Maybe it’s just me and my state-educated ignorance, but are saying fat and ugly = dumb?
Alas, mine was notoriously high. But also high in academics - especially engineering and business.
Not exactly. I think what he is saying is that in addition to intelligence and academic achievement, a lot of elite colleges also value superficial qualities as well. They aren’t looking for superintelligent geeks and nerds. They are looking for stereotypical “winners” or “leaders”. Smart, athletic, good looking, social people.
You touch upon one of the negatives of elite colleges. That would be “elitism”. I used to describe my college as a great place to be yourself…provided you were just like the rest of us. For example, fraternities and sororities were overwhelmingly popular at my school. Not being a city school, there aren’t a whole lot of alternatives socially. Basically your freshman year, you end up in a hall with about 20 other freshman. You start making friends with your hall mates but then Greek rush starts and you start having to deal with “what house should I rush”, “what if my friends get into a different house”, “what if I don’t get into a house”, “do I even want to go Greek” and so on.
It creates a lot of social pressures that you might not have at other schools. It’s pretty much exactly like starting a new high school with all it’s cliques and groups and then entering a draft to see which one you end up in.
Cornell has a reputation for being a little different from the other Ivies, here: easier to get into, and easier to fail out of. I don’t think that reputation is completely undeserved.
Speaking of Cornell, I swear I know the guy who the character of Andy Bernard must have been based on. Within 5 minutes of meeting him, it’s guaranteed that you will know he went to Cornell, and you could make a drinking game out of how many times he mentions it throughout a conversation.
I went to a large state university for undergrad and to an Ivy for both graduate degrees. Taught at both and now I’m a prof at that same large state uni.
The question is one of specialization. There are way more smart profs and grad students that will fit at the Ivies or the “named elite” schools. So you can likely find the same level of rigor and academic training at many institutions outside of this group. And in some fields, the so-called elite schools are not where the innovation and research dollars are going.
But here’s the biggest difference - at an elite school, there is a certain level of excellence across the board. So if you decide to change your major, there’s no concern that you’re going to be in a program that isn’t top notch. Case in point: I worked at a state university in California renown for its engineering program. One of my staffmembers realized in his sophomore year that he was really better suited for sociology and switched majors. He found the level of competition, etc. far inferior to his engineering experience and finished, ultimately a little disappointed that he’d changed.
From personal experience I would say that the peer effects - the people you go to school with, and what you learn from them - might be the major intangible difference. At my state school I think I met wonderful people, but they were almost exclusively from my state and region. We have a sizable international population too. In grad school, the pool of peers were national and international. The content of people’s characters aren’t any greater - there are wonderful human beings at all these places.
But I remember a classmate in grad school - let’s call him “Ray” - who I studied with, occasionally ate lunch with, and generally would chat with before exams. About 9 months later, I heard he was going to address some of the graduating class. I wondered why, and then I found out that Ray was actually the incoming secretary of education in the Philippines. You’d never know it from talking to him - he was a very modest, mellow guy - but those are the types of folks that flock to elite schools. Not just from your state or nation, but from around the world.
Another time I was watching the NBC Nightly News and saw a classmate of mine profiled as a “Person Making a Difference” - he was working at a prep school and had created a program that sent students to his homeland in Kenya. And yes, they mentioned that he went to our school.
My dissertation work involved me interviewing a number of professors at the school. I am pretty certain that most people would know their names, simply because they have international reputations outside of their academic work. And the other neat thing was when I needed to contact another professor, they’d pick up the phone and introduce me to Dr. Important Professor, who most people couldn’t access, because they were so busy.
Once again, this happens at a lot of places, but especially at the elite/Ivies.
That was my experience for the purely academic courses. Grad schools have quals to winnow those who can’t make it, and so don’t even try in classes. some of the first year classes I took, like Compiler Design, required a lot of work, but after that they expect you to do more on your research.
On the other hand, I had to be a lot sharper in seminars than in any regular class. That is where the really good grad students get identified. I sit in on a grad seminar class at Stanford, to help ask hard questions from the industry viewpoint, and I can tell those who do good dissertations from those who will just get through.
I had a roommate at MIT who came from Texas, and he was probably the smartest guy his high school had ever produced. He was a lot smarter than me, but he had a harder time exactly because he wasn’t challenged in high school. I went to a giant school where there were lots of smart people, so I had to work there.
As for reading, my daughter went to Chicago, where the reading load is immense. Even the PE class she took had a pretty heavy level of reading!
However, I found that you had to work to fail. One guy I knew started as a math major and was terrible at it. Finally they passed him in a class if he’d change majors and never take another math class. He became a lawyer. Doing stuff like not going to classes got you into trouble, so you had to really work at screwing up.
I went to one of the lesser Ivies (that is, not Harvard, Yale, or Princeton) and one professor there changed my life. That said, I truly believe that several of the state universities (U Cal@Berkeley, U Ill@Urbana-Champaign, U Mich) are in the same league as far as research as the Ivies and a number of others are not far behind. A friend of mine claims that going to an Ivy is a form of conspicuous consumption. (It was not so in my day, when a lesser local college charged about 70% of the Ivy and the state university cost more considering that I would have had to pay room and board.)
I’m fascinated by this discussion.
I went to a large public university, University of Michigan. Michigan is most well known for its football team, but it is fact highly selective and very academically rigorous. I graduated at the top of my class in high school and I quickly found myself surrounded by thousands who also graduated at the top of their class. It was a humbling experience. The thing I found most remarkable was the quality of discourse, both in the classroom and outside it, the opportunity to hear talks by experts in the field, and the vast number of resources at my disposal. The school has a shitload of money – I did not – but I got to enjoy a lot of the fancy stuff, like the state-of-the-art computer labs and free health care.
I don’t know for sure whether UM can compare to an Ivy, because I’ve never been to an Ivy. But I always felt that I was getting the best education possible. I had always wanted to attend Michigan and didn’t even bother applying for any Ivies. From start to finish my college experience was a fantasy come true. I have nothing but good things to say about my alma mater.
Now, I am actually applying to the only two Ivies that offer graduate programs for social work – Columbia and UPenn. I have also applied to Bryn Mawr and maybe, just maybe, I’m going to have to make some tough choices this spring. I’ve already been offered an interview for UPenn, so I’m optimistic.
So I will be interested to see if there is much difference between one of these schools and my undergraduate school. I don’t think there will be, other than name recognition. But in today’s competitive world, name-recognition is something. To be able to accomplish something like a degree from an Ivy league school, well I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but it would be a dream come true.
You really have to compare undergrad to undergrad, because once you start looking at graduate and professional programs, talking about the university as a whole starts to make a little less sense. That’s not to say that there aren’t variations in programs at the undergrad level, but they tend to be a little less pronounced there.
Sweet.
I am a school snob and the University of Michigan is very prestigious by any measure. There is nothing to be ashamed of there. The University of Virginia, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and some of the California state schools are world class as well. There are scattered world-class programs all over the place that easily beat the ones in the Ivy League. Nobody makes fun of the University of Michigan when it comes to academics. The big factor is the size and the “spa” atmosphere that some of the exclusive private schools provide and there are many that are not in the Ivy League conference.
I’m with Shag. As much as it pains me to admit it to my friends who are graduates of Michigan, it’s a damned fine school. The established state universities - the aforementioned ones, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maryland, Texas, to name a few more - are excellent schools and you will find grads of these schools in Ivy League grad programs… and even on the faculty.
Not surprised that you have gotten an interview, olivesmarch4th, if you were a high-flyer at Ann Arbor. I suspect you’ll get more.
There are also the honors programs and majors at the state universities, which often rival the Ivies as far as selectivity and admissions criteria as well. You really can get a damned fine education at a state school price if you look around. As a grad of one of those programs, I was well prepared for the rigor of grad school and seminar learning - I’d been doing that pretty much all through undergrad.
I hadn’t considered this, but it makes a lot of sense. I’m glad to hear University of Michigan does have a good reputation. Since my parents owned a business in Ann Arbor when I was growing up, the atmosphere and campus have always been a fixture of my life. I had wanted to attend since I was 9 years old, so I think sometimes I take it for granted.
Agreed. Just trying to stay 
over here.
I just thought I should point out, it’s not Ivy League vs State schools. It’s “elite” schools vs “not elite” schools. (Business Week looks at something like 1400 schools) Doesn’t really matter if they are public or private. People always say “oh just get a degree. It doesn’t matter.” It actually does matter quite a bit. Those people then say “oh, well then it only matters if you want to be one of those financial guys or land one of those high powered jobs”, to which I reply “exactly”.
There is a small difference in certain areas. For instance Bill Gates was well known for only choosing Harvard grads for his start ups. This meant that a lot of people got rich. Were those Harvard grads any better than Stanford or any other college. Most likely not, but because only Harvard grad could get in the ground floor with Gates, they profited (through stock options) that were closed to everyone else simply because of their schools
Law firms in Manhattan also are known for choosing only from Yale. The thing is you have to do some serious figuring. Sure you’re gonna make $500,000/first year and you can only get in IF you go to Yale, 'cause they won’t take anyone else but Yale grads.
But if they only hire ten or twenty new lawyers will YOU be one of them. So you have to figure out what are my chances of getting in with that firm versus the extra cost of going to Yale.
There are real world issues, as well as Princeton for instance has an exceptional research division. Johns Hopkins has a great research for medical studies. You can’t get exposure like that in other schools.
So you have to really decide you needs and then weigh the costs
You also have to remember that the big private schools often offer much better aide packages than state schools: the Ivy’s pick up part of the tab for anyone coming from a household that makes under $160,000/year, and pays everything–not loans, grants–for households making under $50,000/year. IME, the majority of “good” private schools will offer good students $20 or $30K scholarships very quickly. That doesn’t begin to cover the cost, but it brings it down to comparable to the state schools.
I thought (at least for the likes of Stanford, Swarthmore, Amherst, etc.) that all of a student’s tuition and boarding costs would be covered if that student’s family earned less than $100,000, and tuition would be waived for income less than $60,000.
I suspect it varies a lot from program to program. I’m a grad student at a large state school (one of the “Public Ivies”; zero points to you for figuring out which one) and my program is one of the top-ranked in the field. (Sometimes I’m still amazed I got in.) In fact, only two actual Ivy League schools, Harvard and Princeton, outrank it in the 2008 US News and World Report list. The consistent top school? Syracuse. I don’t know what the hell they’re doing up there, but their masters program is only one year, which sounds like hell.
I’m working on a professional, not academic, degree, and I can’t imagine that any Ivy League school would be an improvement once I graduate. OTOH, it might have been cheaper, since I’m an out of state student. (The state of which I am a resident, Illinois, doesn’t have my program at any of its state universities.)
Which law firms pay $100,000 first year? This seems like nonsense to me.
pdts
ALL LARGE law firms pay north of 100k. The top ones pay $160k, I think, 145 is avg. A vast majority of the large law firms paid north of 100k ten years ago.