My child attends an elite college. It is overrated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You know who says getting into/attending an Elite College isn't a big deal?

Poor people and those who were rejected.

My favorite growing up: Im really smart but Im just not a good test taker.

Uh yeah. You're not that smart.

All important, also field of study or major is very important.

Big difference between Engineeing CS Econ/business, Math/stat, etc vs you know

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting, the report linked above says “ Job candidates from flagship public colleges are most popular among employers in the study, followed by private not-for-profit colleges ”

Hmmm

What does that even mean? Of course the state flagships are popular if not preferred — 99% of employers never come in contact with Ivy League applicants, let alone have any in their social network or any shared experiences with them. Ivy League kids funnel to the same handful of regions every year, asking employers in flyover country if they want Ivy League applicants is a pointless discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You know who says getting into/attending an Elite College isn't a big deal?

Poor people and those who were rejected.

My favorite growing up: Im really smart but Im just not a good test taker.

Uh yeah. You're not that smart.

You are making a straw man argument.
OP said “elite college is overrated” and she knows this because her dd is in rolled in one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know who says getting into/attending an Elite College isn't a big deal?

Poor people and those who were rejected.

My favorite growing up: Im really smart but Im just not a good test taker.

Uh yeah. You're not that smart.

You are making a straw man argument.
OP said “elite college is overrated” and she knows this because her dd is in rolled in one.

What is “in rolled”. Perhaps a sandwich. The child is between two rolls? Learn to spell. Enrolled.

[Anonymous]

Whether an elite college is life-changing depends on 2 things:

1. What your life looked like before you went to college
2. What you do with the opportunities available to you at college

A white private school-educated UMC kid from the Northeast corridor is least likely to find HYP transformative.

A kid who is not ambitious (and there are lots of different ways to be ambitious) will get less out of their college experience than one who knows what s/he wants and sets out to get/accomplish it. Ambition plus talent may get you even further but talent w/o ambition doesn’t count for much in these environments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which "elite" college is this? UChicago's initial ROI is around $60,000 per year.

Is that supposed to be be good?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Which "elite" college is this? UChicago's initial ROI is around $60,000 per year.

Is that supposed to be be good?

It's quite bad for an "elite" college. UChicago usually ranks dead last in ROI among the T10 and its peers. Its ROI is more like a T15-20 school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Duke and this is a pretty accurate (and bitter) summary. I wish I had gone to a cheaper school close to home, and maybe done pre med or something. But I wasn’t really organized enough to take advantage of the opportunities available. Oh well. I did end up going to law school on the cheap with scholarships so I learned my lesson!

Dook, without basketball, is basically Elon.

Basketball helped, but it was the Duke tobacco money that did it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it's too early to tell or maybe she just didn't capitalize on all the opportunities (I suspect very few do) but it most certainly has not changed her life. The thing I do notice is overall a higher percentage of deeply committed pre-med students than my son's peers at the state flagship. Other than that there's this laughable idea that an elite college is a golden ticket to a $150,000 job offer and a rich spouse and that's just not accurate. The plum six-figure job offers are scarce and go to the connected and elbowy overachievers with perfect grades. And generally the rich socialize with the rich. If you want your child in that orbit they need to be in that orbit by 9th grade at some ritzy prep or boarding school.

I have a niece at Cornell who is close with my daughter and she has had a similar experience. At Cornell the rich are in the rich kid sororities and fraternities.

A few years back we were caught up in the admissions frenzy but in retrospect it seems so nutty. I'm [now] far more impressed with a parent who tells me their kid is at a less selective school but just got into medical school than some Ivy League parent who tells me their ubiquitous kid is going into "consulting" for $60,000 a year or some second rate grad program.

Sounds like Northwestern or UChicago. Anyone who tells you those schools are elite for undergrad is clueless or a liar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it’s so overrated why hasn’t your kid transferred to state school? No difference, right? Right.

Do you have any idea what it takes to transfer into a good public university these days?

It is not at all difficult to transfer into your home state or commonwealth's public university from an elite college. If community college kids can figure it out, pretty sure an overachiever at an elite college can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it’s so overrated why hasn’t your kid transferred to state school? No difference, right? Right.

Do you have any idea what it takes to transfer into a good public university these days?

It is not at all difficult to transfer into your home state or commonwealth's public university from an elite college. If community college kids can figure it out, pretty sure an overachiever at an elite college can.

It’s very difficult to get a transfer to UVA, primarily because it has to reserve 600-700 seats for the guaranteed transfer program students coming in from community colleges throughout the Commonwealth. And, if your student is in the latter group, the courses required for transfer are all in core subjects and you must get a min 3.0 GPA, which is not easy at the college level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love bottom rung morons who repeat that “college only matters for your first job” nonsense. Your college remains on your resume for 40 to 50 years. Yale is going to pop off your resume when you’re job hopping in your 30s and 40s and the selection committee internally refers to you as the “Yale guy.” Only folks who went to bottom rung colleges think credential prestige doesn’t matter past age 22 — and you all don’t really even believe it, you just wish it was true.

Most jobs do not ask about your college resume after you have work experience (ie. a first real job out of college). What matters after first job is references from previous jobs and what you did at those job(s). So other than the possible connections you use to get an interview, yes, nobody really cares about where you went to college after that (minus a few industries like banking and PE).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it's too early to tell or maybe she just didn't capitalize on all the opportunities (I suspect very few do) but it most certainly has not changed her life. The thing I do notice is overall a higher percentage of deeply committed pre-med students than my son's peers at the state flagship. Other than that there's this laughable idea that an elite college is a golden ticket to a $150,000 job offer and a rich spouse and that's just not accurate. The plum six-figure job offers are scarce and go to the connected and elbowy overachievers with perfect grades. And generally the rich socialize with the rich. If you want your child in that orbit they need to be in that orbit by 9th grade at some ritzy prep or boarding school.

I have a niece at Cornell who is close with my daughter and she has had a similar experience. At Cornell the rich are in the rich kid sororities and fraternities.

A few years back we were caught up in the admissions frenzy but in retrospect it seems so nutty. I'm [now] far more impressed with a parent who tells me their kid is at a less selective school but just got into medical school than some Ivy League parent who tells me their ubiquitous kid is going into "consulting" for $60,000 a year or some second rate grad program.

Sounds like Northwestern or UChicago. Anyone who tells you those schools are elite for undergrad is clueless or a liar.

Can you elaborate on your comment? Is it based on experience with Northwestern or UChicago? Truly curious not trying to troll.

[Anonymous]

I went to an Ivy and loved it but I have always been surprised that people want their kids to go to Ivies to connect with rich people. At my Ivy (Brown) the boarding school/NYC private school uber rich mainly hung out with each other. I love my college friends but they and their connections did not help me get jobs. Nor did my parents help them get jobs. None of our parents were in a position to do that and now we all have such different careers that our professional networks do not overlap at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You know who says getting into/attending an Elite College isn't a big deal?

Poor people and those who were rejected.

My favorite growing up: Im really smart but Im just not a good test taker.

Uh yeah. You're not that smart.

All important, also field of study or major is very important.

Big difference between Engineeing CS Econ/business, Math/stat, etc vs you know

What? At an elite school you can major in whatever you want and still get a great job. At a regional school you better major in something employable.