I’m with eleanorigby, let her try and stop being such a worry wart.
You’re way over estimating the amount of mental horsepower it takes to succeed at an Ivy League, and under-estimating the amount of grind it out “work ethic” necessary. Sure there will be some brilliant people, but the large majority are not these super human mentalities. They’re “work ethic” grinds just like she is.
And if it doesnt work out at least she’ll have the satisfaction of knowing she had a shot. Beyond this having a major Ivy on your resume is a huge boost to initial (not necessarily future - down the line) job prospects.
…and to top it all off, I lived in or near Cambridge for 14 years. There are a few bad patches but they’re only a few blocks long. Never got mugged, never saw open-air drug transactions like in NY sometimes, never had anything broken into. The entire little city is geared towards young people, with lots to do and see and plenty of hangouts and lectures and concerts and moviehouses and stores, and I can’t think of anything that would broaden her more. And Boston is only a few stops away on the Red Line.
She’ll probably see some politics and signs that will drive her up the wall with their liberalness or fatuousness, but that too is part of college. She also needs to see real foliage and experience a (relatively mild there) New England winter.
Take it from a girl from the Bronx whose father was a public high-school teacher and who went to Wellesley–nobody cares who anybody’s dad is up there; maybe I couldn’t afford ski vacations and had to work in bookstores during the summers instead of having unpaid internships at the Met, but I never, ever was degraded or put down for my origin or having to work. And having spent lots of time in Harvard Yard and having dated Harvard guys, trust me, there are a lot of bright but otherwise painfully ordinary kids there.
A bright kid from Andalusia, AL could make it at Harvard if that’s where she wants to be. The operative phrase being if that’s where she wants to be. If she’s doing it just to please daddy, she may be miserable. Then again, she may get there and really like it.
I’ve know some people from small southern towns who have gone to Ivy League schools. Hell, they were no better or worse than me who, while bright, never even considered Ivy League colleges.
As long as she’s happy to go there, if accepted, just be the good, supportive uncle.
I grew up on a farm. Neither of my parents went to college. None of my grandparents went to high school. Nearly all the fathers of the people I knew growing up were farmers or factory workers or both (like my father). The people I grew up with made it clear to me that the absolute most (yes, I mean the absolute most) that anyone from my high school could ever even dream of was to go to some second-rate state university and come back and teach high school.
I had SAT scores of 719 V, 772 M. This would have been one of the best scores in the class even if I had gone to some well-off suburban high school. In my worthless high school, it was probably a total of 100 to 150 points higher than anybody else in the history, before or since, of the high school. I told people that I wanted to go to a first-rate college and maybe go on to get a Ph.D. and become a mathematician. They told me that I was a snob and a traitor. They told me that if I had been a first-class football player and had won an athletic scholarship to some good place that would be O.K., but going to some fancy college because I was smart was wrong. Because I had an absolutely iron will and ignored everybody around me, I did go to a very selective college, got two masters degrees, and now work as a mathematician.
I know that you mean well, but how is what you’re doing any different from what the people around me did when I was young? If you’re going to move up in the world, you have to get out of the provincial situation you start in. The point that you go to college is the ideal place to start. I went from being a provincial hick to being a student at a first-rate college and I loved it. Give your niece some credit for being able to make adjustments.
Sampiro - Sounds like you might be the one having the issues with your neice going to Harvard. Is it possible that you are concerned that she actually will fit in there?
Also, going to a small private college does not mean you will avoid a social pressure cooker. My school had plenty of BMW and Mercedes driving children of rich parents and even a former VPotUS’s son. From the moment you set foot on campus the “importance” of joining the right fraternity or sorority is hammered into you (50% or more of students go Greek). And diversity? Literally every student recieved a J. Crew catalogue in his/her mailbox at least once a month.
College is a time to grow and discover new things. I would have welcomed the chance to go to college in Boston (ok, I did end up going to business school in Boston but whatever).
If I were you I’d suggest in the strongest possible terms that your niece visit the schools she’s interested in attending. In about 2 hours she’ll know if Cambridge is THE place she wants to be, Harvard is great, etc. etc. or if the weather, and the crowds, the funny food (grits? Fuggedaboutit), and the rude, pushy people are going to be too big an issue. The culture gap is what’s important here - not the intellectual gap. If she gets into Harvard and wants to end up with a Harvard degree, it’s extremely unlikely that she’ll flunk out. That should be the least of her worries.
I have experience with my own and my friend’s kids (over and over again) who changed their favorite schools once they visited the campus and got a true feel for what it was like. The son of one of my good friends ended up going to Harvard. He came from Utica, New York, and upstate New York won’t come in second in any hick contest against Alabama. Friend’s son thought he wanted to go to Haverford till he spent a weekend on campus. He realized that it was just too small (as he put it, he didn’t want to meet everyone he’d know for 4 years in one weekend). Big, bad Cambridge/Boston was just right.
Harvard is actually easier to adjust to than you might think. All the freshman are housed together the first year and there really is quite a range of people. The “elite” know how to find each other and she wouldn’t be troubled by them after that. One positive thing about Harvard is that there is really no emphasis on sororities or fraternities. There are clubs that invite certain privileged students to join, but the vast run of students don’t pay them any mind. So people just sort themselves into natural groups. Cambridge is a great place and the area has the advantage of a very good public transport system, so she wouldn’t be stuck on campus, even without a car.
The old Big Fish/Small Pond to Eensy Weensy Fish/Huge Pond dilema.
Well, I suppose she’ll either sink or swim and it will be a learning experience. Personally, I think if she gets in (and I think it’s pretty competitive, even with great grades), she should jump at the opportunity.
I’ve definitely noticed that most of the Ivy League grads I’ve known were not on average any brighter than the state college grads I’ve known. (Actually if I had to give any university an edge, it would be U.C. Berkeley grads or U. Illinois grads- I’ve never known a graduate from either school who wasn’t exceptionally bright, though this is purely anecdotal and based on an extremely limited population.) The dimmer Ivy League graduates I’ve known (including Dubya, who I don’t know personally thankfully but certainly keep abreast of) all had one thing in common: Legacy.
This begs the question already mentioned here of “why pay six figures for an education when study after study shows you’ll probably never recoup the cost of the education in earnings when your income is compared to that of a grad from a state college with the same major [so long as all accreditations are the same]”.
I do fear she’s doing this (if she does it) to please Daddy. She also says she wants to study pharmacy, which is of course 100% because her parents are pharmacists. (My secret evil hope is she’ll go there and graduate with a double major in Yiddish Poetry with a minor in Byzantine Folkdancing.)
I have no say either way so que sera sera. I am glad to read so many “it’s not as snobbish as you think” posts.
I’ve experienced both Harvard and Berkeley and I’d have to say that Harvard probably provides the better undergraduate experience. There are more opportunities to interact with faculty (as opposed to TAs) and more opportunities to take smaller classes and seminars.
I don’t know if Harvard would be the best place for a future pharmacist, though. It was really more about the cultural experience for me. There’s just something ineffably cool about knowing that your dorm is over 300 years old.
My high school advisor wanted me to go to Rice because he thought MIT would be too big for me.
I’m glad I didn’t take his advice. MIT was great, a real exercise in dealing with adversity and the real world. In my high school, I was tops in the physics class. At MIT I was average, and even ended up taking “help” classes after regular classes in some subjects. It was a great education in more ways than one.
Heck, if she doesn’t learn about The Real World at school, what’s she going to do when she’s thrown into it at graduation?
I have a friend who is in Princeton. She is from an upper-middle-class background not unlike your nieces, and said although there were other kids like her and poorer, many were relatively wealthy. She said that freshman year, a butcher’s daughter lived across the hall from a Romanov of Russia. JFK and Jackie’s granddaughters used to come to parties and had many “common” friends. So there will be a small number of “intimidating” people but they will be pretty friendly to all. She will no doubt fit in with the kids in terms of wealth, and there are a lot of girls there from the South (if she goes, a big thing is Lilly Pulitzer dresses and good old southern cocktails; it’s been called the Ivy with the most “southern charm”).
I can’t speak to the rest of your concerns, but when I went from high school to college, I went from being able to coast to working my butt off. Best thing that ever happened to me- it told me that I was capable of something other than coasting, if that makes any sense.
I live an ocean away from most of you guys and don’t know anything about Harvard, but if my own experiences taught me one thing, it’s this: choose the highest-level education you might possibly be able to handle.
Worst case: you fail, “lose” a few months of your life and gain some very valuable experience. Best case: you rise to the challenge, and who knows where you may end up. And otherwise, as Marlitharn said, you will spend the rest of your life fretting about what would have happened if you had taken the chance when it was offered to you.
I’m very puzzled by the OP – so much so that this might come out sounding a little harsh, which is certainly not intended.
From what I gather, this young lady is being urged not to attend Harvard because she’s wealthy and spoiled, a hard-worker who may not be brilliant, has a southern accent, and may have to adjust to people and surroundings that she is not accustomed to. Forgive me, but I fail to see a single reason why any of these mean that she shouldn’t go to one college or another. Should all young women who may be the creme of the small-town crop be discouraged from going to prestigous, big-city colleges? That seems patently absurd, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what might distinguish this young lady in question from any other generic, privilidged, successful high school student. (I.e., she’s not allergic to Massachusetts snow, she doesn’t carry a deep-seated grudge about the War Between the States and Boston’s infamous 213th Infantry Regiment, etc.)
I have no idea what this woman’s goals are for college (does she want to become a business mogul or a wife of a well-heeled man? does she want to travel the world or live her life basking in the glow of her father’s accomplishments?), but it occurs to me that if her aims are to make something of herself, she ought to be allowed to sink or swim, not put in the kiddie pool in the early years of her adulthood.
If she doesn’t like Harvard, she can always leave and have her choice of public schools, whether near home or far. Going the other way might be more difficult, however, as chances to go to one of the top universities in the world don’t necessarily come around that often.
I’ll say what most everyone else has said in regards to her going to Harvard:
If not now, exactly when do you expect your niece to go out into the “real world?” Or should she live the rest of her life as the daughter of two prominent pharmacists in Podunk, AL contantly being fretted over being ready for something by her gay uncle?
If you don’t think a Harvard undergrad degree is worth $150 K, fine, I don’t think it’s worth that either. But if her dad wants to pay for it, why the hell not? He’s getting to say that his daughter has gone on to Harvard, which is apparently worth it to him. Should he spend it on a boat instead?
The question is does she want to go. I’m told Princeton, for all its southern charm, is not much different from northern Harvard. She will no doubt still be in the presence of other well-to-do, fabulously wealthy, and quite poor children. It’s a question of her desire, her major, and what her parents are willing to do.
If you are close with her, Sampiro, might I suggest speaking with her about it and giving some uncle advice?
If she wants to be a pharmacist, she’d be well advised to go to a university or college that has a pharmacy school.
If she want’s to be a snob about it, go to UC San Francisco or U Texas. They were ranked as the best pharmacy schools by U.S. News and World Report (followed by UNC Chapel Hill, Purdue, Michigan, Arizona, and Minnesota) Not an ivy league school in the pack.
I am 100% sure that going to a great big name school that doesn’t have the subject you most want to study is a waste - unless she’s a complete “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” type of person (which it doesn’t sound like she is). No matter how great a school, you can’t exactly take the majority of your undergraduate course load as independent study.
