Are Ivy League Schools Becoming More or Less Popular?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry how exactly is the quality of the education at Columbia and Cornell declining? I am deeply familiar with one of these institutions - there is absolutely no evidence of such decline from what I see (quite the opposite).

For Columbia, it was mostly smoke and mirrors in the first place. Making up crazy stats, leaving out the stats from the School for General Studies. That’s what the math prof who exposed Columbia’s data fraud said in an interview with Malcolm Gladwell. He said that there’s no way Columbia could ever compete with schools like Harvard and MIT. That’s why UNSWR T5 ranking immediately made him suspect fraud.

Pound for pound, Columbia does better than MIT or Harvard in silicon valley placement.

Visualized: The Top Feeder Schools into Silicon Valley
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/the-top-feeder-schools-into-silicon-valley/

I worked for a FAANG for several years. I paid some special attention to it.
Most regular employees went to schools like CarnegieM (top pipeline), Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Cornell (most popular Ivy), followed by UPenn and Columbia. The top researchers had degrees from schools like MIT. GT, UWashington, UCLA, and NYU seemed to be other popular pipelines. I didn’t meet that many HYP graduates btw (I guess most of them tend to join EPS companies).

In the end, previous work experience is more interesting/impressive. You get mostly excited to collaborate with former NASA and Tesla employees (regardless of their alma maters). Btw, some of the most impressive superstars went to “lower ranked” (state) schools for undergrad - think Arizona St, UC Irvine, Utah St, etc (but still attended prestigious universities for PhD - Stanford, MIT, no Ivy League). The most impressive/well-rounded colleagues went to British schools (Oxford, LSE, etc)… they were not just experts but also seemed to grasp the wider implications of our work, such as societal impact etc…

[Anonymous]

Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

The Ivies had cachet when they were waspy elite clubby institutions. Then they had cachet when they were meritocracies. When they were no longer waspy nor meritocracies, they are not so interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

The Ivies had cachet when they were waspy elite clubby institutions. Then they had cachet when they were meritocracies. When they were no longer waspy nor meritocracies, they are not so interesting.

Valid point, and the recent SC ruling sure is not going to change that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

The Ivies had cachet when they were waspy elite clubby institutions. Then they had cachet when they were meritocracies. When they were no longer waspy nor meritocracies, they are not so interesting.

💯

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The people I know who went to Harvard will say some version of, “I attended school in Boston.” They won’t even say the name.

That’s because people make sure a fuss about it. They tend to hide it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

The Ivies had cachet when they were waspy elite clubby institutions. Then they had cachet when they were meritocracies. When they were no longer waspy nor meritocracies, they are not so interesting.

Bingo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

The Ivies had cachet when they were waspy elite clubby institutions. Then they had cachet when they were meritocracies. When they were no longer waspy nor meritocracies, they are not so interesting.

+1000 I agree. All these people clamoring to get their kids into Ivies with dreams of the connections they will make and how they will be set for life. You realize when all the rich, waspy, legacy kids with the connected parents are no longer filling the classes at the ivies, your kids are no longer getting a leg into that world. Prestige isn’t about academics, it is about sharing a college experience with the wealthy and connected.

[Anonymous]

I attended one of the Ivies and now work at a FAANG. Twelve of my college friends and current coworkers have children currently attending University of Florida. UF is definitely rising in popularity now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I attended one of the Ivies and now work at a FAANG. Twelve of my college friends and current coworkers have children currently attending University of Florida. UF is definitely rising in popularity now.

Let’s not kid ourselves. They’re attending UF because they all got rejected from an Ivy League school or knew they couldn’t get admitted.

You all can kid yourself that they’re less popular or less “meritocratic” for whatever stupid reason you want to invent. You’re all in denial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I attended one of the Ivies and now work at a FAANG. Twelve of my college friends and current coworkers have children currently attending University of Florida. UF is definitely rising in popularity now.

Let’s not kid ourselves. They’re attending UF because they all got rejected from an Ivy League school or knew they couldn’t get admitted.

You all can kid yourself that they’re less popular or less “meritocratic” for whatever stupid reason you want to invent. You’re all in denial.

They are decidedly less meritocratic than they used to be, and it’s fine that people recognize that and celebrate the alternatives.

Some of the Ivies are basically hedge funds now with a side gig as universities. They discriminate in favor of URMs, athletes, legacies, and the children of big donors, and the types of kids who were their bread and butter in prior decades are looking elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

The Ivies had cachet when they were waspy elite clubby institutions. Then they had cachet when they were meritocracies. When they were no longer waspy nor meritocracies, they are not so interesting.

+1000 I agree. All these people clamoring to get their kids into Ivies with dreams of the connections they will make and how they will be set for life. You realize when all the rich, waspy, legacy kids with the connected parents are no longer filling the classes at the ivies, your kids are no longer getting a leg into that world. Prestige isn’t about academics, it is about sharing a college experience with the wealthy and connected.

Why aren’t the rich and connected kids filling the Ivy schools (they are BTW)?

As has been pointed out…even if they remove legacy they are still picking the next super rich kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

The Ivies had cachet when they were waspy elite clubby institutions. Then they had cachet when they were meritocracies. When they were no longer waspy nor meritocracies, they are not so interesting.

Bingo.

it was never a meritocracy. This is so nuts. I agree about the racist and sexist clubby phase. Then there was the "important to a certain kind of people, mostly UMC white and northeastern types who send their kids private schools or very very white and resourced high schools and can afford the 18k tuition fees bcs 100% of colleges took pay into account then" phase. And now we're in the "open to the ROW phase, need blind". You have to be a lot smarter and a lot more accomplished now than in our day. That's merit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yogi Berra would love this discussion.

Is interest in the Ivies fading? Sure, monody applies to them any more because they are too hard to get into.

The Ivies had cachet when they were waspy elite clubby institutions. Then they had cachet when they were meritocracies. When they were no longer waspy nor meritocracies, they are not so interesting.

Bingo.

it was never a meritocracy. This is so nuts. I agree about the racist and sexist clubby phase. Then there was the "important to a certain kind of people, mostly UMC white and northeastern types who send their kids private schools or very very white and resourced high schools and can afford the 18k tuition fees bcs 100% of colleges took pay into account then" phase. And now we're in the "open to the ROW phase, need blind". You have to be a lot smarter and a lot more accomplished now than in our day. That's merit.

Eh, you need to check certain boxes and in you go to hang out for four years with other people who checked the boxes. Why would I hire for that over people with actual grit? I’m not on Wall Street or in Hollywood, so those connections won’t further my business.

[Anonymous]

Ivies used to have a monopoly or close to it in the smartest kids, so it was a useful signal, but nowadays the gap between these elite schools and so called second tier schools is very narrow. Just look at standardized test data. Plus there is the recognition that while half the class at Ivies are top notch students, the other half are hooked, beneficiaries of woke policies, etc.

For example, the intellectual gap between the average Ivy League student and the average SLAC student is minor at this point. Thirty years ago it was more significant.