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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The college counselor at our private calls HYP, MIT, Stanford "the crazies". He keeps telling our kids that they can get an equally great (likely better) education at a hundred schools, none of which is as selective as the top 10.

What makes these top 10 schools "better" is nothing. What makes them hard to get into is popularity and perception. Even if your kid gets selected to go to one of these schools, it's like he won a lottery, not a measure of his innate value or superiority to those poor saps who were not so lucky.

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Not true at all!  Though I'm sure the thought helps you feel better about not being HYPMS material.

The education one receives at an ivy is indeed unique and much more challenging than what you'd receive anywhere else. There's a reason the atmosphere is often competitive and stressful.

And let's not talk about the level of intellect in the room that challenges your way of thinking and causes you to think deeply and more critically. The "Crazies" give you access to resources and opportunities you will find in few other places. And let's not talk about the networking.

Yes, you can get a good education and many, many other schools outside of the "Crazies" but to try to say there is no difference is ridiculous.[/quote]

[b]I wish this were true.  But it isn't.  My husband and/or I have been faculty at a) a #1 school, b) a #8 school and c) a #20 school.  They are really, really different in terms of education and networking opportunities, and in the way that you'd expect.  It's not worth going nuts over, but honestly, it's not all branding.  It's just not.[/b]  That said, the good kids at all of these schools (as you'd expect) are phenomenal and the worst kids are disasters.  They all have different characters that definitely don't make them for everyone.  But they just not alike.  Not at all.
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OK, we know that if Obama had never transferred to Columbia or if Bush 43 went to UMass, neither would have been president.  But how come every place I have ever worked, they hire people from a wide range of schools and nobody's particular graduates stand out.  You cannot sit in a conference room and think, "wow the Harvard grad is so much smarter than the UVA person"?  I understand Yale attracting different students than Rutgers, but at some level the school can't matter that much.  [/quote]

I didn't say the grads were totally different.  But the education and opportunities are different.  At the top schools you learn from the people who are truly making things happen.  Sometimes that's good, sometimes it means that those people are too busy to create a presentable class.

Your classmates and perception also matter.  The students at the top 20 school were totally clueless about how to, say, work at a hedge fund.  At the #1 school, there was a pipeline.  At the #1 school you meet tons of kids with CEO parents, cabinet members, etc.  This is great networking, and my brother, for example, has totally used this in his career as an executive.  At the #20 school there aren't too many such students (though they do exist).

That isn't to say that things can't even out later and it's definitely not true that non #1 school students are doomed for life.  Case in point, DH went to a #20 school for undergrad (and to some extent for grad). I went to a #1 school.  DH is more successful than I am.

But it is just not true that going to the #1 school or the #20 gives you the same experience.  All things being equal if you have the choice you need to look at what the school will do for you (and how much it will put you in debt).  And you need to consider the intangibles that #1 schools often offer.

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IME this holds true for law schools.  I went to Harvard, but spend my last semester at GW because my then-fiancee, now husband, was a year ahead of me and was already here clerking.  Sure, there are many successful lawyers who graduated from GW, and there are some real doozies who graduated from Harvard, but I observed a marked difference between the two schools in terms of the intellectual climate.  Class discussion was generally speaking at a much less nuanced and thoughtful level at GW than at Harvard.  This was true even though the profs I encountered at GW were excellent.  Again I'm not saying that the GW students might not have been capable of more, nor am I saying that every moment at Harvard was scintillating, but, on balance, there was a big difference.         [/quote]

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