Why is it so hard to accept that the students at better colleges are simply better students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread is simply so out of touch with reality. Most people don’t care. I don’t care. I’ve worked with people from ivies and I’ve worked with people from unimpressive party schools. Their educational background has almost no correlation with how good of a coworker (or, in general, how good of an employee) they are.

Do people really feel the way OP does? Caring that much about pedigree just sounds exhausting.

Only low ambition folks don’t care and people trying to cope with they or their kids landing at degree mills.

There's that binary thinking again -- either elite or a degree mill.

I just looked up where my company's CEO went to undergrad (large company, brand all of Dcum would know) -- Small Catholic U in the Midwest that I've never heard of with an 80% acceptance rate. My DD goes to a mid ranked LAC that most people haven't heard of but alums include Nobel prize winners. OP doesn't think these people exist.

[Anonymous]

If you believe that all institutions are interchangeable and one has nothing to offer over the other, I am not sure that you have access to really high quality opportunities. All schools are actually not created equal. A student can try make the most out of any college but they are not all the same by any means

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you believe that all institutions are interchangeable and one has nothing to offer over the other, I am not sure that you have access to really high quality opportunities. All schools are actually not created equal. A student can try make the most out of any college but they are not all the same by any means

Of course not all schools are created equal. I don’t plan to disparage people who don’t have access to “really high quality opportunities.” It’s actually pretty easy to argue that access does not equal intelligence. A student raised with all these extra opportunities isn’t inherently more intelligent or more “worthy” than another; they simply had access granted to them that others did not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread is simply so out of touch with reality. Most people don’t care. I don’t care. I’ve worked with people from ivies and I’ve worked with people from unimpressive party schools. Their educational background has almost no correlation with how good of a coworker (or, in general, how good of an employee) they are.

Do people really feel the way OP does? Caring that much about pedigree just sounds exhausting.

But this thread is about college years, not post college.

But doesn’t one have to do with the other? Isn’t the point of college… getting a job? If I’m working with (and making similar salaries as) people from prestigious universities, then what’s the point of this conversation? Ultimately, so many of us end up in the same fields, with the same titles, doing similar work. I spend very little time worrying about where my colleagues went to college.

Spend more time with the super nerds. Education has value for it's own sake for some of these geeks

My mom, who is 78, takes classes at her local community college simply because she wants to learn new things. Learning having value for its own sake? That can be found anywhere, not only around super nerds. My 9-year-old is currently teaching herself Morse Code for fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you believe that all institutions are interchangeable and one has nothing to offer over the other, I am not sure that you have access to really high quality opportunities. All schools are actually not created equal. A student can try make the most out of any college but they are not all the same by any means

Of course not all schools are created equal. I don’t plan to disparage people who don’t have access to “really high quality opportunities.” It’s actually pretty easy to argue that access does not equal intelligence. A student raised with all these extra opportunities isn’t inherently more intelligent or more “worthy” than another; they simply had access granted to them that others did not.

The only students being disparaged on this thread are one that want to to to a very competitive top university. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do that. And nothing wrong with not wanting to do that

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole thread is simply so out of touch with reality. Most people don’t care. I don’t care. I’ve worked with people from ivies and I’ve worked with people from unimpressive party schools. Their educational background has almost no correlation with how good of a coworker (or, in general, how good of an employee) they are.

Do people really feel the way OP does? Caring that much about pedigree just sounds exhausting.

But this thread is about college years, not post college.

But doesn’t one have to do with the other? Isn’t the point of college… getting a job? If I’m working with (and making similar salaries as) people from prestigious universities, then what’s the point of this conversation? Ultimately, so many of us end up in the same fields, with the same titles, doing similar work. I spend very little time worrying about where my colleagues went to college.

Spend more time with the super nerds. Education has value for it's own sake for some of these geeks

My mom, who is 78, takes classes at her local community college simply because she wants to learn new things. Learning having value for its own sake? That can be found anywhere, not only around super nerds. My 9-year-old is currently teaching herself Morse Code for fun.

Age has nothing to do with wanting to learn for wanting to learn. Geeks exist from age 9 to 78 and beyond

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where are these students supposed to go? There is a huge variety in where students decide to pursue higher education for lots is reasons. But top students with many academic gifts would overall gravitate to a challenging environment where they can make use of their talents.

And where they can afford to go.

Many, many of the best students apply and are admitted to “better” schools than where they ultimately enroll because they cannot afford to go to the more expensive school. Conversely, full pay students are not always the best students but they can pay.

Get you head out of your backside, OP.

This. This. This. There are many super talented students who went to a lower ranked school on a merit scholarship or a state school just to afford to go at all.

How do I know? I got into Carnegie Mellon, but attended Clarkson on scholarship.

[Anonymous]

I believe it, just very loosely, in three tiers: colleges with a 30% acceptance rate and below, colleges with a 30-60% acceptance rate, and the rest. There are lots of exceptions to this, notably students who go where they can afford to. Broad brush.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here are the 50 smartest colleges in America
based on test scores before the pandemic when test score was mandatory.

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-50-smartest-colleges-in-america-2016-10

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay but why should I, as an employer, GAF who is the best student? I don’t have any jobs for studying and taking tests. I need to know who is the best project manager and best salesperson and best communicator. Mind you, I do think student quality has some overlap with the skills I’m looking for, but you’re the one talking about the “best students.”

I find the obsession over where a person spends 4 years of their life really odd. Especially in the DMV, people seem to take more about predictors of success than actual… success.

And before you accuse me of being a naive populist, I went to Northwestern.

The easiest way for you, as an employer, to determine who is the best manager / salesperson / communicator would be to administer some type of IQ or aptitude test to job applicants. But you're not allowed to do that thanks to Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971). Therefore, you, like all employers, are forced to use proxies to achieve the same effect. The leading proxy for ability to do the job is, of course, "what degree do you have and where did you get it from". That may not be optimal from an employer's perspective but here we are.

Not at all. To be blunt some of my best sales people surely had unimpressive IQs. Communication skills also are not well-predicted by IQ but are obvious from a good interview process. Getting the most tippy top bright students has never been my goal, because, again, I’ve never hired for a test taker.

Agree 100%! IQ and management/sales/communication are not necessarily correlated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you believe that all institutions are interchangeable and one has nothing to offer over the other, I am not sure that you have access to really high quality opportunities. All schools are actually not created equal. A student can try make the most out of any college but they are not all the same by any means

Of course not all schools are created equal. I don’t plan to disparage people who don’t have access to “really high quality opportunities.” It’s actually pretty easy to argue that access does not equal intelligence. A student raised with all these extra opportunities isn’t inherently more intelligent or more “worthy” than another; they simply had access granted to them that others did not.

The only students being disparaged on this thread are one that want to to to a very competitive top university. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do that. And nothing wrong with not wanting to do that

+1

[Anonymous]

No, not all of us can afford what you consider better. We send our kids to good schools we can afford.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you believe that all institutions are interchangeable and one has nothing to offer over the other, I am not sure that you have access to really high quality opportunities. All schools are actually not created equal. A student can try make the most out of any college but they are not all the same by any means

Of course not all schools are created equal. I don’t plan to disparage people who don’t have access to “really high quality opportunities.” It’s actually pretty easy to argue that access does not equal intelligence. A student raised with all these extra opportunities isn’t inherently more intelligent or more “worthy” than another; they simply had access granted to them that others did not.

The only students being disparaged on this thread are one that want to to to a very competitive top university. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do that. And nothing wrong with not wanting to do that

Seriously? That’s what you get out of this thread? Where, exactly, are competitive, top university students being insulted?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here are the 50 smartest colleges in America
based on test scores before the pandemic when test score was mandatory.

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-50-smartest-colleges-in-america-2016-10

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering?

Most people on DCUM never heard of MIT, either- before having access to the internet.

OP I find you posts consistently divisive, intentionally misleading, and quite rude.

You obviously have quite a large chip on your shoulder.

If you have so many issues with “better schools”, consider (more/different) therapy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Students at "better" colleges are, on average, better students than those at less competitive schools.

But the thing people like OP don't get is that there are many excellent students at less competitive schools. Some of them are on par with students at the most competitive schools.

Talk to any admissions officer at a top college or university and they will tell you that the number of qualified applicants far exceeds the number of spots. In addition, many of these schools would require most students to borrow large amounts of money to attend (not all, I know some of the top schools give very generous need-based grants and scholarships, but these are also the hardest to get into). So many highly qualified applicants (yes, many) choose to go to less competitive schools where they are likely to receive significantly more generous aid packages because of their excellent qualifications, which might place them in the middle at a highly competitive school but at the tippy-top of a less competitive institution.

Other excellent students selects schools on the basis of location or availability of very specific programs. I know a student gained admission to a top university (HYSP) but chose a (very good, but significantly less competitive, especially for students from the DMV) state university because she is focused on a specific scientific area of study and that school is considered to have the very best program for that area.

And it's also important to acknowledge that there are, in fact, students at elite institutions who are not superior students, but are given admission thanks to legacy or donor status.

Very nicely put.