Reply to NYT opinion article "Did I choose the wrong college "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't get it. Does she feel that Cornell was not worth it? That the financial stress was too much for her parents? Or did she realize that where you go to college does not determine your life outcome? In that case, no shit Sherlock.

I feel like the essay was half finished. [/quote]

Listen, in poor communities, the idea of an elite education and moving into wealth does feel like a golden ticket. No one in your circle has any clue as to otherwise; most parents have no degrees or from 3rd tier state colleges, and your teachers in these struggling areas are not from the Ivies and generally come from a local teachers college.

You have to remember when she went to college, internet was still very new, so movies and magazines basically portrayed career paths for those trying to rise in income class.   [/quote]

I don't know too many middle class high schools that are filled with Ivy educated teachers.  In fact, I don't recall any of my kids' teacher or any of my own teachers having Ivy degrees.  It never even dawns on most middle class kids to apply to these Ivy schools because they are so expensive and so out of reach for their family budgets.  I've also never heard of an Ivy school schmoozing a regular middle class family the way that Cornell schmoozed this author.

The author of this article applied to two schools:  University of Florida which is THE flagship school in FL and to Cornell (why Cornell?).  She didn't apply to any other schools because the applications cost money.  Yet, she and her family took on debt, her parents mortgaged the family home to send her to Cornell.  They thought it was worth it.  And her position as a tenured professor at a university is a nice reward for those efforts.  Yet, we are somehow supposed to feel like she was hoodwinked into going to Cornell?

If you look up Hialeah, FL, where the author is from, it looks like a pretty middle class town to me although I don't know which specific neighborhood she grew up in.  Her parents owned their own home and had lots of family and friends nearby - she mentions how they couldn't go anywhere without running into someone that her mother knew.  I have little doubt that her parents worked hard, sacrificed, scrimped and saved to give their daughter every advantage that they reasonably could but the same exact thing could be said about a lot of working and middle class families.

She is a gifted writer and story teller, I will give her that.

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