or for non-profit groups. Also, I don’t know exactly what leadership the concert-master has to show, but I think that is a position of leadership?</p>
<p>Third, playing violin or piano connects a person not only with his/her community, but with a wide range of people from other countries. Music has power to communicate, and I suspect that learning to play the work of a composer from another country–with the expression that was intended by the composer–will give a person a visceral experience of one part of the other country’s culture.</p>
<p>In addition to that, playing the violin or piano connects the musician with others across time. To me, this is important. The connection is aided by a huge library of compositions for these instruments.</p>
<p>Playing the violin or piano has carry-forward value that playing football does not have for any but the most exceptionally talented athletes–and it has carry-forward value that extends beyond one’s late 30’s or 40’s, when most football players must retire from the sport.</p>
<p>"However, from what I’ve heard from those who hire at such companies or those who work there…if all else is equal…the ones from UIUC, UW-Seattle, and UMich are the ones most likely to cinch that engineering/CS job over the engineering/CS grad from most of the Ivies. "</p>
<p>Can I request that we all only talk about our OWN experiences as hiring managers in our own fields / industries rather than pretend we know how it works in other fields through brief discussions with friends at conferences? Thanks.</p>
<p>Playing the piano has one additional benefit for the parents–namely that the tones are generally reproducible, and the parent does not have to listen to the kind of “screeching” that may accompany learning to play the violin (although perhaps very talented violinists never screech). Petey Otterloop in Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac comic makes a lot of noises with his woodwind that are rendered as “Heenk. Heenk. Heeeenk.”</p>
<p>QuantMech, no one seems to be biting on your violin/piano digression. Maybe start a new thread? I think it is interesting but am afraid it will get lost here.</p>
<p>So, my question is: Do you think it is “better” to play the tuba than the violin? It is pretty likely to be less common among HYPSM applicants. (For that matter, it’s less common within an orchestra, just on a numerical basis.)</p>
<p>Richard Feynman became interested in Tuva, one of the republics of the former USSR, a few years before his death. He wrote about Tuvan “throat singing,” in which the vocalist is able to produce two distinct pitches at once (with quite some training, obviously).</p>
<p>Would it be better to adopt Tuvan throat-singing as an EC? Or if there is a Tuvan instrument that is a cross between the French horn and the piccolo, would it be well worthwhile to learn to play that?</p>
<p>It’s early Sunday morning, sally305–I’d like to give it a little time. Actually, I think the topic of common vs. uncommon EC’s is fairly closely related to issues raised by the OP, via the column in the WSJ by Weiss (at least, closer to the OP’s issues than many of my posts are–with apologies for that).</p>
<p>If Weiss had only written about the advantages of uncommon EC’s that did not have any specific cultural link, she could have made her point better, in my opinion. </p>
<p>Violin and piano are just two illustrations of relatively common EC’s. I’m happy to include others.</p>
<p>“My point is that “Elite [why the cap?] school lovers” do not live in a vacuum. They are perfectly well aware that there “are actually intelligent, well educated, incredibly successful people” who did not attend a top 20 college. It would be hard to live anywhere in the US and not realize that.”</p>
<p>Tell that to the kids who come on here year after year desperate because their parents insist they get into an Ivy, and anything else is shameful failure. These are good kids. They work hard, they try their best, anyone would be proud to have them as kids, but their hearts and spirits are broken. (For bonus points, they’re required to follow certain careers. I saw two " help me tell my parents I don’t want to be a doctor" threads open up on the same day a few days ago.)</p>
<p>Or, consider an eighth-grader who has a good chance of becoming a first-chair violinist in his city IB school’s orchestra. Would the student be better advised to switch to playing the bass?</p>
<p>QM, the whole EC issue can be summed up in one word: SINCERITY. The underlying theme of Suzy’s article is exactly that (whether you believe she is honest or not)–she wanted to be herself and do things she wanted to do because she was told that would be “good enough” to get her into top schools, and instead she is now wishing she played the euphonium or spoke Sanskrit or some other such attention-getting EC, since she believes kids with more original hooks are the ones that took her place.</p>
<p>Hi, Pizzagirl, re #855: Where I am going is this: It seems to me that if one strips away the anti-AA commentary and the remarks about founding “fake” charities from Weiss’s column in the WSJ, what is left is the idea that being uncommon in some way, or doing uncommon things is an advantage in college admissions.</p>
<p>A student cannot change his/her background, but does have choices of EC’s. Now, clearly it would be just plain stupid to orient one’s pre-college life around college admissions.</p>
<p>Yet I think there is an issue about choosing an EC that is relatively common among academic high-achievers–e.g, playing the violin and risking becoming just another of the “500 asian [sic] boys who play first violin,” in the words of AlwaysNAdventure. Perhaps at some point after the disadvantages of playing the violin have grown very apparent, choosing to play the violin will appear to be an act of wild rebellion.</p>
<p>Incidentally, re #857, to borrow a trope from Charles Schultz: The Mechs cultivate the most sincere rutabaga patch in the county.</p>
<p>How sincerely should a student want to play the violin instead of something else, in order to compensate for the stigma that is [apparently, to AlwaysNAdventure, at least] associated with violin playing?</p>
<p>if a student, after becoming interested in the Vedas, spends high school studying Sanskit and intends to continue and expand that study in college - I am going to support that student being admitted to the university with the best Sanskrit department, over many other applicants. This would be an admit based on academic interests, imho, not ECs. I am not sure if we can define Sanskit as an EC?</p>
<p>The euponium I can see as academic or EC depending on what the student is intending to study in college.</p>