The T-20 obsession comes down to class, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the immigrant parent obsession.

If you're at a top private high school, many parents are completely relaxed about sending their kid to place like Colby or Boston College. I know DCUM think they're all nuts but our experience with 3 kids has been the opposite. Parents are very nonchalant about where their kids land. Often the Ivy gunners are, yes, the immigrant famlies in the bunch.

Meanwhile, on Reddit so many freshmen are trying to transfer up from Emory or Rice or Vanderbilt, etc. "My parents are still so embarrassed that I'm not at an Ivy."

Immigrant parents aren't the ones using legacies,wealth, and athletic side doors for their kids to get into T10. That's usually white American parents. And there are more spots for those types of applicants than for immigrant children with no hooks.

OP, my kid went to a state flagship -- 1580 SAT, 4.92 wgpa/4.0 unwgpa. They were rejected at T20 (for CS). But, they got some great internships because they are smart and driven.

I went to a no name state u, and ended up working for a FAANG. It took me a lot longer to get there than my colleagues who went to T10s (MIT, Cornell), and I can hold my own.

So, while yes, one can get jobs at top companies even if they didn't go to a T20, it may take them longer and have to hustle more.

Ah so all those wealthy students from abroad are just really really smart!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of us attended these schools (and the top SLACs this board loves to hate). We want our kids to experience them, too.

Yes. IYKYK. Worth every penny and ours did not pick ours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me this seems primarily an East Coast obsession.

If you have spent time in the bay area immigrant community you wouldn't say that. Among the non-immigrant upper class private school crowd on the West Coast things seem to be a bit more chill. Very good schools or better are expected but the T20 obsession definitely isn't as strong.

That's because rich people don't need their kids to go to a T10 to make connections. They already have those connections. Their kids will get the top jobs through those connections.

Unhooked kids can benefit most from the T10 connections, but most of the universities have more spots open for legacies, the wealthy and athletes than for unhooked applicatns.

While, this is intuitively true...the wealthiest, most connected rich people still send their kids to T10 schools. Gates' kids at Stanford, Bezos' kids at Princeton (transferred to MIT), Musk's kid at Brown, etc.

It's simply a strange, urban myth that rich parents aren't pretty obsessed with their kids also attending top schools. The crazy top college consultants charge like $750,000 to children of hedge fund founders, PE fund founders, Tech entrepreneurs...and yes, very wealthy international families (though those families are a far cry from immigrant families in the US).

I don't doubt that, and I bet they hide the obsession with elite colleges from other parents. They like to play it off cool.. "Oh, I don't really care where Larla goes to college as long as it's a good fit and they are happy there", all while paying $$$ to college consultants to get their kids into the most prestigious college they can.

I paid $100 for a college student to read one of my DC's essays. Other than that, we didn't pay for any tutors (for any SAT/AP exams) or college consultants. The one person I know who did pay $$$ for a college consultant was an umc white parent.

The stereotyping of Asian parents on this board is off the charts.

-asian immigrant parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the immigrant parent obsession.

If you're at a top private high school, many parents are completely relaxed about sending their kid to place like Colby or Boston College. I know DCUM think they're all nuts but our experience with 3 kids has been the opposite. Parents are very nonchalant about where their kids land. Often the Ivy gunners are, yes, the immigrant famlies in the bunch.

Meanwhile, on Reddit so many freshmen are trying to transfer up from Emory or Rice or Vanderbilt, etc. "My parents are still so embarrassed that I'm not at an Ivy."

Immigrant parents aren't the ones using legacies,wealth, and athletic side doors for their kids to get into T10. That's usually white American parents. And there are more spots for those types of applicants than for immigrant children with no hooks.

OP, my kid went to a state flagship -- 1580 SAT, 4.92 wgpa/4.0 unwgpa. They were rejected at T20 (for CS). But, they got some great internships because they are smart and driven.

I went to a no name state u, and ended up working for a FAANG. It took me a lot longer to get there than my colleagues who went to T10s (MIT, Cornell), and I can hold my own.

So, while yes, one can get jobs at top companies even if they didn't go to a T20, it may take them longer and have to hustle more.

Ah so all those wealthy students from abroad are just really really smart!

DP but basically yes. But you're the perfect example of why this country is so dumb. Children of immigrants are not the same as those international students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the immigrant parent obsession.

If you're at a top private high school, many parents are completely relaxed about sending their kid to place like Colby or Boston College. I know DCUM think they're all nuts but our experience with 3 kids has been the opposite. Parents are very nonchalant about where their kids land. Often the Ivy gunners are, yes, the immigrant famlies in the bunch.

Meanwhile, on Reddit so many freshmen are trying to transfer up from Emory or Rice or Vanderbilt, etc. "My parents are still so embarrassed that I'm not at an Ivy."

Immigrant parents aren't the ones using legacies,wealth, and athletic side doors for their kids to get into T10. That's usually white American parents. And there are more spots for those types of applicants than for immigrant children with no hooks.

OP, my kid went to a state flagship -- 1580 SAT, 4.92 wgpa/4.0 unwgpa. They were rejected at T20 (for CS). But, they got some great internships because they are smart and driven.

I went to a no name state u, and ended up working for a FAANG. It took me a lot longer to get there than my colleagues who went to T10s (MIT, Cornell), and I can hold my own.

So, while yes, one can get jobs at top companies even if they didn't go to a T20, it may take them longer and have to hustle more.

Ah so all those wealthy students from abroad are just really really smart!

? wealthy parents, be they Americans or foreigners, can pay $$$ for college consultants. And they are equally obsessed with T10s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me this seems primarily an East Coast obsession.

If you have spent time in the bay area immigrant community you wouldn't say that. Among the non-immigrant upper class private school crowd on the West Coast things seem to be a bit more chill. Very good schools or better are expected but the T20 obsession definitely isn't as strong.

That's because rich people don't need their kids to go to a T10 to make connections. They already have those connections. Their kids will get the top jobs through those connections.

Unhooked kids can benefit most from the T10 connections, but most of the universities have more spots open for legacies, the wealthy and athletes than for unhooked applicatns.

While, this is intuitively true...the wealthiest, most connected rich people still send their kids to T10 schools. Gates' kids at Stanford, Bezos' kids at Princeton (transferred to MIT), Musk's kid at Brown, etc.

It's simply a strange, urban myth that rich parents aren't pretty obsessed with their kids also attending top schools. The crazy top college consultants charge like $750,000 to children of hedge fund founders, PE fund founders, Tech entrepreneurs...and yes, very wealthy international families (though those families are a far cry from immigrant families in the US).

I don't doubt that, and I bet they hide the obsession with elite colleges from other parents. They like to play it off cool.. "Oh, I don't really care where Larla goes to college as long as it's a good fit and they are happy there", all while paying $$$ to college consultants to get their kids into the most prestigious college they can.

I paid $100 for a college student to read one of my DC's essays. Other than that, we didn't pay for any tutors (for any SAT/AP exams) or college consultants. The one person I know who did pay $$$ for a college consultant was an umc white parent.

The stereotyping of Asian parents on this board is off the charts.

-asian immigrant parent

Putting it another way for you: racism and jealousy from the white people are off the chart here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're setting up a strawman with 'foreclose.' For STEM careers, where you did your undergrad does matter. Georgia Tech, UT Cockrell, Caltech, Rice, MIT aren't just names on the back of your SUV. The research pipelines, faculty connections, peer networks, and venture capital ecosystems (looking at you, Stanford and MIT) shape outcomes in concrete ways, especially for students headed toward PhD programs, elite research positions, or startups.
The law school analogy isn't quite right. A strong LSAT and GPA can get you from Arizona into a T-14, and from there the law school prestige and targeted recruiting does the heavy lifting for clerkships, the academy, big law. PhD admissions, research opportunities, faculty recommendations, the institutional reputation (prestige) runs through all of it in STEM in ways the law school pipeline simply doesn't.

Strive much?

DP. You say “strive” like it’s a bad thing. My kid is a striving AI research scientist who no doubt could make a lot more in industry but is choosing academia as a career. DC, whose work focuses on translational AI in health and medicine, is glad to be at a resource-rich, “prestigious” university where they were able to join a lab as a freshman, attain funded fellowships to conduct full-time research over the summers, publish and present at conferences early on in their academic career, and so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me this seems primarily an East Coast obsession.

If you have spent time in the bay area immigrant community you wouldn't say that. Among the non-immigrant upper class private school crowd on the West Coast things seem to be a bit more chill. Very good schools or better are expected but the T20 obsession definitely isn't as strong.

That's because rich people don't need their kids to go to a T10 to make connections. They already have those connections. Their kids will get the top jobs through those connections.

Unhooked kids can benefit most from the T10 connections, but most of the universities have more spots open for legacies, the wealthy and athletes than for unhooked applicatns.

While, this is intuitively true...the wealthiest, most connected rich people still send their kids to T10 schools. Gates' kids at Stanford, Bezos' kids at Princeton (transferred to MIT), Musk's kid at Brown, etc.

It's simply a strange, urban myth that rich parents aren't pretty obsessed with their kids also attending top schools. The crazy top college consultants charge like $750,000 to children of hedge fund founders, PE fund founders, Tech entrepreneurs...and yes, very wealthy international families (though those families are a far cry from immigrant families in the US).

Well at least for gates kids, they were highly qualified. They went to elite school in Seattle and their parents value education (and can provide them the best)

But you don't go to standoffs and nyu medical and become an Md simply because of who your parents are. Without the smarts she never would have gotten into med school and survived residency

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course it is all about social mobility.

But the parents on this board who are freaking out the most send their kids to private schools. Seems like they don't need to move up because they are already there.

I think you are assuming that is who is posting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're setting up a strawman with 'foreclose.' For STEM careers, where you did your undergrad does matter. Georgia Tech, UT Cockrell, Caltech, Rice, MIT aren't just names on the back of your SUV. The research pipelines, faculty connections, peer networks, and venture capital ecosystems (looking at you, Stanford and MIT) shape outcomes in concrete ways, especially for students headed toward PhD programs, elite research positions, or startups.
The law school analogy isn't quite right. A strong LSAT and GPA can get you from Arizona into a T-14, and from there the law school prestige and targeted recruiting does the heavy lifting for clerkships, the academy, big law. PhD admissions, research opportunities, faculty recommendations, the institutional reputation (prestige) runs through all of it in STEM in ways the law school pipeline simply doesn't.

You are correct...but there has to be a reason when you see the undergrads at say Yale or Harvard law school, you may only see 2-3 kids who attended Arizona, but you will see literally hundreds that attended an Ivy or other Top 20 undergrad. Both Yale and Harvard law schools alone will have like 100+ kids who attended Yale undergrad and a 100+ kids who attended Harvard undergrad.

Perhaps it's because Arizona undergrads for the most part just want to practice law in Phoenix or Tucson...I don't know. I would imagine the University of Arizona law school has 100+ kids who went to University of Arizona undergrad.

Yale Law doesn't even have 200 total students in an entire class.

Yeah...that's why the 100+ was for the entire law school. When Yale last published this data, I believe like 29% of Yale Law School students went to Yale undergrad.

Nope. The class of 2028 has 204 students from 85 schools. If the percent were anywhere near that high, we'd be talking 60 from Yale and 142 from 84 other schools. Less than 2 kids on average. The class is not now and never has been that lopsided.

The most recent data I can find on line is the Yale Law bulletin for 2020. It says that out of 636 students in the JD program in 2018, 90 went to Yale undergrad. That's 14 percent, not 29.

The most annoying thing about DCUM's college forum is how often posters pull the wrong numbers completely out of their a$$es when the right ones are so easily searchable on line. It happens time and again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're setting up a strawman with 'foreclose.' For STEM careers, where you did your undergrad does matter. Georgia Tech, UT Cockrell, Caltech, Rice, MIT aren't just names on the back of your SUV. The research pipelines, faculty connections, peer networks, and venture capital ecosystems (looking at you, Stanford and MIT) shape outcomes in concrete ways, especially for students headed toward PhD programs, elite research positions, or startups.
The law school analogy isn't quite right. A strong LSAT and GPA can get you from Arizona into a T-14, and from there the law school prestige and targeted recruiting does the heavy lifting for clerkships, the academy, big law. PhD admissions, research opportunities, faculty recommendations, the institutional reputation (prestige) runs through all of it in STEM in ways the law school pipeline simply doesn't.

Strive much?

DP. You say “strive” like it’s a bad thing. My kid is a striving AI research scientist who no doubt could make a lot more in industry but is choosing academia as a career. DC, whose work focuses on translational AI in health and medicine, is glad to be at a resource-rich, “prestigious” university where they were able to join a lab as a freshman, attain funded fellowships to conduct full-time research over the summers, publish and present at conferences early on in their academic career, and so on.

Just listen to yourself. You sound unhinged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sigh. I know I should just go outside and pull some weeds or do something else more useful than participate in yet another pissing match on this board, but I'll bite.

Hard working immigrants and other disadvantaged folks can actually benefit more from a top 20 than others because going to one of them moves them up from first base to third, where most of the others who attend those schools started on third base in the first place. Study after study confirms this.

But if you're ALREADY on third base, as most DCUM families and private school families are, then no it doesn't matter in the slightest.

It would depend on what the kid wants to do. Even for those born on third base, going to a T20 matters if they want to go into finance, consulting or increasingly tech. And that typically is where a majority of graduates end up from the top 20 schools. That degree opens doors on Wall Street, FAANG and so on that are largely closed to everyone else.

Also, as others have noted, the top 20 universities are often the most affordable option for bright and accomplished MC and UMC students. The cost is often substantially lower than going to the state flagship. Add in the peer group and generally a great education and you can see why so many want to attend.

That is not my experience. I went to my state flagship because I had a full ride. The flagship in the neighboring state gave me a partial scholarship. Plenty of kids from my kid's high school get scholarships to in-state universities. If a kid has the qualifications to be admitted to a T-20, with financial aid, there is no way that kid is not going to get a substantial (or full) scholarship from their own state university.

FALSE. The most generous schools (five ivies, MIT and Stanford) give need based aid to some degree up to around 300k HHI, free tuition for up to 200k.
The next tier (rest of ivies, Duke, JHU, handful of others) give need based aid into the upper 200s and free tuition high 100s. They all have NPCs and seek to continue to have over half their students on need-based aid. This is not secret information. The families in the group around 150k-300k get need based aid from these schools that often takes the cost down to the same or slightly higher than UVA or WM in state yet those schools offer ZERO need based aid to these families, and have ZERO merit scholarships for top students. Many flagships are similar to their in-state residents, minimal need based and almost no merit. Merit at lower ranked publics for OOS families will get that public close to their in-state public but the ivy+ top-need-aid will remain a better deal.

WRONG: You completely missed the point, which is that a kid who is qualified for admission to an Ivy is guaranteed a merit-based scholarship to their state school. The post had nothing to do with financial aid. Kids from DC's high school have received merit-based aid from UVA and other VA schools, so your argument that UVA provides zero merit-based scholarships is wrong. My niece just got a full-ride to a flagship in another state. I mean, seriously, what state school offers zero merit-based aid to in-state students? You are clearly an Ivy booster/apologist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're setting up a strawman with 'foreclose.' For STEM careers, where you did your undergrad does matter. Georgia Tech, UT Cockrell, Caltech, Rice, MIT aren't just names on the back of your SUV. The research pipelines, faculty connections, peer networks, and venture capital ecosystems (looking at you, Stanford and MIT) shape outcomes in concrete ways, especially for students headed toward PhD programs, elite research positions, or startups.
The law school analogy isn't quite right. A strong LSAT and GPA can get you from Arizona into a T-14, and from there the law school prestige and targeted recruiting does the heavy lifting for clerkships, the academy, big law. PhD admissions, research opportunities, faculty recommendations, the institutional reputation (prestige) runs through all of it in STEM in ways the law school pipeline simply doesn't.

Strive much?

DP. You say “strive” like it’s a bad thing. My kid is a striving AI research scientist who no doubt could make a lot more in industry but is choosing academia as a career. DC, whose work focuses on translational AI in health and medicine, is glad to be at a resource-rich, “prestigious” university where they were able to join a lab as a freshman, attain funded fellowships to conduct full-time research over the summers, publish and present at conferences early on in their academic career, and so on.

Just listen to yourself. You sound unhinged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're setting up a strawman with 'foreclose.' For STEM careers, where you did your undergrad does matter. Georgia Tech, UT Cockrell, Caltech, Rice, MIT aren't just names on the back of your SUV. The research pipelines, faculty connections, peer networks, and venture capital ecosystems (looking at you, Stanford and MIT) shape outcomes in concrete ways, especially for students headed toward PhD programs, elite research positions, or startups.
The law school analogy isn't quite right. A strong LSAT and GPA can get you from Arizona into a T-14, and from there the law school prestige and targeted recruiting does the heavy lifting for clerkships, the academy, big law. PhD admissions, research opportunities, faculty recommendations, the institutional reputation (prestige) runs through all of it in STEM in ways the law school pipeline simply doesn't.

Strive much?

DP. You say “strive” like it’s a bad thing. My kid is a striving AI research scientist who no doubt could make a lot more in industry but is choosing academia as a career. DC, whose work focuses on translational AI in health and medicine, is glad to be at a resource-rich, “prestigious” university where they were able to join a lab as a freshman, attain funded fellowships to conduct full-time research over the summers, publish and present at conferences early on in their academic career, and so on.

Just listen to yourself. You sound unhinged.

On the contrary, you sound jealous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sigh. I know I should just go outside and pull some weeds or do something else more useful than participate in yet another pissing match on this board, but I'll bite.

Hard working immigrants and other disadvantaged folks can actually benefit more from a top 20 than others because going to one of them moves them up from first base to third, where most of the others who attend those schools started on third base in the first place. Study after study confirms this.

But if you're ALREADY on third base, as most DCUM families and private school families are, then no it doesn't matter in the slightest.

It would depend on what the kid wants to do. Even for those born on third base, going to a T20 matters if they want to go into finance, consulting or increasingly tech. And that typically is where a majority of graduates end up from the top 20 schools. That degree opens doors on Wall Street, FAANG and so on that are largely closed to everyone else.

Also, as others have noted, the top 20 universities are often the most affordable option for bright and accomplished MC and UMC students. The cost is often substantially lower than going to the state flagship. Add in the peer group and generally a great education and you can see why so many want to attend.

That is not my experience. I went to my state flagship because I had a full ride. The flagship in the neighboring state gave me a partial scholarship. Plenty of kids from my kid's high school get scholarships to in-state universities. If a kid has the qualifications to be admitted to a T-20, with financial aid, there is no way that kid is not going to get a substantial (or full) scholarship from their own state university.

FALSE. The most generous schools (five ivies, MIT and Stanford) give need based aid to some degree up to around 300k HHI, free tuition for up to 200k.
The next tier (rest of ivies, Duke, JHU, handful of others) give need based aid into the upper 200s and free tuition high 100s. They all have NPCs and seek to continue to have over half their students on need-based aid. This is not secret information. The families in the group around 150k-300k get need based aid from these schools that often takes the cost down to the same or slightly higher than UVA or WM in state yet those schools offer ZERO need based aid to these families, and have ZERO merit scholarships for top students. Many flagships are similar to their in-state residents, minimal need based and almost no merit. Merit at lower ranked publics for OOS families will get that public close to their in-state public but the ivy+ top-need-aid will remain a better deal.

WRONG: You completely missed the point, which is that a kid who is qualified for admission to an Ivy is guaranteed a merit-based scholarship to their state school. The post had nothing to do with financial aid. Kids from DC's high school have received merit-based aid from UVA and other VA schools, so your argument that UVA provides zero merit-based scholarships is wrong. My niece just got a full-ride to a flagship in another state. I mean, seriously, what state school offers zero merit-based aid to in-state students? You are clearly an Ivy booster/apologist.

Absolutely false! I have two kids admitted HYPSM and none of them received merit scholarship at the state colleges, not even a penny!