What are the Lifetime Advantages of Attending Top Colleges

Parents Forum
41

<p>Actually, I think it’s because the people who want to be dentists or doctors probably aren’t as interested in writing for a newspaper. I had lots of friends who were pre-med. None had any interest in working on the Crimson. They liked doing lab research, but hated writing the reports. I had no problem with writing reports, but hated doing lab research. Consequently, their idea of a fun EC was very different than mine.</p>

<p>I know that lawyers and journalists have lots in common when it comes to general interests. In fact, many journalists had considered becoming lawyers and vice versa.</p>

<p>I can imagine that students considering business careers might find working at the Crimson attractive because of the chance to run a real business. The business – advertising, etc. – part of the operation might be the draw for them, not the writing. They’d probably think that doing things like that is fun.</p>

42

<p>“But this is not true of all college EC endeavors. For instance, let’s say a kid devotes 25 hours per week to the college musical but has an unrelated major and no aspirations to go into theater. They have to truly love it to participate. There is no long term benefit for graduate school admissions or employment (other than there are skills one learns when particpating in such endeavors that can apply to many areas).”</p>

<p>My point is this is not exclusive to elite colleges, and to say it is, is BS.</p>

<p>The whole journalism argument as presented by Northstarmom is illogical and BS. However, we need some pro-Harvard threads once in awhile. :)</p>

43

<p>It used to be the case, once upon a time, that a would-be journalist coming out of H. would be at a significant disadavantage to one coming out of Ohio University. (I’m being totally serious.) But with the contraction of news services/newspapers/radio, etc., (and now I will sound like one’s of those bizarre conservatives), the power behind the media is increasingly concentrated in a (mostly) eastern, or at least “coastal” elite. The power of the HYP degree has, under these circumstances, likely increased, though it has nothing to do necessarily with what the HYP students actually did to earn it.</p>

44

<p>Northstarmom, once again you are missing the point, and I have to agree w/Dstark here. You can move to a no-name college town in a rural area and be stunned by the quality of the musical performances, the student-run art galleries, the publications, etc. which in most cases are run by kids whose professional interests have nothing to do with their passions. If you assert that this is somehow unique to Harvard, well, maybe you’ve spent too much time in Cambridge and not enough time in Rolla, Missouri.</p>

45

<p>Our motivation. With NSM’s list</p>

<p>(1) Are such colleges viewed as tickets to becoming rich? - Not really. After the first few years in a job where you come from as not as important as what you can do for the company.</p>

<p>(2) Are the colleges viewed as having connections that will pay off? - Not really</p>

<p>(3) Is it an a guaranteed excellent academic education? - some what. If you accept the fact that teachers/profs teach to the least common denominator. The student body would be at a higher level. Otherwise I agree with your statement.</p>

<p>(4) “What has stood me well for a lifetime is the exposure to such fascinating peers who felt that they could do anything.” Probably the main reason, and also the fact that my parents were not rich. They made the sacrifice so that I can come to this country and better my life. So we just continued the tradition, and don’t regret a bit.</p>

46

<p>Attending graduate programs rather than under graduate in top universities will give some advantages.</p>

<p>My 2 cents</p>

47

<p>Dstark, the example I gave about a theater EC was in response to the comment about those who write for papers like the Harvard Crimson who can dovetail that EC into a possible graduate school admissions or job prospect. I was responding to Blossom’s point about the journalism EC, which I thought was a valid point. I was saying that some heavy duty EC areas would have little impact on graduate school admissions or job prospects…another example was my D’s ski race team commitment.</p>

<p>In other posts, I have commented on your assertion that those with passions in EC endeavors can exist at any college campus. There are a high percentage of these types at more selective colleges (where it is even a criteria for admission) that at some other schools, but they exist everywhere.</p>

48

<p>Susan, I know. I was hoping my next point would clarify that I wasn’t talking about you. Sorry. </p>

<p>I liked your paragraph and that was why I highlighted it.</p>

49

<p>Dstark, thanks for explaining. I now get it :).</p>

50

<p>Re post 43 – Historically hasn’t it been the opposite regarding newspaper publishing and reporting, and other fields like the foreign service, which used to be male and ivy-dominated, and have opened up to a broader spectrum of society.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washpost.com/news_ed/summer_internships/bios2005b.shtml[/url]”>http://www.washpost.com/news_ed/summer_internships/bios2005b.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

51

<p>“But this is not true of all college EC endeavors. For instance, let’s say a kid devotes 25 hours per week to the college musical but has an unrelated major and no aspirations to go into theater. They have to truly love it to participate. There is no long term benefit for graduate school admissions or employment (other than there are skills one learns when particpating in such endeavors that can apply to many areas).”</p>

<p>My point is this is not exclusive to elite colleges, and to say it is is BS."</p>

<p>I have never said that these things are exclusive to places like Harvard. Of course, every college will have some students who do ECs unrelated to their majors out of pure passion. Places like Harvard, however have a much higher proportion of students doing things like that because having such passions and being successful in pursuing such passions are part of their admission criteria. </p>

<p>When it comes to theater at Harvard, about 750 of the 6,613 undergrads participate in performances at Harvard’s Agassiz Theater. Considering Harvard has no theater major and has relatively few students who are aspiring actors, there are a lot of students who are doing these activities simply for fun. To my knowledge, the bulk of the performances, if not all of them also are student directed and organized. </p>

<p>Last weekend was Harvard’s Arts First event, and there were 200 music, dance and visual arts performances/exhibitions, mostly by undergrad students who did these things for fun. Participating in musical ECs is one of the most popular ECs at Harvard despite the fact that relatively few students are music majors or plan careers in music.</p>

<p>When I taught at a second/third tier college that had a theater department, the only student run theater projects that I heard of were done to fulfill requirements for students getting their theater major degrees. Most of the theater students whom I knew seemed to regard the requirement as a necessary evil, not something that gave them great joy.</p>

<p>At Harvard, these are the types of things that seniors who recently won awards for their work in the arts had done despite there not being majors in theater or dance:</p>

<p>"Colleen McGuinness and Sam Speedie are the winners of the Louise Donovan Award, which recognizes a Harvard- Radcliffe student who has worked behind the scenes in the arts, as director, producer, or accompanist, for example, and contributed the most to the success of a production by creating the opportunity for others to shine…</p>

<p>As well as acting, directing, and assisting in a number of productions at Harvard and Radcliffe, McGuinness directed Guys and Dolls, the first undergraduate co-ed production held at the Hasty Pudding Theatre in more than a decade. [Their performances traditionally have been done by guys in drag]. She also founded Rockin’ the Boat Theatre Company, which will enable future productions to be held in the Hasty Pudding Theatre.</p>

<p>Speedie, a founding member of the Hyperion Shakespeare Company, has produced Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, Baal, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, The Tempest, and Hamlet. Speedie is currently directing the film Twelve Nights."</p>

<p>Anyway, at most colleges, there are not lots of students who want to put this kind of time and effort into ECs that they get no kind of course credit for. Students who would love to be in a place that has a preponderance of students like this and that is designed to enable them to run with their interests like this might find going to a very expensive competitive college worth it. </p>

<p>Others, who are more interested in traditional college fun, and whose main interest in college is getting the ticket to a decent job may not even want to be on a campus that has a preponderance of students who are intensely pursuing their academic/artistic interests. Such more traditional students, no matter how smart, probably could find their needs fulfilled at places that aren’t among the very top colleges. They could go to those colleges, have a great time, learn a lot and also graduate into good professional schools, nice jobs, and other perks without having to pay the big bucks that many middle/upper class families are paying for kids to go to the very top colleges.</p>

52

<p>No. Just take a look at the number of newspapers and news services that used to exist outside of the northeast corridor, and how many of them were staff from graduates of Ohio University (among others.) Ivies never dominated these papers - in fact, they were virtually non-existent.</p>

<p>I do think Northstarmom has a point, though, but it may be much more specific to Harvard than to YPS or any of the prestige LACs. Most folks who I have ever met seem to suggest that the classroom education at H. is not stellar (the students themselves rank it 27th among the 31 COFHE schools), but that the bulk of what makes H. special is the drive of students outside the classroom, and what sets H. apart (or at least used to.)</p>

<p>As for myself, I think it has much more to do with catering to wealth, which we poorer folks admitted were able to take in as an added benefit. Oxford-style tutorials (as at my alma mater) simply don’t exist at College B; study abroad programs in Florence centered right in the Piazza de Signoria for the past 75 years simply don’t exist at College Y (as they do at my d’s school, and no, you CAN’T get into the program very easily from any other school); most colleges don’t have their own liberal arts college in St. Petersburg, Russia (as does Bard), etc., etc.</p>

53

<p>“a well-oiled path to elite roles in our society.”</p>

<p>My S is a fairly recent grad of an elite college. His experience has taught me that the above is relatively true. He has been given tremendous opportunities because of the connections he made, and experience in EC’s he received at this school Before he went, I figured that it wasn’t true - State U would be good enough. I must say his experience has proven me wrong. He would also agree that being with intellectual peers was wonderful. Would he have succeeded at State U? Yes, but I dont think in the same way.</p>

<p>I have also come to realize that many of the top grad schools look at graduates from the elite institutions differently than they do State U grads. It might be shallow and elitist, but it doesnt make it less true. OF COURSE there are exceptions to the above. I am talking about general trends.</p>

54

<p>Without inciting a flame war, I thing what NSM is saying is very simply that at the most elite schools, with the competition so intense, the admitted kids tend to be not merely smart and able but really turbocharged. There is a greater concentration of energy and opportunity. These kids WANT to “drink from the firehose.”</p>

<p>I suspect, though, that you find a very similar population <em>subset</em> in the honors depts of elite State Us and Merit Aid schools… many of these kids were admitted to elites too, but for $ or for location or for whatever reason they did not choose the elite. So, instead of the whole school having that turbo-energy, it is a subset. If the subset is big enough, it will be inspiring in a similar way. And remember, for certain kids being ‘big fish in smaller pond’ is ultimately more helpful than being ‘smaller fish in big pond.’ It depends on one’s personality and needs.</p>

<p>The energy level at H is palpable and raw. It was unnerving to me (an intense person with an immense competitive streak and a high-energy personality, but also someone who really likes to relax and shrug off that intensity and have more fun in my life) because I thought I would turn into a human tuning fork if I had to spend 4 years at that kind of full-tilt. So I did not apply.</p>

<p>There are all kinds of schools with different forms of the ultra-intense inspiring environment. Sometimes it is a whole school, sometimes it is a department, sometimes it is an honors program. Of course, some kids drop out and finally get “inspired” by the school of life.</p>

55

<p>There are terrific, focused kids at tons of universities, not just Ivies.</p>

56

<p>

Very good point. But I think what NSM is saying is that at schools like Harvard, you get virtually an entire student body of kids who are breaking their necks to become top ‘opera singers’ professionally, AND to have fun they are teaching underserved kids or publishing newspapers. The point seems to be that these schools have intellectual bravery and energy that is very deep throughout the community. Other tiered schools have it too, but perhaps not as deep as at top tiered schools.</p>

<p>I don’t really know if I buy this at the moment. It could be we are missing an important point about the nature of value. But it makes sense to me at the gut level.</p>

<p>My gut tells me that Ivy U will offer the better lifetime advantage and so I’d go for it. But, is this necessarily true? For example, Ivy U’s basketball team likely will never become the topmost American team. In fact, it likely will never even come close because its members just don’t have the natural ability as the guys at State U. State U. may offer a really fine intellectual education and also allow me to play at a level that adds to my physical and emotional toughness unlike anything IVY U can offer. This could broadly enrich my life in many ways, even if I never plan to actually play professionally. What about the diversity of State U., including its intellectual diversity? Could this difference somehow offer a greater advantage than IVY U., especially since it better reflects the real world?</p>

<p>I am wondering if the better lifetime advantage being discussed here is too narrow, especially since it seems not to make as much of a quantifiable difference in the real world. <a href=“http://www.ncpa.org/pi/edu/pd110199f.html[/url]”>http://www.ncpa.org/pi/edu/pd110199f.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

57

<p>Absolutely, Allmusic. I don’t think anyone is saying anything different. Like SBMom said, it’s the percentage operating at that level that differs. All I can say for sure is that when I transfered, and when my D transfered, we each went from situations where, never mind being a fish in a big or small pond, we were fish out of water. At the schools we transfered to, we were saturated in an ocean of possibilities and other “fish” who cared as much about them, me in an Honors program of a very good public U, and D in a good LAC.</p>

<p>The difference for each of us between the schools we left and the schools we transfered to was life-changing–I know that it’s not the same everywhere, 'cause I’ve lived it.</p>

58

<p>Simba and Allmusic get it.</p>

59

<p>I think that Northstarmom’s take on this is right on target. The distinctiveness among the peer group that she cites is certainly not unheard-of at publics and less-elite schools. The difference is that when it occurs at the latter schools, it tends to be a deviation from the prevailing culture of the campus. At the elite schools, it IS the culture of the campus. And Alexander Astin’s longitudinal studies of the outcomes of the college experience suggest strongly that the best predictor of students’ goals and aspirations is not the curriculum or the faculty contact, but the influence of the peer group.</p>

60

<p>These arguments are never going to be resolved.</p>

<p>I almost see the elite college/no-name college relationship as a similar relationship to the silver spoon/aluminum spoon relationship. The aluminum spoon does the same job as the silver spoon. The silver spoon is a little shinier, rarer, and a little more expensive to produce. It costs much more than its function would dictate compared to the aluminum spoon. So those that own the silver spoons have to keep telling everybody how much better and more valuable their spoons are than aluminum spoons. Because once people stop believing that silver spoons are really better, the value of the silver spoons plummets and those owning the silver spoons lose money and lose the prestige of holding more valuable spoons.</p>

<p>You see Mini, I’m still reading “The Theory of the Leisure Class”. :)</p>