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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am not a troll. I’m the parent of a HS sophomore who is killing themselves excelling in school and participating in extracurriculars to be competitive for T20.

At the same time, I see parents on here posting how their kid went to Cornell and ended up in the same place as someone who went to Pitt or another similarly ranked school.

At the same time, in my job I work alongside people who have gone to ivies and schools I’ve never heard of. I went to Michigan, btw.

My sister did her undergraduate at Oxford, stayed in the UK and is now partner at a well respected consulting firm alongside other partners that went to no name schools from India.

So seeing the stress my kid goes through, I am honestly asking what is the point of a Yale or Princeton if they take you to the same place that a school like Rutgers and Radford can take you?! [/quote]

Ah, the perennial 'does it really matter?' question from those comfortably outside the velvet rope. Let me illuminate the distinction you are evidently missing.
Your anecdotes about colleagues ending up in the same building or your sister at Oxford alongside Indian partners prove precisely nothing beyond basic competence.  Of course raw talent exists everywhere. Pitt, Radford, no name schools in India. The point is not whether someone can succeed; it is how they succeed, where they start, and the effortless glide path provided.

Yale or Princeton are not merely schools; they are global keys to locked doors. They provide:  
1. An instant, unassailable brand worldwide. A resume that bypasses HR algorithms and lands directly on the desks of people you will never meet. No explaining required. Ever.  
2.  A network that is the establishment. Your Michigan peers are fine. My classmates run the firms, funds, and faculties your peers aspire to join. This network is not LinkedIn connections; it is lifetime access to decision makers who answer calls because of the crest on the degree.  
3.  A concentration of ambition and resources. Your sophomore is stressed? Good. They are competing in the Olympics, not the county fair. At Rutgers, they might be the smartest in the room. At Princeton? They are sitting alongside future Nobel laureates, Fortune 500 CEOs, and Senators. The expectations, the peers, the opportunities, it is simply a different universe of potential.

Does a Pitt grad eventually land a good job? Possibly. Does the Princeton grad walk into McKinsey, Goldman as a baseline expectation? Routinely. The 'same place' you naively observe is often just the starting line for the elite grad, while it is the finish line for others. The trajectory, the ceiling, the sheer ease of ascent, that is what you are paying for. And what your child is striving for.

The 'point' is securing a position where merit is assumed, doors open silently, and the path to the top is not a grueling climb, but a well lit escalator.

If you cannot perceive that distinction from your vantage point at Michigan... well, that rather proves it, does it not?[/quote]

Despite the sarcasms here and arrogant tone, this is spot on….[/quote]

I went to one of the aforementioned elite schools and chuckled when I read this crap. Where were the amazing internships falling into my lap? Where were the seminars with visiting SCOTUS justices? Where were all the interviews automatically happening with Goldman Sachs? Or even those nightly philosophical debates with fellow students? My god, how did I miss all of this? Har har har.

This "global key to locked doors" exists solely in the minds of college kids, not adults. There was a PP who referred to the top 20% at Harvard and I'd concur that the closest to a gilded track to success via walking into elite internships, analyst roles, grad programs, extends to maybe top 20% at Harvard, 15% at Yale/Princeton/Stanford, 10% at Brown/Columbia/Dartmouth/Penn/Cornell/Duke etc. And some of those will be kids who already have family connections but it's really just the very tippity top of aptitude and capabilities.

Which still means most students are not getting onto the gilded track to success. Goldman Sachs doesn't take most kids who apply for jobs from these schools. Your typical grad of these schools is someone who ends up in a nice upper middle class life no different from all of his or her neighbors who went to other kinds of colleges but ended up in the same nice upper middle class life. And some will not do well. Some will end up in studios for life. Some are people who are socially awkward and never amount to much despite high academic aptitude (those of us who went to elite colleges recognize this demographic).

In the real world, senators have gone to all sorts of schools. In the real world the #1 feeder for F500 CEOs are flagship state universities. The elite colleges have nowhere near to a lock on elitedom insofar as it is defined. And especially not these days. [/quote]

I’m not idealistic. I believe there is a difference. Maybe it’s small though. I see it in my prof and personal life (T10) compared to my siblings (not). I now see it in my Ivy kids’ ambitions/friends/lifestyle compared even to their own high school friends (same private HS) who went the flagship route. I think the demographic where a top school is [b]most impactful is the very poor (FG/LI) or weirdly very high income/UHNW[/b]. We now fall into latter. My kids have doors opened by their Ivy that even our professional contacts don’t open (at least not as easily).

But maybe not true for everyone. We may be outliers. Live your life. Be happy. [b]This is all minor and at the margins[/b].[/quote]

yes, agree with this and have seen the same with regards to very high income kids. A huge part of maximizing an Ivy degree is having the confidence, knowledge and soft skills to know how to use it and these things are generally learned by example by watching parents, family friends, etc. it's fascinating to me as an upper middle class parent whose kids attend(ed) a NYC private. Their peers just have an expectation of success and they know how to get there. It took my husband and 20 years to internalize what some of my kids' 21 year old friends knew from the day the ink was dry on their diplomas. [/quote]

This is why there are kids out there who are middling to mediocre students in HS and who go to mediocre colleges who end up extremely successful in life while the valedictorian who grinded his/her way to an Ivy ends up living an unremarkable life (likely still pleasantly nice but not quite the same). It's also why there's a risk in overthinking or expecting too much out of a fancy college experience. Statistically speaking, upper class America is dominated by schools outside the Ivy League, not elite Ivy grads. The latter gets the attention but the former is the clear majority.

By the way, a lot of Wall Street/finance talent comes out of certain sports teams at certain schools and those schools aren't exclusive to the Ivy League. [/quote]

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