Anonymous
07/23/2014 08:42
Subject: Re:The problem with elite schools
1. What is "Swat"
2. I don't see what's so wrong with seeing college as mostly a vehicle to get a good job. I don't want my son to major in philosophy. He wants to major in computer science and I'm glad. The goal is for him to be a responsible, self supporting adult. Sure, I want him to have thoughtful, intellectual conversations and be exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking but mostly I want him to get his ticket stamped so he can get a good job and be intellectually challenged in his work life. I think professors want us to put college and academics on a pedestal because it's their life but I think a lot of the time spent in college is frivilous and a waste of time.
Signed, BA, MA recipient.
2. I don't see what's so wrong with seeing college as mostly a vehicle to get a good job. I don't want my son to major in philosophy. He wants to major in computer science and I'm glad. The goal is for him to be a responsible, self supporting adult. Sure, I want him to have thoughtful, intellectual conversations and be exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking but mostly I want him to get his ticket stamped so he can get a good job and be intellectually challenged in his work life. I think professors want us to put college and academics on a pedestal because it's their life but I think a lot of the time spent in college is frivilous and a waste of time.
Signed, BA, MA recipient.
Anonymous
07/23/2014 08:06
Subject: Re:The problem with elite schools
If you want your kids to be well-rounded, educated, happy people, you should encourage SLCS or public universities for undergrad and elite schools for grad school. (That said, I hated my elite law school, but lots of people hate law school.)
Anonymous
07/23/2014 07:07
Subject: The problem with elite schools
There are schools that resist this tend. The article referred to Reed and I would add Bard, Sarah Lawrence. I wonder about University of Chicago, which was always the university for ideas but I wonder if thats still the case.
I've heard U of Penn is the worst for preprofessionalism.
I've heard U of Penn is the worst for preprofessionalism.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 22:49
Subject: The problem with elite schools
Anonymous wrote:I think its a great article. I went to an Ivy back in the day and from looking at them with DC and going back, I can tell you things have changed enormously. Now it seems everyone wants to go into finance or Wall St. I maybe knew one or two people like that. Instead we had future academics, journalists, public interest advocates, writers. Where are those students now? At SLACs, where they are immersed in the world of ideas and not the world of pre-professionalism.
My sister just graduated from swat (which is historically much less 'preprofessional' than NESCAC slacs that DCUM's love - and she said that even within the four years she was there, each incoming class became more and more pre-professional.
McKinsey came on campus for info session and packed the room supposedly - the number 1 question she was asked by freshman this past year was regarding how to gain relevant internships asap to position oneself for future recruiting from 'top firms'.
My sister doesn't even want her 6 figure silicon valley job (she wants to be an urban farmer) but within her circle at swat, kids are leaving for 6 figure jobs in tech firms or finance/wallstreet, or top strategy consulting.
Yes, you have your med school and ph.d kids (which still occurs at a higher percentage at swat than other places) but even SLAC's are becoming more and more preprofessional.
I was the PP that talked about the draw of the ivies being 'access' and not the actual education. SLAC's are turning into the same way.
As I said, it isn't a school issue - it is a societal issue. Values, Competition, tougher to maintain standards of living or rise in 'economic class' cause students to act this way.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 21:56
Subject: The problem with elite schools
I think its a great article. I went to an Ivy back in the day and from looking at them with DC and going back, I can tell you things have changed enormously. Now it seems everyone wants to go into finance or Wall St. I maybe knew one or two people like that. Instead we had future academics, journalists, public interest advocates, writers. Where are those students now? At SLACs, where they are immersed in the world of ideas and not the world of pre-professionalism.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 21:53
Subject: The problem with elite schools
Anonymous wrote:Some of the points are good, like the point about overachieving kids never having faced failure. I agree with that one.
But there are a lot of over-generalizations and unsupported assertions.
For example, he claims SLACs are more diverse than Ivies. No way! Seriously, I have a college-age kid and many SLACs are bastions of white preppies.
He treats all elite schools as being absolutely identical in being factories for kids going to law and business school. As if nobody at these schools ever studies anything else. And nobody at state schools or SLACs ever goes to law school or starts a business.
He treats all elite schools as clones of each other, as if Harvard and Brown and Dartmouth and Columbia and Cornell and Stanford and MIT are all alike in terms of diversity, intellectual environment and output of "elitist pigs."
He asserts that public universities have more truly intellectual environments, partly because they are more diverse. Maybe in some cases, maybe not in others. Tell that to kids who don't fit in at public universities that are focussed around frats and sports.
I get it, academics often exagerrate a tad to sell their books. But that author often crossed the line into opinion, where I wanted to see the stats or research that supported the statement.
IMO, a bigger problem is the rising cost of education combined with huge student loan burdens. There's a book in the making, with lots of stats.
You need to go back and read it. He said that SLACs were the place to for the more intellectual environments and state schools for diversity. You have it backwards.
Of course he's expressing his opinion. He doesn't claim otherwise. He does include stats about things like percentage of grads working on Wall street and percentage from high income families.
I think you need to read it again,
Anonymous
07/22/2014 15:59
Subject: The problem with elite schools
baltimoreguy wrote:Interesting article, but I find pieces of it overstated, like:
"Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it."
And:
"So extreme are the admission standards now that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success. The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them. The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk. You have no margin for error, so you avoid the possibility that you will ever make an error."
In some ways, that description sounds more like the parents of these kids than the kids themselves.
It's true of the kids as well, but the elite schools have been struggling with their admissions policies for years now and will continue to do so. Once they were largely schools for the children of the economic and social elite. Then they became more overtly meritocratic, starting in the late 1960s. Then the admissions directors became concerned that the schools were getting too many kids who knew how to check off all the boxes, so they started claiming that they were looking for kids "with a passion," which led to applicants who had to check off an additional box for "passion." And, in reward for their diligence, they'll get some snot-faced professors who periodically toss it all back in their face and put them down as robots.
Whatever. I had a good enough time at an Ivy in the 80s, when the schools were somewhat less pretentious than they are now (and certainly easier to get into), but I'm happy to see my kids go to state schools where the academics are pretty good and there's a lot less navel-gazing.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 13:01
Subject: The problem with elite schools
Some of the points are good, like the point about overachieving kids never having faced failure. I agree with that one.
But there are a lot of over-generalizations and unsupported assertions.
For example, he claims SLACs are more diverse than Ivies. No way! Seriously, I have a college-age kid and many SLACs are bastions of white preppies.
He treats all elite schools as being absolutely identical in being factories for kids going to law and business school. As if nobody at these schools ever studies anything else. And nobody at state schools or SLACs ever goes to law school or starts a business.
He treats all elite schools as clones of each other, as if Harvard and Brown and Dartmouth and Columbia and Cornell and Stanford and MIT are all alike in terms of diversity, intellectual environment and output of "elitist pigs."
He asserts that public universities have more truly intellectual environments, partly because they are more diverse. Maybe in some cases, maybe not in others. Tell that to kids who don't fit in at public universities that are focussed around frats and sports.
I get it, academics often exagerrate a tad to sell their books. But that author often crossed the line into opinion, where I wanted to see the stats or research that supported the statement.
IMO, a bigger problem is the rising cost of education combined with huge student loan burdens. There's a book in the making, with lots of stats.
But there are a lot of over-generalizations and unsupported assertions.
For example, he claims SLACs are more diverse than Ivies. No way! Seriously, I have a college-age kid and many SLACs are bastions of white preppies.
He treats all elite schools as being absolutely identical in being factories for kids going to law and business school. As if nobody at these schools ever studies anything else. And nobody at state schools or SLACs ever goes to law school or starts a business.
He treats all elite schools as clones of each other, as if Harvard and Brown and Dartmouth and Columbia and Cornell and Stanford and MIT are all alike in terms of diversity, intellectual environment and output of "elitist pigs."
He asserts that public universities have more truly intellectual environments, partly because they are more diverse. Maybe in some cases, maybe not in others. Tell that to kids who don't fit in at public universities that are focussed around frats and sports.
I get it, academics often exagerrate a tad to sell their books. But that author often crossed the line into opinion, where I wanted to see the stats or research that supported the statement.
IMO, a bigger problem is the rising cost of education combined with huge student loan burdens. There's a book in the making, with lots of stats.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 12:12
Subject: The problem with elite schools
Yes, there are lots of piggish dot com bros at Stanford and the Yale has a disproportionate share of anxious young men confused about their sexual orientation and Princeton is full of Southern trust fund preppies and they all have way too many students who think wealth is the only measure of life.
But these schools are also full of really interesting young people who do all the reading and have fascinating discussions in their seminar classes, like the author who has three degrees from Columbia and spent nearly all of his professional life at Yale. A large proportion of the grads from elite schools end up as academics and think-tank types because they want to build a life around their intellectual curiosity.
For really smart, curious students, the elite schools offer a large set of peers who share their smarts and curiosity. Those kinds of students exist at all the big public schools and the SLACs but not at the same critical mass as at the top tier schools. It's one thing for a Yale professor to whine about the shallowness of his students, it is another when a professor at a public university talks about the barely literate essays submitted by her students or a SLAC professor describes how none of his students read the news.
But these schools are also full of really interesting young people who do all the reading and have fascinating discussions in their seminar classes, like the author who has three degrees from Columbia and spent nearly all of his professional life at Yale. A large proportion of the grads from elite schools end up as academics and think-tank types because they want to build a life around their intellectual curiosity.
For really smart, curious students, the elite schools offer a large set of peers who share their smarts and curiosity. Those kinds of students exist at all the big public schools and the SLACs but not at the same critical mass as at the top tier schools. It's one thing for a Yale professor to whine about the shallowness of his students, it is another when a professor at a public university talks about the barely literate essays submitted by her students or a SLAC professor describes how none of his students read the news.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 09:47
Subject: The problem with elite schools
baltimoreguy wrote:Interesting article, but I find pieces of it overstated, like:
"Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it."
And:
"So extreme are the admission standards now that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success. The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them. The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk. You have no margin for error, so you avoid the possibility that you will ever make an error."
In some ways, that description sounds more like the parents of these kids than the kids themselves.
For the second statement... I believe there is lots of research about top students who have never faced failure and how it paralyzed them once they are released into the real world. My son talks about his peers freaking out when they get a B... Which is nowhere close to failure. I don't think this is overstated.
baltimoreguy
07/22/2014 09:11
Subject: The problem with elite schools
Interesting article, but I find pieces of it overstated, like:
"Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it."
And:
"So extreme are the admission standards now that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success. The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them. The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk. You have no margin for error, so you avoid the possibility that you will ever make an error."
In some ways, that description sounds more like the parents of these kids than the kids themselves.
"Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it."
And:
"So extreme are the admission standards now that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success. The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them. The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk. You have no margin for error, so you avoid the possibility that you will ever make an error."
In some ways, that description sounds more like the parents of these kids than the kids themselves.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 08:27
Subject: The problem with elite schools
Anonymous wrote:Neither of my parents went to college and I went to Yale twenty years ago -- I must have been a "hardship case" as they call it. So the system worked for me.
Now my husband and I have a daughter and there is basically no way she will get in. But there are other great schools here. Who knows, maybe she wil want to be a carpenter or a technical worker. As long as she's happy.
Thanks for the article. It was interesting.
the right attitude to have.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 08:18
Subject: The problem with elite schools
Neither of my parents went to college and I went to Yale twenty years ago -- I must have been a "hardship case" as they call it. So the system worked for me.
Now my husband and I have a daughter and there is basically no way she will get in. But there are other great schools here. Who knows, maybe she wil want to be a carpenter or a technical worker. As long as she's happy.
Thanks for the article. It was interesting.
Now my husband and I have a daughter and there is basically no way she will get in. But there are other great schools here. Who knows, maybe she wil want to be a carpenter or a technical worker. As long as she's happy.
Thanks for the article. It was interesting.
Anonymous
07/22/2014 04:43
Subject: The problem with elite schools
It isn't about being 'ivy league worthy'.
It is about 'getting paid worthy' in choice/highly-competitive career tracks.
The analogy would be if i was a ball player - it isn't about being 'sec worthy or pac 12 or big10 worthy' - it is about being 'nfl, nba, mlb worthy' and then taking a set of decisions that will optimize success to the end goal.
The ivy league and similar institutions are so popular not because of any inherent characteristics but because they provide access and the greatest chances to the best jobs and/or opportunities post-graduation.
If the top banks, PE/HF/VC, tech, consultancies, big law, think thanks, relatively more competitive gov agencies, top teams at f500, suddenly decided they would recruit primarily at big10 and SEC schools only and barely if any at ivies (and peer institutions) then parents and students would start getting hungry for acceptances at those schools and not ivies.
Very few students/parents gun for ivies because of inherent ivy characteristics - they gun for the opportunities and access.
solving 'ivy fieding' isn't about the institutions but solving society's emphasis on career/wealth over personal happiness.
It is about 'getting paid worthy' in choice/highly-competitive career tracks.
The analogy would be if i was a ball player - it isn't about being 'sec worthy or pac 12 or big10 worthy' - it is about being 'nfl, nba, mlb worthy' and then taking a set of decisions that will optimize success to the end goal.
The ivy league and similar institutions are so popular not because of any inherent characteristics but because they provide access and the greatest chances to the best jobs and/or opportunities post-graduation.
If the top banks, PE/HF/VC, tech, consultancies, big law, think thanks, relatively more competitive gov agencies, top teams at f500, suddenly decided they would recruit primarily at big10 and SEC schools only and barely if any at ivies (and peer institutions) then parents and students would start getting hungry for acceptances at those schools and not ivies.
Very few students/parents gun for ivies because of inherent ivy characteristics - they gun for the opportunities and access.
solving 'ivy fieding' isn't about the institutions but solving society's emphasis on career/wealth over personal happiness.
Anonymous
07/21/2014 21:06
Subject: The problem with elite schools
Here's a thought-provoking article from a former Yale professor about the problem with students at elite colleges and universities, questioning the admissions process and indeed the whole process of raising kids to become "ivy-league worthy," which he thinks turns them into zombies. He advises to send kids to small liberal arts schools to get a better overall education and to derive a real sense of purpose in life. (Superficial summary of the article's thesis -- you'll have to read it to get a better gist.)
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere