How the East Coast is viewed by others
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
I found this thread very interesting:
http://ideas.theatlantic.com/2009/06/the_east_the_west_and_the_ivy_league.php to be a young, ambitious person growing up on the East Coast is to obsess about educational institutions in a way I never remembered growing up in California, although I took advanced placement classes at a competitive Orange County high school where classmates attended all manner of elite colleges. As seniors in high school, my sense is that although most of my classmates were probably aware of Harvard as the biggest name school in America, a peer admitted to Stanford University would've commanded congratulations as hearty. Asked to name the most prestigious school among UC Berkeley, Brown, Cornell and UPenn, Berkeley would've won the day, except that one never would've been asked to make that judgment, let alone to internalize it. |
Anonymous
| People who go to Berkeley think they are Ivy? |
Anonymous
| Berkeley is far superior to many ivys. |
Anonymous
|
I'm a native Californian who graduated from HS in the late '70s. Back then, actually, we'd console our friends who got into Stanford by saying, "Not everybody can go to Cal." (For the record, I'm not a Cal grad -- much to my parents' dismay I came east to school.)
Fast forward -- I know a kid here who just graduated from HS and picked Cal over Cornell. All of his friends are saying he made the right choice. And I know several recent HS grads from this area who are picking Pomona over east coast SLACs -- you get all the benfits of Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, etc., including nearby skiing, plus the beach. It's a no-brainer for these very brainy kids. 
|
Anonymous
Where does it say, or imply, that? |
Anonymous
Right there on the first page. |
Anonymous
| I grew up in CA I couldn't have named more than a few Ivy League schools off of the top of my head. Only a few of my friends even considered applying to East Coast schools. Our target schools were the top UC schools (Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD) and a few top private schools like Standard and such. At the time tuition at UC schools, including Berkeley, was maybe $5,000 a year, so none of us really wanted to pay $20,000-$30,000 to go to some Ivy League school unless it was Harvard, Yale of Princeton. |
Anonymous
| Back in the day, even here on the East Coast (PA), there wasn't the Ivy obsession that exists today. One friend wanted to try for Harvard, but that was about it. I had almost perfect SATs and a great GPA but, as I recall, my well-educated parents didn't even suggest HYP. |
Anonymous
| College is usually local, isn't? Look at how Va parents only look at Va colleges' which are mediocre at best. |
Anonymous
| People sometimes will now think you are stupid for wasting your money studying med-evil times or liberal art at an ivy or even any other degree when local state schools are excellent. I take that as bad decision making and may consider the worker to not be able to make work decisions in an economic and logical manor. |
Anonymous
sorry for the typos and bad grammar I usually solicit the help of my assistant when sending out official letters but this is DCUM so I am not too worried about proper grammar / spelling. |
Anonymous
|
Anonymous
Wow. So your assistant is clearly better educated, too. Just....wow. |
Anonymous
|
the reason people obsess over colleges and getting into ivies now is because the stakes are so high. we have a gilded age economy, where the middle class is shrinking and the wealth blossom. jobs are generally won with connections, not saying winners arent qualified, but in this sea of excess candidates, the distinguishing characterisitc is to know someone on the inside (or your family knows someone, depressingly enough).
as for cali schools, uc are great schools but with california economy, state budget, and demographics uc will all be on a stark decline. stanford will be fine, with all the google alums etc who will bestow grants in their dotage (sp?) |
Anonymous
Whoever you are, I wouldn't be interested in working for someone who has no intellectual interests outside work and the dollar. |