Letting the Ivy plan go
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Anonymous
Bravo! I feel the same way, exactly. However, I'll acknowledge that I probably harbored similar ambitions to the OP at some point in my life. Now that my oldest has been through the admissions process, I'm so thrilled he's at a great school and doing well academically and socially. Ivies and the like are a pointless mireage. |
Anonymous
Interesting. If you go to their website and click on “who we are”, the very first profile is of a woman who got her undergrad degree at University of Washington and her PhD at NYU. |
Anonymous
I’m not going to get into an argument about how hedge funds hire. NYU is top notch for business. Don’t know what that person has a phd in but NYU is a solid school. I used to work in finance in NYC and it seemed like most people were from Ivy, MIT, Stanford and NYU. |
Anonymous
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I went to Harvard. If my kid gets into a top 50, I will be thrilled. If not, there are many good options. We have all worked with hugely competent people who went to the State U nearest their childhood home. I have told my kid, though, that working hard in high school increases the number of options you have.
I have taught at a few universities, and it isn't the case that, "Freshman bio is the same everywhere." I think you want to look for places that teach the topics at the end of the textbooks, that require written papers and not just debates or presentations, and that have a freshman writing program that gives frequent, low-stakes feedback. You want the faculty to have their PhDs from a diversity of places, because nepotism in hiring can fly under the radar. (Oh, the stories...) Someone in the Math Dept. doing research on math education is also a good sign. |
Anonymous
They are focusing on football teams so they’re a little pathetic. And March madness? Ridiculous but you know some pick their colleges based on the quality of their sports |
Anonymous
Well when you make the statement that “DE Shaw only hires from elite schools” and someone proves you wrong, you should be prepared for an argument. |
Anonymous
Well, they actually have a target list of like 30 schools that includes many non-Ivy schools. However, I guess indirectly you are now plugging that there is value to these elite schools. |
Anonymous
| I hope this is a troll. |
Anonymous
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OP here. There is some really great advice here amidst the flogging. This topic really riles some people up, doesn’t it? It’s quite fascinating. I can almost see someone of you foaming at the mouth. How bizarre.
To those who offered up sincere advice: I see you, I hear you and I thank you. It’s been very helpful and has given me some things to think about. |
Anonymous
Amazing insight here - thank you. |
Anonymous
Exactly. I went to a very good VA university with a strong fan base. Not Ivy of course but extremely competitive for VA in-state. I have worn their gear occasionally and we’ve driven through campus a few times since my kids were born. One of my kids has passionately attached themselves to the idea that they’ll go there someday. Maybe, maybe not but I never pushed for them to go there and my other kids don’t give a sh*t about going there. It’s not always about obsessive parents but people do love to crap on parents here instead of helping them. Bummer. |
Anonymous
I feel like people fail to realize how much of a lottery it is, especially for kinds coming from the DC area. I did IB w/ a middling GPA but high SATs, made time for a fun high school experience, and ended up at a state school honors program for undergrad. I loved it, stood out academically without having to work too hard, had a great time socially, and am so glad that's how it turned out. So many of my HS classmates wore themselves thin just to end up at UMD with the kids who had fun. You can have a 4.0 and perfect test scores and all the hooks in the world and still get rejected. One of the best lessons I learned from a mentor in undergrad is that goals should be things you have control over; they should be actionable. "Getting into an Ivy" isn't a healthy or realistic goal, because so much of it is luck and at the end of the day you can do everything "right" and still not get in. And of course going to an Ivy is not at all the right fit for everyone (and all of them are SO different), nor is it a guarantee for success. I'm currently getting my masters at an HYP school and I have friends with the same stats as me who got rejected from my masters program. I think the acceptance rate for this year's application cycle was literally under 1% (it's a very specific program only offered at a few schools, even the non-T20 programs are super competitive), and I absolutely tell people that after a certain stats threshold it's basically a lottery. We've joked that admission depends on whether or not [notoriously hangry program chair] read your file before or after lunch. I have friends in my program who applied 2-3 times before getting in, and were specifically told to apply again in the next cycle because their rejection was an issue of space, not an issue of talent. There are so few seats, you can be so smart and so hardworking and still not make the cut. Of the 13 people in my specific Ivy graduate program, 6 (!) of us are from the DMV (mix of MCPS/FCPS/private) and only one of us got into an Ivy for undergrad. I also think it's one of those things where correlation is not a causation. Yes I'm getting the Ivy education and connections, but when you're looking at a crazy competitive program, all the people who got in were always going to do well regardless of where they went-- be it due to intelligence/talent, work ethic, or family money/connections. I think specifically for my program, which has a heavy interview and vetting process on top of a standard application, we got in because we were already on the right trajectory to be at the top of our field, simply going to an Ivy isn't what's going to make us successful, we were already on track to be successful. And I'd imagine the same is true for a lot of people who were in the top 5-10% of applicants but just didn't make that final round of cuts. They'll all be fine professionally. Sometimes it feels like very fancy daycare-- I'm just here to hang out and meet the "right" people, not necessarily learn. I have friends getting the same degree at state schools who seem to have more rigor/learn more content than I do at my Ivy. |
Anonymous
This. It isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about Ivy schools. It’s about taking the courses that are most suited to your abilities and talents. Some stress is a good thing. Life is stressful. While classes absolutely can stress teens out- these are not real problems, not really. And they are sure to face real stressors in their life. Taking easy classes she doesn’t have to work in isn’t going to do her any favors. The exception would be if she is having mental health issues. But you can’t force. You have to work with her to find a balance of what is an appropriate work load that challenges her and gives her a sense of achievement vs a course load that is so hard she feels like she is on a hamster wheel and cannot keep pace. |
Anonymous
+1 and amen. |
Anonymous
Comments like this are interesting, because there are in fact the .01% of athletes who do in fact go on to play their sport professionally. If you look at Caleb Williams (Gonzaga graduate, likely top 5 NFL draft pick), his parents sacrificed massively for him to be where he is and he had private trainers, private QB coaches, etc. Sure, he wanted it...but he probably wasn't going to get there on his own. The issue quite honestly is that most highly successful people do have goals like "I want to play in the NFL"...the problem is that for many they have the "dream" to play in the NFL and not the goal. Meaning, they aren't prepared to give up essentially 1/2 their life to attaining that level of success and/or they realize they don't have the natural ability or size from the start. Look at basically any successful athlete, entertainer, etc. Even a group like Nirvana...Kurt Cobain told his bandmates when they were nothing that his goal was to create the biggest band in the world. Again, most people "dream" of that happening...very few put in the 10,000+ hours to make it a reality. |