If your kid got into an Ivy League school this fall (congrats!), he or she most likely also got into less expensive schools that also have a hall or two lined with famous faces. Jimmy or Jenny might never quite forgive you if you send them to State instead of Harvard, but those of us who do not have to agonize over the decision in real life can noodle away about whether those schools’ crazy tuition makes basic economic sense. Given alternative uses for the substantial difference, for example endowing an decent nest egg for Jenny’s first post-college start-up business, or buying Jimmy a used Ferrari, does a famous name school bring that much added value?
Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum have taken a few swings at the question, with Kevin leaning no. A correspondent from the higher-Ed trenches wrote Kevin today to point out that the Ivies use at least some of that money to give students more effective learning experiences such as more seminars and discussion courses, smaller classes and professionally graded papers, whereas State schools (CA in particular) have cut back on everything but chalk.
No doubt the money gap has some influence, but it still does not seem like the simplest or the most parsimonious explanation. Whereas Harvard can cream off the top however many percent of an already heavily self-selected applicant pool, State schools by design must accept a much broader range of student.
Other professional scientists have told me that while hiring from the Ivies does not mean that you will get a superstar, it does guarantee at least a minimum level of quality. Hiring out of state schools is more of a crapshoot. The very best scientists come from literally anywhere, but a kid from the Ivies will at least get the job done without too much grief or drama.
In other words Ivy League schools put out exactly what they take in: people who do very well at the sort of thing that schools teach and test for. Traditionally the hopeless legacy cases also came with a different but also valuable guarantee: the weak-chinned drunk with a nice diploma must be related to someone rich and/or powerful, and he may well use some of those strings to rake in cash if you put him in charge of a team like the Texas Rangers.
During life as a perma-student I somehow managed to earn degrees from a geographically-advantaged school/commune for trustafarians and serious mountain bikers, a decently regarded State school and a private school on the technical tier not too far below MIT and Cal Tech. This vagabondage gave me enough time to teach a decent number of semesters to a wide variety of student. At the State school I generally found that ten percent (or so) would fail or come close to it no matter how hard you tried, while another ten percent would find a way to succeed no matter how poor the instruction. A smart teacher therefore judged himself by how the middle eighty did.
Harvard gets to skim off that second ten percent before anyone gets their first dorm assignment, suggesting to me that Ivy League schools would still produce an exalted batch of graduates if nine tenths of the coursework was taught and graded by ATMs. To find out whether that is true, maybe we should ask whether Ivy grads do better than the cohort of State school graduates who either got into an Ivy but chose not to attend, or at least fell well within their acceptance criteria. If diploma discrimination were not a factor then I’d guess the answer would be no. As well, if my uncle had tits he’d be my aunt.
Roger Moore
ISTR that this has already been looked into, and you can predict success better by looking at the best school a student applied to than by the school they actually attended. The argument is about the same as the one you’re making- schools don’t have a huge amount of value added- plus the idea that students have a fairly decent idea of how good they really are and generally don’t apply to complete longshot schools.
Anne Laurie
Excellent point.
Keith G
Riffing off and away from your point a bit, my concern is about the lack of diversity of opinion and intellectual DNA of our leadership when sooooo many come from the same three or four schools.
Wag
With a daughter attending a private college and another graduating from an excellent Stat University, your analogy of buying a Ferrari vs an Audi A6 has been heard numerous times in our household. I’m sure as hell not convinced that the Ferrari is worth the price when what we really need is good transportation, not an expensive rocket to the moon. Is an audi better than a Hundai? I suspect so, but have no data to back it up.
MonkeyBoy
At top schools you have a large number of students who are mainly interested in learning (except for the pre-med or pre-law weenies who are mostly in getting good grades. The best way to get into a good grad school is by doing something interesting as an undergrad not just racking up good grades).
Walker
I have worked on admissions at my Ivy. While I have heard of the mysterious “special consideration sheets” attached to a student’s application (never seen one first hand), my understanding is that it requires a building named after the family.
While I hate to say it, the other thing to keep in mind when you are paying for the school is the alumni network. You are paying admission to a very influential club that will provide you with benefits for your entire life. Not pretty, but true.
The Dangerman
Shit, in CA, teachers are expected to basically provide their own chalk, too.
As a former employee of the CSU system, all I can say is I’m not sure I’d send my child into a CSU (or, perhaps, maybe not even a UC). What I saw “behind the scenes” was shocking; it was classic 99% vs. 1% (unrelated to my experience, consider the controversies over spending on the President’s houses in the CSU system). I saw repeated events that most people would consider fraudulent, but, as long as the “perpetrator” was in the 1% Club, they were golden. Very sad to witness up close and personal.
Zagloba
I realize this is with regard to law school rather than undergrad, but the fact that the upper levels of the federal and state benches are populated almost solely from the Top 20, and even more so from Harvard/Yale/etc., points to the fact that education (whether undergraduate or specialized) is not about positioning yourself into a meritocracy, but rather jockeying for position into a rigged game.
/mathematician +3
Tyro
I think that if yu go to a state school and get admitted to one of their rarefied honors programs, you can take advantage of many of the research opportunities and experiences that you would have had at the ivy league school. That said, I found the rigor and intensity at my elite private university something that wasn’t available everywhere else. State schools have excellent graduate programs, but undergrad is just “ok”, and there’s less of an available pipeline into prestige jobs.
Boomsloop
Having done my degree work (engineering) at a state school and now teaching at an Ivy-like private school, your description is spot on. It bugged me to no end from the outside while doing my degrees but now being on the inside, it really is remarkable to the extent that our students at the private get a head start.
The main thing that an Ivy-like school brings is the alumni network. While we have better than average teaching, one can find that also at technically focused schools (ex. Rose Hulman, Milwaukee School of Eng). The thing you do not get with those programs is the built-in career boost by virtue of alumni saying hey, you are from X, so am I, let’s get you an interview.
It is just amazing what our grads walk out with as an advantage in that they dodge the standard HR clutter and are automatically fast-tracked on leadership programs / etc. Basically that opportunity part of Gladwell’s discussion of success is automatically provided. Of course the students need to actually do something with it but by in large, the neuroses that got them into the school in the first place, tend to stay in place and drive them through.
Ability-wise, I describe the students to faculty candidates as if you took the bottom fifty to seventy percent of students at a state school and simply started from there.
Is it worth the price? For a technical degree in engineering, yes. For a business degree, definitely yes. The connections plus your likely pay are fantastic. For those high achievers, definitely. For the middle of the road folks perhaps less driven, maybe. For non-science / business, likely no.
Steve in DC
The value in the school is in the other graduates. Our directors that went to Harvard, Hopkins, Oxford, simply will not hire a person that lacks the same academic pedigree of the rest of them. They also recruit from their old schools through internships and other avenues.
It also depends on what you’re going to school for. Hard sciences do not seem to suffer from this sort of treatment. But outside of STEM jobs who you know is far more important that what you know. In the same fashion where you used to work is often far more important that what you did.
It’s a rather incestuous process. Part of it seems to be self interest in keeping the value of their schools, and the rest of it has to do with putting in place more people that think like them and approach problems from the same way. Views outside of the established schools and their doctrine are simply not tolerated at all.
I don’t think this is healthy for our society, it’s no shock that the leadership of both parties and Wall Street all went to the same schools, and all keep insisting on the same sort of perscriptions for solving the problems we face. It’s the same country club at the end of the day.
I’ve seen qualified people from state schools ran out of their position as fast as possible as soon as someone from the “right” school came up for promotion, that’s just how it works.
Mnemosyne
I suspect that, when it comes to the Washington DC and NYC elite, geography is more important than school quality. Stanford generally ranks in the top 5, but how many elites in DC went to Stanford? Hell, it’s unusual that some of Obama’s top staffers went to University of Chicago instead of an Ivy.
Don K
Based on a career in business observing people at all levels, as well as being involved in hiring decisions, and knowing that banks, private equity, and consultants hire all of the A students from Harvard by dangling the prospect of mega or centimegabucks in front of them, I’ll say I’d much rather hire an A or B student from UMich, MSU, or IndU than a B or C student from Harvard.
The mediocre Harvard students are, well, mediocre, but with the Harvard attitude, wondering five years down the line why they’re not CEO yet, let alone CFO. The good students from a decent state school, by contrast, realize they have to work and learn to get ahead.
Villago Delenda Est
University of Texas Law wouldn’t admit the deserting shit.
Harvard took him into their business school.
Tells you a great deal about “merit” right there.
Phil Perspective
@Mnemosyne: Is it? Considering Chicago is where Obama decided to hang his hat, so to speak. Chicago was his comfortable circle was, so he appointed people(like Goolsbee) he was comfortable with. It’s part of the reason someone like Stiglitz didn’t get a sniff.
PJ
Academics are only a portion of the value of a college. The further you are from graduation, the more important the alumni network is. This is where the Ivies excel over pretty much all other US schools (sadly, my alma mater is near the bottom in this regard.)
Gretchen
My daughter went to state school for undergrad, and is soon to start at Columbia for grad school in public health. She could have gotten a free ride, and lived at home, continuing at state school., while she’s looking at $60-90,000 in debt for a degree that probably won’t lead to a high-paying job. I’m hysterical at the thought of her starting life with that much debt, while she’s confident it’s worth it.
My best friend sent me a picture of her son-in-law, shaking hands with Obama, and noting that SIL got that high in government with a master’s from our state school. I noted that the guy he was shaking hands with took out a bunch of student loans to go to Columbia, and look how it worked out for him. I just don’t know whether it is worth it or not. But I really resent the fact that it’s coming down to, only the rich people can go to the good schools, and we can waste the talents of everybody else.
Meanwhile, my son works at the local country club, and spent last evening selling $600 bottles of wine to rich elderly drunks. They’re not telling their kids to pick the cheaper schools so they’re not buried in debt for the rest of their lives.
Don K
Okay, if you have your heart set on being President or a Supreme Court Justice, then go to Harvard or Yale (we have to go back to Reagan to find a Prez who went to neither, and the Supreme Court famously is the property of grads of Harvard and Yale Law). If you want to make the bucks on offer from banks, private equity, or consulting, then get an MBA from Harvard, Chicago, or Stanford. If, like most of us, you just want to make a comfortable living while doing something you like, then go to a good state school and do as well as you can.
burnspbesq
My experience when I got to law school was that the students who were best prepared came from neither the Ivies or the UC, but rather from the top tier of small liberal arts schools. We had been in small classes taught by scholars who loved to teach, and we had been pushed harder.
Walker
Grad school is one thing. Anything that is not PhD level is generally seen as a money maker for the university. Schools are comfortable not giving much aid, and students generally pay full price.
But when it comes to undergraduate education, the top schools are very, very good about financial aid. You are very unlikely to pay full sticker price if you get into an Ivy, provided that your family does not make more than 250K. When the economic crisis hit, one of the things my school did was immediately commit a sizable increase in aid from the endowment.
Car dealers ain’t got nothing on universities when it comes to sticker versus actual price.
ReflectedSky
I went to Harvard. I had had a miserable childhood which included ghastly boring and abusive schooling where I learned nothing in the classroom most of the time and was punished for being intelligent. Once I had to stand in the corner in front of the class for an entire day because I’d been reading ahead of the rest of the class.
I didn’t initially want to go to Harvard. I thought of it as conservative and elitist. My school (a tiny boarding school) wanted me to apply because they knew I’d get in and they could use that in their marketing. I was an ideal candidate for the full spectrum of reasons — horrible childhood, including alcoholic parents and a physical disability, small town in a small state, etc., plus the high test scores, grades and tons of ECs, including writing a novel just for fun. I wasn’t a resume builder in high school, just doing what interested me. And when I visited Harvard under duress, I found a lot of people who seemed like me, and I fell in love with the place. I went there so I could finally not stick out like a sore thumb. It wasn’t perfect, but I had some amazing educational experiences and never regretted going. My dad spent what would have been his retirement fund to send me, and he didn’t regret it, either.
I wasn’t smart about it in a ROI sense. I went in the early 80s, and I turned down a chance to go to Wall Street to be a filmmaker — as a woman, Wall Street would probably not have panned out either, but Hollywood was DEFINITELY non-starter. Harvard did take over Hollywood (people from my class being a significant factor), but like the rest of the “meritocracy” it made things worse. The people that got in were the people in it just for easy money. They didn’t know about movies nor did they care. I didn’t play that game.
My basic point is that I’m so impractical and foolish that I went to college based on wanting a learning and life experience. No one seems to go to college to learn these days. But a liberal arts education was never supposed to be about a monetary ROI. Meanwhile, I am ashamed over the indisputable role my alma mater has played in the failure of the elites over the past few decades. It’s supposed to be selecting and training the leaders of the country. And more and more it takes the hothoused offspring of the affluent, people who have been trained since early childhood to cut corners and discard ethics in the service of their self-interest, marinated in values that go no deeper than having more than the next guy and the power to pass that on. It’s not surprising that the result is what we see in government, in finance, in popular culture. They believe in nothing but their self-interest, yet have been coached to think that they have “earned” their privilege. It’s hard to find the cool, brave, deserving applicants in the sea of hothoused applicants who have in some cases entirely fabricated lives. I believe the admissions staff tries, but there are so many cultural forces at work.
You can’t get through the UC system now in four years, because they’ve cut so many required courses down. There may be state systems that are still healthy, but CA’s isn’t. There’s a HUGE variety of colleges and universities out there, so it’s a bit of a straw man argument to say it’s Harvard vs. a state school. A kid that could get into Harvard could turn that down for a full ride at an excellent small LAC, for example.
Harvard gives you a leg up because of its reputation and network. I was able to laterally change professions when I really needed to to take care of my infant daughter in part because of my pedigree. If you work at it and have the right temperament, you can get an excellent education there, but it has never offered the best default undergraduate education, and I’m sure it doesn’t now. It doesn’t “make” people accomplished; it takes the accomplished. Did anyone ever really think otherwise?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
I’ve got a BS and two MS degrees. The BS and one MS were from top-tier private schools. The second MS was from the University of Maryland. Guess which one actually taught me something useful for my career.
I haven’t seen a dime’s worth of benefit from any alumni network from any of them. My take: go to a school you can afford and work as hard as you can.
Second take, based on watching my fellow BS majors. If you want to go into a profession that requires an MD, JD, or PhD, go to the easiest school first. Grad schools look at GPAs and don’t seem to factor in how tough your undergrad school was.
Walker
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
I can say from experience that this is not even remotely true when it comes to PhDs. The primary thing we look at is recommendations from people we trust, as well as research (and possible publication) track record as an undergraduate.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Walker: OK, maybe I exaggerated and maybe things have changed. I base my comments on a classmate who had to sweat to get into med school where it would have been a cakewalk had he gone to UCLA.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@MonkeyBoy:
This was what I found at the University of Pennsylvania. I know there were ambitious weenies (especially in Wharton), but all the people I keep up with were just plain interesting people who were interested in learning things. Maybe because I wasn’t an ambitious weenie, I was drawn to others who also were not ambitious weenies. Because if this, a fair number of my friends are, you could argue, not “successful”, but that’s only if you use a narrow definition of what it means to be “successful” I’d never think of trading my friends for a bunch of now rich, ambitious weenies. My friends have done a whole lot more interesting things with their lives than make money, and I’ll take interesting over rich.
One other thing about what we’re calling the “top” schools (I feel kind of weird talking about my school as one of the best in the U.S., even though it is; I guess it just seems kind of snotty to me.): They can be amazingly patient with people who come in and turn out to be screwups. I was one of those. I’ve since learned much later that I have really bad ADD (the inattentive kind), and I had shitloads of trouble finding my footing there. I got sent home twice, once for half a year, and the next time for a whole year, but they didn’t give up on me. Once I found a subject that I really loved (American history), and found what I had to do to stay afloat in the classes I wouldn’t have taken if I’d had a choice, I did all right. I don’t know how willing to deal with me a lot of other schools would have been. I think I might have ended up out on my ass for good, though I don’t know this for sure.
And although I might not now be what people would typically think of as a “success” in life, I think my old school would find things about me to make them, if not quite proud, then at least not utterly ashamed that I ever darkened their doors. The ADD has made it impossible so far to hold any kind of decent paying work, but I’ve done a lot of interesting things. I lived in Honduras for two years, and faked it as a teacher at a little school there; I’ve started a non-profit, which I’m still struggling to get going, but I got my 501(c)3 status, pretty much all on my own; and I’m a good friend who keeps up with people and have helped some of my friends through some hard times.
I guess what I’m saying is that I, at least, was lucky to have gone to a “top” school. I think it was well worth it for me, and I got a lot out of it that I don’t know I could have gotten at most other schools. I’m not trying to be a braggart here and crow about what a kickass school I went to and sneer at other people’s schools, so if that’s how it comes across, then please know I don’t mean it that way. And, of course, I could be dead wrong about how I might have fared at some other school; if I am, then by all means, por favor, set me right here.
Rando
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Med school student here. Graduated from one of the schools mentioned in Tim’s post. While going to a top ten school can hurt your GPA, as long as you stay above 3.5 and have a strong MCAT, you stand a better chance than someone who goes to state school to get admitted, esp at the top med schools which are all fairly incestuous (ie if you count everyone in my class who attended a top 20 undergraduate institution, as ranked by US News, they would account for at least half, if not more, of the class… My school is a fairly well-known private school/research institution). Sad, but true.
That being said, you have a way funnier college experience at a state school. Or so they tell me.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@burnspbesq:
This is true, too. People talk mostly about Harvard and Yale when they name the “best” schools; but Swarthmore, Haverford, Amherst, Williams or Oberlin are every bit as good; better in some ways, I’d bet. I’m glad to have gone where I did, looking back; at the time, and for a while after, I wondered if I’d ended up at the right place. But even though I’m glad I went there, I can’t say that, knowing what I do now, I wouldn’t go to a much smaller school if I woke up and found I was 18 and had to do it all over again.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Dang, that’s a rather small geographic area you’re selecting from.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Not really, he got as far west as Oberlin. :-)
You make a good point about the Eastern Seaboard bias, though.
Mnemosyne
@ReflectedSky:
Ironically, the reason you probably didn’t make it in Hollywood is that you didn’t go to the right school. A degree from Harvard is more of a hindrance than a help when you’re competing with grads from USC, UCLA and NYU who are trying to get jobs from people who went to USC, UCLA and NYU.
That’s why I was saying above that geography is often more important than the school itself. The only Harvard grads who get anywhere in creative Hollywood are the ones from the Harvard Lampoon who went to work for “The Simpsons” after Conan O’Brien formed his little Harvard mafia there.
ETA: BA from USC CNTV, MFA from Loyola Marymount, and still working as an assistant. So you didn’t miss all that much.
Gretchen
@Walker: True that you don’t pay the sticker price, but the sticker price is so high that normal people can’t even pay the discount. My daughter, and others I know, was offered $20,000 off the $40,000 sticker price, but we couldn’t come up with the other $20,000, so had to say: “I know your heart is set on going there, but we just can’t afford it. State school for you.” I think that may be one reason she is set on Columbia, whatever the cost. The daughter of a friend took out large loans at a small liberal arts college, worked as a nanny for a year, and is now taking out more loans to get a masters in painting. We took a lifetime to rack up debt, while they have it at the starting line.
ReflectedSky
@Mnemosyne: Conan was a beneficiary of the Lampoon network. He didn’t set it up. I went to NYU for grad film. That’s another whole story. Hollywood simply isn’t a welcoming environment for female creative personnel. Going to UCLA or USC wouldn’t have helped — at that point, I don’t think girls were allowed to direct at USC, although I believe it’s better now. (I sure hope so.)
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Something I find interesting is, though, that if you look at state or regional politics, other schools start appearing more and more. For instance, in California, you will see Stanford, Cal, UCLA, USC and Santa Clara graduates all over the place in politics and local/county/state government. An example: both the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of California went to Santa Clara.
Tim I
It seems to me that many people have a very distorted view of the costs of an Ivy League education. All Ivy League colleges, must accept students regardless of need – in fact the admissions process is needs blind.
I chose to go to Columbia because they offered me the best financial aid package among schools that I was interested in applying to. I could have gotten a free ride from some schools, but none that I wished to attend.
As a kid from a working class family, I got an excellent package. I graduated with very little debt, despite the fact that my parents only contributed $2,000 over the course of my four years there.
The Ivies are very expensive if you can afford it, but much of that money is used to finance the educations of students from lower income brackets, as part of the commitment to fostering a diverse student population.
I think that cost should weigh in the decision where to go to school, but I think it is important to look at the actual cost, not just the tuition number given in US News.
Mnemosyne
@ReflectedSky:
I was at USC in the late 1980s, but I was in Critical Studies. There were some women directors (my husband was the sound man on one woman’s 480) and, by the time I graduated, the head of Production was a woman, so at a minimum they were trying to turn things around even while I was there.
But Hollywood is a major boys’ club at so many levels that it’s still a very tough row to hoe. I think that in about another 10-15 years it will no longer be unusual to see major women directors, but that will be because of the 20-year-long push of women film school graduates behind them, not because Hollywood finally wised up.
If you see Brave, you’ll notice that Brenda Chapman is still credited as a director, with a separate “co-director” credit for the guy who took the film over 18 months ago when she was pushed out. I think part of the reason for that is that Pixar didn’t want to be seen as firing the first woman to direct one of their animated features.
(Though it looks like Pixar is learning the same lesson that we learned at the Giant Evil Corporation where I work — your most talented animators are not necessarily going to be your best animation directors. The skill sets are not always transferable no matter how much, say, Glen Keane wants to direct an animated feature.)
Gretchen
@Tim I: My daughter got $5000 off the $30,000 tuition at Columbia, before considering books and living expenses. I wish she weren’t set on going there, and hope it’s worth it.
drylake
In respect to the undergraduate experience, I remember sitting on an admissions committee for a reasonably competitive overseas program some years ago and being struck that not one of the four applicants from Harvard had a letter of recommendation from an actual faculty member in his or her file (all from TAs or instructors), more or less like the applicants from Cal (those two institutions do have a good deal in common). The one applicant from Brown, on the other hand, had a meticulous and highly informed letter from a major professor in her file. Anecdotal, to be sure, but it jibes with my impression over the years that the best applicants to graduate programs come from LACs.
Jay
This seems like equal parts conventional wisdom and bollocks, topped with statistics derived from anecdote and Tim’s butt. As someone who went to a large private undergrad and an MIT/Caltech grad (cough the latter cough), I thought this was particularly silly.
Ivy leagues guarantee a minimum level of quality? Who are these professional scientists who see the world in clean cliches, and not populations with differing statistics?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Jay: People who are lazy asses and aren’t interested in doing their jobs?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Tim I: If you’re rich, you can afford it, fine. If you’re poor or working class, you can get need-based scholarships. If you’re middle or upper middle, you’re screwed. You’re parents make too much to qualify for assistance, but they can’t afford the sticker price.
That was the case for my parents, and it’s the case for me with my kids. We qualify for nothing but loans.
TheMightyTrowel
Another Ivy grad here (with a phd from an ivy-equivalent foreign university and teaching experience at that university and at 2 large ‘state’ universities also in foreign climes)…
My 2 cents is that the Ivy advantage comes primarily from 3 things: the skimming off of the top 10% as in the OP, the alumni network (as in many posts) and (and for me this was key) the financial wherewithal to give students a lot more support in their ‘extra curricular’ experiences. My uni had enough money sloshing around that there were hundreds of grants for undergrads to apply for which would fund internships, travel and volunteering during holidays. I spent at least 6 weeks each summer travelling to other countries and working in the field I would eventually specialise in paid for by at least 10 different small grants. This leg up gave me a heck of a lot of professional experience as well as an international network of friends and colleagues and a HUGE amount of experience grant writing all before the age of 22. I have classmates who launched NGOs and worked for months in various community support positions all funded by these sorts of grants. Almost all are from alumni donations.
I’m an alumni interviewer now (my alma mater is need blind internationally as well so we get a huge number of international applicants) and when applicants ask me about the uni I always mention the UG travel/internship/volunteering grants.
DPS
Jesus, don’t let Drum’s friend delude you about UC. I taught at UCSD from 2002-2005 and am at UC Berkeley since then. This is me. At UCSD I taught a vicious humanities lecture course (HUM 2) that demands three drafts and three final versions of papers in a ten week quarter, and expected attendance at weekly discussion sections taught by grad students or lecturers. At Berkeley I have taught two kinds of lecture course. One is an “introduction to Roman civilization” with about 160 students and three teaching assistants who each run two weekly discussion sections; the course expects several short writing assignments and one term paper (but no revision of drafts). The other is a “roots of western civ” course that has about 160 students and eight teaching assistants who each run one weekly discussion section and grade three separate papers over a semester, with mandatory revisions. This latter course satisfies one semester of a campus-wide two-semester “reading and composition” requirement that the campus has poured large amounts of money into in the past few years.
I am afraid that we will eventually lose the ability to work with students’ writing, but it most definitely has not happened yet, at least not at Berkeley.
DPS
@DPS:
Sorry, the “roots of western civ” course has two weekly discussion sections, not one, which actually matters a lot.
Mike S.
LOL, and Bullshit, and here’s why:
I turned down both Harvard and Princeton for the UC… and it didn’t matter b/c a) one can get a great education at any of them as well as at two dozen other (and in fact many, many more) institutions, and b) all three (and many, many more) are run by authoritarian psychopaths.
nihil sub sole novum:
the best students in the ivy league are no better than the best students anywhere else (though the ivies might have more of ‘the best’ proportionally).
Meritocracy…? LOL and FAIL and FANTASY OF YESTERYEAR — it’s who you know, not what you’ve accomplished.
Jess
I teach at a well-regarded state university, and I can say without reservation that my colleagues are the most dedicated, talented, hard-working, enthused-about-teaching bunch that I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, as both a student and an instructor at a variety of institutions. Since it’s not a researched based institution, nearly all the energy goes into teaching. Since a professorship here is not a particularly glamorous or well-paid position, superstars with big egos and bad attitudes stay away. I would say the range of students we get here is about the same as what I got in the UC system (in terms of native ability, at least).
The big differences are the background and expectations of the students. They tend to be working class with heart-breakingly modest expectations and a low level of cultural/political engagement. They often have to work a lot of hours to support themselves and pay tuition, so they tend to invest minimal effort into what they consider non-essential courses. For an ambitious and intellectually-gifted student, this would not be a particularly inspiring or challenging environment. College isn’t just about what the professors teach you; it’s about how your peers challenge and inspire you, and broaden your horizons. If I were advising my kid on where to go to college, I would tell her to find a place where the other students are interesting, rather than a place with big-name professors.
James E. Powell
Both my undergraduate and law school had the word state in their names and neither one was on anyone’s list of top anything. Somehow I managed to have life that was both interesting and rewarding. Although I have had and continue to have my struggles, none of them seem to be related to the schools I attended.
From what I am reading, either this is now no longer possible, or many members of our middle class have lost their goddamned minds.
superdestroyer
If one attends an Ivy League/Ivy Like school, then one can pursue a career in a log-normal career such as investment banking, consulting, or top 14 law school.
If one attends a state school, the one has better think about a career in a normally distributed career such as healthcare, engineering, accounting. A graduate of an Ivy League does not get to say to CMS that they are a Harvard graduate and must be paid more. The legal system works in a very different manner.
Anyone who attends a public university who could have attend an Ivy League is taking possible career fields off the table.
geg6
Jeebus, what a load of crap. I work at a small branch of a huge state u. We tout our big name but small college experience and how excellent our teaching is and how many opportunities there are for undergrad research there are at our small campus. And it’s all true. And the proof is in the pudding. This years graduating class had less than 10% who did not have job offers from top tier employers, most locally but also including MIT’s neuro research lab and JPMorgan. I have hundreds of stories like that. One reason may be that we have the largest dues-paying alumni association in the world (literally), but I doubt it was alumni who hired those kids at MIT and JPMorgan. We simply put out excellent grads.
Cermet
@Boomsloop: I read by your insightful post the truth about Ivy schools – your insight really says it all – the terrible reality about both how the world really works and what having a degree from an Ivy league vs. any where else; with todays economy, this spells doom for the average student from the middle class who can’t get into the 1% … I mean Ivy league school (the poor, except for a tiny group of very high achievers, were always screwed.)
pluege
going to a name college has nothing to do with the education the students receive. It has everything to do with the alumni pool to draw on afterwards. The better the schools name, the better the jobs, the more and better choices throughout life. Its an advantage gap that only widens over time.
Its not what you know, its who you know that matters and name schools connect students with more powerful alum. So being a dumb as a stump legacy like romney or bush the lessor doesn’t matter – they just keep sucking off the teat of their life-long advantage all the while convincing themselves of their innate superiority as evidenced by the wealth and advantage they are handed.
Palli
Of course, expensive schools like the ivies with gargantuan endowments and legacy students do give scholarship support to deserving bright students, Graduates get the prestige and jobs from an alumni support system that represents the power & 2% of the nation.
Universal education is not a consideration for these institutions these well-endowed schools; but if it were these schools would be tithing to state schools to support great teaching, libraries and laboratories in state schools thoughout the United States.
The economic disparity within the education system is appalling on all levels.
Omnes Omnibus
In my experience, limited as it is*, the people I have known who had Ivy-level credentials (test scores, grades, extracurriculars, etc.) who did not go to an Ivy chose small liberal arts colleges not big state universities. They choose those schools to avoid the size and/or hot house atmosphere at the Ivies. I find it interesting that, with the exception of burnsie, the LAC option doesn’t come to people’s minds.
*My sample pool is my peers from high school who generally choose either LACs or Ivies and my classmates at a well regarded LAC. Anecdotal, I know.
Not Sure
@Wag: Audi is to Volkswagen as Acura is to Honda. Both made by the same crappy company, and both destined to be decrepit beaters in around six or eight years or so, not that anyone with enough dough lying around to buy an A6 cares about that.
Not Sure
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Thank you. Unless you’ve always made $70,000 a year or better and always had money left over to save for the possibility your progeny might get into college, you’re pretty much screwed. And even then, I suspect the fact you’ve put money away works against your progeny when they fill out the FAFSA.
There’s always military service. You get time to mature (and the swift kick in the behind you probably need), and come out with both a pot of money to spend and a new perspective on the world around you. Just wait until after November to consider this alternative.
Tyro
the best students in the ivy league are no better than the best students anywhere else (though the ivies might have more of ‘the best’ proportionally).
I would say this is true, especially at top tier state schools like Berkeley. The problem is that the average state school student is pretty mediocre, and the average Ivy League student is pretty good. I was in the sciences, and even the mid range students had their choice of top PhD programs, whereas students from more mediocre schools had to be really top tier to get into a good PhD program and then had a lower chance of finishing, because they were less prepared, academically and temperamentally.
As far as liberal arts colleges, they are great in theory, but in practice, they are SO expensive that only the top few liberal arts colleges can afford to give decent financial aid, and the rest are either a haven for mediocre rich kids or a place to suck out money of working class kids and leave them saddled with debt before sending them off to a mediocre job in the non profit industry
Omnes Omnibus
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: My undergrad gives aid to 95% its students. The amount varies, of course, but the school’s goal is that any student who is admitted be able to attend without crippling their future by saddling them with an absurd debt load.
geg6
@Not Sure:
Putting money away for college CAN hurt you on the FAFSA. But not if you’ve put it in a 529 plan. A regular savings account hurts; a 529 doesn’t much because it is set up to be an advantageous way to save for college specifically.
J.W. Hamner
In my experience with graduate programs… not ivy, but elite PhD generating machine vs. a cheap state program oriented towards professionals getting a masters… the material is the same but the grading is much more forgiving in the latter. So I think it’s correct that if you get the elite student you are guaranteeing some general level of competence/drive… and while you could find someone just as good or better out of the latter you could also get someone who skated through for a rubber stamp degree.
maurinsky
I did not go to an Ivy – in fact, 25 years after graduating from high school, I am still working on my first degree, an Associates (I anticipate graduating this December). I did do a musical at the Yale Dramat, though, working closely with 30 or so Yale undergrads plus a director who was in the MFA theater program. I quickly determined that the students I was working with were no smarter than I was – they certainly were more confident in their abilities than I was, and they had supportive families and broad life experiences, but I never felt stupid. I occasionally felt enraged with a couple of them who were blithely unaware of the privilege into which they were born.
Neither of my parents graduated from high school, nor did my older sibling. There was certainly no expectation that any of us kids would go to college, and there was no way my parents were paying for it. They refused to fill out the FAFSA, so I got accepted to some fine institutions that I could not attend because they couldn’t give me financial aid (I was shy of 17 when I graduated and I really had no idea what I was doing when it came to applying to college).
smintheus
Many of the best schools are able to award such large scholarships and grants that they end up costing no more or even less than many less prestigious universities. State schools have become so expensive that the cost differential is relatively small.
The main merit of an Ivy or other top notch college is that you’re surrounded with others who are as intellectually inclined as yourself. It makes a huge difference in the way professors teach. It also changes the environment in which you live. The university doesn’t come to a standstill every weekend for the big game; you aren’t nameless and faceless to your profs; you don’t feel like a freak for caring about your studies.
smintheus
Many of the best schools are able to award such large scholarships and grants that they end up costing no more or even less than many less prestigious universities. State schools have become so expensive that the cost differential is relatively small.
The main merit of an Ivy or other top notch college is that you’re surrounded with others who are as intellectually inclined as yourself. It makes a huge difference in the way professors teach. It also changes the environment in which you live. The university doesn’t come to a standstill every weekend for the big game; you aren’t nameless and faceless to your profs; you don’t feel like a freak for caring about your studies.
RSA
@Roger Moore:
Here’s a description of one such study. Alan B. Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale looked at students who were accepted by a most selective institution but instead attended a moderately selective institution. From the abstract of their paper:
bago
I started working at Microsoft when I was 18, and now that I’m in my 30’s trying to get into the UW is proving to be a bureaucratic nightmare, not coming from high school.
Rafer Janders
For the individual, the most rational choice is to go to the Ivies — not because of the education per se, but because of the lifelong advantage conferred by the friendships one develops with the other graduates. In my case, for example, my friends and acquaintances are now top law firm partners, investment bank managing directors, Senators, Congressmen, White House officials, heads of department at major research hospitals, Academey Award-winning actors, producers and directors, very high-ranking chiefs at Facebook, Google, and other tech companies, chairmen of private equity firms, etc. It’s not that one or two of my friends are very successful — it’s that dozens of them are, and in all areas of business, government, finance and the arts. I’ll be able reap a life-long advantage from this network in a way I wouldn’t have been able to had I gone to a state school or lesser private school.
The advantage isn’t what you learn — it’s who you get to know.
Gretchen
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s the question: How much aid do they give? As I said, I know several examples, including one of my own kids, of small Midwestern liberal arts colleges that offered $20,000 a year, which sounds like a lot, until you realize that the total cost per year is $40-50,000. So the kid has a choice of starting off life $100,000 in debt, or going to state schools. There were a l ot of tears in all the families I know, whichever way the decision went.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gretchen: The average grad currently leaves with $25-30,000 in debt. I am sure that aid packages vary and some include higher amounts of loans. The sticker price for the school is about $50,000 per year and people finish their degrees in four years.
Rafer Janders
@Mnemosyne:
Don’t tell that to Matt Damon, John Lithgow, Natalie Portman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ed Zwick, Darren Aronosfky, Jeff Zucker, Nestor Carbonell, Mo Rocca, Lawrence O’Donnell, Eli Attie, and Alec Berg and Jeff Schaeffer (head writers for Seinfeld), among many many others. And the number of Harvard grads to be found working as less well-known but often just as powerful agents, managers, producers, entertainment industry lawyers and studio and network executives is vast.
Chrisd
Whenever Harvard calls for an alumni donation, I think back to that weird semester when my clueless grad-student TA was also a clueless classmate in another course. Then I tell Harvard that I’d sooner compost my cash than give it to them.
Tyro
elite PhD generating machine vs. a cheap state program oriented towards professionals getting a masters… the material is the same but the grading is much more forgiving in the latter.
This was my experience as well. I have an elite PhD AND occasionally take night classes at one of those “programs for working professionals” associated with a well known university. The classes in the latter case are not that challenging, in part because they can’t afford to be– everyone in the class has a job in addition to the two night classes they’re taking, and it’s unreasonable to expect them to be spending as much time on those classes as a full time student at a competitive program.
This holds for undergrads, too. A teacher at a state school teaching a mainstream class expects that the students have jobs or for other reasons might not be fully engaged. Whereas an elite college (or a special honors college program at a state school where the students are all on full scholarship) can expect that all of the students are focused primarily on school with few job or family-related distractions, and the program can afford to be much more demanding.
skeeball
Ivy Grad/Ivy PhD student here.
There are some who argue that the most important thing about getting into Harvard is that you got into Harvard. They take the very top students in and people leave there with high level training almost in spite of the faculty. A person who gets in there is clearly talented and its entirely possible, and maybe even probable, that they could get better training for their particular talents elsewhere. At the undergrad level, there is a hell of a lot of teaching by TFs and somewhat limited access to the famous profs.
For me, the biggest bit of value came outside of the classroom. During my undergrad there were a confluence of events that threw me into a fairly major depression. The school picked up on it and helped me get straightened out and I made it out in one piece. I can’t say that this wouldn’t have happened elsewhere, but it is a hell of a lot less likely in the public university my mom teaches in.
Gretchen
@Omnes Omnibus:
My kids both graduated from State U with $17,000 in debt a year ago. It would have been much, much more from the liberal arts school of their choice. Maybe yours is better-endowed than most? Wheaton announced last week they’re dropping need-blind admissions and will try to fill up with those who can pay the freight.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gretchen: It may be the case that mine is better endowed. It is definitely true that it made a policy decision many years ago to make sure that students can attend. My takeaway from this is that people should, and it appears that you did, consider those schools. They may not be the best option for a given student, but the sticker price should not keep people from looking at them.
Tyro
Wheaton announced last week they’re dropping need-blind admissions and will try to fill up with those who can pay the freight.
I can’t think of many circumstances in which I would suggest someone go to Wheaton over a decent quality flagship state university.
Anything really outside the top 25 universities or top 10-15 liberal arts colleges will not provide any significant academic advantage over a solid flagship state university, and will probably end up being worse (and even then, you could cut those lists again in half to give yourself more assurance). The problem is that this wide swath of mediocre liberal arts colleges markets themselves heavily to middle class and working class students as an “intellectual escape”, but it just ends up screwing them over financially and professionally.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Yes, that’s true; but it’s where I’ve always lived, so this is the part of the country I know the most about; I grew up about a mile from Swarthmore College. I don’t know what the best small schools are out west or in other such exotic spots…
Capri
The entire premise of the discussion is “of course you’ll go to college, the only choice is where” needs to be re-examined. To me, you’d only go to a college or university because you want it to help you in a future career.
If that career is one in which name recognition counts for a lot and opens doors that can’t be opened any other way – then incurring the debt is worth it.
If the career is one in which that doesn’t really matter – then incurring the debt is crazy.
If someone is going to college because that’s what one does for 4+ years after high school, I’d say find some other way to spend your time until the college experience makes sense for career preparation.
Mnemosyne
@Rafer Janders:
Yeah, sorry, I know Haaa-vard grads love to think that they’re #1 in all fields, at all times, everywhere, but a degree from USC, UCLA, or NYU gets you much further, much faster if you want to get into a creative field in Hollywood. It’s not like Lithgow stepped off the Harvard stage and got a movie contract like, say, John Singleton.
It’s true that there are a lot of Harvard grads running the money side of the studios, but I’m not sure that you really want to brag about that given how much the money guys have fucked things up.
ETA: And there’s also a fourth option — Sofia Coppola may be one of those Coppolas, but she’s also a graduate of Cal Arts. Their mafia leans more towards animation, but if you want to get into filmmaking — not being an agent, or a producer, but actually making your own films — Cal Arts is a very good thing to have on your resume.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tyro: I think you are significantly underestimating the number of quality LACs that are out there. In addition, without denigrating large state schools, some people would be lost in that environment.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
“Other professional scientists have told me that while hiring from the Ivies does not mean that you will get a superstar, it does guarantee at least a minimum level of quality.”
Funny, I have had a contrary experience. I’ve worked with a few Harvard MBAs, and I’d never do it again. 2/3’s of them are either screw-ups or sociopaths who use their alumni network to helicopter themselves out of the disasters they create. I’d never work for a Harvard MBA again.
I’d work for any MIT graduate of any discipline in a heartbeat, though.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
As other have said, this isn’t true of PhDs. Research groups are pretty small, and having a weak Ph.D. candidate can really impair a group’s output. Wheras med or JD programs are pretty large and expect a certain percentage of washout.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, the Best Director nominees from this year:
Michel Hazanavicius: no college as far as I can tell (those French!)
Alexander Payne: UCLA
Martin Scorsese: NYU
Woody Allen: NYU
Terrence Malick: Harvard (aha!) … but his film degree is from AFI
Sorry, Rafer, even Ivy Leaguers have to go to a “real” film school to find work — Aronofsky is another AFI grad, as is Ed Zwick.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Stanford grads (and Berkeley) have local, more attractive, alternatives to working in Wall Street or DC. Silicon Valley’s dominated by Stanford grads followed by UC Berkeley. Biotech in the Bay Area is a bit more diverse, but Stanford and UC Berkeley are still very strong there.
A few years back, Wall Street recruiters ranked Stanford really low – lower than Brigham Young U. Why? Not because Stanford didn’t have better graduates than the universities ranked above it, but because Stanford grads were declining becoming a junior MotU to go work in tech or biotech or VC, which was all hurt-hurty to the fee-fees of the Wall Street recruiters.
beergoggles
I think an ivy education would also be a bit more affordable if u were dirt poor like my family was. The financial aid I received was purely grants and hardly any loans. Ultimately my choice of college was based on what would be most affordable and several ivy colleges came out on top in that regard. It’s probably different for (upper)middle class families who don’t qualify for having 90%+ of their education covered by grants but I quite enjoyed having the rich subsidize my ivy education – so thanks.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Depends on what program. When I was doing a part-time degree (in a competitive program at a name-brand university), we could take classes with full-time students and they could take our classes. The feedback we got from the faculty was that the distribution of ability/effort was similar between the part-time and full-time students, except there was a “tail” of low ability/effort in the full-time cohort that they didn’t see in the part-timers. Basically, the part-time students wanted to be there and worked their tails off, wheras there were a few goof-offs in amongst the full-time students.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
What the guy said. If you’re doing a STEM discipline and aren’t planning an academic, then how you do in your first job (and whether you’re graduating in a recession or expansion) are going to be more of a factor than whether you went to a state or an Ivy. And many state schools have better reps in the STEM fields than many of the Ivies (e.g. I’d rank Iowa State above Yale in engineering).
But if you’ve got a humanities degree, particularly if graduating in a recession, you’re gonna need all the help you can get.
Interrobang
I went to Canada’s answer to Yale and Canada’s answer to MIT, and so far, I’d say the latter has paid off for me far more (both in terms of actual education and in connections) than the former; I’m simply not rich enough to be well-connected there. (I went there for my undergrad because it is the local university, and it’s significantly cheaper to go here if you live here than otherwise, but all the people with connections are from overseas or Toronto.) I have to wonder if that happens in the Ivies, too; I know it happens at Cambridge (in England), because I have a friend who went there, and he said the two types of people who went there were the children of the upper class, and the “NARGs,” for “Not A Real Gentleman,” those who were actually there to study.
I work (in IT) with a bunch of grads from my Master’s school, but they weren’t people I knew.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tyro: Also, you are leaving out that there are many LACS where someone from a modest background can get a degree for for the same price as they would pay at a state school. For the same money, would you recommend that a history major go to Beloit College or UW-Whitewater?
Rafer Janders
@Mnemosyne:
Sure, that’s true to a point, but that’s not what you’d said above, or what I was addressing. You’d claimed that a Harvard degree was only useful insofar as it got you a career writing for The Simpsons or Conan — but while Harvard grads are vastly over-represented in TV comedy writing, they also have solid alumni networks in the producing, directing, acting, agency/management, studio/network and fiance fields of the business. It’s not that they’re #1, but they’re far, far ahead of most everyone else who either didn’t go to school in LA itself or to NYU, which illustrates my point that there’s a network effect to going to a top Ivy League school which can’t be replicated by going elsewhere.
Noting the way things are is not bragging. It’s not necessarily a good thing that these networks exist, but it’s a fact that they do.
Tyro
@Omnes Omnibus: Beloit, but only if the cost were nominal and only if UW-Madison were not an option. And even then, I would try to see if there were public LACs in your own state that were possibilities (eg, Hunter and William & Mary). I would be willing to hedge and expand the list of liberal arts colleges worth paying for to the top 25, only because Bryn Mawr and Oberlin are included when you get down that far.
But more than 20k worth of debt to go to someplace lower on the totem pole than that? A waste of time and money for an education that isn’t going to pay any personal/academic dividends over an above what can be found elsewhere.
Outside of the top tier, LACs are just a luxury good that sell a luxury experience (all residential, small classes) without luxury amenities (high caliber student body, well known reputation) while charging high prices with little financial aid.
Rafer Janders
@Mnemosyne:
Again, I think you’re arguing with something I never said. I never claimed that there was no value in getting post-undergrad degrees from film school. Why would I have? But the existence of prominent directors such as Aronosky and Malick does tend to contradict your earlier claim that:
Tim F.
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: Needless to say my experience with MBA students is somewhat more limited. I can tell you that Mass General Hospital (a research and teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard) would not have let George Dubya mop its floors.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tyro: I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
hitchhiker
We just paid the last tuition bill for daughter #2 about two weeks ago. (Yay!) She went to a Jesuit school in Seattle whose mission statement is something like
empowering leaders for a more just and humane world
She got a sound education, she got multiple opportunities to engage with the places & people in need of justice, and she has a network of friends that frankly knocks my socks off. Her life has already been enriched in a hundred different ways . . . which is the only reason, imo, to do anything, including go to college.
Her older sister wanted nothing but to be with the friends she already had and immerse herself in a foreign language curriculum, so she went to a state school that met those requirements. She has a good job now, doing work that didn’t even exist a generation ago.
I don’t think it’s possible to predict what specific skills the world will need from millenials, which makes it hard to figure out how to educate them.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Actually, there were three types of people at Oxford/Cambridge. There were the English ‘public school’ (which in England means ‘really elite private school’ like Eton or Rugby or Roedean). They were charming, emotionally (if not always academically) intelligent, and knew they were going to run the country, so they might as well be nice about it.
Then there were those who went to the state schools and got there by their ability and hard work.
And then there were those who went to the second-tier private schools, and spent their time fretting about getting in the elite dining clubs we state-schoolers didn’t even know about. Those second-tier private schoolers were the ones you had to watch your back about, as they were the most insecure and the most worried about their social position.
To be honest, as a non-English person, the conclusion I drew was: “I’ll never understand the English-class system”. One of the reasons I didn’t stay in the UK.
[PS. Narg was a typical term at Oxbridge for STEM types, regardless of which school they went to. I actually never knew that’s what it stood for.]
[PPS. Regardless of which of the three groups you were in, most Oxbridge types consider the Ivies as inferior colonial rip-offs of the originals.]
negative 1
Went to state school, got a BS in econ and an MS in accounting. The difference is that I had to work to pay for as much of it as I could, and from what I could tell from a friend who went to Smith, there was no way I was working and going to school at an Ivy League school.
Like most state school grads I’ve met, I think anyone who mentions their college pedigree in conversation is a pretentious douche, but maybe I’m just jealous. I’m topped out in my field, but I’m young and have a family and it’s a pretty good upper middle class living. I think many state school ‘success stories’ (defined narrowly) would read like that.
Since I didn’t go to any Ivy, however, barring some freak windfall I will never be rich. I will never be a CEO, or work on Wall St., or be brand manager of a major product line, however. For that, you have to go to any Ivy, and that’s the difference in value.
Walker
Went to sleep while this thread was still raging. And then had work this morning. But…
A lot of this discussion is humanities focused, but many of these truisms hold in STEM as well. I worked at a SLAC before coming to my brand-name Ivy(TM). I had good students at my SLAC, and they had a hard time getting even a remote interview from a company that was not local. Recruiters from all the major companies fly to my Ivy to recruit (sometimes it feels like half the graduating class goes to Google).
And start-up culture is VERY name driven. They need to tool up with known quantities very fast. Plus schools do a lot of PR with their alum start-ups. Stanford is very good about this. My school is less good about this, even though our start-ups are not far behind Stanford (and I know of a few cases with start-ups created by our alums that Stanford took credit for when they pulled on a Stanford partner).
Walker
@Gretchen:
I have not looked at the financial aid of things in over a decade. But it used to be that the Ivies would do the raw amount of the financial aid package based on need. HOWEVER, the amount of loans is where they sneak in the merit factor. A more promising student will get more grants than loans.
In fact (though this was 20 years ago), when I was a student at another Ivy, I got more grants and less loans each year as I did extremely well in my classes. When I graduated, almost all of my student debt was from my first year.
Walker
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Which is funny, because the only school in the UK worth a damn (at least when it comes to STEM) is Edinborough. Oxford hires people who would barely qualify for a post-doc here.
Tyro
I confess I don’t understand a lot of the LAC love here. The sales pitch always seems to be “creating leaders to make the world a better place.” That’s the sales pitch. The reality is, “menial job at a non profit.” LACs notoriously over promise what they can actually deliver. BU is large, private, and expensive, and on no one’s list as an academic powerhouse for undergrads. But no one goes there thinking that it will “change their lives” or “create the leaders of tomorrow.”
They almost seem to reinforce the class system since the middle class LAC students work at the bottom tier of the non-profits while the students from well off families enter high paid professions and serve on the boards of directors of those same non-profits.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tyro: Your experience clearly differs from that of many people here. LACs punch above their weight in grad school admissions. I also think you are drawing your line too high. The USNWR ranked National Liberal Arts Colleges are one thing; the
recional schools are another. It seems to me that you are calling everything ranked below Oberlin a regional school. I think this is mistake. I went to a top quartile LAC; I had Ivy grades and test scores. I wanted something smaller but challenging. I got it.
JustMe
@Walker: And start-up culture is VERY name driven. They need to tool up with known quantities very fast. Plus schools do a lot of PR with their alum start-ups.
This is the truth. Startups are so tight-knit and have so little time and resources to invest in hiring that they tend to stick with “known quantities.” Which tends to be their friends, people who went to their colleges, or people their friends went to college with. They call it hiring people who “are a good fit for the culture.” But the reality is that it’s “the kind of people I am most familiar with.”
maurinsky
RE: Financial aid – my daughter went to WPI, with lots of free money from the school, and subsidized loans from the fed. She was there for 2 years before she declared she could not tolerate one more calculus class taught by someone who didn’t speak English (she is good at math through her hard work – she is not one of those kids with a seemingly preternatural understanding of math as a language, which schools like WPI have coming out of their earlobes).
She accrued $8000 in debt from those two years. She transferred to the CT State University system, and because of her grades (3.98 gpa, knocked down .02 by a teacher who clearly just didn’t like her in a ridiculous education class with work that I don’t believe could be objectively judged) she has gotten free money there, as well. I think I’ve paid about $1000 out of pocket for her 2 years there.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Edinburgh?
Yeah, Oxford punches below its overall reputation in the STEM fields, but I’d put Imperial College and Cambridge ahead of Edinburgh on STEM. As do the UK research rating agencies – you can see the overall rankings here based on the 2008 research assessment exercise: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/table/2008/dec/18/rae-2008-results-uk-universities
Having said that, Oxford, particularly its PPE graduates is ahead of any university in the UK in terms of people in UK policymaking positions.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Also, Stanford’s got probably the most sophisticated technology licensing group of any university you could mention. By comparison, the UC’s, with the exception of UCSF, are much less savvy.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Which from a risk management point of view, is rational. Below the founder level, you don’t want to hire a screw-up, because cash (capital at that stage) is so expensive, and having a social connection to the firm makes it less likely they’ll take you to court if you do let them go.
However, at the founder level, all bets are off. Given pathologically delusional optimism is a prerequisite to being a start-up founder, and that a lot of inventors have a very hard time letting go of their baby, the percentage of founders who can’t play well with others is very high.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
BTW, I wasn’t saying they were *right* in their assessment. I was just saying it was what they believed.
BTW, the Ivies do owe a lot of reason for their early existence to smallpox – because of lower population density than the UK, many colonial sons hadn’t been exposed to smallpox in childhood, and so ~30% of them dropped dead from it if they went to the mother country for university study. Hence the demand for local universities in the colonial era.
Anon
Another tired “the Ivy’s are expensive and not worth it” article followed by multiple “all Ivy graduates are entitled snobs” comments…
While base tuition at Harvard and Princeton is comparable to most other private colleges, their financial aid is in the form of need-based grants and so every student can graduate and not carry any loan debt if they choose. I just did a quick calculation as to what costs would be if I magically had an incoming Princeton student and was solidly upper middle class with moderate savings.
Princeton’s Estimated Costs for 2012-2013 (everything including books and travel home)
$55,480
Estimated Family Contribution
$6,100
Your Estimated Aid Package is $49,380
This is obviously a very rough estimate, and actual family contribution is probably more since 1) I’m not 55, and 2) by the time I’m 55 I’ll probably have more assets that they’ll ask to pay for tuition, but the aid package is super generous. And this aid package is a grant
This year’s list of most expensive colleges only has one Ivy in the top 10 (Columbia). And last year’s list also only had 1: Columbia again. So the Ivy schools do not have “crazy tuition”.
Disclosure: I went to Princeton a few decades ago (moved to US when I was 8, not a legacy admit, middle-middle class parents, very middle of the road public high school). Did I get a great education there: yes. Could I have gotten as good an education elsewhere: probably, but not everywhere. Were there bad students at Princeton: yes. And were there good students that would make bad hires after college: yes also.
Anon
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: “I’ve worked with a few Harvard MBAs”
Since when did an MBA become a professional scientist?
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Since when were we solely talking about STEM fields?
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Maybe, but the flipside of that is that because UK students start specializing in science or the humanities at age 15-16, they’re done with their B.A or B.S by age 21 and their Ph.D.s by 24-26, with that time being mostly research. Four years in a Ph.D. program and the university starts putting pressure on the adviser, and after five years you’re definitely past your sell-by date.
Wheras someone getting their Ph.D. in the U.S. in their early 30s after a gruelling eight years of classes and research is pretty common.
Given that for most research scientists their most innovative years are in their 20s and 30s, I can see a reason why Oxford might take Ph.D. A in their mid-20s but with fewer papers than Ph.D. B in their early 30s but with more papers.