<p>Just to be accurate: the BIG break was not a college-related lead but a lead I earned on my own. I would not have pulled of the charity event without ABILITY nor would I have lasted in the demanding big-break job without ABILITY.</p>
<p>But… I was introduced to mogul’s wife and her specific charity (one of the beneficiaries of my event) through another friend from Brown.</p>
<p>Just wanted to chime in for a second.</p>
<p>I went to a top 25 school (guess which one.) But outside of an arguably unhealthy amount of school pride, I don’t really think I’m necessarily “smarter” or “better” for my degree. I saw it as a great opportunity to tap into a wealth of resources and develop myself. But I’m not going to go to someone at, oh say UCI, and tell them that they’re inferior to me because they’re not at a “top 25.” I’m just going to be glad for my blessings (along with Alumother).</p>
<p>“Yes, students at Harvard are passionate and energetic. However, no need then to disparage kids who graduate from Wisconsin and Illinois or Bard or Hobart as somehow lazy slugs who are too busy getting wasted to write for their school paper unless they’re getting credit for it or are journalism majors.”</p>
<p>Since I’m the one who’s mainly been talking about journalism and who also went to Harvard, I assume this is aimed at me. </p>
<p>For the record: I not only spent 6 years as an advisor to a school newspaper at a 2/3 tier school, I also consulted with about 20 student newspapers at 2nd and 3rd tier colleges. In addition, when I worked for a Fortune 500 company, I recruited newspaper interns from places like Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and personally visited those campuses. My older son also was a journalism student at a big ten, and worked on the student newspaper there, which I visited. </p>
<p>Overall, students at Ivies and highly competitive colleges tend to spend a lot of time with their ECs and to be very passionate about them. Why? That’s a major part of the selection criteria. The colleges are flooded with applications from top students, and therefore have the luxury of being able to select from that outstanding pool, the students who also show a lot of passion and self direction in pursuing their academic and EC interests.</p>
<p>State universities tend to be far more numbers driven. This also helps them keep their constituents happy because the selection system is clearer and seems fairer than one that is very subjective such as when passion is a criteria of admission.</p>
<p>Consequently, however, while of course there will be some students on their campuses who show passion, that’s not going to be the norm. Instead, students will be more likely to work for the grade. Of course, with colleges as huge as Wisconsin, there definitely will be some students who are passionate about working for their newspaper, which is excellent. </p>
<p>The following is based on a very small sample, so is only a hypothesis. When I visted my son’s college newspaper (a 2nd tier public), I saw a lot of students working hard there who were certainly as hard working and passionate as were the students at the Harvard Crimson. The paper also was excellent. </p>
<p>The difference, however, was that the students were not graduating on time. Indeed, some students told me that they were deliberately stretching out their time because the only thing they liked about college was working on the newspaper. My son ended up flunking out after freshman year. He did an outstanding job on the student newspaper, working 30 or more hours a week there. He did nothing in class. </p>
<p>This isn’t likely to happen at a place like the Ivies because they choose students who have high gpas (and h.s. gpa is the best predictor of college gpa), high SATs and have the passion. Those are students who can work hard on ECs and still get high grades. I also doubt that it would happen at the top public universities because their large groups of top students, too, have a track record of balancing ECs and and academics. </p>
<p>S’s gpa was mediocre – about a 2.9 unweighted, SATs were high – 1410, ECs extraordinary and he had no chance of getting into an Ivy because they rightly would view him as someone who’d do great with ECs, badly in academics. He did get into, however, 2 top 30 publics and one top 25 private. The university that he flunked out of was a second tier where he was an automatic admit because of the combination of his gpa and test scores.</p>
<p>sallyawp and others, this “viewpoint” poster is simply a ■■■■■. As wikpedia says
This person writes one or ridiculous 2 sentences and must be chortling as people waste time writing paragraphs in return. </p>
<p>Just don’t feed the ■■■■■</p>
<p>Here’s the gist of this discussion:</p>
<p>"The point is that elite college kids are special. They are bright, motivated and compassionate. Being with a whole bunch of these kids is liberating and intellectually stimulating.'</p>
<p>Can’t non-elite colleges have special kids, too?</p>
<p>“Yes, but not as many. The real point is that non-elite colleges have to focus on teaching to the lowest common denominator.”</p>
<p>Do elite college professors focus on teaching? I thought their abilities were primarily as researchers and thinkers.</p>
<p>“Most professors are known for their research and thinking but they teach well, too. At least some do, but many don’t. The real point is that elite college students are self-motivated and spur each other to accomplish great things.”</p>
<p>Can’t non-elite colleges have special kids who spur each other to accomplish great things, too?</p>
<p>“Yes, but not often because they have to struggle for attention.”</p>
<p>Even if it’s true that non-elite colleges are like that, can it be a good thing to struggle for attention?</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<hr>
<p>I think this is the bottom line. If you subscribe to the theory that non-elite colleges are jungles where students must have a “survival of the fittest” mentality, do you think that’s a good thing? Or is it better to attend a college that offers education as if it were a sumptuous “all-you-can-eat” buffet? I don’t know the answer to those questions. I suspect there is merit to both concepts. (Thankfully we live in a country that offers many options.)</p>
<p>Overall, though, we aren’t getting anywhere in this discussion because it repeatedly relies on circular, anecdotal proof. While it may be true that Harvard is a great college, “I went to Harvard and all the students were terrific” is not proof that Harvard is a great college. </p>
<p>The sad thing to me is that I entered this conversation believing that elite colleges do have something special. Since the 1960’s, they’ve done their best to dilute the quality of an elite education but historically Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc., have produced fine graduates. I want to believe there are colleges in America that offer the best of the best. I’m not going to change my opinion because of an anonymous internet chat site, but this discussion has given me pause.</p>
<p>[Northstarmom writes: When I taught at the second/third tier, I found that I had to assign work that was mainly to make sure that students read their textbooks. Otherwise, unless I directly taught the material in class, the students would not know it. Many students wouldn’t even read the syllabus and then would be surprised at how their grades were calculated. One prof whom I knew solved that problem by giving a test on the syllabus.
[/quote]
At the 2nd and 3rd tier schools, far too many students are unprepared for college work and need this kind of basic guidance. There was a PBS show a while back called “Declining By Degrees” that addressed what happens to kids at large publics; one they focused on was U of Arizona. While the story found a success story at the school, it also showed that for many kids their college experience was FAR less than it should be. </p>
<p>You can read the transcript of the show at <a href=“http://www.pbs.org/merrow/tv/transcripts/[/url]”>http://www.pbs.org/merrow/tv/transcripts/</a> on the link labeled with the show name</p>
<p>To me the gist is the question: is there a “club” aspect to the elites which can provide lifelong connections which are enjoyable and beneficial to elite graduates? Based on this thread alone, the answer is definitely yes. Outside of that, if a person wants to be an educated human being and to succeed in life in a variety of ways, that can be accomplished by graduating from other places.</p>
<p>
The dictionary?</p>
<p>DRJ4,</p>
<p>Wow, you’re about as fun as a dead bunny. :(</p>
<p>
I hate to think that’s all there is but you may be right.</p>
<p>Whatever.</p>
<p>And no, I didn’t learn that at Princeton.</p>
<p>DRJ4, </p>
<p>You seem to ignore my discussion of the specific benefits of Brown’s open curriculum. While not all elites have this curriculum, Brown does. All the other schools I am aware of with an open curriculum are fairly elite as well. Can you recognize how that educational system can confer a unique lifetime advantage?</p>
<p>No denying there is a club aspect, but if you sit on your hands and expect the club to kick in you’ll wait a long time. The club aspect only works for those who work it, and it only gets you in the door. The required initiative to knock on doors and the ability to suceed once in the door are surely more important in the long run.</p>
<p>SBmom,</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about Brown, for or against. For that matter, I’m not for or against elite colleges. The point was to explore the value of an elite education, and my comments are intended to further that exploration.</p>
<p>As to the club aspect, I’m not the person calling this a club. You need to talk to Hereshoping.</p>
<p>SB, Alum, et al-- I went to Brown. It was a wonderful experience. I am glad I went. I met great people and learned from professors who loved to teach and who clearly had made it their life’s calling to communicate their passion for their discipline to their undergraduate students. I was fortunate in that the god’s of financial aid smiled down on me; otherwise I’d have gone someplace close to home and I’m sure would have worked hard and met inspiring people as well.</p>
<p>I went to a top 5 professional school, also an Ivy. It was a tolerable experience-- the students were highly competitive, the professors were professional but not all that “into” teaching, etc. For the life of me I can’t understand why people kill themselves to get there… it had none of the intellectualism of Brown, people were there to “get their ticket punched”.</p>
<p>The “lifelong” advantage for me clearly came from the professional school. It has determined where I started in my career, both in terms of the inherent interest of the job as well as the $, it has assured me a wide range of contacts in several cities around the country, wherever life has taken me, and has meant that I’ve never been unemployed. People always assume I am smarter than I am when they find out where I went to grad school.</p>
<p>Could I have had as wonderful an experience as an undergrad someplace that wasn’t Brown? I think so. I’m not objecting to y’all’s claim that you loved college… so did I. It’s your somewhat parochial view that this experience is unique to the “club” that I find so funny.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the advantages I’ve gotten from grad school-- social, financial, intellectual, etc. are somewhat unique to a top rated school. I know many people who do what I do, and without the benefit of the “piece of paper” have had a handicap which is significant in the corporate world. My “dues paying years” were short compared to other, equally hard-working colleagues, and I started doing interesting work long before other people had emerged from some training program or other.</p>
<p>So-- when people in my town call me to ask if they should risk their retirement to send their kid to Brown, when they’ve got a fantastic package from Emory or UNC or RPI I tell them honestly, “Your kid will get a wonderful education at any of these places.” What they really want to know is, “will my kids be members of a club which I can’t join if they don’t go to an Ivy league school” which I don’t answer, because of course… that depends. Lots of kids go to places like Brown and Harvard and take advantage of every single opportunity that comes their way… and lots of kids go back to the dorm after class and order up a Domino’s and a keg and watch “General Hospital” in which case… don’t liquidate your IRA for that-- just being on the campus doesn’t get you into the club.</p>
<p>And like Northstarmom I’ve hired journalists and there are smart, savvy, ambitious kids who major in Political science or journalism or mass communications or anthropology all over the country, many of whom go on to become fine writers for top papers. Not every Pulitzer goes to a Harvard grad.</p>
<p>Princeton doesn’t have an open curriculum. But what it had in the late 70’s was a newly forming department of Comparative Literature. Several senior profs from other literature and languages departments, along with a couple of new Ph.D.s from Yale and Columbia, headed it up. I was a junior in the department in its second year of existence.</p>
<p>My personal educational experience that I doubt would be duplicated many other places was this. First, a course in literary criticism taught by one of the new Ph.Ds. I remember sitting in my dorm room reading over my notes and suddenly realizing that all literary criticism approaches could be analyzed for their structure rather than their content. It was also the era of Structuralism. It was the first time I truly felt the power of analytical thought. It’s very hard to communicate, and I know that in telling this story I am opening myself up to ridicule. But the fact was that when Princeton decided to start a Comp Lit department, they could attract the best Ph.Ds in the country. And those young professors were willing to treat naive little girls and boys as though the output of our brains mattered. The course had maybe 9 people in it. The professor is now the Chair of Princeton’s department.</p>
<p>The other experience I had was with the other new Ph.D. Who is now the Chair of Yale’s Comp Lit department. I was writing my junior paper on early French Nativity poems. Well, turns out those early French types knew a lot of Latin and Greek. My Latin was beginner and my Greek non-existent. So my professor would point me to texts and translations I never would have found myself. And those texts allowed me to analyze these fairly short poems in incredible detail, and to examine the Nativity as a metaphor for the creativity of the artist. Which, in those days, the intellectuals were just beginning to appreciate.</p>
<p>OK. So big deal. Who knows if that helped me to become a VP at a startup? Does it matter? Not to me. And maybe I am wrong about the uniqueness of my experience. Maybe as many kids at lower-ranked schools have intellectual epiphanies as do at Princeton. Maybe so. Who am I to assume that my experience was directly correlated to the fact that top Ph.Ds from other top universities were dying to work at Princeton?</p>
<p>But just don’t try to tell me that what happened when I was 20 didn’t happen. Because it did.</p>
<p>Me a ■■■■■. Well maybe. This is the dumbest thread ever on CC.</p>
<p>One more thought.</p>
<p>I, like SBMom, was a nerd girl. Actually, I was a word nerd girl. Not on the outside maybe - in those days long blonde hair barred the door to the nerd club - but in my heart. Maybe Blossom, maybe you weren’t a nerd. But for the nerd, maybe especially the secret nerd, just to find some place where the way I spoke didn’t make people look at me funny, where I could raise my hand to my heart’s content in class, where if I was jumping up and down in my excitement over a concept the professor would be just as enthusiastic as me, well, it felt like for the first time I found my real self. And when I went back to my 25th Reunion, although culturally I am much more liberal and hippie-like than most of my classmates from those days, just to be again amongst all those people who could talk, it was wonderful.</p>
<p>Alumother,</p>
<p>I think your statement is heartfelt and I’m glad you shared it. It speaks well of you, Princeton professors, and Princeton. Your statement is all the more powerful and reasonable because you recognize that other people may have had similar experiences elsewhere.</p>
<p>I can’t believe this self-congratulating nonsense continues on this thread.</p>
<p>Alright. You are all brilliant and so much more special than all the poor, dumb twerps at State U.</p>
<p>Happy now?</p>
<p>The great thing about this thread is we have a lot of intelligent people arguing the unprovable.</p>
<p>SBmom, I enjoyed reading your story. I usually like reading your posts and it is one reason I’m still on here.
It’s not like I need to be on here for my son. :)</p>
<p>Of course, I like reading Alumother’s, Northstarmom’s, and Blossom’s and my thinking is more similar to Blossom’s on this thread. (And I like the fact that she works in HR).</p>
<p>Now SBmom, come on. You wrote this.
Alu,</p>
<p>I agree… but on the connections side, I forgot to mention that virtually all my introductions went like this:</p>
<p>job in France = friend from RISD
apartment in France = friend from Harvard
French tutoring lead = boyfriend from Harvard
Shipping Lead = friend from Brown
Industrials Lead= friend from Brown
Charity event = gathered 10 friends from Brown to do it
When I was recruited away lead= friend from Harvard</p>
<p>Once I quit to write:
first helpful intoduction to agent = friend from Brown
my agent = Brown alum
my lawyer = Brown alum </p>
<p>SBmom, where do you think you are going to make connections? Do you really think you are going to make connections with Wisconsin people when you went to Brown?</p>
<p>Isn’t it easier to make make connections with people you know, or have similar backgrounds, rather than people you don’t know or have dissimilar backgrounds?</p>