Truly? Nothing IME. These grads tend to think their shit doesn't stink. Many are also so used to being *the best* that they are flummoxed when they finally face a challenge in the workplace.

Anonymous wrote:I applied to college in 1977-78 and lived in CA. And Stanford was as I described it. So USNWR, which had zero credibility at that point, puts it at number 1 in 1983 (which generates interest/controversy/attention that ranking HY or P #1 would not have produced) and the rest is history. This is not a persuasive argument that change at the top happens slowly.

It's a story about fads and communications networks (and major investments or disinvestment) changing the visibility/popular perception of educational institutions that have long histories, but whose constituencies are continually evolving.

Disagree. It's not about fads when it came to Stanfird or MIT. Remember Brown in the 80s ? Or Columbia a few decades before that? Now these were fads. Stanford and MIT rose because there was an actual shift towards tech and engineering not because UsNews out it at #1. I know for sure that during the 1980s Stanford was already starting to compete with HYP. By the early 1990s it was considered part of the that top tier.

+1. Well said.

I applied to college in 1977-78 and lived in CA. And Stanford was as I described it. So USNWR, which had zero credibility at that point, puts it at number 1 in 1983 (which generates interest/controversy/attention that ranking HY or P #1 would not have produced) and the rest is history. This is not a persuasive argument that change at the top happens slowly.

It's a story about fads and communications networks (and major investments or disinvestment) changing the visibility/popular perception of educational institutions that have long histories, but whose constituencies are continually evolving.

Anonymous wrote:M and S have in recent history. Stanford was like USC (for affluent kids who couldn't get in to or wouldn't compete successfully at Berkeley or UCLA) when I applied to college and MIT was considered a niche school.

Stanford was ranked #1 in the first USNews ranking in 1983. Probably HYP was still more prestigious at that point but Stanford was more or less up there. This was 34-35 years ago. Depends on what you call recent history.

Anonymous wrote:M and S have in recent history. Stanford was like USC (for affluent kids who couldn't get in to or wouldn't compete successfully at Berkeley or UCLA) when I applied to college and MIT was considered a niche school.

Stanford hasn't been considered what you describe for the last 40 years at least. Not sure before that. Even in the early 1980s it was considered just a step below HYP for college. By the early 1990s the concept of HYPSM existed. Engineering and technology became very prominence that is why Stanford and MIT rose in prominence with it because HYP were not that strong in these fields. It would be very hard for other schools to develop similar advantages in brand new academic fields.

M and S have in recent history. Stanford was like USC (for affluent kids who couldn't get in to or wouldn't compete successfully at Berkeley or UCLA) when I applied to college and MIT was considered a niche school.

Anonymous wrote:Elite school perception does change over time. 50-100 years ago, it was really HYP, while Stanford and MIT were just "good" schools.

Perception changes more easily at lower levels. At the apex it is very hard to change. Super tough for a school to break into the HYPSM tier.

Anonymous wrote:Elite school perception does change over time. 50-100 years ago, it was really HYP, while Stanford and MIT were just "good" schools.

Something momentous needs to happen for perception to change. HYP were historically the finishing schools of the wasp elites. So they have historical status and prestige and are top in certain fields, hence their status. In the last 50-100 years, STEM, and especially engineering and tech took off hence the rise of Stanford and MIT. It will be rather hard for any other school to develop a similar competitive advantage in any field and rise to that level.

Elite school perception does change over time. 50-100 years ago, it was really HYP, while Stanford and MIT were just "good" schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Its wannabe talk. No actual elite college alumni, faculty, or admin use the term HYPSM. The lingo originated from India, China and S. Korea, where books like Harvard Girl (how to raise a child to get in to Harvard) have sold tens of millions of copies. They have an abundance of really awful colleges and a few great ones that admit based solely on test scores, so they obsess over school "prestige" as if they were handbags.

HYPSM has been around since I applied to colleges in the 1990s and was used among my cohort of primarily affluent upper middle class white friends.

These are the colleges that do lead the pack. No matter what US News says, Penn or Chicago will never crack it. It’s the combination of resources, prestige, history and student body that gives them their particular distinction. That’s just the way it is.

You could go even further and say it’s H versus everyone else.

+1000
This. The acronym might be wannabe talk, but domestic applicants have it in their minds even though it might be cheesy/uncool to say it out loud. I agree that no matter what USNews says Chicago, Penn, Columbia et al will never join. All of them have been ranked in the top 5 for many year at some point or another but it makes no difference.

It is probably H and S vs everyone else. Which is why you see these two outpace all others in metrics like acceptance rate, yield, cross-admit splits, fundraising etc.

I think there are small practical advantages, such as the quality of your peers and faculty, the resources available and the fact that your school name gets instant recognition. However there are no huge practical advantages compared to other elites.

Let’s just say I became more appreciative of CA and of chill.

Did you keep your CA chill?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Years ago a P grad worded it differently but it amounted to the idea that the practical advantage was that when you were at HYPSM, you don't have to wonder if someone at HYPSM was just totally outclassing you.

Looking at it from another perspective, I went to Stanford and one of the greatest benefits IME has been knowing there are plenty of folks who go to fancy-pants schools who aren't all that smart. But then, even if I hadn't gone to Stanford, as soon as I graduated and started working, I would have quickly learned this, as well as the converse: there are plenty of folks who go to non-fancy-pants schools who are really smart.

ITA. I was a west coast kid who went to Harvard because I thought that must be where all the smart people were hiding. Pretty quickly, it became clear that I had already experienced the basic range of intelligence elsewhere. Ambition and self-confidence, OTOH, were manifest in ways and at levels I’d never seen before.

Well, going to H probably gives one an edge for HBS. The incessant name dropping is annoying though. Something seems to happen to families as soon as their kids get in to H or S. IMO, this seems less frequent as related to any of the other top 10 schools. Everybody else just says " parents weekend or drop off this weekend".