Are Ivies still enrolling the best students? Yes, but maybe not undergrads

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Columbia has a ton of in-person degree-mill, cash-cow master’s programs that admit anyone. It also has multiple “revenue streams” like the “General Studies” program that gives students little FA & treats them second class.

Penn, Columbia, Cornell and Harvard all have a bunch of bullsh*t online master’s degrees that cost an arm & leg. Harvard & Penn have “extension schools.”

However, I’ve heard Princeton hasn’t bought into any of that crap. [b]They are the strictest on who is allowed to even audit a class.

Maybe because Princeton doesn’t have grad programs like masters to throw around(really if you are going to post learn something about Princeton before you do!)

The PP you’re responding to is 100% correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Columbia has a ton of in-person degree-mill, cash-cow master’s programs that admit anyone. It also has multiple “revenue streams” like the “General Studies” program that gives students little FA & treats them second class.

Penn, Columbia, Cornell and Harvard all have a bunch of bullsh*t online master’s degrees that cost an arm & leg. Harvard & Penn have “extension schools.”

However, I’ve heard Princeton hasn’t bought into any of that crap. They are the strictest on who is allowed to even audit a class.

OH lord, Jesus - thank Christ! For real.

Yes, thank them for keeping their standards high instead of diluting their brand with a bunch of cash cow revenue streams like the other Ivies have.

Yes, how dare these institutions of higher learning actually expand access to more knowledge. The horrors. It’s much better to pull up the drawbridge for the sake of maintaining exclusivity.

🙄

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Columbia has a ton of in-person degree-mill, cash-cow master’s programs that admit anyone. It also has multiple “revenue streams” like the “General Studies” program that gives students little FA & treats them second class.

Penn, Columbia, Cornell and Harvard all have a bunch of bullsh*t online master’s degrees that cost an arm & leg. Harvard & Penn have “extension schools.”

However, I’ve heard Princeton hasn’t bought into any of that crap. They are the strictest on who is allowed to even audit a class.

OH lord, Jesus - thank Christ! For real.

Yes, thank them for keeping their standards high instead of diluting their brand with a bunch of cash cow revenue streams like the other Ivies have.

Yes, how dare these institutions of higher learning actually expand access to more knowledge. The horrors. It’s much better to pull up the drawbridge for the sake of maintaining exclusivity.

🙄

It's not the knowledge they're selling, it's the prestige. A course you can get on ICW or OYC for free is not worth 5 figures. Prestige is not an unlimited resource.

Note that MIT has expanded access to more knowledge far more than these schools, yet their prestige is excellent because they aren't selling out (too many) degrees with the MIT name

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Columbia has a ton of in-person degree-mill, cash-cow master’s programs that admit anyone. It also has multiple “revenue streams” like the “General Studies” program that gives students little FA & treats them second class.

Penn, Columbia, Cornell and Harvard all have a bunch of bullsh*t online master’s degrees that cost an arm & leg. Harvard & Penn have “extension schools.”

However, I’ve heard Princeton hasn’t bought into any of that crap. They are the strictest on who is allowed to even audit a class.

OH lord, Jesus - thank Christ! For real.

Yes, thank them for keeping their standards high instead of diluting their brand with a bunch of cash cow revenue streams like the other Ivies have.

Yes, how dare these institutions of higher learning actually expand access to more knowledge. The horrors. It’s much better to pull up the drawbridge for the sake of maintaining exclusivity.

🙄

Yes, an $80,000 Master’s in Film, Social Work, Photography, Liberal Arts, Library Science, Education, Library Science or English is totally worth it. You absolutely couldn’t get the same jobs you’d get with an MA in Social Work from Penn v. an MA in Social Work from Old Dominion or Shippensburg. You will also certainly make more with an MA in Social Work from Penn than you would with one from elsewhere, and certainly enough more than the $80,000 that you spent to buy one.

[Anonymous]

No they are too busy going woke. Once enrolled they give everyone A’s so they appear to be producing great students. Feel sorry for the HR directors and grad school admissions officers that have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No they are too busy going woke. Once enrolled they give everyone A’s so they appear to be producing great students. Feel sorry for the HR directors and grad school admissions officers that have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

You apparently never was a student at an Ivy. It's not easy to get an A, maybe B.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No they are too busy going woke. Once enrolled they give everyone A’s so they appear to be producing great students. Feel sorry for the HR directors and grad school admissions officers that have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

You apparently never was a student at an Ivy. It's not easy to get an A, maybe B.

Well the avg GPA at Ivies nowadays is around a 3.8

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No they are too busy going woke. Once enrolled they give everyone A’s so they appear to be producing great students. Feel sorry for the HR directors and grad school admissions officers that have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

You apparently never was a student at an Ivy. It's not easy to get an A, maybe B.

There are hard & easy majors at every school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To append a previous/similar post:


The Ivies do attract the absolute best. I've done both - midwest state flagship (undergrad) to Ivy (grad). There is no comparison. Trust me, the Ivy is a different league altogether and it allows you to truly peel away from the ordinary. However, do NOT obsess too much about the undergrad level. I personally was not overly impressed with the caliber of undergrads at the Ivy school I attended, and I know because I was a TA. The students in the grad or professional programs are worlds apart and represent the most talented group on campus. Get your degree anywhere and excel. I've met people who started at a community college, transferred to a four-year college and admitted to medical school at my Ivy.

I agree with this approach for people seeking knowledge for its own sake or true expertise-based careers, but I disagree with this approach for networking-based careers.

For U.S. networking-based, wealth-oriented careers, the earliest known connections after the Battle of Hastings matter more than the more recent sources of connections

As long you’re reasonably bright and have a reasonably good level of family wealth, anyone who’s a prince, princess or a member of the hereditary nobility ought to be able to get into a T10 business school, but, really, the royal or noble title is more powerful for networking than what you learn.

Who was at your parents’ wedding, golf or yacht club and 25th wedding anniversary party matters more than where you went to school, as long as you have a respectable MBA or law degree.

What preschool you went to matters more for networking than your grade school, your grade school matters more than your high school, your high school matters more than your undergrad school, and, for networking purposes, your undergrad school matters a lot more than your grad school.

A Harvard College degree is much more intrinsically powerful than a Harvard University MBA or law degree.

The raw of intelligence of the students is not the relevant factor. The factor that drives the networking power is the total wealth of the people invited to a student’s bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, sweet 16 party or cultural equivalent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To append a previous/similar post:


The Ivies do attract the absolute best. I've done both - midwest state flagship (undergrad) to Ivy (grad). There is no comparison. Trust me, the Ivy is a different league altogether and it allows you to truly peel away from the ordinary. However, do NOT obsess too much about the undergrad level. I personally was not overly impressed with the caliber of undergrads at the Ivy school I attended, and I know because I was a TA. The students in the grad or professional programs are worlds apart and represent the most talented group on campus. Get your degree anywhere and excel. I've met people who started at a community college, transferred to a four-year college and admitted to medical school at my Ivy.

Quoting a tenured Ivy professor “I don’t know how some of the students in my class got in….this happens in every class“

Simple. Affirmative Action, Legacy admission, Recruited Athletes, First generation kids and doing away with scores and strong academics to get Diversity.

Plus, focus on fluff courses, useless majors, inability to tell them "No" and grade inflation turns these kids out on society for us to suffer their incompetence

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To append a previous/similar post:


The Ivies do attract the absolute best. I've done both - midwest state flagship (undergrad) to Ivy (grad). There is no comparison. Trust me, the Ivy is a different league altogether and it allows you to truly peel away from the ordinary. However, do NOT obsess too much about the undergrad level. I personally was not overly impressed with the caliber of undergrads at the Ivy school I attended, and I know because I was a TA. The students in the grad or professional programs are worlds apart and represent the most talented group on campus. Get your degree anywhere and excel. I've met people who started at a community college, transferred to a four-year college and admitted to medical school at my Ivy.

I agree with this approach for people seeking knowledge for its own sake or true expertise-based careers, but I disagree with this approach for networking-based careers.

For U.S. networking-based, wealth-oriented careers, the earliest known connections after the Battle of Hastings matter more than the more recent sources of connections

As long you’re reasonably bright and have a reasonably good level of family wealth, anyone who’s a prince, princess or a member of the hereditary nobility ought to be able to get into a T10 business school, but, really, the royal or noble title is more powerful for networking than what you learn.

Who was at your parents’ wedding, golf or yacht club and 25th wedding anniversary party matters more than where you went to school, as long as you have a respectable MBA or law degree.

What preschool you went to matters more for networking than your grade school, your grade school matters more than your high school, your high school matters more than your undergrad school, and, for networking purposes, your undergrad school matters a lot more than your grad school.

A Harvard College degree is much more intrinsically powerful than a Harvard University MBA or law degree.

The raw of intelligence of the students is not the relevant factor. The factor that drives the networking power is the total wealth of the people invited to a student’s bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, sweet 16 party or cultural equivalent.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To append a previous/similar post:


The Ivies do attract the absolute best. I've done both - midwest state flagship (undergrad) to Ivy (grad). There is no comparison. Trust me, the Ivy is a different league altogether and it allows you to truly peel away from the ordinary. However, do NOT obsess too much about the undergrad level. I personally was not overly impressed with the caliber of undergrads at the Ivy school I attended, and I know because I was a TA. The students in the grad or professional programs are worlds apart and represent the most talented group on campus. Get your degree anywhere and excel. I've met people who started at a community college, transferred to a four-year college and admitted to medical school at my Ivy.

Quoting a tenured Ivy professor “I don’t know how some of the students in my class got in….this happens in every class“

Simple. Affirmative Action, Legacy admission, Recruited Athletes, First generation kids and doing away with scores and strong academics to get Diversity.

Plus, focus on fluff courses, useless majors, inability to tell them "No" and grade inflation turns these kids out on society for us to suffer their incompetence

When have Ivy League schools ever been a pure meritocracy? They used to only admit white men from “good families.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To append a previous/similar post:


The Ivies do attract the absolute best. I've done both - midwest state flagship (undergrad) to Ivy (grad). There is no comparison. Trust me, the Ivy is a different league altogether and it allows you to truly peel away from the ordinary. However, do NOT obsess too much about the undergrad level. I personally was not overly impressed with the caliber of undergrads at the Ivy school I attended, and I know because I was a TA. The students in the grad or professional programs are worlds apart and represent the most talented group on campus. Get your degree anywhere and excel. I've met people who started at a community college, transferred to a four-year college and admitted to medical school at my Ivy.

Which Ivy ?

Worthless post without naming the particular Ivy ?

My money is on Columbia.

Would like to know which Ivy you are referring to as well. Because I followed a similar path to you - State U in the Midwest to Yale PhD and, now, I am back teaching at a State U - and my experience has been the total opposite. ~95% of the Yale undergrads I’ve interacted with have been whip-smart, engaged, challenging, hard-working. These kids would come to class always prepared, many even did more than what was required, asked me challenging questions and were actively engaged in their learning. At the State U, it’s the opposite for me - only 5% of the class is at the level of the Yale undergrads, the remaining either does the bare minimum and/or is not engaged at all and cares more about what party they’ll go to on the weekend than the course material.

Also, your post smacks a bit of bitterness and resentment. I can tell because I’ve encountered it among some of my fellow Yale PhDs. Somehow deep inside they resented that they never made it to an Ivy undergrad and would try to put the undergrads down to make themselves feel better about that fact. It didn’t help that at Yale you really do feel that the undergrads are at the heart of Yale University. I think you are trying to do the same by posting this thread, and I am glad that so many on here are calling you out on your BS.

NP. I went to H for undergrad and MIT for grad school in the sciences. My experience matches the OP’s.

What does H mean?

Hogwarts, you dummy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No they are too busy going woke. Once enrolled they give everyone A’s so they appear to be producing great students. Feel sorry for the HR directors and grad school admissions officers that have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

You apparently never was a student at an Ivy. It's not easy to get an A, maybe B.

It would be “never were a student at an Ivy”. Why I got the A and you got the B. Serious grade inflation at Ivy’s now to mask the wide capacity difference of today’s diverse classes. Just the way it is in higher education today. Not limited to Ivy’s. It is the same At Stanford, U Chicago, and other “elite” universities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Columbia has a ton of in-person degree-mill, cash-cow master’s programs that admit anyone. It also has multiple “revenue streams” like the “General Studies” program that gives students little FA & treats them second class.

Penn, Columbia, Cornell and Harvard all have a bunch of bullsh*t online master’s degrees that cost an arm & leg. Harvard & Penn have “extension schools.”

However, I’ve heard Princeton hasn’t bought into any of that crap. They are the strictest on who is allowed to even audit a class.

I took an extension class in Japanese at Harvard. It was a great class and a lot of fun. It’s possible that I learned as much per hour in the class as I would have learned at a Harvard College class.

But, yeah: A Harvard extension school class has no prestige whatsoever. It’s at the same prestige level as any well-done community college night school class.