<p>Oh, I never meant to suggest that Harvard is unique versus its peers. The reason I say “Harvard” and not “HYPS” or “elite schools” or whatever is because (1) I’m speaking from my own experience, and I don’t mean to imply that my experience is broader than it has been, and (2) no one is going to agree whether that group of schools includes three or ten or twenty schools.</p>
<p>Alumother,</p>
<p>I guess my comment is more that it gets back to what a “successful” life is. For some a more service oriented career is what defines success to them because it is their way of changing the world. Clearly many of us would think of people who changed our lives who were not necessarily rich and famous. Perhaps a favorite teacher, perhaps an inspirational coach, but not necessarily the richest person in town or the famous.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They absolutely are not evil and if I said anything that made you think that, let me set that straight now. I think the main issue at Princeton was that the Student’s Bill of Rights paralleled David Horowitz’ Academic Bill of Rights. At least for some students, it became a referendum on David Horowitz and FIRE.</p>
<p>The Princeton debate was also politicized because the Student’s Bill of Rights was promulgated by the campus Republicans and the campus Democrats opposed it. If you are a conservative, the surprising part is that the Republican group was able to garner 51% of the vote, but even the campus Republicans knew they didn’t have that kind of support. </p>
<p>I read elsewhere (and I’m sorry but I can’t remember where to find the link) that the referendum came up so quickly that many didn’t know exactly what they were voting on, so they read the referendum and voted yea or nay. I find that encouraging if true. When faced with a bland statement for or against student free speech, 51% were in favor. The bad news is that 49% were against.</p>
<p>Admittedly, I have not read every post on this thread, but in case it has not been mentioned, from what I understand, from what data exists, the greatest predictor of career success are the schools from which one has applied and been rejected, not the school one attends. Those rejected by top schools tend to be more successful than the ones who actually attend.</p>
<p>“…the researchers not only looked at the schools that students attended but also where they were accepted and rejected. They found that where a student applies is a more powerful predictor of future earnings success than where he or she attends.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/00/q1/0126-krueger.htm[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/00/q1/0126-krueger.htm</a></p>
<p>If anyone is interested in a discussion of some of the research on the effects of college on career or financial success, this speech by Andrew Abbott is a good read. Abbott is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago who studies the sociology of occupations, and has actually done research on these topics.</p>
<p><a href=“http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0310/features/zen.shtml[/url]”>http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0310/features/zen.shtml</a></p>
<p>TheGFG #254,</p>
<p>Your post was powerful and I’m glad you commented.</p>
<p>
17,000 college graduates applied to Teach for America in 2005:
<a href=“http://www.teachforamerica.org/documents/030105_Nat_SecondDeadline_000.pdf[/url]”>www.teachforamerica.org/documents/030105_Nat_SecondDeadline_000.pdf</a></p>
<p>Since there were more than 209,000 graduating seniors in 2005, some colleges do produce a disproportionate share of Teach for America applicants.</p>
<p>I don’t think all the advantages have to do with money or the “club” aspect, though some certainly do. I won’t deny that for a upper middle class Ca. girl, learning how to fend for myself alongside the ultra rich prep school kids with famous parents was sort of empowering. It was a very different culture and sort of exotic.</p>
<p>Back to the OP’s topic: many advantages will be specific to certain schools, regions, careers, fields. So different kinds of people will find different schools most advantageous.</p>
<p>I was turned off by what turned Hanna on for example. So I went to the place with much less money, less prestige, & more freedom. For me, the life-long advantages have been many. What it boils down to is that I was extremely happy in college (after being not very happy in high school.) The environment opened me up in dozens of ways and set me on my adult path.</p>
<p>Remember that the elite schools in most cases accept a whole lot of NERDS. I was a nerd. An 18 year old girl nerd-- long past ready for a social life, a peer group wherein I would be normal and <em>attractive to boys</em> instead of intellectually intimidating. I was also very ready to run my own show after fulfilling everyone else’s requirements for a long time. Finally, I was eager to be 3000 miles from my parents! </p>
<p>What Brown gave me was a place to be smack in the middle of the bell curve for the first time in my life. It took brains off the table, because everyone was very smart. I cannot overemphasize how important this was for me as being smart had often been a social barrier in high school. Maybe this is why “concentrated high intellect peer group” keeps coming up for ivy grads who post here-- because for many of us it felt SO good to finally HAVE a large peer group.</p>
<p>It gave me the open curriculum which in a nutshell allowed me to spend 4 years completely in love with what I was doing and excited about every class I took. This in turn set a rather high bar for how I would be satisfied to spend my time after college: I got used to being very happy and fulfilled, and something shy of that would never again cut it. </p>
<p>It gave me incredible friends (so did RISD, by the way.) </p>
<p>The ‘anything is possible’ spirit (yes, in part, the result of a high concentration of money-is-no-object people) was intoxicating. It was further amplified by the open curriculum that encouraged experimentation and following one’s intellectual bliss.</p>
<p>I would say the door-opening power of the degree is significant-- but the way of approaching decisions and the style and habit of deep engagement that I developed at Brown was much, much more significant. Maybe I would have developed this somewhere else but it would have to have been a place that was very similar.</p>
<p>idad,</p>
<p>Yes, I love that article! At the end of the article/speech he ends with:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which I interpret it as:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Though I can not explain why I interpret it that way.</p>
<p>Re: post #254.</p>
<p>One must be careful of creating self-fullfilling prophecies. We have friends whose child is now attending Yale. The student came from modest means, worked, did not take Calculus until junior or senior year, did attend local summer programs at a major university near where they live, but applied for and received full scholarships to attend. Yale was actually the second choice, but the first choice school (an elite school not in the Ivy League) offered over $10,000 less per year than did Yale. One should not base everything on what the conventional wisdom is.</p>
<p>
The thread has gotten alarmingly long, but before my post in this thread I <em>did</em> read every post, so the Krueger study has been brought up a few times.</p>
<p>I know you’re just quoting the Princeton U press release, but its an even worse summary of what his research actually showed than most. In fact what Krueger aimed to do is study sets of students who were accepted/rejected to a mix of the same schools and attempted to determine how much effect attending the more elite school had in terms of lifetime income. </p>
<p>Sounds like a detailed and conclusive study, but there are serious problems with his methodology. For starters he defined more elite as the school with a higher avg SAT of enrolled students, which is a dubious definition. And to further simplify matters because he didn’t have enough sets of students who were accepted/rejected to the same schools for valid regression results, he then further grouped the schools into just a few buckets. And in fact if you look at the draft of his paper on his website you’ll find that another measure of eliteness (Barron’s rankings) that there WAS a significant effect due to the school; somehow this got dropped from the final paper.</p>
<p>See my post #221 in this thread for a further discussion and a link to a description I put together in Feb of what his study actually did and shows.</p>
<p>2cents,</p>
<p>Teach for America is one of many service oriented endeavors that a student may choose. It looks like the schools you named were places they found many of their applicants.</p>
<p>However, service is not limited to Teach for America. It would include the Peace Corp, City Year, some would argue teaching and nursing as a careers are purely service oriented. Those at Catholic schools often choose the Jesuit Volunteer corp (some call it the catholic peace corp).</p>
<p>I would also look at the service oriented learning programs available at many schools.</p>
<p>I would said that Service is the meta container for Teach for America but I don’t want eng_dude sniffing anymore meta-crap. ;-)</p>
<p>idad, thanks for the link from the Chicago professor. I really like what he said; although, after reading it, I do wonder why Chicago doesn’t have an open curriculum like Brown.</p>
<p>Alumother, you are not damned if you do or damned if you don’t.
I’m sorry if my use of your daughter in one of the examples bothered you.</p>
<p>dstark: I think that is answered in this:</p>
<p><a href=“http://iotu.uchicago.edu/levine.html[/url]”>http://iotu.uchicago.edu/levine.html</a></p>
<p>idad, my S still applied to Yale EA anyway…was deferred and then rejected–a fact which may or may not have had anything to do with what I posted above. We did think Yale was wonderful in a lot of ways. My point was that their rather elitist presentation could easily produce self-doubt in students from more humble backgrounds.</p>
<p>I concur with the comments about Darmouth seeming more egalitarian. In our opinion, Dartmouth did not exude the same privileged vibe, though of course many of their students will hail from the same backgrounds as Yalies.</p>
<p>idad, it is amazing that a school that was accused of peddling Communism in the thirties gave us Milton Friedman.</p>
<p>What schools weren’t accused of Communism in the thirties? ;)</p>
<p>idad, thanks for the link to the speech by the U Chi professor. I printed out the conclusion to give to my college-bound son. (I’m sure he’s dying for more Good Advice From Your Mother).</p>
<p>There may not be any women presidents (from elite schools or anywhere else), but Princeton produced a queen and Cornell produced Ruth Bader Ginsberg. And didn’t Sandra Day O’Connor go to Stanford? Or was that “just” law school?</p>
<p>They’re all stil peddling communism if one listens to talk radio. </p>
<p>TheGFG: I guess my point was, and your S’s application kind of substantiated it, was not to let a pompous admin official deter one from applying, lightning can strike (even if it is likely it won’t).</p>
<p>redshoes: We won’t have to wait long for a woman president, Hillary went to Wellesley (and Yale law).</p>
<p>Sandra Day O’Connor did both undergrad and law school at Stanford.</p>
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<br>
<p>Nope, she’s a Stanford undergrad, too. Harvard produced one female head of state (Benazir Bhutto), its grad schools at least three more (Mary Robinson of Ireland, law; Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, public health; and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Kennedy school; Portia Simpson Miller of Jamaica received a certificate, not a degree, for completing an executive program for leaders in development).</p>