<p>aren’t CEOs forever getting dragged into court for misdeeds? Better to be an anonymous millionaire,…</p>
<p>The two schools tied for #1 in placing CEO’s at Fortune 500 companies in 2005 were the University of TexasAustin and the University of Chicago, for whatever that is worth.</p>
<p>For those still reading this thread a little more fact, from a relatively recent Atlantic Article:</p>
<p>The Gotta-Get-Ins can no longer claim to be the more or less exclusive gatekeepers to graduate school. Once, it was assumed that an elite-college undergraduate degree was required for admission to a top law or medical program. No more: 61 percent of new students at Harvard Law School last year had received their bachelor’s degrees outside the Ivy League. “Every year I have someone who went to Harvard College but can’t get into Harvard Law, plus someone who went to the University of Maryland and does get into Harvard Law,” Shirley Levin says. For Looking Beyond the Ivy League, Pope analyzed eight consecutive sets of scores on the medical-school aptitude test. Caltech produced the highest-scoring students, but Carleton outdid Harvard, Muhlenberg topped Dartmouth, and Ohio Wesleyan finished ahead of Berkeley. The elites still lead in producing undergraduates who go on for doctorates (Caltech had the highest percentage during the 1990s), but Earlham, Grinnell, Kalamazoo, Kenyon, Knox, Lawrence, Macalester, Oberlin, and Wooster do better on this scale than many higher-status schools. In the 1990s little Earlham, with just 1,200 students, produced a higher percentage of graduates who have since received doctorates than did Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Northwestern, Penn, or Vassar. </p>
<p>That non-elite schools do well in Who’s Who and in sending students on to graduate school or to the Senate suggests that many overestimate the impact of the Gotta-Get-Ins not only on future earnings but on interesting career paths as well. For example, I graduated from Colorado College, a small liberal arts institution that is admired but, needless to say, is no Stanford. While I was there, in the mid-1970s, wandering around the campus were disheveled kids whose names have since become linked with an array of achievements: Neal Baer, M.D., an executive producer for the NBC show ER; Frank Bowman, a former federal prosecutor often quoted as the leading specialist on federal sentencing guidelines; Katharine DeShaw, the director of fundraising for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; David Hendrickson, the chairman of the political-science department at Colorado College; Richard Kilbride, the managing director of ING Asset Management, which administers about $450 billion; Robert Krimmer, a television actor; Margaret Liu, M.D., a senior adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and one of the world’s foremost authorities on vaccines; David Malpass, the chief economist for Bear Stearns; Mark McConnell, an animator who has won Emmys for television graphics; Jim McDowell, the vice-president of marketing for BMW North America; Marcia McNutt, the CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute; Michael Nava, the author of the Henry Rios detective novels; Peter Neupert, the CEO of Drugstore.com; Anne Reifenberg, the deputy business editor of the Los Angeles Times; Deborah Caulfield Rybak, a co-author of an acclaimed book about tobacco litigation; Ken Salazar, the attorney general of Colorado and a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2004; Thom Shanker, the Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times; Joe Simitian, named to the 2003 Scientific American list of the fifty most influential people in technology; and Eric Sondermann, the founder of one of Denver’s top public-relations firms. </p>
<p>In terms of students who went on to interesting or prominent lives, Colorado College may have done just as well in this period as Columbia or Cornell or any other Gotta-Get-In destination. Doubtless other colleges could make the same claim for themselves for this or other periods; I’m simply citing the example I know personally. The point is that for some time the center of gravity for achievement has been shifting away from the top most colleges.</p>
<p>idad…Tricks with numbers. Harvard law means nothing to me. But for those who do, note that 39% of their freshmen class went to graduates of 8 schools whose enrollment is less than 2 Big Ten schools! Yeah, Ivy League sure isn’t doing well! A couple of thousand colleges including the 50 largest fighting over 61% of the class while 39% is concentrated in 8 medium size schools. Idad is this what meant by “shifting away from the top colleges.”</p>
<p>From what I understand, it is. At one time it was populated nearly exclusively by Ivy Grads. As time passes this is becoming less the case. But all this is really besides the point, the main implication of the entire passage is that the elite schools are no longer the gate keepers they once were. And as far as numbers, there is little Earlham and its 1200 students. And one would think that in terms of MCAT scores, “Carleton outdid Harvard, Muhlenberg topped Dartmouth, and Ohio Wesleyan finished ahead of Berkeley” might give one pause when considering which school has the stronger peer group.</p>
<p>And, at the level of graduate training many state universities are ranked ahead of the past elites. For example, for the past 13 years the University of Washington Medical School has been ranked #1 in primary care training, and is currently tied with Stanford at #7 for research. It is the only school to be ranked in the top 7 in both categories. It receives the second highest funding for medical research in the country. If one is looking for the top medical school one’s eyes would be looking northwest not northeast.</p>
<p>Graduate programs in the professional schools are a really poor guide to undergraduate education since by and large, the faculty do not teach undergraduates.
It is also easy to choose selected specialties to make a point about quality.
For example, it would be easy to dismiss Harvard Medical school as being an inferior school on account of its being ranke 42 in primary care (2005 USN&WR); but then it is #1 in research. In internal medicine it is #2 after JHU, as well as in Drug/Alcohol Abuse, but does not crack the top 10 in family medicine (#1 being UW). But students headed to professional schools or grad schools go for specific programs and specific profs rather than for the overall university. By and large, that does not apply to undergraduates.</p>
<p>I’m not convinced that statistics relating to the number of students going on to earn PhD’s from a particular college should necessarily be taken as a sign of undergrad academic quality. It may very well be indicative of a high level of passion for learning. On the other hand, (and please don’t attack me) couldn’t it be indicative instead of the fact that the undergrad degree wasn’t the ticket to a good job and more education was necessary for economic survival?</p>
<p>If one can graduate from an elite school and land a fulfulling, well-paying job, there may be less motivation to get that PhD, no?</p>
<p>My good friends Alumother and SBmom have been taking all the flak while I was foolishly out trying to earn a living (Jeez, what the Hell happened here? This place is a wreck.) and they seem a little tired:(</p>
<p>so I’ll go ahead and offer myself up to our self-appointed Strelnikovs (ooh. Nice saber scar, buddy. But could ya lighten just up a little?
)</p>
<p>I’ll try to answer the question posed by the thread. Hell, why not? Everybody’s ready to tussle anyway. </p>
<p>What are the lifetime advantages of attending Top Colleges? A: Absolutely nothing that is directly quantifiable. Not money, fame, success, or happiness. Not boardrooms or tenure. Not even better MCAT’s. Nothing, well - if you call a well-contemplated life nothing. </p>
<p>Well-contemplated life? Like the guy at the pond who didn’t work? Sort of. Just with calculators and computers and telescopes …oh and reactors, and more books. </p>
<p>Does a well-contemplated life only come from attendance at a top school? No, that’s ridiculous. </p>
<p>Why go then? It’s more likely to happen there because of the overall quality of the student body and the prevailing environment (the bottom half at Harvard is more academically capable than the bottom half at UT. Look it up.). It can happen on the ranch . It can happen in a prison. </p>
<p>Can you go through a top college and miss all this contemplation stuff? Sure. I had a friend who used to do this great sprinkler dance dead a#@ drunk and never got wet. It can and does happen.</p>
<p>Is it worth the cash difference? Only you can answer that for yourself.
Is it worth the money to take 4 years off work at the peak of your career to write a book? These are personal choices. Some would resist the pull, some wouldn’t.</p>
<p>Doesn’t this seem like a luxury education? To some it does. They aren’t likely to come.</p>
<p>Can everyone benefit from spending the extra coinage? Nope. If what you want from your education is a guaranteed high paying job , you may well be better off someplace else. </p>
<p>Is that all it is ? Well, no . A large part of it is the well-contemplated very long explore that comes after and comes without the artificial limitations imposed by the conventional thinking of the hundred acre wood.</p>
<p>Well, what exactly do you do with all of this , once you’ve contemplated existence for four years? Not for me to say. That’s kind of the point. </p>
<p>Summary: You may not get anything for spending your money on an elite college, but then again, you may get everything that really matters to you. </p>
<p>As always, just my opinion. See the ball, be the ball. ;)</p>
<p>GFG, good point; maybe it could also be that some kids got a merit scholarship at Ohio Wesleyan-- and since they knew they would be heading to grad school later, they took it.</p>
<p>I have always believed in the small LAC model. Loren Pope’s argument that some of these schools value-add tremendously is correct. Furthermore, the research mentorship element is quite important for med school. </p>
<p>BTW, I would also define Carleton and other similar schools as elite.</p>
<p>Good summary Cur.</p>
<p>curmudgeon–I think that’s the sanest thing I’ve read on this thread.</p>
<p>(my posts included, or maybe my posts especially.)</p>
<br>
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<p>Pooh is hardly a conventional thinker. Owl maybe,…</p>
<p>“If one can graduate from an elite school and land a fulfulling, well-paying job, there may be less motivation to get that PhD, no?”</p>
<p>There are also some professions (like architecture) where PhDs are not the norm. I’d hate to be at an institution where everyone wants to be a professor.</p>
<p>Cur. Phew. Thanks.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, and just as expensive.</p>
<p>Total for 2006-2007: $42,864</p>
<p>Total for Harvard for 2006-2007: $44,250
Difference per year: $1,386
Difference over 4 years (at constant cost): $5,544</p>
<p>Meh, as my S would say.</p>
<p>Marite brings up a good point. Once the decision has been made to consider paying the cost of a private college, why wouldn’t you go for the best school to which you could be admitted? S1 got into some really wonderful colleges, and I’m still convinced that he would have been successful at any one of them. But in the final analysis, why would we pay the same for U Chicago (plus transportation costs) over a Dartmouth or Columbia? Chicago is a wonderful school, but there’s a reason why Dartmouth is ranked higher. You may not agree with those reasons, but all else being equal, we went with the higher ranked school. He didn’t go with the highest ranked school, because we did feel geography carried some weight. </p>
<p>Finally, and this is just a mom speaking, he is finally average. He is middle of the road – not a geek or nerd. He has found a group of kids where he absolutely fits in and is tremendously social – I’m not convinced that that would have happened at a different school. And like the Mastercard commercial says, that’s priceless. (Well, not really, but I hope you know what I mean.)</p>
<p>Mathmom, you are right…many professions do not involve a PHD as the terminal degree. </p>
<p>One of my kids is going into architecture via this route:
BA in Architectural Studies
MArch in Architecture</p>
<p>One of my kids is going into musical theater via this route:
BFA in Musical Theater</p>
<p>These are terminal degrees and they will not be going for PHD’s which do not exist in these fields. </p>
<p>Sjmom wrote:
“Finally, and this is just a mom speaking, he is finally average. He is middle of the road – not a geek or nerd. He has found a group of kids where he absolutely fits in and is tremendously social – I’m not convinced that that would have happened at a different school. And like the Mastercard commercial says, that’s priceless. (Well, not really, but I hope you know what I mean.)”</p>
<p>Yes, I know what you mean as I brought that point up, as well, some pages back. One thing I think my kids actually like a lot is that while they may have been the “star” locally, they are now one of many stars in a galaxy at their resepctive colleges and that is quite stimulating. They also like the kids they are amongst, even though they still very much like their home friends, who are merely different.</p>
<p>To be fair, some top colleges are cheaper. Grinnell costs $36k+ next year. Over four years, it would mean a saving of $32k; quite substantial, and enough to make one think about relative value and costs.</p>
<p>“What are the lifetime advantages of attending Top Colleges? A: Absolutely nothing that is directly quantifiable. Not money, fame, success, or happiness. Not boardrooms or tenure.” -Curmudgeon</p>
<p>That’s the disillusioning aspect of life in America. Students work hard in high school, and college and in the end, they don’t make more money than others who don’t work hard, who are not very intelligent. In fact, for all that money and time spent, many are unemployed and poor, even with graduate degrees such as PH.D.'s.</p>
<p>I would like to see a new thred on why hard work doesn’t pay off in the U.S.</p>
<p>I’m thinking about becoming a high school teacher, and wonder why I should encourage students, especially those from poor families, to study hard or bother with college, if attending the most competitive colleges would get them nowhere.</p>
<p>Come on, viewpoint. That was some sucky editing. LOL. You’re fired.
Gotta have this part to be fair, don’t we?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here, I’ll help so we can speed this up. Now all you have to do is discredit and discount the value of a well-contemplated life as a reason to attend a top college and then you’ll have what you’ve been looking for the whole time. There would then be absolutely no reason for you to attend a top college.</p>
<p><a href=“The Honolulu Advertiser - Business”>The Honolulu Advertiser - Business;
<p>The article mentions that state school grads relate better with people of diverse backgrounds.</p>
<p>I would like to comment on the alleged diversity on the Ivies but that’s for another day.</p>