@gwnorth Or as I thought, go to a less academic but still social and sports/school spirit college of the 1000s in the US!
@natty1988, that’s the irony. She was already doing very well financially and was not interested in academics. I suspect that it was important for her mother that she attend USC. The only value it had to her was a way to further her career by spinning her lifestyle to create additional content. Now because of the scandal she’s most likely lost all that (though she might rebound, how many scandals have the Kardashian/Jenner’s gone through?).
“Teachers who are gifted, for example, recognize giftedness in students, and they will talk about it in those recs.”
Ok but there can’t be that many gifted teachers since by definition, gifted means a very small, maybe miniscule part of the population. Others have already pointed out the biases and flaws in LORs, so I will add that fellow students (gifted or non-gifted) actually know who the gifted ones are better than the teachers. Lots of times, these kids have known each other for years, in and outside of the classroom, vs someone that just taught them for a year. The kids know who thinks differently than them. And I have a tough time thinking that even if Steve Jobs went to a Phillips or Andover, a teacher would know he would disrupt three industries, vs saying what he was, a mediocre student.
It’s about building a network of people you can tap into later on in life. The perception is that the elite schools will have the wealthiest and most influential graduates, who can be most helpful in social, academic, and job circles later in life.
I’ve got one kid who was gifted and precocious. I think all his teachers recognized how unusual he was, but by the time high school rolled around it was less easy for him to show off. (He took AP Comp Sci as a freshman, no easy way take official courses in CS after that.) In the end it was outside recommendations who could testify how far beyond the curriculum he had taught himself. Other son, was according to IQ test also gifted, but because of various deficits, never performed as well in school. He was lucky enough to have a math teacher who thought he was one of his best math students in terms of deep understanding, even though he got a B+ in the class. (This teacher wrote one of his recommendations.)
My CS kid also went to a private college, though there are some public schools that are also very strong in CS, I think they would have cost as much OOS.
And I know people say it all the time on CC, but a lot of people who make $200,000 in the NYC area don’t feel very rich.
They feel even less rich in San Francisco.
@CU123 - #156 certainly does not explain the why to the OPs question.
You really don’t see the point of #156???
Some private colleges that are widely seen as elite or near-elite are divided into divisions. Examples include Duke, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, USC, CMU, NYU.
$200,000 per year is much higher than the median household income in either city ($57,782 in New York, $96,265 in San Francisco).
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocitycalifornia,newyorkcitynewyork/PST045217
Yep, living with 7 other people in a 4 bedroom house is not that much fun after a while in San Francisco, definitely can’t support a family on 96K living in the Bay area. @ucbalumnus surely your aware of the protests in San Jose against the new Google Village. Unbelievable that they would build it there and then pay the majority less than $200K when the home values are hitting $1 million for a fixer upper.
Correct. There are not. However, there are ways of speaking about students that translates the same reality to the admissions committee. And the point is, the committee is not specifically looking for giftedness, of course. However, all admissions is comparative. Those who have an edge getting in are in fact the gifted. And why? Because they have accomplished so much – not by “working really really hard,” (which is the myth) but by working very easily. They’ve accomplished more than some other students who work harder than they did, because efficient work and creative ideas come naturally to the gifted.
@gardenstategal Very good point. I am a big proponent of public colleges, but you are correct in stating that almost every single LAC is private, so a kid whose personality is a better fit for a LAC is almost invariably sending their kid to a private college.
Unrelated to that:
People make too many assumptions here based on a total lack of understanding of how PhDs are trained, how they are hired, and how good they are at teaching. “Elite” colleges are not “elite” because they have smarter faculty who are better teachers. Here are a few reasons why:
A. A PhD is not a teaching degree, it’s a research degree. It is a doctorate in philosophy, that is given after the student produces a written thesis, which is based on original research. That is the focus of any PhD program, and teaching is secondary. The ranking or prestige of a Doctorate program has no positive correlation with the quality of teaching by its graduates. In fact, the opposite is often true - wealthy universities will often reduce the amount of time that their doctoral students “waste” as TAs. So the quality of a student’s classroom experience has no correlation with the level of prestige of the university at which their professor did their PhD.
B. While it is true that more universities are more likely to hire up than down, the prestige of a college’s undergraduate program is not the same as the prestige of their doctoral program is. While USANews may declare Notre Dame to be an “elite” university, most departments will prefer faculty who did their PhDs at UIUC, OSU, UMN, UWisconsin, etc. Princeton is hiring more CS PhDs from Berkeley than from Harvard. Almost all the faculty in U Chicago’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department did their PhDs at public Universities.
There is also issues of regional preference - Alabama colleges will often prefer people with PhDs from the University of Alabama over PhDs from U Chicago. Small low ranked colleges will often avoid hiring people with PhDs from Big Name Universities, since they assume that they won’t stay.
C. The “glut” in humanities PhDs is not a recent phenomenon, and has been going on sine the 1970s. The uncertainty of the job market has also not changed, so a person graduating from Chicago has no more chance at working at U Wyoming today than they had in 1980. That is why you have these people who have been working as adjuncts at NYU for 30 years - they did not want to work outside NY, and there were no jobs in NY for the 5 years or so that they were still marketable for TT positions.
D. The Prestige" of a college is a very small part in why a person chooses to work somewhere as faculty. It’s about the availability of a job, fit, location, and family. Jobs for trailing spouses, school districts, cost of living, living close to family, are all much more important than whether the college is ranked 20th of 45th in USANews. UIC was much more attractive to many of the faculty that my wife’s department hired than Notre Dame. In fact, almost every one of the faculty at the CS department at my wife’s university has done their PhD in a T-20 program in their field.
E. The reason that LACs generally have better teachers than other colleges and universities is because, unlike other colleges, including “elite” non-LACs, they generally require real evidence of “teaching excellence”. They like teaching awards, great teaching reviews as TAs, teaching experience. They actually read the Teaching Statement in the application packet and take it seriously - if it doesn’t demonstrate an understanding of the teaching philosophy of a liberal arts colleges, that person is rarely going to advance in consideration, no matter how many publications they have, how much grant money, or where they did their PhD.
Perhaps not at the spending levels that most forum posters are accustomed to (i.e. $250k+ income but with no or very little left over to save for kids’ college), but the median household income is much more typical than the forum demographic income.
@tdy123 You are fortunate to have such a great public HS. Would you mind sharing what state, county or school district this is? Stats like that do not exist in our supposedly world-class school system, except at a few magnet schools.
@privatebanker You might find what you are looking for in threads for parents of B students, GPA 3.0 - 3.4, and similar. You are a wonderful writer. My response doesn’t do you justice!
@1NJParent Are you guessing at the 10% figure or do you have a source?
@MWolf A lot of false conclusions here, they are not hiring new PhD’s straight out of these universities, they are cherry picking the best talent from these universities a decade or more after they got their PhD. Only the Stanford or MIT grads came directly from getting their PhD to Princeton.
@observer12 That would be correct, however it is harder to get great grades at many state schools. The hardest part of making high marks at Harvard is what you had to do to get in. After that, As are plentiful.
What I find interesting about this discussion is that the OP did not define what he or she means by “elite.” Many posters responded with the assumption that “elite” means Ivy/Ivy-like, but I think the OP more meant the distinction between Public/private (in one post stating favorably on the possibility that one of the Obama girls may attend Michigan, for instance).
This is how I’d respond. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a public university. However, most are very large campuses, with very large classes–especially during the first couple of years, where you may not get to develop a relationship with your professors and may even be taught by grad students, and where students may not get the help and support they may need to succeed.
The private schools tend to be the opposite–smaller classes, smaller campuses, where you are taught by your professors who have frequent office hours, etc.
For many students, the latter is the better environment. Private schools are not necessarily “elite” as far as the makeup of the student body is concerned–there are many private universities stocked with average students with average test scores. Yet they fill their classes because of those other aspects of the experience.
My older child would thrive in a small school where all her classes engage in open discussion. For her, that environment is perfect. My younger child is different and may be more comfortable being more anonymous is a large program. Everyone is different, but I’m blessed with the means to help them find their sweet spot, no matter what it is.
Some have mentioned small, honors programs at large universities. I can’t imagine how that is comparable to the experience at a small or mid-size private school, but maybe I’m wrong.
There is also the impact of money, and I don’t mean richer classmates. Private schools often have better facilities, better food, better dorms. I’m not saying it is true in all cases, but it may be a factor. William and Mary may be the best small public (other than engineering-focused schools), but the dorms are sort of crummy. It’s on my older daughter’s list, though, and she would be happy there.
Again, it’s not just a school–this is four years of your child’s life. If you have the means, why not help them find the best, most comfortable environment? Schools where the administration will help them create their own clubs, support them in they want to study abroad, and make tutoring available and easy to access?
That’s “elite” more than limiting yourself to Harvard/Yale/Princeton, etc.