Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard undergrad is weird-- there are definitely benefits to being on a wealthy campus with bright students but much of the teaching is done by grad students not research professors. Biggest thing you get out of it is a name and a sense of entitlement.

I went there and this is totally untrue. Maybe in the past, but not in the last 10 years.

Almost all of the instruction I got was from actual tenure-track professors.

I went there too and disagree with you. Maybe it depends on major.

Anonymous wrote:Harvard undergrad is weird-- there are definitely benefits to being on a wealthy campus with bright students but much of the teaching is done by grad students not research professors. Biggest thing you get out of it is a name and a sense of entitlement.

I went there and this is totally untrue. Maybe in the past, but not in the last 10 years.

Almost all of the instruction I got was from actual tenure-track professors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard undergrad is weird-- there are definitely benefits to being on a wealthy campus with bright students but much of the teaching is done by grad students not research professors. Biggest thing you get out of it is a name and a sense of entitlement.

Bingo

So do you two know this because you are entitled a-holes who got nothing but a brand name out of your Harvard education? Or are you opining about an experience you haven't had?

Anonymous wrote:Harvard undergrad is weird-- there are definitely benefits to being on a wealthy campus with bright students but much of the teaching is done by grad students not research professors. Biggest thing you get out of it is a name and a sense of entitlement.

Bingo

My experience (and DH's) as a Harvard undergrad was that the teaching was done primarily by faculty and that faculty were easy to get to know. Grad students ran discussion sections, but that's true at most universities with PhD programs, and some of the grad students were as good as (or better than) some of the profs when it came to teaching. So, basically, you often had two different people you could go to in large classes (for help, advice, etc.)-- and in classes where you had only one person to go to, that person was the professor.

Biggest thing I got was a glimpse into an intellectual community where people were very good at and excited about their work and very welcoming to others who shared their enthusiasms. The second biggest thing was that I internalized high standards about what it means to do this kind of work well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We would pay if our children are accepted and would like to attend our undergrad, which happens to be an Ivy (though a much maligned one on these boards, since, gasp! it's not HYP). Our parents paid for it for us, which was a sacrifice for mine, not so much for his, and we both had excellent experiences at a small school with an incredible focus on undergrad teaching.

As to those who say they don't know anyone who married someone from college, I find that surprising. Among my closest college friends half are married to someone they knew in undergrad or met after at a college event or through mutual college friends.

Because the "elite" look down on anyone who marries before they are 35. They feel it is better to get married at 40 when you have gobs of money to pay for IVF. There is nothing wrong with going to state school and getting married in your twenties when you are at your peak fertility. These normal people have a happy life. Thinking you will be happier getting two Ivy League degrees and spending 100 hours a week working and putting off family life will lead to bliss is a story people make up in their heads.

You are just as silly as the rest of them.

Harvard undergrad is weird-- there are definitely benefits to being on a wealthy campus with bright students but much of the teaching is done by grad students not research professors. Biggest thing you get out of it is a name and a sense of entitlement.

Different poster, but wanted to say that some of the monetary advantages are pipelines rather than just cash. E.g. UChicago has a paid internship program that essentially recruits summer employers who get a free UofC intern (and a simple/reliable process for finding a good candidate) in exchange for providing work experience.

ITA you can get as great an education at some public schools as at HYPS. I also agree that HYPS gives you a different experience of college in some ways (less hassle, more luxe), but that you do pay for it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to med school with Berkeley and UCLA alums and all of them bitched about how few resources they had to help them along the way. Sounded like a pain in the ass as well as a bit demoralizing to have such a barebones college experience.

Resources like what exactly?

I could sink time into telling you, but it'd just go over your head. So, to make you feel warm and special I'll just say there's NO difference between Berkeley and Harvard. Let's go further, no difference between Cal State and UCLA either!

Wow, you are a serious douche. I'm the poster with three Ivy League degrees you're responding to. I somehow managed to emerge from those institutions not pitying the poor souls at state schools. Your personality is one of the reasons I frankly think the Ivy League is overrated. To the PP who actually helpfully listed the essentially solely monetary resources, yes, that's true and accords with my experience. But I find it interesting that it all comes down to money, which a lot of students at elite institutions already have in excess -- that is, mommy and daddy could pay for them to travel and cover extra academic costs, too. But, for the non-wealthy student, stop and think of the implication of these monetary "extras." This thread was about whether you'd be willing to PAY for an Ivy. It seems kind of odd to say, sure, I'll pay 60,000 tuition a year because such-and-such college will give me a "grant" of 5,000 for a summer internship. Hello?! You're paying for that! My point is, economically, you can get a lot of the same value at other schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to med school with Berkeley and UCLA alums and all of them bitched about how few resources they had to help them along the way. Sounded like a pain in the ass as well as a bit demoralizing to have such a barebones college experience.

Resources like what exactly?

I could sink time into telling you, but it'd just go over your head. So, to make you feel warm and special I'll just say there's NO difference between Berkeley and Harvard. Let's go further, no difference between Cal State and UCLA either!

The poster above answered far better than you did. You sound like you're making it up as you go along.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to med school with Berkeley and UCLA alums and all of them bitched about how few resources they had to help them along the way. Sounded like a pain in the ass as well as a bit demoralizing to have such a barebones college experience.

Resources like what exactly?

I could sink time into telling you, but it'd just go over your head. So, to make you feel warm and special I'll just say there's NO difference between Berkeley and Harvard. Let's go further, no difference between Cal State and UCLA either!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to med school with Berkeley and UCLA alums and all of them bitched about how few resources they had to help them along the way. Sounded like a pain in the ass as well as a bit demoralizing to have such a barebones college experience.

Resources like what exactly?

Resources like... The Yale/Stanford/Princeton debate endowments that fund their teams' travel around the world. Yale Law School where they pay you during your 1L year to take a public interest job. Harvard/Yale, where you're almost guaranteed to get a year or two of post-grad study funded if you're a decent student (Oxbridge and China, in particular, have ~20-30 funded students/year). Yale where residential colleges have slush funds to cover extracurricular or thesis study/research costs you can't get funded elsewhere and Secret Societies pay for summer travel for sophomores up to $10,000. Unlimited RA budgets for professors, so you can make decent money while getting credentials for grad school. Until you experience one of these schools v. what your equally qualified friends experience at State schools, you just don't realize how easy it is to do basically anything you want at HYPS.

Anonymous wrote:I went to med school with Berkeley and UCLA alums and all of them bitched about how few resources they had to help them along the way. Sounded like a pain in the ass as well as a bit demoralizing to have such a barebones college experience.

Resources like what exactly?

I went to med school with Berkeley and UCLA alums and all of them bitched about how few resources they had to help them along the way. Sounded like a pain in the ass as well as a bit demoralizing to have such a barebones college experience.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only folks who are anti-elite don't know what they're talking about and/or don't have the money saved.

Elite grads don't rail against the elites. It's always bitter UMD or JMU moms who try to convince you their average kids are soo!! happy at their mediocre college.

Meh. I am an Ivy grad (whose child is also attending an Ivy) and I laugh at the people who are 10+ years out of undergrad and still bring up where they went to school or how "elite" their institution was. It reeks of insecurity and/or navelgazing. No one cares.

+1. The elitist comments in this thread are jaw-dropping to me. I have degrees from three Ivy League schools and my takeaway from the Ivy League is some teachers are brilliant, a good portion of them may be brilliant but hate teaching and suck at it, some of the students are very smart, a lot of them are entitled brats who are really quite horrible people. Common sense, street smarts, and interpersonal skills matter a great deal and can be learned basically anywhere. The door-opening power of the ivy degree depends a lot on your field of work. Some fields are prestige-obsessed (like law) and it helps. Others not so much. But in terms of the quality of the education, the cheaper schools are really just as good, based on then graduates I know from those schools. I genuinely do not care whether my kids go to an elite school.