What an Ivy league education gets you - the Atlantic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the article is getting at is that smart people with emotional intelligence go far. Basing that conclusion on Ivy schools is a little reductive however. It's a very outdated metric. There are bright students with a high emotional IQ at all sorts of schools in 2026.

But peer group and good manners do matter of course - as they have since the beginning of time. Not exactly rocket science.

The metric is the concentration of these people. Far fewer in other schools.

Eh. Given admission priorities these days, the Ivy League ain't all that in 2026. For smart + emotional IQ, there are a lot of other schools, as everyone who has toured universities over the past three years has discerned. The Harvard Man is a myth today. Things have changed a lot.

Disagree. Ivy leagues are all test required now. Of course they have institutional priorities, but they all submit scores. The majority of other schools are test optional, AND give the same if not more preference to priorities.

Columbia remains TO

If Columbia wasn’t in nyc, it would be struggling to be a t30

If nyu wasn’t in nyc it would be a t100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the article is getting at is that smart people with emotional intelligence go far. Basing that conclusion on Ivy schools is a little reductive however. It's a very outdated metric. There are bright students with a high emotional IQ at all sorts of schools in 2026.

But peer group and good manners do matter of course - as they have since the beginning of time. Not exactly rocket science.

The metric is the concentration of these people. Far fewer in other schools.

bingo.

Parent of a current Ivy student who describes all of his classmates as "cracked" and says it has made him better.

Same. It can cause angst but boy does it push them all.

If you aspire for your child to be a societal and environmental menace, by all means these schools with a statistically higher concentration of sociopaths will push them.

Some people aspire to more than that, however.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the article is getting at is that smart people with emotional intelligence go far. Basing that conclusion on Ivy schools is a little reductive however. It's a very outdated metric. There are bright students with a high emotional IQ at all sorts of schools in 2026.

But peer group and good manners do matter of course - as they have since the beginning of time. Not exactly rocket science.

The metric is the concentration of these people. Far fewer in other schools.

And a critial concentration has be reached to get the effects described in the article. Below that critical concentration, it rarely happens.
Ivies are the ones (most likely only ones) exceeding this critical concentration.

If it’s about a “critical concentration,” why wouldn’t an even smaller school be even better (more concentrated)? And shouldn’t it be possible to quantify and measure the concentration? I’d like to know if, as you suggest, a school that is merely at 99.99% of the “critical concentration” truly gets absolutely no benefit. Because my suspicion would be that things are not as black-and-white as that.

Not if you recruit half of the class with athletes, donors, and other prirorities, and test optional. A larger school may recruit the same number of athletes but they are quickly diluted in a sea of geniuses. With test required, these athletes are probably also very capable.
It's just more difficult for SLACs to do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the article is getting at is that smart people with emotional intelligence go far. Basing that conclusion on Ivy schools is a little reductive however. It's a very outdated metric. There are bright students with a high emotional IQ at all sorts of schools in 2026.

But peer group and good manners do matter of course - as they have since the beginning of time. Not exactly rocket science.

The metric is the concentration of these people. Far fewer in other schools.

Eh. Given admission priorities these days, the Ivy League ain't all that in 2026. For smart + emotional IQ, there are a lot of other schools, as everyone who has toured universities over the past three years has discerned. The Harvard Man is a myth today. Things have changed a lot.

Disagree. Ivy leagues are all test required now. Of course they have institutional priorities, but they all submit scores. The majority of other schools are test optional, AND give the same if not more preference to priorities.

These tests are meaningless when we all know that the little Larlos of the world studied with tutors for years AND had to take the tests multiple times to achieve their “superior” scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The study findings are what I intuitively would have said was the thing an elite institution gets you. I was a small town girl from a MC high school. Living in a dorm with heiresses and UMC girls acclimated me to the life I lived "ever after."

And yet you’re still posting on DCUM like the rest of us losers. Good for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the article is getting at is that smart people with emotional intelligence go far. Basing that conclusion on Ivy schools is a little reductive however. It's a very outdated metric. There are bright students with a high emotional IQ at all sorts of schools in 2026.

But peer group and good manners do matter of course - as they have since the beginning of time. Not exactly rocket science.

The metric is the concentration of these people. Far fewer in other schools.

Eh. Given admission priorities these days, the Ivy League ain't all that in 2026. For smart + emotional IQ, there are a lot of other schools, as everyone who has toured universities over the past three years has discerned. The Harvard Man is a myth today. Things have changed a lot.

Disagree. Ivy leagues are all test required now. Of course they have institutional priorities, but they all submit scores. The majority of other schools are test optional, AND give the same if not more preference to priorities.

Columbia remains TO

If Columbia wasn’t in nyc, it would be struggling to be a t30

If nyu wasn’t in nyc it would be a t100

BS, Forbes ranks Columbia 2nd, after only MIT. The Forbes ranking is exclusively based on outcomes, not the softer factors which are easily manipulated. Columbia is right to ignore USN

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the article is getting at is that smart people with emotional intelligence go far. Basing that conclusion on Ivy schools is a little reductive however. It's a very outdated metric. There are bright students with a high emotional IQ at all sorts of schools in 2026.

But peer group and good manners do matter of course - as they have since the beginning of time. Not exactly rocket science.

The metric is the concentration of these people. Far fewer in other schools.

bingo.

Parent of a current Ivy student who describes all of his classmates as "cracked" and says it has made him better.

Same. It can cause angst but boy does it push them all.

My Ivy kid is actually surprised by how unimpressive many of their classmates are--can't do math, can't write, etc

Not the only one to make that observation.

This article reminds me of something David Brooks would have written 20 years ago. But the idea that the Ivy schools represent some kind of meritocracy is very dead in 2026. Most talent goes elsewhere these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys aren't getting it. It's the expectations you develop for yourself and what your life will be like that matters long after you graduate. Yes, you work hard, are challenged academically. But that's not all. You learn how people from more successful backgrounds think and act. How smarter and academically more accomplished people think and act. You change.
--small town girl from MC high school

But not everyone is a small town girl from a MC high school. All those people you met at an Ivy, they went to high school somewhere. For people who already met them in high school, what’s the benefit of the Ivy?

You haven't met the professors in your high school now have you? Any Nobel laureates taught your high school classes?

[Anonymous]

This thread is a lot like the ones I used to see on Twitter (before it was X) about how college wasn't necessary because Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates all dropped out of college. Usually the posters were strivers trying to convince each other that they could get coding jobs without a degree. Lol. Now AI got their jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys aren't getting it. It's the expectations you develop for yourself and what your life will be like that matters long after you graduate. Yes, you work hard, are challenged academically. But that's not all. You learn how people from more successful backgrounds think and act. How smarter and academically more accomplished people think and act. You change.
--small town girl from MC high school

But not everyone is a small town girl from a MC high school. All those people you met at an Ivy, they went to high school somewhere. For people who already met them in high school, what’s the benefit of the Ivy?

You haven't met the professors in your high school now have you? Any Nobel laureates taught your high school classes?

DP but my non-Ivy school had TWO Nobel Laureates (one of whom taught classes while I was there). Did you know that there is zero correlation between winning a Nobel and being a good teacher?

[Anonymous]

I did some back and forth with several AI engines, and I left even less impressed with the DCUM Ivy focus. The typical job for an Ivy grad is something in finance, consulting, or tech. It’s a job. It has a salary. But, many kids get this from a good school.

The students who go on to become standout alumni fall into one of several buckets:

1) They already had access to capital and networks before they arrived at school. The degree confirmed their birthright.

2) Ivy was a FIRST step among many to success, like a prestigious job, then a prestigious graduate degree, then another prestigious job, and then many years of hard work, and then they got the prize.

3) They were risk takers. Four of the wealthiest people in the US attended an Ivy and dropped out. It definitely wasn’t the education that determined their success. Other notables didn’t follow the safe path of the prestigious job, but ran for office, wrote a book, etc.

Whatever the case, only 1 in 50,000 Ivy dudes will become a CEO, and it’s hard to know if it was their Ivy degree, jobs after school, graduate education, or something else that got them there. Whatever the case, it’s clear that most Ivy students won’t be CEOs.

The takeaway is that while kids who attend Ivies are smart and probably more ambitious and competitive than most, only a fraction of even them have the insatiable ambition and drive to actively leverage the available network to make an outstanding difference.

For what it’s worth, I have a SIL who attended an Ivy undergraduate and Ivy medical school. She complains all the time about how her non-Ivy peers get paid the same money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is a lot like the ones I used to see on Twitter (before it was X) about how college wasn't necessary because Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates all dropped out of college. Usually the posters were strivers trying to convince each other that they could get coding jobs without a degree. Lol. Now AI got their jobs.

Guess it’s a good thing they didn’t waste money on degrees, then, isn’t it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a bunch of new ivies including Emory, Vandy, Rice. They can simulate a similar environment.

Ha, nope. Look at parchment match ups, while those are great schools, they are full of kids who didn't get into an Ivy and would have picked it if they had.

Parchment is am interesting and growing source. I researched it after my son's public high school made it their official transcript in 2024.

HOWEVER...

Parchment doesn't reveal sample size. And Parchment doesn't have dominance in the transcript service field. From what little was available two years ago, it was reasonable to assume that there were lots of potential biases in the sample AND there was no way for the general public to interpret how that could impact any specific school pairings.

Parchment is cagey about its statistics. They say they have 5,500 K-12 schools participating. Another source says there are 27,000 secondary schools in the US. Looking at some other statistics suggests they might have 20-30% coverage but there are bound to be all sorts of geographic and demographic biases.

TL;DR we can probably guess the samples behind the pairings are reasonable. But there's no proof, and real researchers wouldn't use the data for anything.

[Anonymous]

Which is why getting rid of legacies is important. Spread the wealth. Don't opportunity hoard.

[Anonymous]

The most sure thing you get from an Ivy degree (really only HPY) is bragging rights. In most circles it is shorthand for I’m smart.

But, it also comes with a lot of baggage, especially outside Ivy circles. Many think that Ivy “normals” rest on their laurels and think too highly of themselves. Some normals are so intoxicated by their supposed sophistication that they are tone-deaf to their obnoxiousness. The worst is when Ivy normals level-up by name-dropping notable alumni, especially ones who attended school at the same time but didn’t interact with them. In other words, for many Ivy graduates, the diploma becomes a burden that many don’t wear well. With great opportunities come great, perhaps insurmountable, expectations.