What are the Lifetime Advantages of Attending Top Colleges

Parents Forum
541

<p>

A rhetorical question I’m sure, but my answer would be “it depends on WHO these other students are”. The effects of peer pressure are well known. If the other kids are accepting of that strange kid or two raising their hand, providing answers when the prof asks questions rather than sitting in mute silence, then sure. </p>

<p>But lets not kid ourselves. Anti-intellectualism runs deep on many campuses, even at some those of the so-called “elite”. Few kids are going to be able to stand up to being ostracized or worse by all the kids around them; they quickly get the message to conform or else. If the meaning of “can’t you really learn” includes passionate debates & discussions with fellow students, it really isn’t possible in many college environments.</p>

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<p>MikeMac says: “If the other kids are accepting of that strange kid or two raising their hand, providing answers when the prof asks questions rather than sitting in mute silence, then sure.”</p>

<p>After graduating from MIT in '75, I went back to school to UMass Lowell (third tier) for an M.Ed. degree in 1991. One of the courses I had to take was a sophomore-level course in Human Anatomy and Physiology (for biology certification), which was also required of the nursing students. So, with my biochem degree and 37-years-old, I found myself in a class of 19-21 year olds with far less education than I had. The first class I was alone in the front row of the lecture room, making it easy for me to ask questions when I became confused. The professor clearly was not used to being interrupted (even though there were only 32 of us), but I was persistent (and paying my own tuition too). The next day, one of the young women came and sat next to me, saying “I’m so glad you asked those questions yesterday, I was so confused.” She asked a question that day. By the end of the first week of two-hours-a-day lectures, the students had all moved to the front rows, and demanded explanations when confused. At the end of the course, the professor congratulated the students on having the highest average test scores he’d ever had (yes, he used the same multiple choice tests in each session). He added that he would encourage his students to ask more questions in the future, something he had worried would slow down the class.</p>

<p>Peers matter. Professors matter.</p>

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<p>On my first day of class at an elite university written across the bottom of the syllabus all in caps, was this pronouncement. </p>

<p>QUESTIONS IN CLASS ARE NOT APPRECIATED. IF YOU FEEL A QUESTION IS NECESSARY, PERHAPS YOU DO NOT BELONG IN THIS COURSE.</p>

<p>After about the the third class meeting the prof looked around the room and saw that we now had a much smaller class. He smiled and said, he lied, he like questions, he just wanted to get rid of the feint-of-heart! It is true, professors do matter.</p>

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<p>One of my close friends attends Rutgers (non-honors program). She is an extremely intelligent person who, although she was fairly succesfull in high school, did not work up to her full potential. A year later, she is a completely different student. Inspired by professors she loves and a chosen major that fascinates her (astrophysics, of all things), she is excelling academically and has found a great group of friends who are also passionate about their academics. While her grades would doubtless allow her to transfer to a more “elite” school, she loves Rutgers and has absolutely no desire to do so.</p>

<p>However, from what she has told me about her experiences, I still feel that my experience at Princeton has additional benefits:</p>

<p>1) Smaller class sizes. As much as she likes her professors, only one or two of them know her name. Onjly one or two of mine don’t know mine. In big lectures, you just don’t get the same opportunity for personalized attention. We also haave many more recitations led by professors than they do.</p>

<p>2)More manageable bureaurcracy. Even with her great academic record, my friend has to worry about not being able to graduate on time becauase of getting closed out of some classes. That just wouldn’t be a concern for us - your advisors and the administration would work with you to make sure you got to do what you needed to get done.</p>

<p>3) Higher expectations. No matter how good the professor, to some extent the material they teach is tailored to the level of the class. Just as it did in honors vs. regular classes in high school, that might mean leaving off some of the books or the most difficult problems, or not getting as many concepts in one class.</p>

<p>4) More motivated classmates. My friend did not take math in her senior year of high school, so she only got to Calc I second semester. A good portion of the class was composed of people who had failed it first semester. Even if your friends are great students, less elite schools are going to have less uniformly motivated students. </p>

<p>To use another personal example, take my own family. My parents both both went to Rutgers, and both loved it. They have a terrific marriage based on common values and genuine love and respect. However, my father (who, as far as I’m concerned, is smarter than I am) would readily admit that he would rather be my classmate than hers, which does not offend her in the slightest. She just isn’t as interested in academics - she was a dilligent student, but not a passionate one. It is just better to be in a class with more people who share your interests - and college is primaraily intended as an academic experience. This is more likely at an elite school, which attracts top students.</p>

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<p>Actually, Ivies are not all made alike. Although every Ivy screens for high stats, etc., each Ivy has its distinct culture.</p>

<p>For example, Princeton and Dartmouth are known for their strong communities and alumni networks. P & D grads benefit greatly for having attended their alma maters. If I were to attend an Ivy again, I would apply to P & D.</p>

<p>Columbia and Penn are known for lack of community. Thus, there’s little benefit from attending these schools. I’ve read on the Columbia board that the undergrads socialize in small cliques with little school sprit; that Columbia alumni don’t care to help one another at all. I also have poor impression of Yale, having seen too many Yale grads languishing at one minimum wage job after another.</p>

<p>So choose your college carefully. Some Ivies have generally happy grads who donate in large numbers. (P & D) Some Ivies have grads bashing their own schools.</p>

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<p>Soozievt:</p>

<p>

I think something of the opposite can also be just as beneficial. People have different ways of doing things. If everyone is basically of the same culture (or aspire to the same), the same economic station in life, maybe they won’t be exposed to the world outside of a certain fairly narrow way of doing things.</p>

<p>Sure there is diversity at Princeton and Harvard and Yale and whatever. But how real is it? How deep is it? Is it so deep that you might easily find many at these schools who have gone out, worked all day to catch a bunch of catfish, and brought them home, cleaned them, deep fried them and then sat out back in the dusk to eat their catch, laughing and drinking far into the pitch of night? Probably very few have. In fact, many of them would perhaps even ridicule the provincial nature of the experience. Yet, it is an experience that a good portion of America has enjoyed at least once.</p>

<p>I think a Northerner at Mississippi State is likely to acquire something very important from his college that will simply not be offered at Princeton and that will make him a better person (Miss State probably lacks diversity just as much as any other school too). I think it all has to do with what you are valuing at the time of attendance. Will the best mathematicians or physicists be at Ol’ Miss? Probably not. You need to go Princeton. But what if you value the study of the American South? I have my problems with the South, to be sure. To this day, I encourage my kids never to even think of going to school, let alone live, anywhere south of the Mason Dixon. But I am a little torn because I once enjoyed the above fishing expedition after having accidentally fallen in with, of all things, a few pretty cool southern “rednecks”. And ever since then, I haven’t really been able to think the same about these folks.</p>

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<p>Drosselmeier, aren’t you being the least bit harsh about the South? Your kids can’t live south of the Mason Dixon line? I’m a transplanted New Yorker and I thought I was bad, but you’re 10 times worse! Not even Atlanta or Charlotte? Come on!</p>

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<p>From what I hear many of the kids attending the southern schools are from the north…my son will be attending Wake Forest…not an ivy, but certainly a competitive school. He wants to be on the cycling team and it is difficult to ride up north in the cold. He is pursuing his passions. He wants a challenging academic environment and wants to be able to ride year round. I want him to enjoy his life and be happy. Life is a short ride; no matter where you go to school…enjoy the experience…college is certainly one of the best!</p>

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<p>Viewpoint: learning about Columbia from the Columbia board can mean learning from one persistent student who transfered from there and has an axe to grind.</p>

<p>My S has thoroughly enjoyed the level of discourse in his Core classes, his other classes and among his friends. In fact, the core leads to an almost ineveitable intellectual give and take, since every freshman in Columbia College is reading the same works for two semesters of Lit Hum, and every soph is doing the same for two semesters of Contemporary Civ. All four semesters are based on the study of ideas. Columbia woudl be a place which is a posterboy for shared academic experience.</p>

<p>Please don’t post based on such flimsy sources of evidence.</p>

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<p>viewpoint, what ivy did you attend?</p>

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<p>Drossel…</p>

<p>My kids WANTED diversity in their colleges. So, I don’t know if you understood their situation. Where we live, everyone is white. There is socio economic diversity. My kids friends at home are all very different and hardly any are going to very selective colleges and my kids went to a rural public school where they mixed with kids who are different, except racially. </p>

<p>At college, they chose schools that have much more diversity…kids from all over the country and all over the world. The student bodies at Brown and at NYU are nothing like here at UVM for instance. Part of my kids’ education is the diverse kids they are getting to know. They have Black friends, Hispanic friends, friends in wheelchairs, Asian friends, Indian friends and kids from around the country and world…nothing at all like the make up at home. As well, my kids grew up in a town of 1700. We live on a dirt road. We cannot walk to anything. We don’t even have a traffic light in our town. No fast food. No movies. My kids wanted a contrasting environment and are in cities now, one even in Manhattan where her dorm is almost the size of our town’s population! She is meeting a MUCH MUCH wider range of people than she did here. My D at Brown has met a very diverse group of kids. </p>

<p>When I said that my D who is a Tisch Scholar made a comment once she got to know the other 15 freshmen Scholars on a trip that they were “just like me”…she didn’t mean they were all alike at ALL. In fact, their backgrounds are INCREDIBLY different, as are other things like race and major. She meant that their “nature” was like her. She had met kids who think at a certain level, who create, who intiate, who are driven, who are extremely talented…I cant put it into words…you’d have to know her…she was not typical at our high school. She meant she found others who shared something with her, even though they were all different. And by the way, I’m talking of a group of 15 people out of thousands. It is not like she goes to school wtih just these students. But like anyone, she enjoys finding people with common interests. She belongs to different “groupings” of kids. She love her a capella group friends for one reason. The kids in her major for another. Her home friends for another. Same with my other D…loves her ski team pals and her soccer team pals but they differ from her pals in her RISD class, etc. Everyone enjoys finding people who have a commonality. In the case of Tisch Scholars, they were all leaders, creative types, innovators, movers, shakers…they were chosen for this reason…and she had finally found some kids who had a kinship to her in this one aspect of her life. These are not her best or only friends at school. Far from it. I was commenting how my D perceived them and how they were very different than who she went to school with at home, or even right at Tisch itself. She has met all types at college. If anything, the more selective schools have a wide range of diversity because they strive to have diverse student bodies, way more so than our state U does. One reason my kids were not keen on UVM was because it was being with a lot of VT kids like they were when they grew up. They wanted to meet a wider range of backgrounds, people from around the world, different races, etc. So, no, I don’t see elite schools as being with one “type”. If anything, they are with more types now. They are with some really motivated students and that is one commonality. Our public high school was more diverse in terms of academic ranges.</p>

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<p>Northstarmom, It is amazing to me that you have worked as a corporate journalism recruiter and yet your experience is the polar opposite of mine. I have worked on the editorial staffs of top national magazines in NYC since 1980, and many MANY of my colleagues have come from Ivies and other elite schools --along with State U’s and everything in between. I am shocked to hear you say that Ivy students do not want to be journalists or magazine and newspaper writers, etc. Isn’t it astonishing, given how many of them nonetheless have wound up on ALL the publications I have ever worked for. I would venture to say that many do work on school publications to further their careers and that when they work on these pubs they have the SAME intent as those at less prestigious schools.</p>

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<p>"I have worked on the editorial staffs of top national magazines in NYC since 1980, and many MANY of my colleagues have come from Ivies and other elite schools --along with State U’s and everything in between. I am shocked to hear you say that Ivy students do not want to be journalists or magazine and newspaper writers, etc. "</p>

<p>I stand by my statement that on the whole, students in Ivies don’t want to be journalists. Just check the career offices at a place like Harvard. While certainly some students go to Harvard hoping to be journalists, those are in the minority. Most Harvard students want to be doctors, lawyers or business executives. Yes, some students become journalists, ministers, teachers and enter other fields, but they are in the minority.</p>

<p>What I think is true is that when Ivy grads enter journalism, they tend to work at the larger publications like the NY Times, Washington Post, places like that (which also are in cities that many Ivy grads flock to). Many are excellent writers and thinkers, had extensive experience on their campus dailies, and end up being fast tracked in magazines, etc. Indeed, the editor of Newsweek is a Harvard grad.</p>

<p>This year, a Pulitzer Prize went to Robin Givens, a Princeton grad who’s a Washington Post fashion writer. I would bet, however, that she is a rare Princeton grad who chose to be in print journalism.</p>

<p>I imagine that some Ivy grads also come out of Columbia’s excellent graduate program in journalism as well as the now defunct (I think) Radcliffe Publishing course.</p>

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<p>SBMom,</p>

<p>I won’t disclose my alma mater. I’m simply pointing out some pitfalls of attending the Ivies that high school students may not be aware of.</p>

<p>I could assure you that it’s not Brown since I believe that’s your alma mater.</p>

<p>Again, I stand by my assertion that Princeton and Dartmouth students have the best Ivy experience and alumni networks. In my area, few people attend the alumni functions of my Ivy; hundreds show up for the Princeton functions. That’s a world of difference, wouldn’t you say?</p>

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<p>I have not found the Columbia J School grads to be particularly more gifted as writers than grads of no-name schools. In fact, the lack of difference is notable. </p>

<p>I say this based on decades of experience as an editor who regularly hires writers. I have learned, based on deep in-the-trenches experience, to pay no attention whatsoever to Ivy or other elite credentials: In all my years as a feature acquisitions editor, I have never found that such credentials translate to superior journalism or writing talent. </p>

<p>I myself have a child at an Ivy, so I have no vested interest in dissing them. It’s just that on the job, as a person who hires writers, I have not found that they produce superior talent compared to other schools and in that sense perhaps you are right. Perhaps those who want to be writers end up going to other kinds of schools—and thus, despite the many talents aggregated at Ivies, they have no lock on the writing field. Some fantastic writers never go to college at all, though that is rare.</p>

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<p>A question for all the super accomplished adult Ivy graduates out there:</p>

<p>How do you all have so much time to be on CC? Just in the last two weeks you, with the help from a few outsiders, have contributed 37 pages of wordy posts on this thread alone! Some of you have been posting on this forum for several YEARS. I’ve been addicted for only few weeks and yet my paperwork is backlogged and my house is in a shambles from neglect. I’m not sure if you yourselves are an argument for the Ivy education or not. Is it that you are so brilliant and high in energy that you can write thousands of intelligent posts and still keep up with your other responsibilities? Are you independently wealthy and thus either have retired young, or only work if and when you want? Do you all have nannies, maids, cooks and groundskeepers?</p>

<p>Or (and I mean no offense) are you all currently unemployed, or perhaps underemployed like that Yale English major, and thus are comforting yourselves that your education was indeed worth it despite the cirumstances? I know some of you have mentioned jobs, but I confess I’m wondering if it’s really so, lol.</p>

<p>I know! It must be that multi-tasking isn’t taught at those lower tiered schools and that’s why I can’t keep up!</p>

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<p>Super-accomplished Ivy graduates are trained to read and write faster than mere mortals.</p>

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<p>Plus, they must not need much sleep…</p>

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<p>As I was reading your posts on the advantages of going to a great colleges, this made me realize that there are many more benefits besides the recognition from others. This made me realize that the biggest benefit is actually meeting people that share the same qualities are you, that actually want to learn, and having great friends that actually care for your well being. But keep in mind, that getting into a great school is very tough and it takes hardwork, perserverance, and luck. I’am one of those students in high school that works very hard and that is in the top 10% of my class but I was rejected from all the schools I applied to and waitlisted to two schools UVA and Chapman. I’am trying very hard to get off the waitlist at UVA, but I was accepted to UNLV and (a state school in nevada). In the state of nevada, residents living in Nevada that has over a 3.0 GPA receives the millenium scholarship (basically covers your tuition). I live in nevada and will be attending UNLV. Hopefully, I’ll only be here for only one year but I’m going to keep applying to the top schools across the country because I do believe I have what it takes to get in. I also don’t see the use of wasting time, energy, and self pity from rejection when I can use this time to keeping trying for the top schools. From reading your posts, I would like to thank you for making me realize the real reasons for attending the tops colleges besides having a huge salary in the end.</p>

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<p>"Are you independently wealthy and thus either have retired young, or only work if and when you want? Do you all have nannies, maids, cooks and groundskeepers?</p>

<p>Or (and I mean no offense) are you all currently unemployed, or perhaps underemployed like that Yale English major, and thus are comforting yourselves that your education was indeed worth it despite the cirumstances? I know some of you have mentioned jobs, but I confess I’m wondering if it’s really so, lol."</p>

<p>All of the above, I guess. Some here are retired, independently wealthy, etc. Many are unemployed, underemployed. Some have jobs allowing them great deal of autonomy: writers, professors, graduate students, various freelancers.</p>

<p>Also, like a few have said, Ivy grads spent many years in higher education: writing theses, legal briefs, dissertations, novels, what have you; and can read and write faster than you can think.</p>