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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Don't believe the out-of-teach weirdos in this thread. Vast majority of people have never heard of these schools, and most do not care. It certainly won't give you "a leg up" or confer some magical social status if you attend, despite the very pushy insistence of the aforementioned posters.[/quote]

I don't think anyone's saying (or I hope not at least) that going to these schools (or any schools) confer some sort of magical social status--this isn't England in the '50s.  They do confer some social capital, which may or may not be important depending on what you want to do in life and your background.  The schools are actually much more valuable from this perspective to lower income and first generation students.  (Anecdotal, but when I was a senior at Bowdoin, the college president's wife hosted a number of mock cocktail receptions and formal dinners to teach us all how to network, handle ourselves at receptions, and not embarrass ourselves at fancy dinners--actually amazingly helpful!)

Going to these schools, among others, will certainly give you a leg up into *certain types of* jobs and grad programs.  On the job front, Bowdoin and Middlebury dramatically outperform their size in investment banks.  Colby, oddly enough, has long been a big recruiting ground for the CIA.  All of them place a ton of their alums as teachers at prestigious private schools.  There are a lot of other examples.  That doesn't make you a better person or whatever you're arguing against but it is undeniable that certain schools provide established pathways to certain jobs and silly to argue otherwise.  For grad programs, these schools again dramatically outperform--relative to their size--most other schools at putting students into doctoral programs.  They also do better on pre-med admission.  Law school is all about numbers, so there's no significant increase (but I noted that a disproportionate number of the top *students* at my top law school were from ivies or small colleges like these ones).

I agree that many people have never heard of these schools and that even more do not care.  And that's fine.  You shouldn't go to a school to have bragging rights (or godforbid to give your parents bragging rights).  But they do open certain doors, and at least some people who care about hiring/admissions do care about them.[/quote]

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