Which schools will continue to be the most sought after in the next decade? Which ones will hit a downward trajectory?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:State flagships are the next “thing”. Families will increasingly balk at spending outrageous sums for Larla to vape and whine about micro aggressions at obscure private schools.

Employers will increasingly balk at dealing with obnoxious super-woke hires from ivies. Without leading to a lucrative employment pipeline, their desirability will slowly ebb.

This becomes obvious even in HS. Too many parents of the DMV UMC think their kids need exotic summer service trips rather than minimum wage jobs. Then they wonder why DD is back home after college instead of working in NYC or elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we will witness the fall of the ivy league and I say that as an ivy grad.

Agree. Yale grad.

This is really sad, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HYPSM will be just fine. Chicago, Rice, Northwestern, etc are not going anywhere.

The Biggest Losers: Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Williams, Amherst, etc. They'll be bitten by the hand that fed them - athletics. These schools will receive the same "woke agenda" accusation as HYP (perhaps correctly), but the second punch is the one that will connect: the many articles that will be coming down the pike about the full pay downhill skiers, sailing, and fencers (etc). These colleges are building classes that are either Pell kids paying zero and St Ann's squash who are paying full fare. That makes for a dysfunctional classroom experience that holds zero appeal to the rest of the world.

Other winners:

The Next Michigan: MN, Iowa, Illinois, Oregon .. basically any flagship with a college town and a football team. (Schools like UCs, UT Austin already in the Michigan category)

Revenge of the Nerds aka "I know what I'm paying for": Purdue, Case, CMU, RPI, WPI, Texas A&M, VT.

Hail Mary: ND but also places like Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga, Dayton, U of San Diego, Marquette.

I disagree with the point about athletics because I think athletics are what will save these schools from being perceived as uselessly woke. For better or worse, the athletes are the ones that keep the deep ties to Wall Street, IB, etc going at the elite schools. They also bring a group of students to the schools who are perceived as hard workers who aren’t annoying and who can handle hard competition. Basically, the athletics programs bring kids to the schools who don’t melt down when faced an opinion they don’t like, who have been forced to get along with team members whether they like them or not, who can handle losing, and who have a lot of discipline. That’s appealing to many competitive employers and has been for many years.

Now if (say) Amherst College guts its athletics programs, I suspect you will be right about the decline of the school. Turning Amherst into another Reed will not be great for the perception of the school. But right now, athletics is one of the only things that is preserving the reputation of these schools from being seen as producing uselessly woke and out of touch graduates.

I find it a huge bonus when schools cut athletics to favor academics. Any school where the highest paid employee is the football coach is kind of a joke.

Okay, but you aren’t a Wall St or IB hiring manager. And in no world does a college like Amherst have the highest paid employee be the football coach anyhow. The athletes at Amherst, Williams, etc are smart kids who have the added bonus of generally not being annoying and who have proof of being good team players. Regardless of what DCUM thinks, the fact remains that’s an attractive combination for highly competitive employers, especially in a world where employers are worried about uselessly woke new hires.

There is a reason the Ivy League started life as an athletic conference. There has long been a pipeline from Ivy athletics to super-competitive jobs.

Yes and Yes to the bolded. I work for and have recruited for one of those employers. Do we now hire more broadly? Yes, we do. But who is still the definition of a top candidate for us? An Amherst or Yale athlete with top GPA and demonstrated extracurricular leadership. Everybody is still fighting for these kids and they get scooped up. So I don’t know what most of you are talking about in terms of the decline of these schools. I don’t see it from where I sit.

+1

I do not think the anti-athlete posters are hiring managers for competitive companies. They are completely out of touch with the reality of hiring.

[Anonymous]

Any college in the depressing Rust Belt. There are too many better or equal options in growing regions with good weather and scenic surroundings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HYPSM will be just fine. Chicago, Rice, Northwestern, etc are not going anywhere.

The Biggest Losers: Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Williams, Amherst, etc. They'll be bitten by the hand that fed them - athletics. These schools will receive the same "woke agenda" accusation as HYP (perhaps correctly), but the second punch is the one that will connect: the many articles that will be coming down the pike about the full pay downhill skiers, sailing, and fencers (etc). These colleges are building classes that are either Pell kids paying zero and St Ann's squash who are paying full fare. That makes for a dysfunctional classroom experience that holds zero appeal to the rest of the world.

Other winners:

The Next Michigan: MN, Iowa, Illinois, Oregon .. basically any flagship with a college town and a football team. (Schools like UCs, UT Austin already in the Michigan category)

Revenge of the Nerds aka "I know what I'm paying for": Purdue, Case, CMU, RPI, WPI, Texas A&M, VT.

Hail Mary: ND but also places like Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga, Dayton, U of San Diego, Marquette.

I disagree with the point about athletics because I think athletics are what will save these schools from being perceived as uselessly woke. For better or worse, the athletes are the ones that keep the deep ties to Wall Street, IB, etc going at the elite schools. They also bring a group of students to the schools who are perceived as hard workers who aren’t annoying and who can handle hard competition. Basically, the athletics programs bring kids to the schools who don’t melt down when faced an opinion they don’t like, who have been forced to get along with team members whether they like them or not, who can handle losing, and who have a lot of discipline. That’s appealing to many competitive employers and has been for many years.

Now if (say) Amherst College guts its athletics programs, I suspect you will be right about the decline of the school. Turning Amherst into another Reed will not be great for the perception of the school. But right now, athletics is one of the only things that is preserving the reputation of these schools from being seen as producing uselessly woke and out of touch graduates.

I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say: this is not my experience with younger millennial or gen z athletes who have joined our company, possibly because colleges athletics are not really team sports. I mean, sure, the squash team is a "team" but it was every person for themselves to get ranked high enough to be a full pay Williams squash player and now you're going through the motions til you can quit junior year. A football player from Illinois or a woman's soccer player ND? Sure. A nordic ski person from Bowdoin? You think they're not annoying? Are you f'n kidding me?

We were hybrid forever - and basically still are. I hope being in the office for the sake of face time never comes back. But some of these kids do not get it, they are really not reliably there, the work isn't done, they are zooming into important meetings from the car. I thought the entitlement was off the charts for older millennials, but omg please let us never hire another sailing team member.

I am highly skeptical that you have any hiring experience at all, but particularly skeptical that you have hired and worked with multiple squash, sailing, and Nordic ski team members from multiple NESCACs all since 2021.

But let’s play in your pretend world and pretend you did manage to hire extensively from this extremely small group of people. Yet all of them are terrible employees? Perhaps you should look in the mirror.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In general I think there will be a push to schools perceived as fun but with good educational rigor. The northeast schools will drop because they are perceived as grim grinds filled with backstabbing, unfriendly people. Political moderation will be appealing. I think this generation of kids, who suffered through covid, has little patience for schools where, fair or not, there is a perception of tolerance of drama queens and waste of education. This will also go with an increasing demand for good ROI.

Excessive drama, misery, and petulance is headed out, solid education, fun, and good ROI is in.

So kids weren't interested in schools that were fun before recently? And plenty of drama and backstabbing in the Southern sorority scene.

They were, but schools in the northeast used to be a lot more fun because there was more personality variety in who they attracted. They used to attract the population that made campuses come alive: the quirky geniuses, the smart frat and sorority kids, the theater kids who had the time in HS to really perfect their craft, etc. But those kids often don’t have the mid-career project management skills that getting perfect GPAs in a test-minimizing environment along with the requisite resume-polishing now requires. So these schools are instead filled with grim armies of Tracy Flicks who don’t understand what “fun” even means.

Have you been on the campus of some of these schools recently? What’s remarkable is how silent they are. It’s like walking through a library, but outside. It’s outright depressing and for some bright kids, that’s not going to be appealing no matter how shiny the name is.

Yikes - what schools are you talking about? My DD is a hs freshman and I want to avoid this type of atmosphere.

Any of the Ivies now.

Walk through them when school is in session and see how quiet and dead they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I predict more Jesuit schools won't break the top 20 but will move into the space BC held 15 years ago.

Schools like Marquette, Gonzaga, U of San Diego, Loyola Chicago, Regis U, Loyola Marymount, Seattle U

for UMC families with A- kids these colleges provide a solid education while side stepping the culture wars. They're right-sized schools in urban (ish) locations with friendly kids, fun sports, dependable career placement all at a reasonable COA w merit.

The #1 culture war is the attack on reproductive health and justice.

yeah, there's planned parenthood for that or people just get their BC from cost-plus. you really don't need to go to the student health center for this.

I do think some states will be hit .. but these colleges are all in blue states.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HYPSM will be just fine. Chicago, Rice, Northwestern, etc are not going anywhere.

The Biggest Losers: Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Williams, Amherst, etc. They'll be bitten by the hand that fed them - athletics. These schools will receive the same "woke agenda" accusation as HYP (perhaps correctly), but the second punch is the one that will connect: the many articles that will be coming down the pike about the full pay downhill skiers, sailing, and fencers (etc). These colleges are building classes that are either Pell kids paying zero and St Ann's squash who are paying full fare. That makes for a dysfunctional classroom experience that holds zero appeal to the rest of the world.

Other winners:

The Next Michigan: MN, Iowa, Illinois, Oregon .. basically any flagship with a college town and a football team. (Schools like UCs, UT Austin already in the Michigan category)

Revenge of the Nerds aka "I know what I'm paying for": Purdue, Case, CMU, RPI, WPI, Texas A&M, VT.

Hail Mary: ND but also places like Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga, Dayton, U of San Diego, Marquette.

I disagree with the point about athletics because I think athletics are what will save these schools from being perceived as uselessly woke. For better or worse, the athletes are the ones that keep the deep ties to Wall Street, IB, etc going at the elite schools. They also bring a group of students to the schools who are perceived as hard workers who aren’t annoying and who can handle hard competition. Basically, the athletics programs bring kids to the schools who don’t melt down when faced an opinion they don’t like, who have been forced to get along with team members whether they like them or not, who can handle losing, and who have a lot of discipline. That’s appealing to many competitive employers and has been for many years.

Now if (say) Amherst College guts its athletics programs, I suspect you will be right about the decline of the school. Turning Amherst into another Reed will not be great for the perception of the school. But right now, athletics is one of the only things that is preserving the reputation of these schools from being seen as producing uselessly woke and out of touch graduates.

I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say: this is not my experience with younger millennial or gen z athletes who have joined our company, possibly because colleges athletics are not really team sports. I mean, sure, the squash team is a "team" but it was every person for themselves to get ranked high enough to be a full pay Williams squash player and now you're going through the motions til you can quit junior year. A football player from Illinois or a woman's soccer player ND? Sure. A nordic ski person from Bowdoin? You think they're not annoying? Are you f'n kidding me?

We were hybrid forever - and basically still are. I hope being in the office for the sake of face time never comes back. But some of these kids do not get it, they are really not reliably there, the work isn't done, they are zooming into important meetings from the car. I thought the entitlement was off the charts for older millennials, but omg please let us never hire another sailing team member.

I am highly skeptical that you have any hiring experience at all, but particularly skeptical that you have hired and worked with multiple squash, sailing, and Nordic ski team members from multiple NESCACs all since 2021.

But let’s play in your pretend world and pretend you did manage to hire extensively from this extremely small group of people. Yet all of them are terrible employees? Perhaps you should look in the mirror.

I have zero hiring experience! I don't work in HR, LOL! I do interview people for my team, but this is largely internal and never ever new grads. But I do have to work with a wide variety of people and this is my experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HYPSM will be just fine. Chicago, Rice, Northwestern, etc are not going anywhere.

The Biggest Losers: Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Williams, Amherst, etc. They'll be bitten by the hand that fed them - athletics. These schools will receive the same "woke agenda" accusation as HYP (perhaps correctly), but the second punch is the one that will connect: the many articles that will be coming down the pike about the full pay downhill skiers, sailing, and fencers (etc). These colleges are building classes that are either Pell kids paying zero and St Ann's squash who are paying full fare. That makes for a dysfunctional classroom experience that holds zero appeal to the rest of the world.

Other winners:

The Next Michigan: MN, Iowa, Illinois, Oregon .. basically any flagship with a college town and a football team. (Schools like UCs, UT Austin already in the Michigan category)

Revenge of the Nerds aka "I know what I'm paying for": Purdue, Case, CMU, RPI, WPI, Texas A&M, VT.

Hail Mary: ND but also places like Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga, Dayton, U of San Diego, Marquette.

I disagree with the point about athletics because I think athletics are what will save these schools from being perceived as uselessly woke. For better or worse, the athletes are the ones that keep the deep ties to Wall Street, IB, etc going at the elite schools. They also bring a group of students to the schools who are perceived as hard workers who aren’t annoying and who can handle hard competition. Basically, the athletics programs bring kids to the schools who don’t melt down when faced an opinion they don’t like, who have been forced to get along with team members whether they like them or not, who can handle losing, and who have a lot of discipline. That’s appealing to many competitive employers and has been for many years.

Now if (say) Amherst College guts its athletics programs, I suspect you will be right about the decline of the school. Turning Amherst into another Reed will not be great for the perception of the school. But right now, athletics is one of the only things that is preserving the reputation of these schools from being seen as producing uselessly woke and out of touch graduates.

I find it a huge bonus when schools cut athletics to favor academics. Any school where the highest paid employee is the football coach is kind of a joke.

You would be in the minority. Athletic programs are crucial for colleges - in terms of income, alumni relationships, attracting future students.

[Anonymous]

I dont' care about Yale athletics because it's a smaller portion of the population.

And in this environment, everyone is getting a job. unemployment is at a low.

I do care about the weird college dynamics when, as someone said earlier, schools are either free-ride Pell or full pay St Ann's squash players. That's a weird dynamic for classroom discussions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HYPSM will be just fine. Chicago, Rice, Northwestern, etc are not going anywhere.

The Biggest Losers: Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Williams, Amherst, etc. They'll be bitten by the hand that fed them - athletics. These schools will receive the same "woke agenda" accusation as HYP (perhaps correctly), but the second punch is the one that will connect: the many articles that will be coming down the pike about the full pay downhill skiers, sailing, and fencers (etc). These colleges are building classes that are either Pell kids paying zero and St Ann's squash who are paying full fare. That makes for a dysfunctional classroom experience that holds zero appeal to the rest of the world.

Other winners:

The Next Michigan: MN, Iowa, Illinois, Oregon .. basically any flagship with a college town and a football team. (Schools like UCs, UT Austin already in the Michigan category)

Revenge of the Nerds aka "I know what I'm paying for": Purdue, Case, CMU, RPI, WPI, Texas A&M, VT.

Hail Mary: ND but also places like Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga, Dayton, U of San Diego, Marquette.

I disagree with the point about athletics because I think athletics are what will save these schools from being perceived as uselessly woke. For better or worse, the athletes are the ones that keep the deep ties to Wall Street, IB, etc going at the elite schools. They also bring a group of students to the schools who are perceived as hard workers who aren’t annoying and who can handle hard competition. Basically, the athletics programs bring kids to the schools who don’t melt down when faced an opinion they don’t like, who have been forced to get along with team members whether they like them or not, who can handle losing, and who have a lot of discipline. That’s appealing to many competitive employers and has been for many years.

Now if (say) Amherst College guts its athletics programs, I suspect you will be right about the decline of the school. Turning Amherst into another Reed will not be great for the perception of the school. But right now, athletics is one of the only things that is preserving the reputation of these schools from being seen as producing uselessly woke and out of touch graduates.

I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say: this is not my experience with younger millennial or gen z athletes who have joined our company, possibly because colleges athletics are not really team sports. I mean, sure, the squash team is a "team" but it was every person for themselves to get ranked high enough to be a full pay Williams squash player and now you're going through the motions til you can quit junior year. A football player from Illinois or a woman's soccer player ND? Sure. A nordic ski person from Bowdoin? You think they're not annoying? Are you f'n kidding me?

We were hybrid forever - and basically still are. I hope being in the office for the sake of face time never comes back. But some of these kids do not get it, they are really not reliably there, the work isn't done, they are zooming into important meetings from the car. I thought the entitlement was off the charts for older millennials, but omg please let us never hire another sailing team member.

I am highly skeptical that you have any hiring experience at all, but particularly skeptical that you have hired and worked with multiple squash, sailing, and Nordic ski team members from multiple NESCACs all since 2021.

But let’s play in your pretend world and pretend you did manage to hire extensively from this extremely small group of people. Yet all of them are terrible employees? Perhaps you should look in the mirror.

I have zero hiring experience! I don't work in HR, LOL! I do interview people for my team, but this is largely internal and never ever new grads. But I do have to work with a wide variety of people and this is my experience.

Yes, it’s quite clear you have zero hiring experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In general I think there will be a push to schools perceived as fun but with good educational rigor. The northeast schools will drop because they are perceived as grim grinds filled with backstabbing, unfriendly people. Political moderation will be appealing. I think this generation of kids, who suffered through covid, has little patience for schools where, fair or not, there is a perception of tolerance of drama queens and waste of education. This will also go with an increasing demand for good ROI.

Excessive drama, misery, and petulance is headed out, solid education, fun, and good ROI is in.

So kids weren't interested in schools that were fun before recently? And plenty of drama and backstabbing in the Southern sorority scene.

They were, but schools in the northeast used to be a lot more fun because there was more personality variety in who they attracted. They used to attract the population that made campuses come alive: the quirky geniuses, the smart frat and sorority kids, the theater kids who had the time in HS to really perfect their craft, etc. But those kids often don’t have the mid-career project management skills that getting perfect GPAs in a test-minimizing environment along with the requisite resume-polishing now requires. So these schools are instead filled with grim armies of Tracy Flicks who don’t understand what “fun” even means.

Have you been on the campus of some of these schools recently? What’s remarkable is how silent they are. It’s like walking through a library, but outside. It’s outright depressing and for some bright kids, that’s not going to be appealing no matter how shiny the name is.

Yikes - what schools are you talking about? My DD is a hs freshman and I want to avoid this type of atmosphere.

Any of the Ivies now.

Walk through them when school is in session and see how quiet and dead they are.

I did and disagree with you. I visited the Yale and Princeton campuses about two months ago with my kid. If I have to pick one word to describe the environment, I’d say vibrant!

Also, my kid got to stay with a Yale freshman friend who took him to a Yale Political Union debate. Kid loved it but was shocked because the media coverage would have you believe there are no conservative voices on campus. Simply not true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I dont' care about Yale athletics because it's a smaller portion of the population.

And in this environment, everyone is getting a job. unemployment is at a low.

I do care about the weird college dynamics when, as someone said earlier, schools are either free-ride Pell or full pay St Ann's squash players. That's a weird dynamic for classroom discussions.

Luckily for you, that’s a fantasy that lives entirely in your head.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Florida and Georgia can get to UVA level, I'm not sure how much more room in the south.

For flagship publics, you need a huge buy in from the brightest in-state students to stay home. And there has to be a sufficient quantity of high achieving students. NOVA probably has more of those students than Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi combined.

How do you know this?

Over 5,000 Virginians score between 1400 and 1600 on the SAT.

In Alabama, fewer than 500. In Arkansas, fewer than 250. Same for Mississippi.

Keep in mind, this is a score achieved in one sitting. So all these states, including Virginia, will have more students achieving a 1400-1600 using the composite score.

That doesn’t tell us much. Did they have the same test prep budget as nova kids?

Exactly, not to mention high priced college consultants.

Oh please. My FCPS kid, who scored a 1500, didn't have any professional test prep (just did free online prep) and we certainly didn't hire a college consultant. Same thing for several of his high-scoring friends. Not saying there aren't families who spend $$ on this stuff, but lots of high scorers do NOT.

Sure. Keep convincing yourself.

No one should be surprised that kids in Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas perform poorly on the SAT since those states have some of the worst preK-12 education systems in the country.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/prek-12

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In general I think there will be a push to schools perceived as fun but with good educational rigor. The northeast schools will drop because they are perceived as grim grinds filled with backstabbing, unfriendly people. Political moderation will be appealing. I think this generation of kids, who suffered through covid, has little patience for schools where, fair or not, there is a perception of tolerance of drama queens and waste of education. This will also go with an increasing demand for good ROI.

Excessive drama, misery, and petulance is headed out, solid education, fun, and good ROI is in.

So kids weren't interested in schools that were fun before recently? And plenty of drama and backstabbing in the Southern sorority scene.

They were, but schools in the northeast used to be a lot more fun because there was more personality variety in who they attracted. They used to attract the population that made campuses come alive: the quirky geniuses, the smart frat and sorority kids, the theater kids who had the time in HS to really perfect their craft, etc. But those kids often don’t have the mid-career project management skills that getting perfect GPAs in a test-minimizing environment along with the requisite resume-polishing now requires. So these schools are instead filled with grim armies of Tracy Flicks who don’t understand what “fun” even means.

Have you been on the campus of some of these schools recently? What’s remarkable is how silent they are. It’s like walking through a library, but outside. It’s outright depressing and for some bright kids, that’s not going to be appealing no matter how shiny the name is.

Yikes - what schools are you talking about? My DD is a hs freshman and I want to avoid this type of atmosphere.

Any of the Ivies now.

Walk through them when school is in session and see how quiet and dead they are.

I did and disagree with you. I visited the Yale and Princeton campuses about two months ago with my kid. If I have to pick one word to describe the environment, I’d say vibrant!

Also, my kid got to stay with a Yale freshman friend who took him to a Yale Political Union debate. Kid loved it but was shocked because the media coverage would have you believe there are no conservative voices on campus. Simply not true.

Well, yes, a child visiting someone she knows will indeed have a different experience.

But in general, these campuses have become dreary and dead.