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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I remind my children, the purpose of a good education to learn and to grow as a person, not to wave a round a diploma, or throw your alma mater's sweatshirt in someone's face. It is unfortunate that the well-off (for the most part) use their privilege as a tool to gain/sustain entry, and as a tool to look down on others.

Harvard receives 60,000 applications a year (https://www.ivywise.com/blog/harvard-waitlist-how-hard-is-it-to-get-off-of-it/) if you are not one of the 3% that gets in, that must make you stupid, I guess (eye-roll emoji)...

Give the grandparents a thought exercise - what would the world look like if a great education was accessible and attainable for everyone?  The artists can study art, the scientists science, etc.  I think we would be better off as a species.

I attended CMU, and transferred to Northeastern (Physics major).  I was very surprised to find out CMU, NU, and MIT all used the same physics book?!  Then it dawned on me, you don't learn a different or "special" math at HYPSM... it's all the same stuff.  [/quote]

As someone who totally and completely sympathizes with OP here (seriously, there is life after college admissions, admissions officers are just humans, for example),  I do want to also point out that college isn't only your textbook. Or why go at all?

Example - go look at Nobel prize winners (small group) or National Academy of Science members or Fortune 500 CEOs.  Many examples of non T20 or 30 or 50 alumni. So lots of wiggle room even by these metrics by colleges  - hopefully OP will share something that helps there.
(BTW MIT did not use the same CS textbooks as others, they wrote their own, but again, not the point)

In 1989, my friend who was attending Stanford visited me at my dorm at Pitt.  She immediately noticed we had the same textbook for our upper division Bio - Genetics elective.[/quote][/quote]

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