I am late reading this, but, YES! Most students, in my experience as a teacher and student, have some very lofty goals in terms of which college to attend. Some will list only the very top universities (e.g., Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc.), while other students will list a university that has is noted for some subject-area that aligns with the student's goal. And then there's kind of the rest of the students who want to attend a university because it is their favorite football team, their mom or dad went there, their friends are going there, it's close to home (or not), etc.
But ultimately, great students get a great education whether they go to Harvard...or to Podunk Co-op College. And poor students? It simply doesn't matter where you place them--since all universities have great professors--they will not do as well as others.
Rich kids? They might already have the inside track to that internship at Goldman Sach, so some suitable mid-level university if fine. Geniuses? They deserve to go to the elite schools, but will make their giftedness known no matter where they wind up finishing school.
But the poor and downtrodden? For them to get into an elite school, that sends a message that they must have deserved it (even if it was more about affirmative action). And if they did well, who isn't going to be impressed with that?
I wonder if a pure LOTTERY SYSTEM would not be superior to what we have now....
My older son was indifferent in high school and went to a non-PhD granting state school- what was formerly called a teacher's college. There he found his passion and has managed to get so involved and crucial to the research of a few professors that he's made network connections across the country and is now weighing competing grad school offers from 3 tier 1 research universities. The younger is a sophomore at a sub-elite school with a national name. There are 2 organized alumni networks from his school within 2 hours of our home. I think he will have the easier time of it.
1
If many kinds of colleges help people from the bottom 20 per cent reach the top top 20 per cent, who cares about anyone reaching the top 1 per cent.
2
I've read through this article twice and did not see one word about differences in the quality of the undergraduate education offered at a highly selective college or university and a major, public research university. If social validation and connections are the criteria for excellence, then wouldn't it be easier and maybe a lot cheaper to simply require country and/or yachting clubs to accept a small percentage of young, "scholarship" members. I think this entire scandal is a symptom of the deterioration of the United States that started with the "conservative" revolution electing Ricard Nixon and the Norquist/Reagan legitimization of wealthy people and corporations refusing to pay their fair share of the costs of running the country. This is what led to the systematic de-funding of of state universities, along with other inherently democratic institutions.
3
It is nice to have our beliefs reinforced by this article.
Three of our kids are going to community college and state colleges. One is going to an elite music conservatory.
Our music student needs the teachers and contacts at the elite institution.
1
This article mostly overlooked that a kid that can make it to elite collage will probably be successful no matter what school they go to.Even if they don't go to a school they still will have a higher chance of have succeces in life because they are more privilleged.Mostly try your hardest to achive something good in life
Let’s note that quality of education is also a factor. That quality is specific to the institution. My daughter went to Kenyon College. It’s hard to imagine that one could get a better education. The institution and the staff are dedicated to the students education. On the other hand my son went to Brown. The staff is dedicated to their research. Good students fall through the cracks.
2
As low-middle class parents we focused all our resources on education. Our one child ended up going to a top prep school and an Ivy, on financial aid, graduating Phi Beta Kappa a decade ago. He is now successfully launched in a high level career.
I will tell you unequivocally that an "elite" education made a difference. Without a doubt, it opened doors because employers (he got a great job right out of the gate through the career office at his college) and others see it as being "vetted" by succeeding at that level. And the thing that is most extraordinary is the network of support on multiple levels through active and altruistic alumni.
The benefits are very real for those who work very hard. Success breeds success.
6
College and other forms of post-secondary education are part of a young person’s preparation for life, or an older person’s preparation for a a change in life.
The main reason for choosing a college lies in how it will be perceived by the people you expect to be working with or living amongst. Everything else can be achieved without the paperwork. The college degree is mostly to certify that you attended, in situations where knowledge and bluff might fall short.
Practically speaking, there are colleges that everyone has heard of, colleges that people in your profession have heard of, and colleges that no one has heard of (and which might not even be colleges at all).
It’s easier to find work if you go to a place that everyone has heard of.
If you go to place that’s well-regarded in your profession (or intended profession), you’ll have more freedom, meet more people, and probably learn more useful things, but you’ll have to work harder in your search. The doors will open when you push them, but the doorman in the fancy outfit will be looking elsewhere, probably at someone’s hood ornament or rear window sticker.
A college that no one has heard of is like a tree falling in the forest. You’ll have to start every conversation with an argument about whether it made a sound. In the right hands this can pay off, but it’s a risky bet.
College is a means to an end. Grasp your end and the means become clear. Let the caliber of the Supreme Court be an inspiration to us all.
3
@Andrew M.
Your last sentence can either be an endorsement of your theme or a counter to it.
5
Go to your state university and get out as soon as possible. Save you money for an elite school's MBA, Engineering or Medical program.
6
Rich and famous get more benefited by attending a state university or a community college where they can learn social skills to navigate in a larger society to which they were never exposed. Similarly, poor can benefit attending an elite college to learn the social skills of the middle and upper middle class who dominate the elite schools. For this reason, elite schools try to make up their incoming class a more representative of the society. Social skills help advance one’s career.
2
I guess when elites can already have everything that money can buy, it's not surprising that they turn their focus to prestige.
1
A point generally overlooked by most is that a kid who can make it into an elite school would probably be successful regardless of where or even if they went to college since they are already privileged. By the time you are 18, it’s more about who you are and how you tackle life.
3
@christian
Your point needs to be qualified. You are assuming that the kid getting into the elite school earned the spot. Two thirds of the students are legacies or get in as athletes or for some other reason; dad donates a new wing.
They reap the same benefits upon graduation and make no mistake, most elite schools make sure you graduate.
Some sixty years ago the graduating class of my Ivy League College (then not co-ed) was addressed by the professor of classical Greek. He noted that the main distinction between a college educated man and one who wasn't was the tendency of the former to pronounce the letter "r" in the word "bastard".
I wonder if this distinction still holds.
3
The big takeaway here is the advantage an elite degree confers on racial minorities, who will stand out as a result. I don't see much recognition of this in the reader comments.
6
I went to flagship state universities and used to feel that going to a private university was simply not worth the extra money. At a time when state legislatures are defunding public universities, the cost differential between public and private schools is no longer as significant and the quality of many state schools has deteriorated considerably. As a result, students are voting with their feet to attend the limited number of elite private institutions. With few exceptions, non-prestigious private institutions are being replaced by affordable (live at home) community colleges and online education.
7
Sadly, it would seem that the greatest benefit imparted to the underprivileged accounting for their success later in life are not skills or knowledge, but the status and prestige that come from a select institution.
5
As low-middle class parents we focused all our resources on education. Our one child ended up going to a top prep school and an Ivy, on financial aid, graduating Phi Beta Kappa a decade ago. He is now successfully launched in a high level career.
I will tell you unequivocally that an "elite" education made a difference. Without a doubt, it opened doors because employers (he got a great job right out of the gate through the career office at his college) and others see it as being "vetted" by succeeding at that level. And the thing that is most extraordinary is the network of support on multiple levels through active and altruistic alumni.
The benefits are very real for those who work very hard. Success breeds success.
10
I feel they have more creative and influential professors. It may expand your own ideas, it helps you to understand, what may have been misdiagnosed her misunderstood as a former student.
I don’t think the colleges are right on the spot as they want federal grants which pays and keeps programming alive, but certainly not accurate and can be misconstrued.
1
Pretty much the one pass I would give Mr. Giannulli is that I don't think he thought ASU was a horrible school (it's actually a great school as most state schools are) but it has a reputation as a party school and has had that reputation for many years. His daughter, as we know, was particularly interested in the college experience of game days and going to parties and it sounds like this is the school she was interested in attending for just that experience.
The parents are being deservedly raked over the coals, but I don't think in this case the motivation was chasing prestige.
I think the statement about ASU was an illustration of his root mistake - not listening to what his kids wanted out of life and substituting what he wanted for them (to go to college for more than partying). Since neither he nor his wife went to college themselves (in fact they are self-made), it seems they wanted the experience for their daughters ignoring the fact that those daughters preferred to follow in their mother's footsteps and be entertainers. Sounds more like living vicariously than it is about prestige. Still entitlement and still terribly sad.
7
would it be so bad if selective schools selected via lottery from a pool of prospective students who all met some combination of strict criteria?
3
I have to disagree, unfortunately graduating from a top school guarantees that you get an exposure from potential employers that you will never get from other less "famous" colleges. If you, for example, look into the universities that employees in the International Monetary Fund come from, you will realize that they are not normally from lesser known schools and this happen in a lot of professions.
The study about how much wealth does an ivy league college adds to a 1% person is not well focused, because in this levels it counts to a personal achievement and not to a wealth agregator and in order to measure that you will have to conduct a totally different study in which econometrics will not have the answer.
In the end its just prestige and nothing more, for the 1% at least
4
I would like to see a study that shows that students at elite universities actually learn more than students at other universities. I suspect that the answer is that the elite universities offer the same learning as other universities and that the only difference is going to an elite university gives a student the ability to hobnob with the children of the affluent and influential. If true, this is a sad commentary on the state of our nation.
6
"I suspect that the answer is that the elite universities offer the same learning as other universities"
and that's the absolute top false "suspicion"
The best DO offer more ... more advanced classes, but more important, the ability to do things like undergraduate research on truly important and stimulating projects. This difference cannot be overehmpasized. A top college experience is not cookie cutter learning.
8
@Doug McDonald
This is hogwash. The good small colleges offer just as much deep thinking and imaginative experiences as any top college. Students can have meaningful relations with top professors who focus on teaching, not research. Much of teaching in top universities consists of having section sessions with harried graduate students who handle much of the teaching and listening to lectures from top professors who are focussed on their research.
1
"Social capital" is the key word here, perhaps? In other words, if you acquire a lot of it in childhood, an elite college isn't going to add much more. The global obsession with places like Harvard is ridiculous and misdirected. Imagine if the obsessed people with money devoted that energy to building up higher education in their own backyards -- the social benefits would be outstanding.
4
I have three sons - one of them went to an elite U.S. university with full tuition paid - another went to a regular university and ended up wealthy -- a third went to a regular university and ended up living in another country and having a wonderful life but not a lot of money -all of them have good lives and are good people - to me the kind of person they become and the lives they live is most important!
9
@Pat from Missouri
I don't care the car you drive. I care about how you drive your life.
@Pat from Missouri - I agree! It depends on how one defines "matter". Not everyone's "matter" involves material riches.
I, like many others, do not feel these parents did their children any favors by facilitating their cheating their way into college. I would have respected these parents more if they were honest with their children about their college prospects, and then just gave them the money to start a business and encourage them to turn it into something thriving. It doesn't take a fancy degree to run a successful business.
1
Does the whinging never cease ? The notion that someone really deserving was robbed of a life transforming opportunity, is just so much pc noise. Several salient factors belie this idea. Let's say 20 undeserving students "sneak" in. The spots they take do not come from a special section of applicants - those 20 slots would have gone to the bottom 20 of accepted students. At elite colleges, the attrition rate is high; how many of the bottom 10% make it ? How many of them end up finishing at lesser school ? How many of them would have been better off starting elsewhere ?
For the undeserving who get in, how many last ? They are in a school above their abilities, can they cut it ? Granted, with parents so hyper ambitious for them, it is likely there is enough drive to get them through, but chances are they don't gain the education their parents expected.
For me going to an elite school was a difference maker. But for the few who cheat their way in, and the marginal applicants they displace, it is unlikely there is talent
enough there for it to really matter.
1
@Charles Dawson Why do you think the 20 cheaters in your hypothetical displace marginal applicants? Harvard, for example, has said that it can replace its freshman class several times over with equally qualified applicants based purely on academic merit. It uses "holistic review" to "shape" a freshman class, it doesn't just rank them 1 to 22,000 and accept the top 1,900. This is also true for Yale, Princeton, etc. They don't have enough seats for all the incredibly impressive applicants they get.
7
@Charles Dawson "The notion that someone really deserving was robbed of a life transforming opportunity, is just so much pc noise."
Oh really? I thought that was the whole argument against affirmative action. Now that it's white people getting (extra extra) special treatment, no biggie?
5
@loracle
Spot on, oracle.
Some of the presidents and cabinet secretaries and many of the Nobel laureates are from top colleges. To name just a few The Clintons, Bushes were Yales. Many of the rich and famous of America are from top colleges. Even Bill Gates who dropped out of Harvard and Zuckerberg who graduated from Harvard came out of top collleges. Does it matter? To a large extent yes it matters if you have one life to live and you want to be your best, the top colleges matter because you develop networks with people that matter to become rich and famous that gives you a life long advantage.
As far as just getting basic skills and education, it does not matter because of the information super highway that equalizes the knowledge gain. There are world class Professors in every college and mediocre ones in every college.
4
The big takeaway here is the advantage an elite degree confers on racial minorities, who will stand out as a result. I don't see much recognition of this in the reader comments.
5
What is the difference between USC and Arizona State? The main difference is that celebrity offspring/starlet/influencer/red carpet walking types don't have to disrupt their lifestyle if they go to USC.
USC was always known as where spoiled-rich-slacker kids who hung out in their celebrity parents' empty Malibu houses went to college. Hilarious that anyone would spend 5 bucks, let alone 500,000(!) bribing people to get in to that joint! I grew up in LA and it was considered a "safety school" for anyone serious about going to college (or better yet take a gap year and try again for something better . . .)
8
@ck You must be at least 50 years old. USC is not the "university of spoiled children" that you knew. It now has an excellent reputation, with a number of highly regarded undergraduate and graduate programs.
USC has also invested heavily in programs for first-generation students and students of color from L.A. Currently takes only 16% of undergraduate applicants.
It was always my experience if a student obtained a graduate degree, it was much more important where you obtained your graduate degree(s) with your undergraduate degree almost being irrelevant.
In other words you could obtain your undergrad work in state college, but obtain a grad degree from a top tier and no one would even ask about your undergrad. So save your money and effort and expend them in getting in the most prestigious grad school. I hired lots of people with grad degrees and focused on where that was from, not the undergrad. This was true in sciences as well as legal field.
9
@Sefo Disagree. I went to an "elite" undergrad but a much less impressive sounding law school (though still top tier). The elite undergrad degree and its alumni network was what helped me find my first legal job, not the law school! I think if you went to a less prestigious undergrad and then go to an elite grad program you are correct, people will focus on the elite grad program more. But this does not mean that the elite undergrad won't help you too if your grad program won't!
4
Two important events in my life occurred in high school: I got set up on a blind date with a girl to whom I have now been married for 54 years, and I got a scholarship to Yale. I have no question about which was more important, but the Yale thing made a pretty big difference too. As the first in my family to attend college, and coming from fairly modest circumstances, Yale opened doors that would have been otherwise unthinkable. It does not surprise me that acceptance at elite colleges still makes the biggest difference in the lives of people who start out on the lower end of society. I interview applicants from Arkansas, and it gives me great pride to know that Yale is strongly committed to opening its doors to talented kids from a wide range of backgrounds. And yes, if your family can give a building, you have a leg up, and that does not bother me in the least.
9
Any observer of societies looks at American and sees how this culture is all about the sizzle, and rarely the steak. Appearance and the fringe elements - the bling - is/are everything in the high-vapidity zones along the East and West Coasts.
Other than social connections and a ton of political indoctrination, the appeal of the top schools is mostly artificial.
As a person who proudly got past 6th grade on the FIRST try, I value those who were taught by hard-working masters' holders over those largely ignored by dilletantes.
3
Kevin, Kevin Kevin
I'm not sure anyone can quantify " Students who are poised to succeed tend to do so even if they don’t get into the Ivy League."
Poised to Succeed?
My opinion is anecdotal. It has been formed from more the 50 years of observations of my life plus that of my 3 children and now grandchildren.
When an individual is admitted to an "elite school"
1st (barring a tragedy) they will graduate from that school.
They get a piece paper with fancy lettering suitable for framing saying---- they graduated.
2nd there is a shift in the social paradigm. In that each of them is entitled to a presumption of being more worthy of the position -further education - task or what ever they are seeking to do. Like this or not Kevin it happens. It is a societal class problem that has openly existed for maybe 150 years.
Those graduates default condition is-- they are a ''better person" to put into the sought after position than those who did not attend such institutions.
Kevin,
It - really - does - work - this way.
As my children and grandchildren have often said to me and now I can say to you
From down here near the bottom of the gene pool.
"DUH"!
WAV
7
How about cheating to get into Harvard Law School? I registered for the GRE (now accepted for admission by Harvard Law School) and found that I could cheat on the exam!. I wrote to the GRE publishers and Harvard but received unsatisfactory replies from the former and NO replies from Harvard. When I called San Diego State, they were immediately cagey. I now have no choice but to take them to court, where of course I shall represent myself. If I win, would I want to go to Harvard, a now obviously inferior school that allows cheating?
2
If you’re vacationing with the daughter of a billionaire who is on the Boatd of Trustees of the college you’re planning to attend, it’s obvious that there are connections already in place and college isn’t a necessity for maintaining those connections. Presumably, they’re already the trustee is impressed by wealth and celebrity.
Nor is college needed for financial security unless your very wealthy parents blow through their money before you inherit enough of it to live a comfortable life. That leaves only the bragging rights of parents who have to see their children as reflections of themselves. Having an “average” child with average or ( heaven forbid) below average intelligence simply won’t do.
Parents should feel blessed to have healthy children.
Pushing your kids to pursue your dreams or represent your status? That’s not even remotely classy.
8
This well-intentioned article misses the point completely. Sure, Tim Cook leads a big company and is rich. But can he get the status of being in the Harvard Club while in New York? No, the rich fellow who went to a Southeast Conference school does get good football and basketball, but not the brass ring of elite Northeast snobbery. And if you want to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice -- or be president -- better get some Ivy. It's not the Benjamins. It's about something that matters far, far more to a certain class or group or clique of people...and the bank account doesn't matter, just the purchased diploma hanging over your desk, signifying that you're better than most of the people who come to your office, who need to bow in awe. That's what people are paying for. And, in the end, they're paying for that exclusive obit, that says the dead person is still better than you. How much is that worth? To some, everything! That's where the problem is.
10
After years of playing the game (I possess a BA, a BS, a Masters, and a Doctorate), I realized that regardless of the quality of my classes or of my professors, an Elite College does often open doors, but not always the ones that are most important. In my case, my degrees from "second" tier schools (whatever that really means) aren't the key to a better life, because...and it took me 50 years to figure this out...the most important things in life are having a roof over my head, the love of my wife and my child, my family, and the time to realize that all of these are fleeting. Metrics are overused. The most valuable lesson I ever learned (regardless of the source) was the the ability to have sympathy and empathy for other human beings.
54
As a Latina woman who graduated with honors from Columbia University but grew up poor - this article is absolutely correct. For those of us who were poor people of color, attending and graduating from an Ivy League university made all the difference in the world. Columbia opened doors to me that would never have been available otherwise. It also allowed me to rub elbows with classmates who already had a lifetime of privileges. I learned a great deal from them. As a result, I was able to lift myself from poverty and into the upper middle class. It never would have happened were it not for my undergraduate experience. As for the extreme bribery taking place on behalf of wealthy, but unqualified candidates, I can only assume that the addition of an Ivy League institution to one's resume is so coveted that even the rich would do so at great expense. For me it certainly added that cache that I was lacking. Luckily I got in on my grades and extracurricular activities alone.
13
My older granddaughter ,an Integrative Neuroscience major on the pre-med track is attending Binghampton University.
An excellent student and accomplished violinist she chose not to apply to any of the Ivy league schools.My younger granddaughter will be attending Buffalo University this coming fall.My son and daughter in law graduated from Stony Brook University and both are successful professionals.There are excellent State Universities that provide a rewarding life experience.
7
"But if the charges against them are proved, Ms. Giannulli’s parents would have taken something their daughter didn’t need from someone for whom it might have been life-changing."
That sums it up. I came from a blue-collar family, first to college. Top of class of >700, etc. No way my parents could afford a selective college. I went to the local state college, though I did get a doctorate from an Ivy League university, full ride. I've always felt my true potential in life wasn't reached due to not accumulating that social capital.
6
A point generally overlooked by most is that a kid who can make it into an elite school (on their own merits) would probably be successful regardless of where or even if they went to college. By the time you are 18, it’s more about who you are and how you tackle life.
8
I've hired over a thousand people in the past 50 years. I wanted to see their transcripts and, where needed, their licenses. I was not particularly interested in where they went to do their undergrad work; since I have gotten a few clunkers from high profile schools and a few stars who started in community colleges. The point about otherwise inaccessible social capital for underprivileged students is well-taken. But, other than that, I have not differentiated among undergrad alums when looking to hire. Grad school and professional school can be another story because of the increasing specialization in some fields and the tougher entrance standards for some schools.
3
My husband and I both now in our 70's lived at home and went to our local State Universities (Wisconsin-Madison and Purdue respectively) out of necessity, our families were not well off, my mother a widow raising 3 kids (she did have a college education, rare for women born in 1917) and his not college grads. Since we were majoring in science fields these were both ideal, and world-class Universities. We both graduated with no student debt. My husband ended up with 3 masters in related fields and I with one. We met in grad school, both had very nice careers in academia and are now quite comfortably retired. I can understand for certain careers an elite school might make sense, but in most cases if you are truly interested in learning, a good State University is a much better option.
5
I did, long ago, go to an elite school in a non-elite part of the country--the Midwest. I hope it remains one that stays too far under the radar to be targeted by scams like this. At the time I was living on the East Coast and was told that I had to go to a Seven Sisters school to make college worth my while. I had seen the disdain expressed for my parents' state school education, and was offended by it, so I refused to apply to the schools I was told I "had" to go to. Later in college and graduate school I encountered two Harvard professors whose contempt for the undergraduates convinced me that I had made the right choice. I have always believed that going to an Ivy League school is not really about getting the best education, but about making the contacts to join the ruling class--a point made by others in this thread.
13
I think that Ms. Giannulli's father's quote explains the real motive here. He would have been embarrassed if his daughter didn't go to an elite school. These people weren't doing this for their kids, they were doing this for themselves.
One advantage of going to an elite college is that you make contacts that will prove useful in you future career. Children of rich people already have those contacts. Sometimes who you know is as important as what you know.
17
@ACW I agree fully with both your points. Although I never saw it as much when I lived in California, on the East Coast (esp. in the Northeast & New England), the college decal that says "Williams" or "Harvard" on your Mercedes' rear window is just as important for bragging rights as the three-pointed star on the hood.
And so far as contacts go, I can vouch for that 100%. Back in the day, when I graduated from Amherst (class of '73) and then went to New York City looking for a first job in publishing, the Amherst College alumni network of "old boys" there (all men at that time, we were not yet coed), all well positioned as major ad agency heads and magazine senior execs and Publishers (TIME-Life, etc.) made it easy for me to meet the right people and open doors.
Nothing on a list of your skills helps with getting a good job as much as one friend or associate quietly telling another "He's one of us."
9
I’m a firm believer in state schools, but I also firmly believe that elite schools deliberately enroll a wide variety of students, including those in financial need, with the goal of a better educational experience for the students who decide to go there. They do it because they can afford to do it. State schools do it as a matter of course—they have to do it.
The ressentiment (a French word largely referring to resentment of those with greater privilege and/or money, from a guy named Max Scheler and a book with that title) is rampant throughout these comments. Envy is not pretty and it makes for bad judgment.
5
I'm a recent graduate of a smaller, fairly-elite college (not an Ivy, but top-30). Over the past year, I've done quite a bit of reflecting on where I am in my life and how I got here. During my senior year of high school, all that mattered was that I got accepted to a top-ranked college. In the end, I received a scholarship, graduated with few student loans and a good job, and overall enjoyed my college experience. But, would I be where I am today if I had attended a school that was not as "elite"? Absolutely yes.
One of the most eye-opening experiences for me was befriending a girl who was a daughter of immigrants and a first-generation college student. For her, the college we both attended afforded her many opportunities that she wouldn't have had otherwise. Attending this school meant that she would have resources to help her with her resume and internships, that she would have the opportunity to study abroad, and that she would be able to addend a conference where she applied for the job that she eventually accepted. She wouldn't have gotten that type of support at another university.
As a white child of two college graduates, I never needed anything from my college. I could have gone anywhere and ended up in relatively the exact same place. That's why this whole scandal is so heartbreaking. These students probably would have ended up being successful no matter what. Instead, their parents took a chance at success from someone else.
12
Boy I'd sure like to know the cutoff point between elite, not so elite, borderline elite, wannabe elite, unelite, down to definitely not elite.
And what happens when all the elites start going to non-elite schools? Do we then create a whole new elite class by virtue of the non-elites getting an elite education?
9
An elite private education is not a civil right. That’s not fair but there is nothing in our constitution that says it has to be. The opportunity for an elite private education within ethical process exists. The fact that exceptional individuals from all walks of life have achieved it is proof.
2
@FNL
“An elite private education is not a civil right. “
Very true, but given the U.S. Goverment funnels billions of dollars to public and private universities certainly gives said government the right to insist on various rules and standards for the admissions process if said universities want to remain on the public dole.
4
I’m going to play devil’s advocate.
I’ve hired dozens of young people over the years from “elite” colleges as well as state schools.
I do put a lot if weight on a candidate that went to a top university but probably not in the way you’re thinking. And for understanding, I’m focusing on middle class folk who’ve gone to top universities.
Such a job candidate is attractive because:
1. They are not mentally self-limiting. If a kid from Texas applied to a top tier Northeast university, then this person from a young age by definition “thinks out of the box.” This person did what most of their high school friends would not dream of. I like that.
2. Independence. Again, if you’re at a university across the country from mom & dad, you are more independent than the friends who stayed local at State U.
3. Typically has a broader world view. The top tier univerisity kid has just been exposed to more things than the State U. fraternity & sorority crowd. Classmates from more diverse backgrounds and more countries.
4. Competitive. Yes, getting into a top tier university is competitive. But it is by definition attractive that such a candidate was not fearful of such competition. A competitive spirit is not a bad thing (with cheating of course being abhorrent).
7
@Ted You have a point, but you're forgetting about money in this equation. Many excellent "middle class folks" end up going to a less prestigious university not because they did not apply to a top tier university (your point #1) or did not get into one (your point #4) but because they may get a more generous scholarship / financial aid from the less prestigious university. This would not have been reflected in the resume. Shouldn't you favor these candidates then for making the financially responsible decision, especially since you seem to work in finance?
9
@Rin
You have a good point and I would certianly consider it in my equation. But again, ai like candidates who find a way “to make it happen” either through financial aide, loans, summer jobs, etc.
Like I mentioned above, I’ve hired many from State U over the years. Some of these folks became amazing employees. But they need to something to truly show they have a broader world view and broader experience set such as military service or summer internships far from home or a semester or year overseas. Indendepent life skills and independent thought are critical to success in a global economy. And surprisingly those skills have been on a steep decline in the last 30 years.
Again, I would definitely hire a State U candidate but the story has to be that it was an economic decision to go to the loval university and not because the candidate was afraid to be far away from their comfort zone of mom, dad and friends.
2
@Ted You may have some valid points but I also have my doubts. I don't think that there as many students that have simple tidy stories that make it possible to glean any understanding of how they are going to perform in a real world setting based on the "eliteness" of the school they attended.
People may have more depth than you might give the credit for.
"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me. You would seem to know my stops. You would pluck out the heart of my mystery. " W.S.
3
My 2 kids both attended top universities... Undergrad through Law School and PHD as well.
For both,IMO, it has been critical to their current success.
They have met their life partners in college and have both established excellent careers. Both, notably, have been independent since undergrad graduation.
I think it is a big advantage.
2
@steve boston area If they were talented to begin with, don’t you think they would have done just as well going to a “second tier” school? Is their success based then on who they knew rather than what they knew? Or are the schools they went to top tier for the fields of study they chose, thus giving them the best preparation for their professions? Do you think they would do as well if they now were living in California or Colorado? I only buy this approach to schooling if monetary success is what one is really going after in the long run or it’s the professors you actually want to study under.
1
Personally, while I could not afford to attend an elite private university nor a public flagship university, I did do a strong science major at my local Big U, and learned both the science, AND that I could hold my own against anyone, and make a contribution. That confidence led to advanced degrees and a career in academe, knowing that despite my lack of platinum credentials, performance eventually wins out.
Yeah, no gets too excited about my academic pedigree from a big state school. But such universities provide up-and-coming college majors, strong classes, and access to young professors who will eventually lead in their fields. Students just have to work a little harder to find the the good stuff, build dreams, and nurture their intellects. Those schools teach a lot about real talent, grit, and working with a diversity of different types of people. They foster a much better shot at the American Dream for a much broader swath of young Americans.
10
@SJL Here, here! The shine has gone off the “top tier” schools for me a long time ago. Individuals in an industry I worked in, all from top tier schools, were the most undereducated grads I ever met! They went to learn some math and make connections.
You are so right, it’s what the student has inherently which will eventually make the difference. It’s too bad too many Americans approach a college education from the wrong perspective all together!
9
I came from the bottom 20%. Neither of my parents went to college. Their parents were immigrants from Poland and Puerto Rico (Yes, I know technically Puerto Rico is not a foreign country. Let's just not go there).
They managed to send me to private Catholic grade and high schools. Actually, they didn't manage the latter: I had to pay for the tuition by working weekends.
I applied to 4 art schools. I wasn't getting into college unless I got a scholarship. Three of the four provided one. Of those, my first choice, The Cooper Union, added support for room and board for two years.
If I recall correctly, Cooper accepted only 25 or 30 students out of 3000 applicants that year, due to construction on the foundation building.
So:
Poor background, check.
Parents did not get beyond HS, check
Zero social connections, check
As the study suggests: yes, the Cooper Union transformed my life, and to this day I am grateful, but not because it catapulted me into the top 10%, though it did, but because it gave me access to a world-class intellectual community.
I know that getting into college is brutal today compared to back then. However, in my case, I do have an idea about how bad it is: my odds of getting into Cooper in 1972 were in fact pretty low. I believe that once you get down to a 15% selection rate, it's the luck of the draw: so not only am I grateful, I am also aware that I was very lucky.
18
1. It is vastly unfair that the power positions like the Supreme Court clerks or end-runs to Wall Street are distributed in the way describe in this article, and a major accelerant to the social distrust and pain enveloping U.S. society today.
2. Students should be advised to go to the best four-year university that they can get into, but also balance the best institution with the threat crippling debt that could result, if you are a student whose parents can't shoulder the costs.
7
@SJL Tend to disagree that it's "vastly unfair". If you have a job that requires extreme diligence and intellectual rigor and devotion and overkill on hours, the numbers suggest that the candidates who will perform best at this came out of an academic environment that required the same thing. In short, it's just easier to pick a straight-A Harvard grad to outperform in a hotly competitive work environment and expect it to work out. It's not necessarily just a snobbery thing. Of course, there are exceptions. My father left high school in Alabama and went to the top of 3 different industries. I was a C student at University of Arizona but caught fire when I started working. So I'm no Ivy Leaguer but I see why that kind of hiring can make sense.
2
@Kim Nope! Nope! Nope!
First of all, the Ivies are not the culling device that you think they are--they just aren't. They are just the status quo for narrow swath of the well-connected-- and pretty rich.
But the Supreme Court is everyone's court. And it should be more representative of the fine minds that are nurtured all over the country.
I was a big Obama fan, but his farm team when the economy nearly went totally down the tubes in 2008 was limited to his Harvard connections and the Wall Street annex.
Don't you wonder how that would have worked out if the Wall Street/Fed/Treasury/Ivy nexus were differently constructed?
Maybe more working people would not have lost their homes, and more rich people would not come out of that mess richer than ever.
9
The greatest benefit of going to a select college is that one will never be unemployed. You might be the dimmest bulb in the pack, but your classmates will ensure you have an excellent job.
7
I somewhat accept the premise of the article, but only somewhat. The network you gain in college will likely be your major network for the rest of your life-- and being a "bro" or "sis" with the children of the 1% and 0.1% ain't gonna hurt. It's who you know, not what you know.
6
@Philip Tymon And it’s becoming obvious this is to the detriment of society.
3
The Ivy League scam. The come to town, tell you that you need to make many applications to be sure to get in to one of the schools and then pocket the application fees while they fill their schools with legacy students. Does the school matter? A Harvard student with a degree in art will get a $200 thousand job on Wall Street.
3
@TimToomey Wall Street has always been thus. That is because finance and banking have always been about connections. Lawyering might be, too. But outside of that and maybe government at Harvard, what fields do these schools excel in teaching?
1
@C A Simpson- Medicine? I've attended an Ivy League medical school program. I'd like to think these top tier schools would excel in teaching the next generation of health care providers.
Your reporting, looking at success of graduates, leaves out a critical factor -- persistence. What if they don't graduate?
Persistence rates are much higher at "elite" colleges, with four-year graduation rates usually about 90% or higher. This coattails effect is absent at State U. Your data is limited and flawed.
4
All of the "it doesn't really matter (ok, that much) where you go to college" comments are silly. Which Duncan Donuts franchise you by your breakfast at tomorrow changes your life, as does which movie you decide to stream on Netflix. Everything you do, and every experience you have, changes you. Yes, what those changes are depend on your character and personality, but only to an extent. Often where you go to college affects who you marry (and who your children are); arguably, it always does.
Those who say otherwise remind me a bit of the novel "Pilgrim's Progess" wherein the protagonist, seeking the purification of his soul, sheds every bit of his identity and earthly attachment, even his spouse and family, for the sake of heavenly salvation, his only ultimate real priority. Everything else discarded as mere trivia and ephemera. Except in this case, one is not reduced to a pilgrim seeking salvation, but an economic machine to maximize income.
2
The article discusses at length the 1% and those from far less privileged backgrounds. What about the vast majority of applicants who are from middle class backgrounds and wondering whether accepting admission to a top tier school is worth the financial burden? Applicants with very limited resources often qualify for significant financial assistance, and of course the 1% can afford it, while candidates with similar educational qualifications from middle income families do not. Question: Is it worth it for these students?
9
My husband and I attended UC Berkeley. After graduation my husband went in to banking and has had a very successful career. Many Wall Street banks only interview candidates from top schools. I went on to a career in fundraising that was opened to me due to my husbands connections in banking. This world of elite doors is one reason selective schools are in demand. I can’t say we would have had these opportunities had we gone to a less selective school. We are always discussing if we want our children to go to elite universities as we know the very hard work that goes in to getting in to one (we won’t be looking for brides). We have such mixed feelings as we want our kids to enjoy their childhood but we also recognize the opportunities given to us because of those degrees. We are lucky to live in a community (Long Beach,ca) that values more than a fancy education. In fact, many parents here opt their kids out of the most competitive high school programs so that they can have a less stressful childhood. In the end we will support our children and the goals they set for themselves.
7
As someone who created and managed a career development program for real student-athletes at SMU, I know that internships in fields they wish to explore are by far the most important contributing factor to success.. If they dislike the field after a summer, that's extremely valuable. Better to discover that while still in college than during their first jobs after graduation. If they thrive and learn and continue to intern for two summers and possibly during the academic year, they have a very significant head start.
3
The key is having the talent to get into a selective school. (And that means real talent, not getting in because of preferential treatment.) Whether you attend or graduate doesn't matter. Remember, both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were college dropouts.
1
@J. Waddell this is such a ridiculous argument, they dropped out at a time when a college degree wasn't even necessary. Also even if it worked for them it probably wouldn't even work for the 99.999999999999999% of people. Just look at their kids, none of them are college dropouts. If being a college drop out is such a lucrative pathway they would be encouraging their kids to do so.
2
@Gignere He did not suggest it was a lucrative pathway, something you should choose. It's quite a valid point that over time, your talent is what makes the difference. After the first day on the job when you graduate, it no longer matters where you went to college. People are not selected for promotion out of a group because of their college background. They are selected for job performance. Sure, there can be minor exceptions but having worked at or headed about 10 companies, that's what I've seen.
1
@Kim
Different colleges prepare people differently for job performance.
1
Few major firm CEO’s come studied at elite colleges. That’s true of top tier performers at most professions. Lets remember the same books are commonly acorss all tiers of colleges. But profs at elite schools do have the advantage of “teaching to the class”. So there’s a perception elites are more comprehensive. Cutting in the other direction profs at elites are notoriously oriented towards “research and publication” while profs further down the list are often focused on being college profs first and foremost. Finally the most valuable college expeience oft revolves around “mentors”. And here the non-elite colleges oft have the advantage. It’s in the non-elite colleges that off have the most dedicated mentors. After all their profs are their to teach !
3
I went to a rather famous university abroad (for a second graduate degree) and as far as I know I got in fairly based on my grades. However, I am not so deluded that I believe that my father's trust fund did not help finance my second graduate degree. Plus this money permitted me to travel to do archival research and get some help with translations that were appendices to my thesis. So a little money goes a long way in helping a student get a college/graduate level degree.
Education can be expensive and those with some money have an advantage-- tutors, consultants, travel, and less time working at bad jobs....
But what one sees in these scandals is much worse than unfairness towards those students without privilege... What one sees is a contempt of higher education itself. I might have had money to pay the rent at college and to travel, but I worked hard on my papers and thought my teachers were next to god. Many of the children of elites and their parents today think that education is nothing more than a commodity (maybe even an entertainment) that can be bought...The objective is to obtain the degree by any means- fair or foul... and this mercenary attitude does not stop once the student is admitted to college....
I say: Shame on our elites for weakening/corrupting/discrediting important institutions in American society-- Shame on the elites, who serve on the boards of trustees of many universities, for not showing more integrity, decency and leadership...
9
@Stephen Ross There is also the pervasive problem of grade inflation. Average, decent work used to earn a 'C' grade, but today's students who see themselves as consumers buying their degrees, will insist on at least a B for 'average' work, and many will argue for 'A's for their drivel. Unfortunately, college administrators penalize professors who are seen as 'too difficult' because students try to avoid those professors by taking equivalent classes at other institutions or online where they think they can earn the required credits with less input and a better grade. This means 'tough' or 'fair' professors are 'costing' their institutions as students enroll elsewhere. Students increasingly attend college with multiple psychological diagnoses and poor coping skills, so 'tough' professors are then 'blamed' for upsetting those students. Many campuses do have the counseling and remedial services those students need, but can't force those students to avail themselves or muster the motivation to actually learn from their time at college. One New England university chancellor was on record as saying that the 'job of faculty is to keep students happy.' Not a road map to excellence!
8
These are critical points as well. They all revolve though around mercenary attitudes by students and administrators supported or permitted by boards of trustees. I have often wondered whether any members of the boards read students’ papers or attend lectures?
1
Given that most people do not attend elite schools, it would take a huge differen ce between elite and non-elite instutions for their to be a difference in average income. It also distracts from income just being one index of success. We do n ot have supreme court justices who attended non-elite institutions. Attending an elite undergraduate institution increases the likelihood of acceptance to an elite graduate program which opens doors for academia and parts of the business sector.
2
As a PS to my March 16 post, this may be relevant: Some years ago I had a long-overdue catch-up lunch with an older cousin--a successful NYC mechanical engineer/patent attorney who'd graduated from Brooklyn College (one of the few "girls" in her class), worked for US Navy, and in a midlife career change, graduated from New York Law School, going on to top positions at North American Philips, among other companies.
At some point she said: "Of course YOU went to a prestigious university!" Naive as it may seem, I was bowled over, blown away, whatever! Thinking back on it now, I'm deeply saddened by the implicit resentment of that comment--as if her all achievements had somehow mattered less than my Barnard/Columbia degree.
Again, plus ça change....
8
What is key to attending elite institutions is mentioned only in passing: social capital. But in the U.S., who you know has always been more important than who you are. Same goes for Supreme Court justices and Wall Street bankers, Senators and Presidents. Otherwise, it does not matter very much.
5
USC is considered as elite university somewhere?
16
@Me @Me I've been asking the same question since I heard about this last week. I mean, USC is a good school but why would anyone pay $400,000 to get in?
3
@Me,
Haha, that was my reaction.
1
@Me In California, the USC alumni network is tight and powerful, helping each other, especially in the film business.
3
Years ago my husband and I drove to Cambridge, Mass. to pickup part of Gordon Willey's book collection. He sat is his emblazoned chair while we hauled books into our little yellow Chevette. My husband had studied at University of California/Berkeley and received his PhD from University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana. BUT Willey poo-pooed him (and with a big sign) because he had studied under Donald Lathrap (tropical South American archaeology).
It felt like we had stepped back a century with class conscious raising its ugly head.
4
@Nancy L. Fagin are you sure you meant this comment for this story?
1
I’m quite sure that the legal bills for just one of the tools indicted this week in the college admissions scandal would send this young man to school. I’m also quite sure that I’ll see a unicorn before I read an article about that happening.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/homeless-student-college-dylan-chidick.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
2
Some of you may not see a nasty habit that the NYT and other media outlets seem to have. When there is a scandal of some sort, even when the overwhelming number of culprits are white, news agencies will highlight the small African American portion. Three days ago I warned my brother that soon we'd see black faces in news stories about the college cheating scandal, giving the impression that somehow African Americans are the leading culprits. It's a deflection tactic used by the news media. Yahoo, the New York Daily News, and now the NYT, all have run stories about black coaches allegedly involved with the scandal. The vast majority of the culprits are Caucasian, yet I have failed to see all but one picture of the white coaches fired so far. Really?
4
@Gordon JD.PhD. You're right about the rest of us not seeing that.
4
"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material".
Is this in all casesss?
What about Clarence Thomas?
He seems only to know "It's better to be silent a thought stupid that to speak up and remove all doubt.".
5
@Joe Sneed Say what? An article about college CEOs and we're back to Clarence Thomas ???
1
I would guess value for their privileged children comes second to the value of prestige and bragging rights at the country club. These parents are not thinking of what is good for their children, they are mired in the shallow murk of insecurity and lack of true sense of worth.
31
@brian begley
Not necessarily. I suspect they truly think their child will be better off at the higher tier school; and the kid is just too young to know it. That is intertwined with perceptions of power and status, and their abilities as a parent.
"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material."
*Cough Kavanugh *Cough
12
@William Smith. I would love to know how it is that of ALL the law schools that exist in the US, why only Harvard and Yale law clerks are chosen for the Supreme Court?
Surely the Harvard and Yale law grads will already go to a great firm upon graduation. How many otherwise brilliant law students are displaced using the current system?
5
I won't take issue with the themes of this article. However, I will say that more and more WHAT major you take in college trumps WHERE you matriculate. How much time it takes for you to obtain a degree in four years is also a signal to potential employers as to ambition and an enhanced capacity to assimilate new material. (Compare 4 yr graduation rates in highly selective schools to those in lesser institutions.) Baccalaureate degrees also are becoming a "glut" on the market. To distinguish oneself in the job market one should seek an advanced degree. (One need only examine the average pay for masters degree holders compared to BA/BS holders to see this very significant increase in compensation.)
11
It seems to me that a large benefit of going to a prestige school is not the education you may receive--a motivated, intelligent student can probably, imho, get a good education most anywhere--but the connections you make with other well-off people.
15
@Lawrence
Someone with an art degree from Harvard will get a high paid job on Wall Street before someone with an economics degree from Illinois.
7
@Laura My experience going from small-town midwest to highly selective college is four decades dated, but for me the benefit of that education was in a) the great teachers and b) the intellectual engagement of my peers. I met my share of jaded prep-school boys whose only interest seemed to be gaming the system, as well as some fossilized creeps who hated that women and people of color walked the halls of *their* school. But most of the people I met (though I would say this is more true of the women I knew than the men) were interested in learning and contributing to their chosen fields — and yes, even in making the world a better place. "Making connections" was not the focus.
Then again, there was no Greek system on that campus, and the heavy drinking and party culture of the 80s had not yet coarsened student life. (cough, Kavanaugh)
3
These colleges are often brutal pressure cookers, students are driven before during and after, many pusue teaching,medicine, law and the money is secondary to the score, the win, the discovery. These are places where "fun goes to die". Really smart people, like really rich people, are very different. To be with the smartest of the smartest, with no hope of being best, is not for these celebrity kids. Coventry is a lonely place for these folks.
2
@northlander and therefore ?
I suspect at the very high end that for a talented person to get into, say, Harvard can create opportunities to network with other talents. Here are 4 well-known Harvard stories:
- Future Microsoft billionaires Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer were friends at Harvard.
- Friends of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard who became billionaires include Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hedges.
- Friends of the brilliant opinion magazine editor Michael Kinsley at Harvard include opinion magazine stars James Fallows and Mickey Kaus
- A sizable fraction of The Simpsons writers who revolutionized TV comedy in the 1990s were Harvard friends.
6
@Steve Sailer Paul and Bill were friends at Lakeside. Paul attended WSU, not Harvard. Bill and Steve met at Harvard.
2
Sorry, USC is not elite. If you’re going to bribe someone to get into a college at least do it for a top ranked school.
7
@David: You'd think but Olivia Jade Gianulli was of an academic calibre that would normally top out at the local community college studying "fashion design". FOR HER, USC was the equivalent of Harvard or Yale.
3
A bigger scandal is the mortgage interest deduction (MID) which allows those who can afford a huge down payment to buy a house in good school districts. By some estimates, the MID cost the government $70 Billion Dollars in 2013. Then there is the $250,000/500,000 capital gains exemption for singles/couples on the sale of their house. If I borrow money to buy a house, why should the government defray the interest on that loan? Who benefits most from MID: those with jumbo mortgages. So it’s the elitist eastern and west coast suburbs in New York, MA, NJ, PA, CA, WA, etc. In other words, the Liberals! Liberals are hypocrites for the most part.
4
If you have to agree with the teachers to get a pass, it is not worth the paper.
1
Matter for whom? Isn't this sort of a child dependent issue?
2
"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material."
Wish I could agree with that statement...
39
@Peter
*Cough Brett Kavanugh *Cough
2
"possibly risking infamy and prison to buy something that, the evidence suggests, provides little value for their privileged offspring."
Whose definition of "value?" For the nouveau riche, like the Loughlin's neither of whom went to college, a piece of paper from the right university may be worth more than money. It's a prestigious endorsement given to the brightest minds in the world that, supposedly, money can't buy. It's an endorsement that proves that they belong in the top 1-percent.
5
@Miss ABC It's a lot like - boy, am I dating myself - John Kenneth Galbraith's 1958 book 'The Affluent Society,' complete with status symbols, conspicuous consumption, keeping up with the Jones, etc.
5
Dropouts start all the companies which change the world and A students work for them.
4
@God For what it's worth, there's an old adage about law school graduates: the ones who get all A's become Supreme Court Justices, or law school professors; the ones with solid B averages become District Court judges; finally, the law school grads with solid C averages get rich. Maybe not 'quite' as true, for sure, as it used to be when 'all the world's a lawyer,' but there enough of a bit of a pregnant nugget of wisdom in this old chestnut...
7
@God Yes, dear. And now back to the story.
4
@God Thank God we've got God here. And to think the NYT once said God was dead....
1
Having been both poor and rich, it’s my opinion that those who disparage the measure of “how much money will that prestigious degree get me” in favor of the value of intellectual pursuit may have a point, but it is a point particular to those already privileged enough not to worry about money.
4
"Supreme Court clerks, for instance, tend to hail from a small number of highly selective universities."
And why is that? Surely not because ONLY those universities produce graduates qualified for the post. This would merit a look in a separate study.
"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material."
After watching recent hearings, I don't think "Supreme Court material" holds to a higher standard of integrity or behavior. The crimes are just different.
9
@CMC A TV show is how you evaluate the judiciary?
3
I got into a better SUNY school on my own merits. I never wondered if I belonged there.
The vicissitudes of life often remind me of some advice I once heard on the radio, which posits that "You can't always get what you want..."
Now some wealthy Americans are not getting what wanted, and certainly not what they feel they need.
But I do...
1
@William There's a great quote going around - there always seems to at least one - or more - of these 'hot' quotes going around. This one has a couple of well-known authors - Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut - comparing notes while staying the weekend at the estate of some generic hedge-fund 'billionaire.' One of the authors remarks to the other that the hedgehog-fund guy likely makes more money in a day that the other author with his most recently published book. To which that author replies - something on the order of: 'Yes, but I have something that he'll never have. Enough...' Yep...
6
I'm a graduate of one of those elite colleges. Having attended the excellent public university in our state with in state tuition, my kids both emerged with engineering degrees, zero college debt (their dad and I ate a lot of peanut butter, but it was worth it), are were both employed within months. Seemed good to me.
11
@Joanne See ! As a result of having graduated from "one of those elite colleges," you got wonderful kids. (you made the juxtaposition, not I)
1
As a medical school admissions dean, I completely agree. I see this all the time although come people can’t see beyond the famous college name.
3
@Dave MD One understands that, 'great' football teams notwithstanding, that USC is simply one more of those 'universities,' not necessarily without distinction, but one that wealthier students attend simply because they can. At the risk of stereotyping, USC seems the very model of, not a modern major-general, but of a California college/institution, with all of the baggage that conveys...
4
@Azzard Starks I wish you'd spell that out for the less educated among us. Or was that the Mongolian translation?
@Dave MD "come people" Doc ?
Could not the better financial performance of graduates of the selective universities be tied to the higher requirements made of the "fairly" admitted students? These probably have more of the useful skills in the work environment as well.
2
@Larry Israel Maybe... And maybe the connections, social networks and the 'who you know' that students with money and connections - and, no doubt, some degree of brains, etc. - plus, all of the white and wealth privilege, etc. - have is what makes the difference in a so-called 'elite' institution. I applied, in 1972, to Boston-area graduate schools, as a working-class kid - first of my family to attend college - upon graduating from a state university with a, at that time, well-deserved, academic and research reputation. I received a 'thanks, but no thanks' letter from the Business School at WGU (Harvard - what many Bostonians sarcastically/satirically refer to as the 'World's Greatest University'). My letter of non-acceptance suggested that I 'needed to get out and work in industry for a few years, then re-apply.' At the same time, there was one Willard [Mittens] Romney, with approximately the same amount of real-world business and work experience, who was happily and cheerfully accepted to WGU's Joint MBA/J.D. program. Of course, he knew, and subsequently, met more, ah, 'well-situated' or 'well-disposed' students. And I am sure that this network helped 'Mittens' become quite wealthy over time, as he, the Boston Consulting Group, Bain Capital, and so on, commenced the roll-up of numerous industries, as well as LBOs [Leveraged Buyouts] of so-called 'value' or 'undervalued' companies, making a lot of money. Two different students/graduates/kids, two different outcomes...
3
@Larry Israel Could not "the better financial performance" be tied also to family connections?
3
Excellent article. For the very wealthy though, most or many have the idea that their children will be members of the super elite. They will grow up to be top lawyers, investment bankers, political leaders, founders of great institutions, fully capable of assuming their family legacies and to do that properly they do need to end up at the very best undergraduate institutions so they can they go to the very best graduate and professional schools so they can work for the very best companies, law firms, investment banks, or whatever the power curve requires.
So begins the maniacal drive to get the children accepted into the best pre-K programs, then the best primary schools leading to the top elite secondary schools and so on. The alternative is the idea that if they don't do this their children will go an average college, an average law school or business school and they will end up living very ordinary unassuming lives and fail to meet the high expectations for continuing or building the family dynasty. In turn, their children will end up being just as ordinary as them.
As for the people who were willing to become felons to get their children into USC- I guess they missed memo.
4
@Yankelnevich "...their children will end up being just as ordinary as them." as they. back to school.
Have never forgotten my 1957 "family interview" with the Brandeis director of admissions (at the then-Roosevelt Hotel, of all venues!). My parents & I were genially informed that because I'd applied for a full scholarship, I'd be one of top 3 on their waitlist. We were also told that if we could in any way withdraw the application--and its attendant financial statement--I'd become a member of the Class of '61. Hands were shaken, good luck wished, etc. Later at home, my dad asked how disappointed I was. I replied I was going to Barnard, which had already accepted me (I'd also won a NYS Regents Scholarship, which covered tuition, etc.) At the time my grasp of economics was minimal, but I did ask him if it wasn't a form of "blackmail" to hear "Pay up & get in--never mind your academic standing." As they say in France: "Plus ca change...."!
11
You may have dodged a bullet. There is a fascinating journal article about the pre-med experience there you can find by googling "the myth of the cut-throat pre-meds". Written by an adviser there, it tries to dispel the common stereotype of the ruthless grind culture associated with "pre-med"; it actually goes in the opposite direction though. He credibly shows out-&-out cheating & sabotage (how he narrowly defines "cut-throat") are relatively rare, but winds up saying that rough, aggressive, even single-minded competitiveness falling short of out-&-out cheating & sabotage are the norm, even de rigeur. In other words, one protracted, Hobbesian weed-out process permeating every detail an moment of those students' experience.
Even for those embracing the competitive achievement ethos as compatible with normal educational goals such as actual learning itself, will find their idealization of this sort of "meritocracy" contradicted by what goes on in labs: the author says virtually everybody must fudge lab numbers because the competitive process doesn't reward data that naturally emerges in actual experiments, so with a wink and a nod, lab courses are administered as a charade in which competitive students are expected to be strategic-pragmatic with the data. Many students who couldn't play ball this way dropped pre-med, thoroughly alienated & dispirited.
There is an old New Yorker cartoon that this brings to mind. "If you can't stand the Machiavellianism, get out of the cabal.
7
In my field, anthropological archaeology, the quality of the graduate department and not the university "elite" or otherwise makes a difference. This is partly due to the demographic position of archaeologists in North America, dominated by Middle Class and even lower Middle Class backgrounds (including me using the GI Bill), since you won't become a millionaire in the trenches so to speak. At my former department of anthropology at UC, Berkeley, there were 12 archaeology faculty when I retired in 2011. Of that number, six received PhDs from public universities (UCLA-2, UCSC, ASU-2, U Illinois), one Ivy League (Yale), one private non-Ivy (Chicago), and four foreign (Toronto-2, McGill, Edinburgh). The Ivy Leagues in the US really do not have high quality archaeology programs. A survey of members by the Society for American Archaeology a number of years ago ranked the top five programs in the US and Canada. The top five were all public universities. So, in some fields it's the accomplishment of the individual that is the primary evaluative criteria for jobs and success. Corruption at the top is rampant, and often necessary since many wealthy children could not compete on a level playing field.
7
Exactly. Generally speaking, attending a fancy university does give you a leg up, even if you don’t need one. But legs may be provided if you’re smart enough to find a really good department to study in, or even somebody world-famous within a so-so department. Or, you can just be brilliant very early on.
3
Maybe the Ivies don't like or cultivate disciplines that remind them they are soon to become relics!
In all the coverage of this higher education corruption scandal, I keep coming back to tne same quote that constantly seems so a propos to university venality going too far: "It's hard to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." This is the ultimate flaw in spoils-driven "meritocracy" developed over the last half century.
In other words, embracing anthropological archeology may lead universities to see themselves historically, which would put them in the tradition of monasteries (brick-and-mortar repositories and transmitters of learning), with the internet (what Ivan Illych anticipated referring to "learning webs" in "De-Schooling Society") playing the same role that the printing press several centuries ago.
Universities in with such a perspective might begin to start dismantling themselves. Or on the other hand, they could dig in and start actling like HAL, convincing us, so unconvincingly, how enthusiastic/committed they are for the mission, in a desperate survival plea. Universities have loads of bright people, and know how to seem indispensible. One way: less archeology!
(And less history generally: no Gibbon, no Thucyides...)
1
I'm a proud graduate of California public schools including higher ed. Merit scholarships helped defray most of the costs. A tiny few (relative to 130k+ admissions each year) might might get in by cheating but it's very hard to buy your way into the UC's (excluding test prep courses and fancy private schooling, neither insignificant these days).
People with money always find ways to smooth their own path and the paths of their offspring. Where we fail in education is having a public service inadequately and unevenly funded at all grade levels across the country. No doubt parents, students, and schools could do more with current resources, but, regardless, we end up leaving vast numbers with less than fully developed potential. The country as a whole suffers for this.
We should fund public universities, colleges, and trade schools at levels adequate to the public need for educated as well as re-educated workers. Student debt should be minimal, low interest, and forgiven for public service jobs.
In exchange for the gov't funding they already receive, privates can be free to admit legacies and the wealthy to a fixed fraction of their spots (10-20%?), but they should pay a high premium. The extra money should be used to expand total enrollment by 20-50% with the entire balance admitted on merit.
Call it a national emergency and a threat to our security. It's just as important as infrastructure investments. Our competitors around the world are not waiting for us to wake up.
6
@Michael Tyndall I was recently shocked to learn from a former admissions officer at UC Davis that the campus gave preferences to "legacies" (sons or daughters of UCD alumni). I can understand why private colleges and universities that rely heavily on alumni contributions for their operation would do this, but the justification for doing so at a taxpayer-funded public university eludes me.
8
@Michael Tyndall
What an insight. Thank you so much for adding this feedback. I’m going to repost it to my state FB forum because I know they will agree with me. And you and it will add further food for thought!
3
Between the lines this article admits that top colleges are crucial for admittance to the 0.1% jobs that rule the world and siphon off wealth from the rest of us (while admittedly adding a miniscule amount of value aside from their parasitism).
This is why elites are resorting to underhand tactics to get their kids in those colleges because pre-existing wealth doesn't buy you access to the wealth stream that is an investment bank job.
It's tragic that this article's and perhaps our socety's conception of social justice is that a tiny subset of black and Hispanic people should have equal access to that pathway to parasitism. I wonder what college the author went to.
10
"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material." - Best NYTimes paragraph ever!
19
But you’ll do very well in the Ninth Circuit.
5
@Kevin
And yet....
3
@Kevin yeah, but then there's Brett Kavanaugh
4
Mommy, I don’t want to go there. All my friends are going to USC.
Honey, Arizona is a fine school.
I don’t mean the school; it’s the whole state.
Arizona’s close to home. You can drive your Land Rover back and forth.
But it’s not in California, Mommy.
Okay, fine, your Daddy and I will get you into USC.
I want a single room, Mommy.
Of course.
10
@Megustan Trenes Very cute. And then what? The first line of the story was, "Was it worth it?"
2
Enough with the incessant, whiny diatribe about the stresses placed on families because of the college admissions processes. Wah! "Life is so hard...we have to jump thru hoops to get our kid, likely undeserving in the first place, into a bragging list school." Wah! Where's my tiny-violin!?
Oh the troubles of the American, First world elites, and those desperately seeking to get there thru their kids. Its so sad for you all.
Really, how can the rest of us born into less, and born into hard work, possibly help and console you all? Can we lay down and let you walk over our backs, keep your feet un-muddied and pristine, like you believe they should be? Can we carry your kids books, and while at it, them too, so they don't strain their muscles?
I know maybe those of us who realize life is hard, and will always be, should just get out of the way so your precious little babies can get all they deserve. Not what they earned, but what you keep telling them is theirs by right.
Should we do that? Is life too hard for your precious little darlings?
BTW; this alleged problem is the sole doing of the Boomers. Now their kids and grand kids are simply reaping what the Boomers sowed. Enjoy!
10
@Boregard Does the "Enough" command mean that you're the referee of this dialogue or just that you're uncomfortable hearing other opinions?
2
This is soo First world, in a country rapidly falling into a 3rd-world dictatorship. Ohhh, heads were photoshopped onto pictures of athletes to make a point. Humm, but some authors do that on book covers. Who were the victims? Obviously, the schools themselves. Who, if they impose academic standards, will flunk out the cheaters sooner or later. Fifty rich white families con 5 rich white campuses, while ignoring the 5000 other schools. Other than the media, who cares?
4
Oh, the fifty families who gave up a lot to get their kid, who actually earned the spot, into that university. Nobody you’d care about.
3
This is the American caste system.
15
@Larry Thau Except that one has to have a full high-school education even to try to make the "grade".
The ivy league takes the well connected and monied and keeps them well connected to money. Grades are not the point. They also take simply amazing students who demonstrated how amazing they were BEFORE college or post grad and then they take credit for the student’s success, to wit: s/he’s a Harvard grad. S/he’s a Yale grad, etc.
The real issue is hiring managers, particularly on the East Coast where the ivies are entrenched. The hiring managers are taught to hire grads from the ivies for their connections to money -solely because the new hire will know someone else with money. Connections are paramount. Ability to do the job? Doesn’t enter into the decision.
The reason silicon valley happened on the West Coast is not that UCB and Stanford aren’t above croneyism but that it isn’t entrenched to the point of asinine (like high school drop out Trump is a college grad...) so bright students can still shine, intellectualism and intelligence count-how darned elite of the, (get the sarcasm?) ...we’ll see for how long in this environment...without bright people, which can’t be in brown people or immigrants according to Trump, Fox and propagandized base, we are toast. Putin’s goal achieved with the help of the ivies and cadet bone spurs’ use of the military, the police and biker gangs...
8
@Sw This Ivy League son of a WV junk dealer doesn't quite see the connection to Putin. Can you explain, a little less lengthily?
4
@kenneth
Ability to do the job doesn't matter when hiring the ivies. inability to do the job (Trump) is preferred by Putin.
USC has a reputation as a party school. It is in no way an elite school. Please scratch it off your list. A degree from any UC or CSU has more value.
11
@Zane Uh, not anymore. Maybe in the 1980s. Not so much now. The acceptance rate is now a very modest 16 percent. It’s ranked in the top 20 for undergrad programs.
5
@Berkeley Bee Same thing with NYU which might as well be an Ivy now. Spruced up and very competitive.
2
@Susan McHale I grew up in the western part of Massachusetts, then came east to go to graduate school. Every previously called 'junior college,' as well as every other school is now Wassamattu UNIVERSITY... Opportunity abounds, eh?!
1
"It turns out that students who come from less privileged backgrounds benefit greatly from selective colleges. Elite higher education gives them social capital they didn’t already have. ... When you’re a 19-year-old YouTube star who spends spring break on a billionaire’s yacht, life tends to work out."
What hogwash.
Students from less privileged social backgrounds tend to suffer from a lack of business background or professional background, even if they have the talent and aptitude. Elite higher education gives their talent and aptitude the edge of academic credentials to tide over lack of money or influence or contacts.
And when you are a kid on a billionaire's yatch, you are targeted by everyone less fortuntate and that is when you need an elite degree to prove you have brains of your own.
2
Basically, life is unfair and that’s the way it is. We are not equal, and suffice it to say, we really do not have equal rights. Some people have more merit than others. Inequality is built into the system. Accept it, that is the way it is, especially if the brown and black people run things which is what they want. White people have leaned over backwards to be fair and to no avail. Each group puts its own group first and I mean, ALL groups. Look at the New York Times with the Democrats!
6
@Labete ALL white people? ALL brown and black people?
ps The families owning and operating The New York Times are mostly Republicans.
2
@Labete Oy... You had me, for a moment, in the beginning of what subsequently became your rant/screed, with the "..really do not have equal rights." But, then you devolved, ahem, into "...if the brown and black people run things which is what they want. White people have leaned over backwards to be fair and to no avail." Oh, tempora, o mores... Will no one deliver me from this loathsome priest?!
1
These cheater don’t just land where they don’t deserve, they push out a deserving person to make room. They literally steal possibilities from someone else.
These silver spoon-fed kids need to be tossed out the door from the universities they are attending immediately. Any institution that doesn’t do so is deeply invested into the fix.
6
What do you call a med student who graduated at the bottom of class?
Doctor.
2
@Fred Yes, we all remember that one. What's confusing is what it has to do with the story about "elite colleges."
2
@Fred What does one call a commenter who says the same thing every day, regardless of the topic ?
2
A lot more than you might think at least for the first job.
4
This is the result from a pipeline from rich kids to Wall Street and government jobs. That the kid is a complete idiot is not a disqualification for getting a CEO position. Is it any wonder that the banking industry is corrupt and filled with seemingly clueless people? That and the fact that the other rich kids in government will not prosecute obviously criminal acts by their own is no surprise.
6
"How Much Does Getting Into an Elite College Actually Matter?"
It depends on the person. If, as a parent, you are a malignant narcissist who sees your children and their accomplishments as nothing more than an extension of yourself (think of the stereotypical "Tiger Mother"), then I suppose it means more than anything in the world for your child to get into an elite college.
I think a more important and related question is this: What is it about American society that produces so many malignant narcissists like the one described above?
8
I was waiting to hear it: “women and minorities hurt most” by the illegal activity.
When global warming destroys civilization the headline will read: “women and minorities hurt most.”
Is it possible to cover a story so as not to claim: “women and minorities hurt most”?
As a poor white male without a chance of ever seeing the inside of Harvard or Yale, I’d love to count too.
11
@John So many more females than males attend college now. Look at the female/male ratios. Would a college really want a 65/55% mix? I don't think so. It's probably easier for male applicants than females to get in, since females far outnumber males.
1
@John "I’d love to count too."
Have you ever done anything about that for yourself?
As the son of a junk dealer from the hills of southern WV, I went from a public high school to the Ivy League (one undergraduate and two grad schools) without ever being made to feel I did not belong.
2
While people moan about affirmative action giving "their kid's college spot" to a so-called "unqualified minority," the rich have been buying, bribing and cheating their children's way into elite schools for ages, and in greater numbers than anything resulting from affirmative action.
This isn't new. This is America.
6
At least one third of the entering classes at these elite schools should be chosen by lottery. Then they’ll have true diversity, and everyone will benefit. The professors will complain about the quality of the students but too bad. Maybe these professors will find out what it means to teach. The same goes for the white students who have a sense of entitlement. Maybe at last they can come out of their privileged cocoons and see what the real world is like where there is true diversity. As it is, there’s a sprinkling of minorities but an essentially white privileged group sets the tone for the whole school. Minorities who matriculate there must feel they’ve landed on the moon.
6
Doesn’t anyone go to college to learn anymore?
5
Why even bother with all the expense and worry? Just buy the Harvard sticker for your rear car window and the Princeton sweat shirt. If people ask, go ahead and lie--if you're found out, at least you won't go to prison.
16
I sure its been said already...but as the case of the Loughlin daughter so dramatically and disgustingly examples, her admission was not about her parents hope she would get a good, maybe great education. It was for them, to brag about, and in turn, for their despicable, vapid daughter of the "Look at Me!" generation, to boost her Brand.
She's admitted on camera, that she's not there for the education. "I'm here for the games, the parties and hang'n out...you all know how I feel about an education." ( I paraphrase) As such she be immediately removed. And then blacklisted by all other college admission boards as an undeserving candidate.
She doesn't need school. She's already on third base. She's on the Hollywood, faux celebrity insider track. She's a Brand. She's not a person seeking to better herself thru education, or the trials and tribulations of that work experience. She's already on third base, with a nice lead towards home plate.
She doesnt see herself as anything but a Brand, and the ambassador of same. She's a marketing object. Thats how her parents raised her. To be a self-contained marketing dept, Rep, and set-placement all in one neat little, buttoned nosed package.
She, so many attractive females like her, see themselves as nothing but a Brand. That's how she measures her value, her self-esteem is wholly linked to her ability to place herself in marketing situations. She doesn't do things for the experiences, but to market her Brand.
How utterly vapid.
8
@Boregard
She's also just an 18 yr old kid, living in a world where that "brand" is what counts most. Is there any surprise that she is the product of her upbringing?
But that's the whole point of college. To have the chance to figure out who you are, and not just simply what you've been raised to be. Sometimes, getting to that level of maturity takes a lot of time, and some don't make it. But others do.
The parents are the guilty ones in this situation. But the kids? I'd give them a second chance. If nothing else, this level of public humiliation is probably strong enough.
6
@Boregard "She doesnt see herself as anything but a Brand" Whereas you are much more significant, seeing yourself as the judge.
2
@Boregard Wow. How great you must have been at age 18.
1
It’s not about helping rich kids attain their own riches—it’s about prestige and bragging rights for parents as well as child. It’s about telling everyone where your kid goes to school and hearing them say, “Good school!”
5
“...All are punish’d”.
1
The mere fact that most of the Supreme Court and most of the presidents and most people in Congress went to these elite schools says that there is a closed club that exists within these walls. Fraternities, certain private clubs allow access to the highest level of government. I am not saying that these graduates are stupid, but to deny that they are networking in the big leagues is just silly.
5
Good article, but Brett Kavanaugh is not Supreme Court material”, yet he sits on the bench for life.
8
Why isn’t he? Do be specific. We’re not talking Dan Quayle here.
3
I went to a small liberal arts school. My work colleague went to Harvard.
We both work at the same firm and are similarly titled.
Bragging rights aside, not sure why his more $$ education can be qualified as better than mine.
6
"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material." And yet, we end up with Trump in the White House?
4
First: Two years community college. Do well. Transfer to state school. Do well. Go to an Ivy League Law School. It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.
9
In reading about the scandal and what the parents did to get their children admitted to the schools mentioned, I keep thinking - How about the kids? Did they know about it? What do the parents' actions say about how they see their kids - " they are not that smart so I have to do this for them", " you are so incapable of taking a test and succeeding at it that I have to pay , cheat, lie, etc to make sure you get into school", " you will always need me because I did not teach you or prepare you for adulthood" .
3
Exceptional students who honestly earn high grades and admission to an elite school have every right to be proud because it is, indeed, an impressive achievement. That said, it is in no way a guarantee of success and happiness in life. On the other hand, anyone who claims that they missed out in life just because they went to a big state school instead of an ivy or ivy safety school is a fool who was never bound for success in the first place. That anyone would feel the need for admission to Yale so keenly they'd bribe/cheat is pathetic.
1
I refer to my college as the eleventh best in Georgia. Yet, I had a career in the hedge fund business and am successfully transferring to venture capital.
Because you went to a prestigious school didn't make you smarter than anyone else. But it did increase your chances of being considered for a position in the industry.
A resume has no personality. But if you went to Yale, a fellow Yale graduate was obligated to take your call. Now that is an advantage.
If your name has initials after it, you are more likely to get an interview than the applicant named Jamal.
Life is very unfair.
But not for me. I was born a white male in the U.S. in the twentieth century. It doesn't get much more privileged than that.
Well, unless you went to Harvard instead of West Georgia.
9
Critical article with the central point nobody’s been making. The absurdity that these people put so much effort to put their utterly mediocre progeny through these bourgeois laundromats, as if their vast wealth and social connections weren’t guaranteeing success even with a semester at community college and a brain hemorrhage.
I exist in an ecosystem full of the pre-ordained elite ivy types and I can assure you all the Columbia degree did is make them even more entitled, obnoxious and oblivious to their meager mental faculties.
4
We went out of our way to avoid ASU as well. That's why we earned our ways into UC and Oxford and Harvard. USC never crossed anybody's mind who had any sense. The fact that the silly people were unaware that SC would cheerfully admit anybody on receipt of a valid check for the full amount just tells you that there are more fools waiting to be scammed than scammers can possibly get to.
2
@GWPDA USC has buttoned up its game since the 1980s. Its acceptance rate today is 16 percent.
1
Perhaps the most embarrassing examplar of the value of an elite college is Mark Riddell. His Harvard education paved the way for taking the SAT test continuously for 20 years and committing fraud. I don’t view him as “smart” — many people could get predictable SAT scores at age 37 if that’s all they had been doing.
Elite colleges do not have a monopoly on success. Katherine Johnson went to West Virginia State College. Her math skills were the foundation of space travel to the moon.
8
@Miranda H. and that was in the 40s or 50s!
The insane genuflection of people to "the Ivies" dates mostly from the 80s and the careerism of the boomers.
1
I find it amusing that the Loughlins seem to think that anyone would look at their duaghters as something other than complete dunces. None of their family members should ever act again or sell any fashion lines, and all of them deserve to be flipping burgers at the local MacDonalds over the next 50 years.
5
This is such an important article and right on the money. I have gone to both types of colleges and med school as well and I have found that it is an individual's internal drive that is linked to career success. Give me a gunner from State U over a legacy frat boy at Ivy U any day!
3
Tell it to parents in Westchester County. They will pay anything to brag at dinner parties.
5
Um going to a selective University is a huge door opener. I went to MIT. As soon as people know that it's like they just assume I'm a genius. It's unfair and stupid but that's how the world works. You got Harvard or Stanford or MIT and you will get a job over someone with a degree from a state school.
Also, at MIT my education was amazing. When I took senior level classes at a state college it was like taking sophomore level classes at MIT. Plus people who go to MIT are motivated and curious. At state colleges it felt like adult day care for kids to party and take drugs.
7
@Jacqueline your attitude fits right in with the elites who feel they are better than everyone else. You needed to meet more of your fellow students at MIT if you think there weren't MIT students partying and doing drugs and met more state college students if you think they were there for the partying and drugs. Seems like your MIT education did a lousy job broadening your perspective. The vast majority of students graduate from non elite schools and manage to do just fine
2
This is consistent with the “mismatch” theory: An African-American is better off going to a college commensurate with his/her abilities and majoring in a STEM field rather than graduating from Harvard in an easy major like Ethnic Studies (which affirmative action admits tend to cluster in because they can’t keep up with their classmates in more academically rigorous classes).
4
Not much. Your childhood “Zip Code” is is a more accurate predictor of future financial success, than your college.
4
Funny there was a song written about the phenomenon of privileged kids going to elite schools to no real benefit on their life. Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Ask the kids whose parents cheated them into a top college, and now have to face the music.
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/likearollingstone.html
1
My take? People who do well there benefit, but it’s not a benefit unless it’s “the school for you”, even if you’re whip smart.
2
Blacks admitted to elite colleges always had to contend with the perception that they really didn’t belong there and that they weren’t as qualified as their white peers. Now it turns out that they have plenty of company in whites who practice their own form of affirmative action whether it’s scamming the system or buying their way in the old fashioned way. During vacations blacks go home to find out they can no longer relate to their friends from the hood. For whites it’s Party! Party!
1
Still waiting for Herr Trump to comment on school admission scandals.
4
@wp-spectator He first has to be told what he thinks.
1
I worked in television journalism for years and got my job by simply saying that I would work for free and meeting someone who got me an interview. I worked nights at a bar and volunteered to do every crappy shoot that the other interns (Brown, Columbia, Amherst etc.) wouldn't do. They had splendid educations, which I did not, but when hiring time came, I was hired and promoted faster than all of them. I don't know if that could happen now, but my kids have completed university and have had jobs since they were 18. One qualified for an Ivy league school but got a full ride at a lesser school. He has no debt, makes good money and has been at his company for 4 years. At 25 he is a director and has opened a new branch office and has a staff of 20, including his brother. Privilege and connections are important, so let's not pretend this is is a meritocracy, but hard work also pays off. Cheating, boy have you given your kids a black eye that they didn't ask for, now, no matter what their accomplishments, they will always be suspect. Kinda sad for the kids, but hey you're rich. The really sad part is the kids who missed the opportunity that your privilege stole from them.
3
why becoming a Supreme Court justice is the ultimate achievment?. There are plenty of lawyers out there who make millions, who went to their local public school( think of tobacco lawyers) and public university law schools.
I went to a no name public college, and professional school that you won’t be able to locate without GPS. I did fine, hell I will I admit it, I am in the one percent. In my profession I happened to work with colleagues who attended some of these elites schools, I don’t see noticeable difference, I am the boss.
Now, I am in NYC, because my teenage daughter thinks it her birthright to attend Columbia university, since she was born in Manhattan. If she has what it takes academically and gets accepted then that is fine, if she doesn’t get in, I am 100% okay if she attends the local public school.
3
I come from a family of five generations of black family college graduates.
Beginning with those who were enslaved and free-persons of color who attended HBCU's and their separate and unequal born and bred HBCU graduate children.
Thereafter, we have attended elite colleges and universities along with public and private universities across the academic spectrum. Typically over the last three generations we have multiple degrees including BS/BA's, Masters and PhD's in a wide variety of academic areas along with professional MBA's, JD's and MD's.
None of us has ever turned as white and equal in America as the foreign models Ivana and Melania Trump. Nor has any of us ever been as white and equal in America as the high school graduate entertainers Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
9
The saddest thing about this article is its implicit assumption that success can be measured by income.
7
Last night I watched a lecture live-streamed from Australia. Brilliant researchers were discussing their efforts to find a biomarker and a cure for the disease that is destroying my daughter's life.
Students admitted by bribery are taking up space at good colleges that could have been given to future researchers.
5
These parents aren't crunching the numbers to analyze their kids future prospects...they simply want another status symbol. Little Johnny going to a top school is just like another sports car or designer bag.
3
I’ve known adults with zero common sense who’ve graduated from Ivy League colleges, and brilliant adults who’ve graduated from community colleges.
Those elite schools mean little. It’s the curiosity and aptitude of the individual that counts.
2
It's not really about increasing, or maintaining, wealth for you child. It is about wanting to avoid them having to mingle with a different socio- economic group of people.
3
Everything in a market based system becomes commoditized. This is certainly the case with education in the US. Elite schools take in only a few % of applicants and can increase fees whenever they want by as much as they want. The main advantage of attending an elite school is networking and access to well connected people. The actual teaching is typically not much better than at a good community college. In fact often the Nobel prize winning profs are off at workshops and think tanks and delegate the chore of teaching to a grad student anyway. The real value add is being “in the club”. I attended a British public school as a kid and this was certainly true there - the unspoken code of the old boy network is worth way more than a good grasp of Latin grammar.
1
How is this news?
Of course, going to an Ivy League or other big name school is going to significantly benefit those who come from an impoverished or minority background, particularly if they are the only one in their families to do so. It could entirely change their life trajectory, and the lives of their families as well.
Of course, it has virtually no effect on those who already have such enormous privilege. What was that degree going to get any of those kids anyway--jobs? No, their parents' connections would.
That's why this was so upsetting to begin with. The only students who really need an Ivy League name on their resume are the ones who are most seriously disadvantaged. That's why we have (and should have) affirmative action.
2
People who didnt go to elite colleges, did and are doing just fine in life. They have their common sense to rely on. They are not crippled by parents wealth.
1
I highly recommend Frank Bruni’s book “Where you go is not who you’ll be” for anyone dealing with the current college admissions process/hysteria. The focus has to be on the best fit for the particular student. That’s the path we followed, and encouraged our daughter to follow, and it has made all the difference.
3
In my many years of practicing law I have never been asked by any client or colleague where I went to college or law school. I have had a handful of opposing counsel tell me they went to Harvard, without me asking.
3
We have to stop talking out of both sides of our mouths. We have read/heard countless of arguments that diversity is wonderful and everyone should have the same opportunities, but then we discriminate against (usually) white and Asian high achieving students because a lesser-qualified student needs an "opportunity." Let's go back to making decisions based on merit. All the "diversity" in the world won't make an average or low-achieving student a high achiever. However, failing to challenge and enrich the already high-achieving students will likely cause them to stagnate and limit their future achievement.
2
Having a UG degree from the Ivies is an automatic clear advantage when applying for a job. Speaking as a long time hiring manager of a large NYC company . You certainly see the pattern across NYC in any business of size. Of course if the interviewee bombs, then you make a hard pass on that candidate, but generally folks from these institutions are VERY well-spoken and *generally* better socialized to work in a corporate environment. After you have done hundreds of in person interviews, you see the pattern coming from the candidates themselves.
1
It’s depressingly reductionist, and depressingly typical of our times, to use income as the measure of success and university impact.
2
Social capital is the whole point. It's all about who your children make friends with, sleep with, and hopefully marry and have offspring with. The quality of education is almost irrelevant. That's not what parents are paying for.
3
To me, the point of the article is to highlight the senselessness of the financial and criminal hoops the parents of some of the 'side entry' students jumped through. What will they actually accomplish for themselves in these schools? So, their resumés will jump to the top of the pile more quickly. But what professor will recommend them? What will their transcripts show? Won't an interview (or job performance) reveal the facade? They didn't qualify for admission to begin with.
While test scores and GPA do not define a person's potential, there is a college for just about every student (if you can afford it, another sore spot). You will thrive most at a college that fits you. Every time I hear the word 'elite college', my stomach turns... there are so many fantastic schools here! And thankfully, so many kinds of brilliance and ways to contribute to society. 'Elite' is a moniker that is important to people who care about monikers.
2
14% at Yale are "legacies", children of alumni. At Harvard the most generous donors ,those who give more than a million dollars are the Committee on University Resources who have or had 336 children at Harvard even though they only except 1 out of 10. They also have a Z list about 25 to 50 well connected but borderline academically are accepted if they defer for a year. So if your very rich you can probably get in. You should read Daniel Golden "The Price of Admission:How Americas ruling class Buys it's way in to Elite College-and who gets left at the gate". You wonder why there is fraud?
1
"...engineering at less selective public universities..." I can assure the authors that from my experience and my son's - each of us has a engineering degree (mechanical and chemical) from a Tier One, Texas public research univeristy - that the colleges of engineering at Tier One public universiites are far more selective than liberal arts admissions to the Ivy League. Ivy League data is statistical nonsense since it includes countless thousands who are hopelessly unqualified but apply for social status reasons. These low horsepower kids never consider applying to a college of engineering at a major state univerisity, they would be laughed at.
3
It seems to me that some upper middle class parents are upset that they got outplayed. But they aren't indicted either. For the vast majority of college applicants, they weren't getting into elite schools anyways. It reads like an extra slot opened up at Arizona State University, too. :)
1
"students who come from less privileged backgrounds benefit greatly from selective colleges" They should only accept those students since no one else has much of a benefit.
1
As an undergraduate my son went to a good small university in San Antonio, Texas-well regarded in Texas but perhaps not well known out of Texas. He had a 50 % tuition scholarship . He then went to a good , small law school in the midwest. He had a full academic scholarship because he has quite a good mind and works extremely hard. How wonderful to exit law school without a $ 150,000 debt. He had fellowships in Washington D.C. One was a Udall fellowship and one was a Dept. of Justice internship. His career has been quite first rate since then. I am very proud of him and of his work. This is just to say that the country is opening up a bit more for those outside the Ivy League. Merit is recognized. Even better if you do not insist upon living in New York City or D.C. And he is content to do constitutional cases, not corporate finance.
And just as an amusing aside: My father was an M.I.T. graduate. He went courtesy of the G.I. Bill. When he moved to S Texas in 1951 to work for Shell Oil Co. no one had ever heard of M.I.T. among his office contemporaries.
" Oh", one of them famously said , " Is it anywhere near as good as the Colorado School of Mines ?".
But everyone knows Harvard and Yale are atop the pyramid. If you want to do certain things those schools still do matter but less and less. Brains, application , passion, work habits, ethics are most important.
3
I just spent 5 years as a consultant for a large financial services firm in Newport Beach whose former CEO was indicted, I can attest to the competitiveness there. It starts in kindergarten and even within Newport Beach it is completely divided by income and very little mixing from the classes (titles or income ranges probably broken down in 50 to 100K increments). It is designed that way by the Irvine Company and is fascinating how people fall into it.
It is ridiculous that they are making $1 million dollar bail for what has been happening all along with the elite paying money to get into the schools. There was a big cheating scandal there at Corona del Mar for SATs a year or two ago as well. Whether it is a CEO or an actress, when the President of the United States is lying constantly and seems to be involved in all sorts of scandals an investigation like this almost seems inconsequential and intended by Trump to play to his base to protest against the "elite". This "press release" done two days after his budget tries to cut education by $7.8 billion and stopping loan forgiveness on these scam schools.
All the rich entitled kids want to get into USC and Stanford, they already have the best tutors, schools, etc. Wake up parents, there is more to life than this. Wake up shocked people, this is life, institutional corruption abounds in the US whereas the individualized graft is abhorred. Stop this holier than though attitude, NYT readers should know better.
1
My dad likes to say he went to Exeter and Harvard right around the time they decided to pivot from being schools for boys from wealthy families to bring schools for SMART boys from wealthy families, and he couldn’t really be tell you which he was but it was no great shakes to get in if you were him in those days. His point is that it’s only pretty recently (50 years) that these schools have had a reputation for academic excellence and not just as a place that east coast blue bloods sent their sons after Groton and Exeter and St. Paul’s. The Ivy’s have successfully cultivated their mythological status as the almighty bestowers of greatness, but it’s mostly in the eye of the beholder. It’s what you do with your education that matters, not where you got it.
2
Curious, educable, open minded, egalitarian people will succeed in life no matter where they go to college or even if they do not go to college. They may not make as much money, but only in America is money a measure of success.
1
Remind me again, which university did Albert Einstein attend? Oh, he didn't. Nor did Shakespeare. Nor did Michelangelo. Or Leonardo.
The university face-to-face campus is an anachronistic creation of the middle ages before the printing press. Because manuscripts took so long to produce, the likes of Abelard would transmit the received wisdom of the age from his lectern to a packed lecture hall of students, some of whom took notes of what the great man was saying.
Universities don't educate most undergrad students. Universities are sausage machines. A lump of raw meat goes in one end and is processed into a neatly wrapped package at the other.
Most undergrads never read the entire text of any of the great writers of antiquity. And if they do, they read the wrong stuff anyway, because they don't know any better, and half the time nor do their ignorant university lecturers and tutors.
I wasted three years of my life reading physics and philosophy at a high ranked university. Only after I had graduated did I really begin to get to grips with the fundamentals of these two disciplines.
Learn a trade so you can earn a living. If you must, go to university to gain a professional degree.
Otherwise, teach yourself ancient and modern languages so that you can read the great authors in the original. And become proficient, to graduate level, in the techniques of applied mathematics, which you can do by working through all the problems in cheaply bought second-hand text books.
4
@Colenso
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Early_life_and_education
Einstein attended ETH Zurich 1896-1901
I am an old man and I would like my college experience to be available to those who want to go to college for an education. I graduated from Queens College in 1956 and it was tuition free. To be considered for entry boys had to be on the High School's Dean's List and girls, even higher or pass a test that took all day.
On the 1st day of class the incoming class was addressed by the Dean, who said that a year hence 1/2 of us will have flunked out. He was right it was more than 1/2 and what was left was the smartest and most hard working and everyone was thinking about graduate school. There were no dumb kids graduating.
I went to Columbia for my M.A., and found that what I was being taught I already learned at QC,
I then went to law school at night and worked full time and then after my law degree and was practicing I earned an LLM, in federal trade regulation from NYU Grad School of Law.
My fellow NewYorkers made an investment in me and my wife too. I have paid taxes and employed other to work in my own firm, and owe no debt on any student loans. My oldest son (53) took a long time to get serious about college and bounced form college to college and is still paying off student loans and teaches mentally impaired teenagers in a run down area.
I believe that govt should provide a QC experience for those serious and will work hard. I will match my B.A. education with Harvard, Yale or any Ivy League College. We must distinguish between education and branding.
2
I graduated from one of the top ten most elite private colleges, at least according to all the rankings. No one ever - not once - asked me to prove I graduated or asked for a transcript. Today, over 40 years later, where I went to college is meaningless. All that matters is that I can produce. Frankly the most important result of my elite education is that I can do the NYT crosswords effortlessly. Yawn.
1
If this comes as a shock to anyone they must have been living on another planet. The question is does pedigree trump scholarship in the real world? It brings to mind the saying the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Wealth greases wheels in high places always have and always will. So all of the feigned shock about this is just that feigned. If the kids who benefitted and the universities didn't know something was awry they had blinders on. if the schools involved really wanted to solve this they would be looking for new people to be university heads.
1
If your family already has tens of millions and you are an influencer with millions of subscribers, you don't need college or even an elite college. It's the lower economic 20% where the exposure to and credence from an elite college matter. For those students, the move to the upper 20% is dramatic.
2
"Certain kinds of students — but not the privileged and the wealthy — benefit greatly from a selective university."
As soon as I read that, I knew that the article would be worthless. According to Carey, "academic research suggests that these efforts are mostly a waste of money." But is it possible that what this research measures is not the only thing that is of value to the students who attend these selective universities? Perhaps it includes the privilege of working with people who have reshaped their fields and learning, through personal interaction, how they think about it?
2
p.s. And not only having brilliant, creative people as your professors. Having brilliant, creative people as your fellow students, and learning from them.
1
Getting into an elite institution was very important for me and my family. And even though I had excellent grades, I didn’t get into my top desired college. Huh. I went to another school. And then grad school. 15 years into my corporate career at a fortune 5 company I decided that I wasn’t progressing up the corporate ladder as fast as I wanted to. And I wasn’t earning as much as I thought.
I went down the entrepreneurial route. In my mid life. And I am thriving intellectually. And financially.
I have a lot of friends who went to elite universities. They are smart. They came from elite l. But they don’t have the drive as mich as I do. I have this chip on my shoulder and the fire in me. I will succeed further because I want to. F the elite education institutions. :). They serve their purpose. But not for me.
2
It is nice to have some confirmation of what we all knew was true. As a group, rich kids aren’t that smart after all. They’re just rich.
1
The rich, or most of the rich, at least, are incredibly insecure and always trying to "earn" the approval of other wealthy types. Pedigrees help, and they know that. Although for the most part they are not all that concerned with their children's well being, since they are so focused on themselves and their image, we can view their drive to pedigree their offspring as an attempt at vicarious self-glorification.
"My son, the Harvard grad." That sort of thing.
What's sad, along with all the other things that are sad, is the effect all this nonsense has on the children of the wealthy. The "poor little rich kids" never have a clue — not just about earning a living and how that is a self-gratifying and self-confirming activity, but also about the difference between right and wrong.
Look no farther than Donald Trump, or his assorted progeny.
2
Nothing appears to be different in one’s approach to financial success. Intellect, will to work, best education available, chosen field in demand, and who you know.
2
This article raises questions about what the economists did to study the effects of a degree from an elite college. Were employers asked about winnowing resumes to put the degreed from elite colleges in one pile for an interview and the other lower tier degreed folks in another? Do employers really look at a skills set for that first interview? Those of us without a top tier degree, personal experience with high marks, strong skills, and work ethic know what it is like to be put in the second pile. Connections (or the "who you know" mantra) still matter. If you don't get an interview, you don't get the job so, of course, you learn to be resourceful with that "second class degree."
2
Perhaps mr giannulli resorted to bribery because he was embarrassed to have his daughter attend a non name school There are many outstanding small colleges in the US that provide excellent educations to their students. What is more important to these parents, the quality of the education or the “I am a proud parent of an Ivy League University” bumper sticker on their cars.
1
1% parents don't want their children to go to elite colleges to enhance their chances of success in life - those kids are already set. No what 1% parents want is to avoid embarrassment at the club when other 1% parents boast about their kid going to Yale or Harvard. Imagine the social shame of having to admit your kid is only going to UConn. Now that's worth a million bucks to avoid!
1
Competence should matter as should hard work and ambition. Hiring does not reflect this at businesses that "sell" Harvard/Yale/Ivy degrees as why money should be spent on them. Consulting, law firms, and a range of others in the services industry typify this. And there are some grads of those schools who are truly mediocre but no one in corporations wants to advertise they have been taken by poor performing Ivy grads. Ego and slacking off exist among such grads.
MIT, Caltech, or Carnegie Mellon produce stunning science excellence. Score manipulators would be gone in weeks I suspect. But the gap between science and corporate management is another story. Particularly under GOP disdain for science and facts when manipulation is given more value. Have you read a quarterly report lately? No there there.
1
This article exposes how perception drives poor unscrupulous decision making. It is so important for some privileged to establish a store front status, a degree from an elite educational institution for their children that they resort to fraud. The human ego struggles with morality over and over again..
1
At least one comment speaks of brand. Now it was 39 years ago, and things may have changed since, but then the head of the foundation that sponsored my studies abroad told us new fellows, "In Germany, we don't ask where you studied, but with whom." The former is little guarantee of the quality of your thinking; the latter, a bit more, especially if you did a dissertation with the person.
2
Why don’t we talk about the elephant in the room, which is that state university and state college systems are corrupt — they accept up to 1/3 foreign and out-of-state students, when they should be accepting ONLY students from within the state.
This is why deserving students in states like CA can’t get into public colleges.
1
I know some friends that chose prestigious schools to get their Mrs degree. Pretty smart, they are living the life now and haven’t worked a single day in their lives! They knew the types of guys they wanted to meet.
1
My daughter graduated Smith/Harvard. While she has not gotten every job she has investigated, she has consistently gotten interviews. Having S/H on your resume opens doors of opportunity.
1
The real cost of pursuing elite universities is the perpetuation of individuals who suffer some level from a narcissistic personality disorder.The perpetuation comes when alumni go back to these institutions to recruit those who are just like themselves. After all I’m smart;I’m great; I’m the most capable; I’m wonderful...and because you went to the same elite school as I...you must be too! Not unlike Garrison Keillor‘s Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
1
How tiresome that all these analyses are about financial success and not about education. Elite colleges offer or should offer elite peers to elite students. It's bad for everyone at Yale -- as well as for those who'd have a spot if admissions were fairer -- when the class is dumbed down. At least half of college is vicarious education -- dining hall conversations, new perspectives on your peers' interests, etc. All of this is lost when the ecology of student life Ian corrupted.
1
President George W. Bush went to Yale. There’s no question how he got in. He’d be the first to admit it. The question is… How did he get out?
I’d say he was definitely misunderestimated.
1
Famous person who graduated last in his class?
George Armstrong Custer, last. class of 1861 West Point
2
What this story, and dozens of others like it, fail to note is the incredible difficulty of getting into many, many non-elite schools as well as the elites. Today, it takes virtually a 4.0 gpa--and often higher--to get into a good state university in California and some other states. When students with 4.3 gpas can't get into their chosen state universities, something has gone horribly wrong with the system. One guess: until recently, community colleges have been viewed as the gateway to a good college. Now they are viewed by too many as a place where "losers" go. This is ridiculous, but sadly a sign of our hyper-competitive and status-obsessed culture.
1
Some questions:
-- Is it a crime for a student to cheat on a test at the local community college? Isn't that fraud?
-- Is it a crime for undocumented residents living in the country illegally to establish residence and enroll in US schools? Isn't that also fraud and 'taking opportunity' from an actual US citizen?
-- If having different standards for different students is so horrible, are we going to move to having no exceptions for any students? What are the standards.
-- Did Title IX create some of this problem by elevating minor sports into scholarship sports that are supposedly equal to big revenue sports like football? You notice nobody faked their way onto the Ohio State defensive line. On a related note, why do so many academics look down on athletics as non-academic. It's hard to play college football -- just as hard as calculus or concert piano, in its own way. Why should excellent superior jocks be brought down to the level of Lacrosse or rowing teams?
-- Why can't things like writing, knowledge of history and literature, or creativity count more? There's nothing wrong with preferring people who are 'well-rounded,' popular rhetoric to the contrary. The GPA weenies have ruined so much about school and it's very sad. Schools dumped Western Civ, US History and Shakespeare, and let the STEM subjects run amok.
1
I went to my Daughters High School track meet yesterday and heard the students laughing about how ridiculous all this “who is going where” stuff really is. And our outstanding public HS is right next door to one of the private schools that unfortunately is now mentioned in the news. So if nothing else, this episode serves to stop the “my parents want me to go to Harvard” nonsense, then it will be worth it.
Another thing that needs to stop is the name dropping of the elite school that someone on cable news or a talk show went to when introduced. I’m looking forward to the day when a guest is introduced as a Lehigh Grad! Yep, that’s where I went and my parents didn’t have to grease the skids or buy a building.
2
"...the scandal shows how much elite higher education has become entangled in structures of prestige, status and anxiety among the upper class." Entangled? It's not called "elite higher education" because it is better education. It is called "elite" because it is a status thing. Up there with driving an elite Bentley, wearing an elite Rolex, encrusting your teeth with elite diamonds, and putting a large stick figure family on the back of your elite Range Rover with multiple East Hampton parking stickers on it.
And to say that going to an elite institution "provides little value for their privileged offspring," is missing the point. It provides more bling. A YouTube influencer who hawks make-up and lifestyle tips naturally covets an elite no-show slot in the freshman class of Elite University. It's validation. A completely empty life needs some external validation, even if it's totally phony.
As Mr. T would say, "I pity the fool."
1
I attended Yonkers public schools in the 70’s and 80’s. I was a mediocre student with disengaged parents and I never took trig or chem in high school. I got serious later and spent the next 13 years working full time, supporting myself and finally completing an MBA from NYU. That credential along with my “grit” story opened doors for me that lead to the stable upper class life I have today. Along the way there were Mentors, supporters and cheerleaders who helped me stay on track.
Today I have one at a big ten school studying engineering and another one about to apply.
I never had aspirations for the Ivies. I didn’t have them for my kids. I see the difference between them and the “stand outs”. My goal is different. I want my kids to choose their path and enjoy the journey and have employment options
My life was so chaotic and stressful that I would not put that on them.
All this elite talk is just nonsense. There are millions of qualified people and only thousands of slots. Of course there is gaming. I want no part of it but then I don’t have the ego for it either.
1
So the rich may be right in paying to get their kid in if it keeps out a poor kid who may move up?
2
It must be sad to live your life through your children. So what your kid went to Yale or Harvard? What did you do with your own life?
From "My kid is an honor student at..." bumper stickers to "I'm a proud parent of a .... University student," the message seems depressing. For the child: "my life belongs to mom/dad; I must make them proud because they're sacrificing their lives so I'll succeed at what they want me to do." For the parent: "My child is my investment. I want to show the world that it yielded spectacular dividends: the ability to brag about my child to other, envious, parents."
3
It is an old story, isn’t it?
The nouveau riche trying to attain the status of “old money” by copying every move of the upper crust. Same neighborhoods, same restaurants, same cars, same schools, and still no class.
Lifestyles of the Rich and Tacky.
Yet we reward these clowns with tax breaks while the strivers and achievers have to pick up the slack.
1
Olivia Jade Giannulli, and all the others whose parents acted illegally/immorally to get them into elite colleges, have been deceived in a fundamental, very damaging way. They believe that they are special, anointed, among the elect, because they attend these schools. Discovering that the basis of their self-esteem, even of their ego function, is fraudulent--this is what corrupts kids early in life. Most accept privilege for its own sake, and go through life using irony and conventionality as defense and personal style. Or maybe they never make this discovery, and live in complacency. Another failure.
1
Yeah, parents like to brag about which college their kids got into. It is at least as much about the egos of the parents as it is about the blind ambition of their children. Any kid with true grit would resent having their parents help them this way. Kids with true grit want to prove to the world -- and especially to their parents -- that they can do it on their own.
But, the grown up brats who just want bragging rights probably just brought up a new generation of brats. Privilege begets privilege.
2
As I write, there are 240 comments on this article. The majority of commenters who claim to have attended an elite university... are using their full name. Sometimes even a middle initial. Most commenters use an alias and stay relatively anonymous. Not these proud Ivy leaguers!!
1
A Bribe by any other name should smell so sweet.
If I were to try to get my Governor's attention for just a few minutes, it would take at least a five figure "donation, honorarium, endowment".
Money gets the Honey.
1
I have degrees from two public universities: BA SUNY Binghamton and MS Cornell (CALS). I taught at a community college for 34 years. I always told my students that it's not what you know, it's who you know. Connections always work, for better or worse.
3
Create a matrix lottery system for admission that has comprehensive questionnaire -- students bubble in responses to range questions and rank importance. GPA along with grades received in each course for 4 years of HS get submitted. Statistical info of grade distribution by HS gets submitted (allows colleges spot grade inflation). Good/thoughtful teachers most often can set up a grading system allowing for a healthy distribution of grades. Skip SAT & ACT data since gives little worthwhile info. Maybe SAT II and AP scores get submitted? Pressure for too many AP's problematic.
In my 20 yrs of teaching at top tier NYC indep & NY public school I have watched the arms race of “getting students into” a elite colleges RATCHET up - along w/gross contest by indep sch overhauling facilities. The # of students dealing with mental health issues has increased dramatically. Equally sad, is increase in jaded students. Not much diff w/ NYC public school families. Lots of Asian children & Anglo children by 6th gr spend several weekdays & Sats doing SHSAT prep. How is our youth losing their only childhood good for society?
How hard is it to teach a room full of strong motivated students?? If top tier schools are SO great why not accept a greater range of abilities? Argument: imperative to have all “capable/bright minded” together in one place. Malarkey!
Some type of lottery system for admittance into college! Let kids enjoy their only childhood & not be asked to jump through absurd hoops!
3
I tell my children they can “go to an Ivy and major in (almost) anything” or “go to a decent school and major in business or STEM”
Too often the choice of major is overlooked. They world simply does not need people who spent $300k on film studies or philosophy (or the equivalent). But the world needs pharmacists, CPAs, programmers, engineers... I know, those jobs are not sexy but they can be earned in a 2+2 or 2+3 program and guarantee a middle class+ life.
1
I have to agree. First, its probably not because these privileged are dumb, but because they did not work during school; you might want to fault the parents here. They will get nothing out of high class universities except a bigger social network. Here in France we complain about our social elevator that is out of order; it was access to good universities during the 60s-80s for working class kids. Now its the elite, not because they bribe, but because the parents pay for tutors and special studies. This is probably a Western world problem. If ever there is a 'burn it all' revolution, it will come because of these decadent practices. I hope my son doesn't have to live it; he's worked his way thru, as I did.
1
One of the parents dissed Arizona State. He wanted his kid to go to USC. Anything but usc, I think he said
Arizona State has perhaps the best supply chain management program in the world. My nephew did that and now works for Amazon. Another nephew went to the communications program at usc, also considered among the best. He works at a youth soccer league.
We put far too much pressure on our children. We play their schools like cards in a poker game. “I’ll see your USC, and raise you Stanford.”
I went through this with my children. They practically killed themselves trying to be perfect. My daughter got into 11 of the 13 schools she applied to, all among the hardest.
My son had a more difficult time. I was in Lisbon when the first five rejection letters came. He was devastated. I went to a store and asked what the best port they had was. He pulled one, and told me it needed 20 years to age. Perfect, I said. I told my son not to open it for 20 years, and left a note in it saying, in essence, “see, it all worked out.” Spin forward five years and he is an honors graduate of Berkeley, with a good job.
You go to college to get a college education. The right one is the one you are happy to be at. Period.
2
7:53
"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material."
Given some of the material on the Supreme Court, I wouldn't be so sure.
1
President George W. Bush went to Yale. We all know how he got in. He’d be the first to admit it. The question is, how did he get out?
1
One thought might be that a student like the You-tube star ought to be booted. She's not getting an education, but rather money and "fame" out of college. A poor role model who really does not need the degree from that (good?) school or the money. Perhaps the whole family should be prosecuted for vulgarity and social greed. Or, just be left on their merry way to vote for Trump.
1
The pampered and tutored rich kids bring the actual education down since they obviously are not as smart as the high performers without the advantage. A famous professor from an Ivy League school said he sent his kids to state university and if they do well they can get their masters/PhD at an elite school. That’s what my daughter is doing. She wants to be in academia so where she gets her PhD is important. And she was a top student at a good state U. Going to an Ivy with those whiny rich egos would have been horrible. Getting her PhD there will be okay except she’ll have to TA those brats.
3
It’s funny to me that Arizona State is scoffed at by Giannulli’s father. In my mind, ASU and USC was where you went if you were wealthy but had poor grades. They were expensive four year party schools for Chicago’s suburban elite.
2
Personally I believe higher education has become so corrupt that it will be nearly impossible to apply any meaningful corrective fixes. These elite schools are about who you get to know and network as much as study. The fact that students across all sectors of higher education are being systematically bilked of their future earnings is where the real scandal lies. Some rich folk got caught cheating. Who is more complicit in this corruption? The cheaters or what they were trying to cheat. It’s like cheating a loan shark whom society deems lily white. On ivy
2
Being absolutely frank, I am so glad I never had to deal w/ any of this. When I went to college, hardly anyone went to anything but a state school, and the few that went to private colleges, stayed in the Midwest. For us, going to an ivy would have been like going to the moon. When I went to law school, I just went to my state university law school, (luckily a very good one, that I probably couldn’t get into today). When my one child wanted to go to college, we were limited to schools that offered small classes and dyslexia support. He did very well, and is now a writer.
I can’t imagine going thru the pressure, stress, competition, financial burden and social climbing these families are going thru. No wonder the teen suicide rate and opioid addiction is so high.
1
Two points.
First, People who rely on the "elite" status of the colleges they attended enjoy an initial advantage that may at first open doors but mostly peters out after a few years. Then they have to achieve on their own. The problem is that in many occupations the old "buddy system" still operates and permits its beneficiaries to coast along on their connections and their 'big name" education. That is why, absent innate talent, the "buddy system" is of limited value in STEM disciplines where things, systems, and processes created by practitioners either work or they don't. That is also why most people never heard of the best, most selective undergraduate engineering schools (like Cooper Union, Harvey Mudd. and probably the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture) -- MIT's and Caltech's fame rests primarily on their graduate schools.
Second. People who buy their kids' way into "prestige" schools are only cheating them. When one overcomes a less-than-stellar high school record and makes is into the ivied halls, that generates a sense of achievement. But kids who make it in via Mom & Dad's dishonesty know inside that they are phonies, something that undermines their sense of achievement that comes to lesser but honest achievers. The upshot is that recent disclosures of wholesale bribery are creating a generation of rich kids who are held in contempt as undeserving of their status in life.
1
Going to an "elite" law school does make a difference in the legal world. The current members of the US Supreme Court went to Columbia, Harvard and Yale. Also, I would guess that over 50% of the equity partners of the top law firms when to "elite" law schools.
2
i worked for an economic consulting firm and we advertised for an entry level analyst position opening and received several hundred resumes. My boss took the pile of resumes and started sorting into 3 piles: ones where a perspective applicant's degree had been obtained from schools my boss had heard of and subjectively thought had a "good" reputation, ones where the degree had been awarded from schools he had heard of and thought "inferior"; and those from schools he hadnt heard much of. Needless to say, those placed into the latter two piles (by far, the majority) received no further consideration and were tossed - only those with degrees from the select schools were considered.
I questioned my boss, who noted that the remaining pile still containedover 100 resumes - and that "the first cut had to be made somehow".
So, yes, in my direct experience in the job market, where you go to school is of immense value if, in the real world, you want doors to open for you. Sad but true.
3
I love this piece. Well done. I suspect
ocial capital from a child attending a selective institution comes to parents too.
1
I went to a prestigious undergraduate school but an OK law school in the late 70s. It took many years to get past that mediocre law degree, even though I thought I got a very good legal education. I did finally get where I wanted, but I think it took a lot longer. (And who knows where I might have gotten, if I'd had attended a more prestigious law school.)
For new lawyers, the snobbery applies well-beyond the supreme court clerk level, particularly if you have you want to practice in what is now called "big law."
When a young person asks me if he/she should go to law school, my answer if yes. provided that he/she can get into an ivy or equivalent law school. Otherwise, I tell him or her to consider some other line of work.
7
Would Donald Trump have been considered a serious presidential candidate for President if he had not attended UPenn?
The Ivy League has a certain cachet in American life and attendance at these institutions provide an imprimatur for those who aspire to/wish to affirm "elite" social status.
It is important to recognize that Trump has already demonstrated clearly that enrollment in an Ivy League institution does not automatically imply superior intellectual accomplishment. His limited command of the English language is no guarantee that he has an understanding of the American constitution and its subtleties.
Unlike Barack Obama who arose from relatively humble circumstances to attend Columbia and Harvard, Trump has done little to demonstrate that inherited wealth and educational privilege is a guarantee of remarkable accomplishment.
2
@Mariano Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, when any white male with money could get in. Trump never had to compete against women or minority applicants.
1
I haven’t studied this topic in an academically vigorous way but my personal experience and observations are spot on with what is reported here. My wife and I both attended an ivy league university and have done well but had we graduated from a good public institution I believe the results would have been the same. The difference maker for us was having had the parents and stable family situation we enjoyed. Our own kids appear to be yet more evidence of this. Two graduated from ivy league schools and one from a good public university. They’re all happy and professionally successful. Their education was critical to their success but the “ ivy league” part was essentially irrelevant. We’ve got one more kid to go but since we live in Switzerland now she’ll probably just stay here. It’s a lot less expensive.
2
The article says:
"There is still a pipeline to Wall Street and management consulting that traverses a long-established network of private high schools feeding into top colleges.
But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material."
Newsflash. If you're out to make money, the pipeline to Wall Street and management consulting is a far better choice. And while clerking for the Supreme Court might be a great way to influence the future, you won't make in into the .001% doing it.
I have a neighbor who is a management consultant that graduated from an elite university. In spite of several attempts, she can't explain what she does to me or why it's valuable. I made a pretty good living listening to people explain things and writing it down, but her career is completely opaque to me. She did say that she got her start based on a recommendation from one of her professors.
I also know her parents. They're well off but not members of the wealthy elite. I't's a good bet that they helped pay for it, but I'd be surprised to learn that anyone cheated to get her in.
I'd say that elite university thing worked just great for her.
4
I scored in the top 0.1% in my tests, and was offered a 3/4 scholarship plus a job to go to a top 40 b-school. Got in at higher ranked places but couldn’t afford the loans.
I’ve observed that many people who graduate from the ivies place great value on their school and other alumni based on false logic.
These schools that are subsidized by taxpayers as nonprofits should establish a minimum score and gpa for their students and then pick at random from all who apply above those scores. That’s the fairest way. In addition those who get in will realize they just got lucky and pay back their good fortune to society.
6
To think, in 1966, I sat down to take the SAT cold. No test prep class, no test prep books, no practice tests. Took the test only once. Just a good night's sleep the night before and a light breakfast the morning of the test. And all my classmates, a few of whose names you might recognize from the large WI corporations founded by their families, did the same.
Applied to three universities--all my parents (blue collar dad and stay-at-home mom) and I could reasonably afford without taking out loans. There really weren't student loan options in those days; it was mostly just scholarships, grants and work/study programs that were given out. Got into all 3 and graduated from a private university with a 3.2 average. Not too bad.
Worked in my field (education), worked in corporate finance, started and sold two businesses, raised two successful children and never had a loan payment until my own 2 went to college.
The student loan thing is a huge racket that some Congressional committee should investigate.
9
For many, the whole purpose of going to an Ivy League school is to raise one’s financial status. A child whose parents can afford to pay a $400k bribe is already financially set. This is about the parents’ ego more than the success of their child.
8
The analysis in this article, while true, is too focused on the narrow economic benefits, the return on investment, associated with a college education and misses the intangible benefits of elite colleges. The real reason to attend elite schools is not that your career will be more remunerative but rather that the education is better. I would suggest that the discussion of Shakespeare, Marx, etc., and especially more current gender or racial studies, basically anything you choose to study, is at a higher level in the small classes led by professors at elite small colleges. This is what “elite” refers too: not the students who are admitted but rather the quality of the education. This type of education, the liberal arts, might not specifically help you at your future job, although I would argue that knowledge and well-reasoned argument does, but life is more interesting and fulfilling on a day-to-day basis when you know things. A college education is not just a means to an end but actually an end in itself.
12
@Stuart Barr: If the education was that elite, I'd think the cheaters would flunk out, except for a few who might turn things around, knuckle down and get to work.
2
@Stuart Barr,
I wish that your comment were a NYT pick so it would be noticed more. The point you make is, unfortunately, not widely understood. (I'll add that intellectually engaged fellow students- whose preparation and accomplishment admittedly often correlate to prior opportunities - contribute to a better environment for the things mentioned in your comment).
1
I worked at a top law firm with grads from all the Ivy’s (I didn’t go to Ivy college but did attend “ivy” law school) and there are a couple of very obvious takeaways: everybody is smart, but except for one or two exceptional brains — more gray matter than the rest of us — they were no smarter than top student at my alma mater; once in firm, it did help socializing with partners if you shared college experiences and that, of course, helped move you up ladder, but at the end of day, it really didn’t matter as you had to be hungry, work hard and be smart. The first lawyers terminated in a round of layoffs - this was the 90s— were all Ivy’s. The handful of us from state schools made it through, we just worked harder, no safety net. However, the Ivys that were terminated had no problem getting other jobs immediately. When you have an Ivy on your resume, assumptions are made. Some of those lawyers got terminated several times, but always got rehired quickly. It was like the HR person couldn’t believe their good fortune. I’m still friends with those Ivy lawyers and they are smart and wonderful people, but no doubt they believe that 4 years in their late teens, early 20s entitles them to something, when in fact all it means is that they have a decent brain and worked hard in HS. The problem is, you need to keep working hard for the next 30 years.
25
I do want to add to my post that the kids that I knew that went to Ivy deserved it. Some were well off and some were not but all worked hard all through junior and high school, built resumes and scored very high on standardized tests. I did not and did not earn an Ivy college. I don’t want anyone to interpret my post as undermining their credentials: they deserved those schools and I didn’t. I was working part time in High School, partying and never even heard of a prep course for the SAT.
3
For my mother's 70 birthday we created a nursing scholarship which targets community college nursing students. Mom just turned 81 and she is still fundraising and giving scholarships. Bye the way, she was a high school drop out who went back to school and became an RN, by attending a program through a community college. Affordable accessible education which promotes jobs we need in our communities is at these community colleges. When you are in the hospital you aren't going to care if your nurse has an Ivy League pedigree, they all pass the same boards. It is the clinical care that matters.
12
We are so self centered We have spent the week discussing the merits of admission to highly selective schools.Has anyone realized that there are millions of children all over the world who would give anything for the opportunity to go to school, especially girls.I think of the many who would benefit from regular schooling-those who would be lifted out of poverty if they could just find a school,within walking distance or could afford the fees for a boarding school.We have spent years in Afghanistan and when there is talk of leaving the woman and girls are fearful- they fear they will lose their chance for an education.
22
@Janet Michael
Hummm? Every kid I know hates school.
1
Your article focuses on the relationship of college ranking and later earning power. No relationship, so no added benefit to an elite school. This seems a limited view.
I graduated from Stanford in 1969. Non-financial benefits: wake -up humility of being (at best) average in a student body where everyone had been a high school star, confidence resulting from succeeding in that context, challenging seminar and dorm discussions with people much brighter than myself, 1-1 and small group experiences with world-class scholars, admission to a Ph.D. program and internship which might have otherwise rejected me.
9
Its hard to glean this from the article, but as far as i can tell there are simple correlations between selective colleges and the economic outcomes for the deserving students from lower socioeconomic rungs, but no evidence of causation. Maybe the reason that selective schools produce better outcomes for these students is because they themselves possessed greater ambition, worked harder, and shone more brightly than other applicants. In other words, maybe it was their own cultivated excellence that projects them to the top, instead of the cache associated with an Ivy League diploma. Let's give credit where it is due.
5
I went to a top ivy school, (Penn) in the late 60’s. What I saw in my first two years, was a lot of large lecture classes with 200 or more students, or smaller classes taught by clueless graduate students. I understand that the faculty to student ratio today is even worse. A prospective student might have been better served by a community college, where real teachers teach in small classes. After two years, a well achieving student could always transfer to a four year college to take advantage of higher level classes with a better faculty student ratio.
I will say, though, that a major part of my education was interacting with my smart, diverse group of peers.
8
@Concerned citizen
I went to a top ivy school, Cornell, in the early 60's.The instructor in my small freshman English class was Warren Olney, fresh outta Amherst College, summa cum.
He went on to a hefty career as a left coast newsboy.
"To the Point," on KCRW, was perhaps his most noteworthy contribution...not an entirely "clueless graduate student."
1
When I was in college I read an incredibly important book for one of my business classes. Ironically, it was not assigned for said class but purchased by me in support of an assignment I was tackling. The book was called "guerrilla marketing" and it was essentially a practical manual for promoting a business on a shoestring. The tactics now evade me (except for supermarket flyers) but what I remember about it and stayed with me so many years later was it's basic premise: the shortest path between two points is the straight line.
It is not lost on me that this non-assigned book remains one of the most important learnings of my four year degree. One my parents are still reckoning with because of their commitment that I not endure debt.
I am not sorry I have a college degree (and I thank my parents gratuitously and often, don't worry). However, I know from experience and observation, that what I have done with my degree was the real value of the investments I have made in myself.
If I am lucky, I will live another 50 years. Our children, though, could live another 100. They are going to see disruptions in every aspect of life. From climate change, to realignment of global alliances, to automation, and AI.... the world has and is changing. The future earner will need to think like a guerrilla marketer. They may not work for a company but many. They will need to know how to self market and how to adapt.
Keep that in mind when spending the dough for college. It's a long game.
8
@Gwe
I agree with you about a harsher future. Our coddled American kids are going to need to get their claws out, and I mourn for their loss of innocence.
1
At some point in time, personal performance comes into play after graduation. Hiring an Ivy graduate who may be a good test taker, but is woeful in an applied world, will not result in a successful employer-employee relationship. In the science and engineering world, I've met folks with excellent pedigrees and forgettable achievements. Additionally, the opposite is true where graduates of Whats-a-matter-U produced outstanding technology. Individual differences mean everything as we are all not equally talented.
11
The hubris of the behavior of these parents (and some students, who knew exactly what was going on) is only topped by the utter inanity of it. Economic or social success defined as being in the 1% or on the A list bears almost no relationship to happiness or impact. The celebrities and their children will pass on, like most of us, into obscurity, and soon be just a footnote or forgotten. What galls is that some good could have been done, some suffering alleviated, if they instead used their wealth and position for the disadvantaged.
I’d love to see some celebs step up and support scholarships to both public and elite institutions to make going to college possible for anyone with the grit, grades, and desire to reach for it.
9
Yes, elite schools open doors to the non wealthy but the world is run by high school graduates and people who went to state colleges and community colleges. College is one of the few things people are happy to overpay for. The system has been broken for awhile and most people know that.
3
My daughter works in HR in a technical company. She says she never looks at the college a perspective employee attended but at their work history and their professional assets. She is looking for skills and personality so that effective teams can be developed.
5
Parents of privileged kids should at least let the kids be admitted into colleges based on their merits rather than what their parents' coffers can buy.
I still don't get why privileged people need to go through the back door. Donate through the front door, at the very least the money benefits the school at large if admission is denied.
We all have to pave our own paths in life, parents should be there to provide the best guidance to happiness, and not imagined success.
4
@Asher
"I still don't get why privileged people need to go through the back door." I 'spect the back door is much cheaper.
1
@Asher
You write: "I still don't get why privileged people need to go through the back door."
Some privileged people are just not very bright, but they enjoy the company of bright people. Therefore, they are willing to pay for the privilege to associate.
the idea that all or most applicants to elite institutions come only from the top 1 percent makes no sense
1
I find something really interesting. As someone who is finishing his education using the GI Bill, and using the remainder to fund my MA, the disparity in attitude between the Ivies (I am using Colombia) and non-Ivies (University of Chicago) with similar academic reputations is striking. Columbia did not have veterans declare their status, nor waived the application fee ($110 is steep, plus the cost of sending the GRE results). This is 180 degrees off of my experience with Chicago, where my vet status was acknowledged, and it automatically waived my fees.
16
@Robert Maxwell Those fees have become moneymakers for universities, just like baggage fees on airlines. It's ridiculous how nonsensical and burdensome it is for most families. You pay to take the test, then you pay per click to send out to schools, then you pay an application fee.
1
First of all, it depends on which degree. I tried for the best schools in my area of interest (none of them are ivies) and was accepted but coming from the bottom 20% could afford none of them some 45 years ago. Now both us are retired from a successful career, it turned out where one get their undergraduate and graduate degrees made little difference to a career, earning potential or advancement potential in the sciences. There might be a little more cachet from some schools but in general, it is your own ability. Second, as to testing, there was not the huge industry of test prep back then. A few books for sale but that was it. It was pretty much a level playing field. For our own children, they too were on their own as it should be.
12
@tom Top schools are most value career wise for two things. They are so selective that future grad schools, employers, spouses know someone passed a lot of quality checks (whether you agree with the values applied or not). Second, attendance at selective schools confers a social network of life-long use. You could be a C student and still get these benefits. And frankly, that is what happens.
10
@Joren Maksho That is absolutely true. My son made many connections in his elite college that have and are serving him well in his career today. Frankly, if you're a dedicated student, you mostly (not always) learn what you need on the job. The degree is just the credential that opens a door.
3
@Joren Maksho as noted in the article, engineering shows the opposite and most science degrees are similar. It depends on which degree as I noted Sure Cal Poly or MIT is useful but not mandatory and doesn't give you a leg up necessarily for graduate schools. Given that by the time you get your doctorate, less than 4% of us and less than 10% of the workforce, social networks you made in undergraduate are barely useful.
1
It makes a difference. These institutions are pipelines to elite positions. If you are a minority, (even one parent represented identify themselves as a minority for applications) regardless of socio-economic class, with a good portfolio, you can get in. I've seen it numerous time. If you are white middle class with a very good portfolio, you have a chance. If you are a middle class Asian, with an excellent portfolio, especially male, the chances are bleak. It has to be this way to maintain the economic/political power structure.
6
The stereotypical “Asians less likely to get in” is a fallacy. Look at the number of Asians represented in colleges then look at the percentage in the population in the US. About double the percentage.
1
@Merlo If this were true, then elite colleges would be chock full of minorities and have very few Asians. Look at the statistics and recognize you are *wrong*.
2
It can be observed that in the art world the graduates of elite schools have an advantage over others. This unfair advantage is most pronounced in this field because of its highly subjective evaluation of quality. The connections between students and gallerists and critics form an incestuous relationship leading to success and leaving out other equally and often more qualified graduates from less prestigious universities.
7
@John Smith
You are correct.
It happens in the area of music as well.
Proximity to a large orchestra is usually the stepping stone for many players.
After advising and helping students get into conferences and grad schools, all from a small, liberal arts university, the elite schools will still have an advantage over our students, no matter how well they do their work.
The only advantage for students in music is when they go to an audition that is screened from beginning to end.
2
Wealthy parents are probably more concerned about appearance and status than whether their privileged kids may actually benefit from attending a prestige university. Saying your kid goes to a state university is like having a Chevy parked in front of your mansion.
15
What a dismal analysis.
The so-called research, sadly typical in education, purports to prove that two things are gained for poor students of color by attendance at an "elite" college or university: Social capital and earning power.
And therein lies the problem in most education research and policy.
First, the research is meaningless in that it "measures" the social capital and earning power of those who attend the most selective schools without any real understanding of why they chose those schools and what might have been the outcome had the same student gone elsewhere. I argue that the outcome is a self-fulfilling result of the ambition for social capital and earning power that led those particular students to the elite college in the first place.
But more disappointing is that these are the criteria for assessing success in the author's and society's view.
I was head of a school for 19 years and see it very differently. I assess success by life satisfaction, contributions to society, originality, passion, creativity and ethical convictions. In this sense, the students who went to other than the most "elite" schools were more successful. Those who were singularly focused on an Ivy college or other prestigious admission, did indeed yearn for more social capital or earning more money, often at the insistence of their parents. They were generally less interesting and committed. This was true for poor students of color and privileged students.
8
@Barking Doggerel
Are schools grabbing too much credit? Could it be that these "poor students of color" have intellect and charming personalities that could take them to the stratosphere, regardless of where they went to school?
1
There is also another pathway that is important to note: if you want to do a PhD in Philo at a top school then it is helpful to have an undergrad at one of the few elite feeder schools.
In these times, a PhD from a top school is the best path to a tenure track appointment.
9
@SteveRR
Kind of incestuous, isn't it?
2
Interesting article. I do find it upsetting that Supreme Court clerkship are most commonly offered to students from the Ivy League. The Supreme Court is supposed to serve all Americans. Shouldn’t those clerkships, and the massive opportunities they bring, be equally available to individuals coming from a range of academic institutions??
18
@Britta Seifert Equal availability does not tend to promote quality in many meanings of the word. But it can give a process more fairness and diversity, if some one wants to manage the process through the shoals of Identity Politics---picking winners with a stated bias in mind.
1
@Britta Seifert
"Shouldn’t those clerkships, and the massive opportunities they bring, be equally available to individuals coming from a range of academic institutions??"
Making a big assumption here. Do we *know* that individuals from other institutions were *not* interviewed? Perhaps they were found lacking vs. their Ivy competition?
2
@Unapologetic capitalist
Yes but on what grounds where they found "lacking" ?
1
The article is right on the money. I had none. I attended the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in the 1960's. The quality of the education that I received was excellent. I became a successful consultant/businessman and earn an excellent living. Had I gone to some private school my parents and I would have been burdened with huge debt.
16
@NVFisherman
From what I remember, the cost of tuition for private schools back then was much more manageable and "huge debt" was not a common problem. YMMV.
1
@NVFishermanNot necessarily. You might have been offered a full ride scholarship.
1
Wondering when the luster will dim for many of these “top colleges.” I love reading the lists of “best value colleges” which combine things like price, median earnings of graduates two years after graduation, overall employment rate of graduates, number of post graduate scholarships, assistantships, fellowships and research grants, student reviews, alumni support, etc. There are many great colleges and universities that serve students and families brilliantly, provide an excellent education and graduate successful young workers not mired in debt or oozing privilege.
So the crux of the matter seems to be prestige and pipelines. Some folks would rather be last in their class at Harvard than successful, engaged and happy at a non-Ivy. Prestige opens doors, perhaps, but smart interviewers should be able to dig a little deeper. I interviewed hundreds of applicants during my education career. It was stunning how some interviewees with polish, confidence and swagger dissembled before my eyes when I moved on to Step 2 of the hiring process - teach a demonstration lesson to one of my classes tomorrow.
It should concern us all that SCOTUS is an Ivy League reunion and that extraordinary public colleges are underrepresented in the realms of government and business and policy in this country. That is one stranglehold that must be breached. There is plenty of evidence to show that work ethic, brilliance and academic excellence abound elsewhere, and that actually working for it matters.
36
I teach at a mid-level Midwest university. Recently one of my best students applied for a Fulbright award. She spent 3 months the previous summer preparing her project in the country in which she sought to carry out her proposal. She is fluent in one of the two languages required to work in this country and had begun study of the other one. She secured institutional support in the country of study. Her project was entirely feasible and had every potential of filling a lacunae in the scholarly field of her project. As one of her advisors, and as a three-time Fulbright research and teaching fellow, I can attest to the high quality of this candidate and of her proposal. Her project was turned down. There might be a perfectly good reason for this decision. Failed applications are never given feedback. But I can't get over the feeling that if the same student had submitted the same application from say, Yale, it would have been successful. The point being that it isn't just students and their parents that have to get over the notion that quality only emanates from the coastal elite/selective institutions. Until that day comes there will remain a strong incentive, irrational as it may be, to seek a gain an admissions edge to the "good schools."
44
@donald.richards Donad makes a point I have little seen made of the Harvard/Yale advantage in fellowships. I have had the same impression (and the same experiences multiple times) in applying for Fulbrights and similar American grants. I, too, have had the same experiences (multiple times) of receiving support in the country of study (to the point that there is I did a dissertation under one of the foremost scholars in my field.) From the U.S., not ten cents, And I agree with Donald that there are other reasons that could explain it and I might assume that were the reasons (and some reasons worse!), had I not had the same experience multiple times and have observed where grants did go.
1
@donald.richards Sir, you suffer needless insecurities. Don't blame it on Yale. You are just guessing. All meritorious achievements are harder to obtain than they used to be. For example, I could never have gotten into the very top school that accepted me decades ago if I faced the competition today.
One silly theme coming out of the scandal is that some people seem to demand that the selective schools be forced to constantly expand their classes to raise the acceptance rate. Growth is up to the schools, is very expensive (usually paid with private funds) and is not a responsibility that the schools owe society. Strivers can do fine at a middle or low-ranked schools. Getting into Princeton is not a right----it could be a real burden, too.
1
It matters a lot which is why people go to such great lengths to ensure it.
It was worth it for me and many of my friends as the income disparity between it and other state colleges turned out to be considerable once we began our careers.
Anyone who’s saying it doesn’t matter hasn’t gone to Ivy League.
Ferrari Vs Honda.
15
Except on the race track, Honda's vehicles are much more useful, reliable and cost-effective than Ferrari, and Honda a much more successful enterprise. Unless, of course, the objective is to impress. Which perhaps is your point about the difference in value here.
2
Your anecdotal evidence proves that, even with an Ivy education, you don’t understand statistics, that you would conclude Ivy school are great because “you and your friends” are doing well. Research, that’s right, has shown that salary is only relevant to Ivy schools when the student is female of from lower income. Hardworking students at public schools make just as much.
1
@There. According to your wisdom, my midwestern university (Miami University) is a Honda compared to your Ivy Ferrari. If that’s the case, why do I work alongside other Ivy graduates? Please explain?
1
Doesn't make a difference, says one report? When one of these cases reaches the Supreme Court, if bold enough, one of the litigants might point out, that all nine justices went to just one of two law schools, Harvard and Yale, leaving all 200 other law schools unrepresented.
35
We're focusing on a handful of people who did illegally what many more people do legally, work the system to assure their children get a degree from a coveted school.
The crime here is not that some more deserving student lost a seat in the classroom because other parents were wealthy; the colleges and the courts don't care about that, the crime is that the money exchanged did not end up in the university coiffures; that the deposit was made through a 'side door' instead of the front door.
It's nice to have all this detailed analysis about how collegiate pedigree wouldn't make a material difference if your parents are wealthy. Of course it wouldn't, the name of the school is just for status. And of course that same school would help a deserving but poorer student more but where's the analysis about the many, many more students who lose the change to get the degree because their parents legally donated to the school?
4
@tro -nyc
"...where's the analysis about the many, many more students who lose the chance(correction mine) to get the degree because their parents legally donated to the school?"
This Q needs explaining. So a parent legally donates, and their kid/s don't get in, and they lose a chance...?
I didn't know they, or anyone, OWNED a chance in the first place? How do you lose what you don't have?
You're saying that donations are by themselves exemptions to the prescribed, and "normal" admissions process...? Is that it?
How much is the right amount, to get the exemptions? $200K? less? A lot more?
Nothing but grades and the fulfillment of the admissions entry procedures should be the criteria fr admission. Thats it. That's all there is. Donations - legal or not - should not push anyone, not only to the front of the line, but in the building with a reserved seat.
You seem to be missing that obvious point.
1
There is a difference between a selective school and an ‘elite’ one. While it is assumed that elite schools would be a subset of selective schools, one can go to a highly selective campus and not go anywhere near an elite one. The University of California, which has 10 campuses, has the same highly selective criteria to be accepted to each campus, but because of the ‘elite’ status of several of them, such as Berkeley and UCLA, the ratio of qualified applicants to those accepted for entrance is very high at those campuses. I would argue that the education one receives is largely equivalent in all selective schools; the mindset of people that seek elite status is what is highly different.
8
@VKG
I went to UC Davis and Georgetown. Vastly better education at Davis, vastly more concentrated and engaged in the subject classmates at Georgetown. Gtown was masters). Was interesting. Gtown was a credential, and classmates. UC Davis was the education (and much, much less expensive.)
3
Let’s be honest...Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego are way above the likes of Irvine, Santa Barbara, Sacramento, Merced, etc
1
It is disturbing how much stressed is placed on families and these children applying for these schools. I see it in my neighborhood every year - kids applying and becoming anxious, frustrated, unhappy, desperate. Instead of enjoying the process and enjoying their high school lives. My children are young and I have already decided not to let that happen to them. Yes, I want them to work hard, get excellent grades to the best of their ability, use their talents, and be active members of society. If they want Ivy I'll be sure to help them out but also not allow them to become sick mentally and physically over it. Also they'll need scholarships because we cannot afford this in any way.
For me, I studied very hard, participates, enjoyed learning so much, and had a great high school life. However, I choked on tests. Literally would go blank. No matter how hard I studied or confident I was in the material. I choked. Every time. still makes me upset. I knew I wouldn't get in on my grades and scores because of this. My SATs were atrocious. Thankfully am a talented person in other capacities and was able to get into a very good school in NYC based on recommendations, essay, interviews, and meeting with admissions. Someone realized I'm very smart but terrible at written tests. I'm successful and happy and continue to better myself. So I can't allow this process of college admissions to make my kids sick.
I hope things lighten up by the time my kids need to go through it.
14
I find it amusing that these articles all focus on metrics like income, when there are other reasons to attend a top university, such as obtaining an education.
Sadly, the system conspires against the kids who actually want to do that.
With its obscene legacies, athletic scholarships, racial and ethnic preferences, geographic preferences, and preferences for children of the rich, it's amazing that kids who are merely smart and interested have any chance at all.
33
This article illustrates how wrong the whole education system in America has become. Education and success of education is not measured by how much money is earned. They are different things completely and earnings relate to the sector of employment, economic cycles and class advantages. The fact that so many higher court judges and presidents went to Yale isn’t a symbol of great education but a well defined golden circle.
Too many people chasing the dollar as the measure of everything has led to many of the biggest problems we face and not enough educated people to solve them.
20
In the eyes of many, a person is not a person, but a "brand". A person is their car. A person is the label on their clothes. A person is their zip code. A person is the name on their diploma. A person is whatever story they can build and sell.
For these people, (both the children and the parents), getting an education is not important. Getting a shiny new label is. You see, the label builds their brand, their brand is what they have to sell and selling is all they know how to do.
In that context, getting into an elite college (and getting the diploma by any means necessary) matters a lot. It can be the difference between millions and billions... because it works.
What could possibly be more important than that?
27
The only reason the USA works (in the least) is because of merit based systems. If more broad spread, GDP would always be above 3% because of improved innovation.
3
Ellitism has a magical pull on us. We lust after what is reputed to be elite, i.e. the best of its class. Once upon a time a school like Harvard might have been the best university. (After all, it was the first college in the US, wasn't it?) And best begets best, so Harvard drew professors with the best credentials, it drew endowments, and it drew students. The students it drew were probably often the best, in terms of how that was measured (SAT scores, GPAs). But at this moment in time is a Harvard education really better than that one might receive at a smaller, less renowned school? Yet Harvard still pulls us, because of its historic reputation. I don't know what can change this, except a better value system.
8
@farhorizons
I've always heard that places like Harvard and Stanford are excellent for grad school but not so much for undergrad because all those excellent professors are hired to get research grants, write books, and increase the endowment, not to teach the hoi polloi YouTube stars. The undergrads get grad students for teachers.
Harvard is a victim of its own success.
5
Elite colleges? Just staus symbols. Mommy and Daddy can brag that 'our' son or daughter is at Yale. Just like buying a BMW.
Advice- let the kid go to and grow up at your best in-state university. Do well there. At 21 or so, with an idea what higher education is all about, apply to a good 'name' school in their chosen field. The BA or BS now is like a high school diploma 50 years ago. Dont waste money on an elite undergrad degree.
1
As the parent of a child currently at an Ivy League school, there are some things that have struck me as an observer:
-The resources for students at the school where my son goes are phenomenal. If you want to study abroad, do research, work in a lab, or do an internship, there is funding to help achieve these endeavors, regardless of family income. This is an example of how disadvantaged students can benefit from these elite schools. Wealthy students could afford to do these things, regardless.
-With at least 10-12% of classes being international students and the desire of families in some countries to send their children to prestigious US schools, I would not be surprised if a similar international scandal eventually broke. Some international students are phenomenal, but there are probably some who cheated to get admitted, just like in the US.
-In all of these discussions on advantages in admissions, I have not seen anything on being the the child of a professor or administrator. Of course, they come from “good stock”, but as an example, one of my son’s professors has had 3 children graduate from my son’s university. How many other families could have this experience? There definitely is an advantage to having a parent work in an elite university, either for their own or a similar institution.
9
@Madame O A certain southern university, very highly ranked academically and with an equivalent quality basketball program, offers reserved seats at b'ball games to administrative recruits...plus "highly likely admission" for children.
1
For the parents of many wealthy students, elite universities satisfy their status needs, and affirms their membership in a club they already belong to. For low income students, the social capital of an elite schooll can transform their lives. Yet elite schools mostly serve the elite. American cities are filled with students who are starved of opportunities, their parents earning the low wages paid by business leaders whose children probably will attend an elite school. The deck is stacked against them. Elite schools should be working to accommodate as many less privileged students as they can. If an Instagramming cheat feels entitled to take a place that could be filled by a more worthy striver, it is evident why Europe now has better social mobility than America.
15
So the narrative here is that the underprivileged benefit from the welfare of the elite. The elite is then an elementary factor in which the society functions and survives. The institution (College or University) itself is a mere host that serves the purpose of the elite. This discourse reminds me medieval times or the ruling of the British empire in India.
6
@Grand Deux The elite and wealthy obtain their status on the backs of the lower classes.
1
While this article makes many valid points, the author fails to highlight that the super-privileged are not looking for the same kind of benefits that the less privileged are seeking from elite universities. The less privileged are looking to advance their socio-economic standing and hopefully also their level of education. The super-privileged are looking to attach to their children a high-status university name that matches the high socio-economic standing they already have, thereby reinforcing and justifying their existing privilege.
A little story: A super-privileged young man once said, "I want to go to (high status) Business School because if I get a (high status) MBA, the people on the board of directors of Dad's company will think I deserve the seat I already have on the board of directors, instead of thinking I have it only because I am the son of the owner."
48
@GS - Wanting to have the abilities and skills to live up to your inherited role is actually admirable. The MBA programs at top schools really are very tough, and you do learn a lot. If this fellow does get that MBA, he will be much better at the job he already has.
2
You just said what I would like to post and even made a better point. The people who committed this crime wanted the buy the brand name of elite universities so that their kids can wear this shining pin upfront their chest as a pass to the elite circle. And this is definitely not the same type of benefit most of us need. I understand that The Times posted this to reassure the anxious and furious crowd by patting their head and say, hey, it’s OK to stay comfortably in an average school (if you make smart choices like majoring in most need subjects). But people who involved in the scandal are not talking about the same thing when we refer to benefits.
1
@Jonathan
Admirable or not, the young man was mostly worried that the other -- much older and more talented -- people at his company thought he got a seat on the board of directors solely because he was the owner's son, which he had. This was not trying to live up to an inherited role. This was using an Ivy League diploma to paper over the fact that he inherited his role, rather than earning it through merit.
1
It strikes me as odd that there is practically no mention in this article of the quality of the education students receive from elite universities and colleges. Surely that must count for something? The economists seem to be focused purely on future earnings. Not everyone who attends elite institutions use their education for financial gain. Nearly everyone in my family for the past four generations has attended college (men and women), and we chose fields of service: military, educational, religious. No big earners, just solid, academically curious community servants. We don’t sit on a pile of money despite elite degrees from Stanford, Swarthmore and Chapel Hill, but we stand for making America a better place. And I can thank my excellent education at my university and law school for preparing me for twenty-five years of military service.
80
I am a graduate of one of these Elite schools. I came from a family who did not have a lot of money. My parents both attended quality universities during the Depression of the 1930s. Jobs were scarce. Prejudice was high. People, I was told, got their degrees essentially based on the importance of education in one's ethnicity. They just tried to do the best that they could. It was always inculcated in me that education was about learning and what it does for your life not just about money. Throughout my life I have met many people who have been jealous of my education and who have made comments about all the wonderful contacts I must have made who, it was implied, just pulled each other along not having qualities that made them any smarter or better. I do have friends from that period. And they are important to me. However, the value of that education was not about contacts. It was about being surrounded by very bright and hard-working people and learning the benefit of being that way. I look back on those years and recognize how rare a gift that was. I took loans when I need to. I worked off campus and saved money for tuition, room, board, books, etc. I complained too and envied the rich kids but was in excellent company doing that. Looking back, I'm very glad I did it. The lessons I learned were only partially from professors, excellent as most were. I fear for a culture that loses that knowledge, as these authors have.
43
@Fir "...the value of that education was not about contacts. It was about being surrounded by very bright and hard-working people and learning the benefit of being that way. I look back on those years and recognize how rare a gift that was."
Thanks for that. My wife has spent most of her time trying to get the above into my head, since I am one of those brilliant and talented guys but somehow I tend to reach out to ... contacts, and other notions of what it really takes. One of the Reis/Trout guys once wrote to me, "Success lies within you, why are you looking for it outside ?"
But I didn't get it till I read your comments above [ even though I am mostly comfortable within the confines of my library and my best hours are spent with my best intellectual friend from school, with arguments about this and that. ]
1
What’s puzzling is how could an academically poor student adequately complete their requisite classes and tests in order to graduate? Surely the standard required from these “elite” universities for graduation is high? Or are there more strings pulled and more cash spent to ensure these students graduate? If so, then the certificates from these universities aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
23
@Emile exactly! There might be payments made to so many college officials at all levels until they graduate. Or maybe just giving your daily attendance is enough to pass college.
2
@Emile In my sample size of 1, some liberal arts degrees at elite institutions can be obtained with little work. You won't get good grades, but can still pass. This is not to disparage liberal arts, getting top grades in these programs is very challenging (and intellectually rewarding).
3
@Emile You just said it all how do these kids navigate school when they are not even college materials?
1
What is this "social capital" this piece talks about? From the context, is seems this type of capital is useful in the business and legal world. Although opportunities are broadening for people of color, would this "social capital" buy them social acceptance?
In the biologic sciences (my field), I didn't find social class a factor in advancement; it was always grades and good recommendations from professors.
I did my undergrad and graduate work at UC Berkeley; it had the advantage of superb professors, but the competition for grades was extreme, so high grade point averages, essential for advancement to professional schools, could be more difficult than in smaller, less competitive colleges.
The capital I value from college is academic/intellectual capital. I can understand how students who do not come from academically oriented families would benefit considerably more from top notch schools than students already exposed to the world of books.
10
We can all appreciate the importance of economic success. But this article and the research it invokes are wretchedly one-dimensional in their purely utilitarian standards of “success.” Does success include developing aesthetic sensibility or a sense of service, or pleasure in reading? Some schools provide more opportunities along such lines. And some students, wherever they go to college, finds themselves enriched along those lines. Yet we in the US seem resolutely committed to a narrow metric of success that devalues the life of the soul and of the individual, whether a carpenter, minister, waitperson, or banker, who “succeeds” at life, with family, friends, community, in some sort of meaningful engagement with the world. Just sayin’.
34
@John California Your viewpoint is an interesting one. But I am in disbelief. A great many lines of work, it seems to me, have nothing to do with meaningful engagement with the world, sadly. Primarily this is because the hours are so impossibly long they turn us all into machines and, related, in many fields the pay is inadequate (especially in our current environment), and more often than not the primary purpose of the work is, of course, to make money. Thoughts?
1
@Mopar Thanks for your reply, and you are certainly right. Meaningful engagement with the world, sadly, cannot always be found in work, and this is as true today as it was at the height of the industrial revolution. My thought, still, is that anyone, no matter how meaningless their work, can and should find meaningful engagement in other ways. I first saw such possibilities when I went to Europe and met people from many stations in life who had benefited from college education but were not necessarily in "college track" jobs.
1
@John California Not to diminish the significance of what you have to say, but what is this "just sayin'" with which you end every comment? It almost seems you don't want readers to take the comment very seriously.
1
Our child went from a small town in Montana to Columbia U. in New York. Urban culture, international influences were part of our student's entirely new environment. In some courses the content and perhaps the delivery were the same as at a state university in Montana. But there were many advantages that could not have been duplicated there.
15
@Susan Understandable. I went from a small town in southern WV to an Ivy League college in a tiny town in New England and then a Columbia U grad school in New York. The three locations offered a rich variety of experience that none by itself could hope to match.
5
I'm a current high school senior going through the college process and, while I read many of these comments and understand the validity of many adults' degrees, the college process is ten times as difficult as it was twenty or thirty years ago. At schools like UCLA, you are seeing nearly a hundred thousand applicants for less than 20,000 spots. Numbers like that are not only discouraging, they are promoting a culture of malice and enormous stress - I'm seeing friends with 4.0's and 1500 SAT scores getting denied from schools they would've gotten into twenty years ago. It's no longer just a numbers game. The college process is so completely random that every single high school student must scramble to find "an edge" or something to make them stand out. While this scandal is on a larger scale, this college process has lead to unethical behavior across the board. Cheating on exams, finding homework answers, discouraging others to apply to a school simply so you can have a better chance. The entire system is flawed and the worst of it all is that many adults don't seem to bat an eye when they hear from high school students that they are under too much pressure. The system MUST change. Beyond the fact that it unfairly favors the wealthy, it is changing our culture for the worse.
145
@Srinivasan
But what can a college do if it has an overwhelming number of equally qualified applicants? What if 60,000 of the applicants all have 4.0's and 1500 on their SATs, and there are only 20,000 spots? I suppose it then has to become a random process. Knowing this, I would ask students in your situation why they feel they have to get into a particular school. Why, for example, does it have to be UCLA? When I was applying to colleges, I desperately wanted to go to Harvard, but I wasn't accepted and ended up going to a small and totally respectable liberal arts college in my home state of Tennessee. Before I retired, I was working side-by-side with a man who was about my age, and who had gone to Harvard. So there we were, pretty much at the same points in our careers, probably making similar salaries. I have to believe that a Harvard education wouldn't have made any difference for me. One bit of advice I would therefore offer is to think beyond your college years. What are you thinking about in terms of a career? Focus on colleges that offer a solid curriculum for your chosen career and not necessarily those that are most prestigious. Knowing as much as anyone else about college admissions, a prospective employer who sees UCLA on your resume may conclude that you were accepted there just because you were lucky, whereas they will be more impressed if you chose a school that gave you the best preparation for the job you're applying for.
24
@Srinivasan
There are many good schools that can develop your ability to think and solve hard problems. Few know about Austin College in Texas, but it has long had an excellent math program. Similarly for Georgetown University in Georgetown, Texas.
The world is not significantly harder for you than it was for my father, who lost his father when he was six, and then had the depression hit Dallas when he was 11 to 12. Since he read well when he entered first grade and there were only 11 grades in schools in those days, he graduated from high school at age 16 in 1936.
There was no Social Security safety net then, so his mother worked as a seamstress at A. Harris department store. There was little or no resources to send him to college. He worked and went to classes at SMU and took correspondence courses. He was always reading to learn more. Ultimately, he married and raised four children, who each graduated from college. We attended Rice University, SMU, North Texas University and Stephen F. Austin University. The Universities did not change our individual personalities, but simply enhanced it.
Rather than be the small fish in a giant pool at a large university, you may be better served attending a smaller school where you will have more opportunities to contribute and grow in confidence in who you are. Look outside your own state. Look outside the box. I wish you well.
10
@Srinivasan I'm 15 years out of high school, but I still remember feeling as you describe. It probably doesn't feel like it now, but it will be OK. Here'a some evidence: let's assume college admissions really is a random (and independent) process. Further, let's assume you have good grades and scores (you write well, so I think that's a good assumption). If you apply to 10 schools of UCLA's acceptance rate (about 20%), there is a 90% chance you'll get into one of them. If you apply to 5 more schools with a higher acceptance rate, say 40%, that would increase your chance of getting into at least one college to >99%. Colleges advertise low acceptance rates for their own selfish prestige purposes. Don't let their agenda stress you out!
9
I tried to get into Harvard — twice (undergrad and grad). I wound up going to Bradley for undergrad and South Dakota State for my masters. My career path has taken me through journalism, music, politics, Capitol Hill, Christian ministry and financial services, and I think that the liberal arts education I received has served me well. I'm satisfied with what I've done in life, and I don't know that an "elite" school would have changed my career trajectory very much if at all. (Not that I wouldn't have minded going to Harvard!)
17
I know and work with many successful people in many different disciplines and different educational backgrounds. There is no question that those who attend Ivy League institutions have a tighter-knit group of people and opportunities to work with. There is a longer history and depth of financial success that stays within the Ivy network. Period. Are they better educated? Hah! No way. But is that a significant point?
Sure, you can measure success differently. But for pure financial opportunity and success, an admission to an Ivy League school is a lifetime admission to the higher tier of financial opportunities that others simply don’t enjoy.
So from a parent’s perspective, if your child can find happiness anywhere, why not find it among the Ivy League? Then you can see the logic.
20
@No labels It's a tiny advantage that goes away if you don't use the opportunity. I deliberately turned down Ivy League institutions for grad school AND for a tenure-track faculty position in favour of (good to excellent) state schools. The reason is due to mentorship - the person I really wanted to work with was not at the Ivy League. Though I did do my postdoc at Stanford (again, due to what I wanted to do but that gave me my experience with elite institutions).
My glide path would've been easier with the Ivy League choices, sure. But it was easier to balance it out with a small amount of extra effort, effort that became effortless because I was doing what I really wanted to do. So on balance I think it worked out even better for me.
I am proud of myself for following my own path in this regard. One of my philosophies is that if we all stayed within our own elite networks, we only end up promoting inequality. It's better for someone trained at elite institutions to get out and see the rest of the world and vice versa.
3
@No labels - But the parents and students in the recent scandal were ALREADY in that higher tier. Mr. Carey is pointing out that these are exactly the people who don't need the boost that cheating got them; they don't do better by going to elite schools. So they not only acted selfishly and immorally; they also wasted their money.
1
@RamS
Graduates who become clergy do not benefit financially for themselves but for their congregations.
I once worked in the admissions department of an extremely selective Ivy League law school. In my experience reviewing thousands of applications one could be admitted from ANY college if one had top grades and a high LSAT score. Some attention was paid to the rigor of courses, but the GPA was more important than anything, including what college one attended.
Also one had to be somewhat involved in SOMETHING not just college classes and LSAT prep. Recommendations were all about the same and had little impact. Maybe if the recommending professor said something awful, which really never happened, they could hurt. And better to get a good recommendation from some low adjunct professor or even instructor than a bad one from a well known professor. These honchos are not known to the admissions department.
Not much credit was given to those who worked full time or many hours per week while in college. Or to those who were the first in their family to attend college. So my advice would be to work during summers and breaks and concentrate during the semester and get top grades. And take LSAT prep courses.
41
@Judy Are you telling me that all of the time and energy that I put into writing recommendation letters for my students is wasted? Maybe this is just the case for law school. Some of my students have told me that their strong letters of recommendation were mentioned at the interview, so I continue to voluntarily invest my time in writing letters. Am I just a tool for the graduate school application process?
1
It is worth noting that the sole metric of success in the studies cited here (and of most others I have seen) is salary. There are of course other markers of success like personal satisfaction or the positive social impact of one's work. Scholars and Social workers earn considerably less than Engineers or Bankers but are they less successful?
75
Thank you, as a social worker (now practicing as a therapist). The graduate curriculum is fairly standard in SW schools, with minor variations. Caring, curiosity, empathy and ethics are what matter. Trust me, my clients, who often suffer serious mental illness and have experienced multiple traumas, don’t care what school I went to.
23
@ehn
How do you propose researchers measure intangibles like satisfaction or positive social impact? It sounds good but not feasible, I fear...
1
Yes, they are less successful.
1
It is such a split mindset. Almost a nature or nurture question. Is excellent higher level learning dependent on the prestigious university one attends or the student oneself ? The obsession on university brand is more pronounced with foreign students from China. They are convinced the top tier schools are a MUST. They were the logo sweatshirts of Ivy League and other elite schools as though fawning sports fans regardless of any true association. It is an aspiration and a conceit. It is true that a diploma and the network from high selective private universities opens doors and dialogs to opportunity.
5
I was very fortunate growing up. I did not have helicopter parents. They set some simple rules and left my brothers and me to figure things out. We sank or swam on our own accomplishments.
I was a middling high school graduate in Albuquerque and was turned down by all but one of the colleges to which I applied. I even had an interview with a Princeton alumnus and he sent his report to the admissions board on my behalf. I was not accepted. Yet, I attended one of the most exclusive undergrad colleges and did very well. I am still in touch with many of my classmates; all of us had successful careers and all of us enjoyed our years at the University of Maryland – Munich Campus. We were all military and federal government dependents. Great faculty. Small classes. Individual attention when needed. My single greatest achievement was that I became bilingual in German. On weekends we partied at the local Bierkeller or downtown at the Hofbräuhaus. We were able to take numerous cultural tours around Europe during breaks.
Most of us returned to colleges in the U.S. after our years at Maryland-Munich. I matriculated to the Ludwig-Maximilians University downtown and studied history at the graduate level. When I returned to Maryland-College Park, I was accepted into grad school on the basis of my work in Munich and also received a paid TA position. Did I miss not going to Princeton? No. I had a unique college experience abroad and built on it in grad school and then in my career.
26
As logic would dictate an elite college is not that much of an advantage. Much more is if you got a good education in a field with potential and then had the work ethic to be successful. See several billionaires who quit college.
7
@vulcanalex I'd almost agree. There is a definite advantage for an Ivy Leaguer, for example, competing with a State College grad for a job right out of school. (All other things being equal).
After that, however, the job resume and the references tell the story.
8
@Kenneth. I agree. At the firm where I worked, if we had a very large number of applications for junior, right-out-of-college staff, resumes were sometimes sorted on the basis of college attended. The assumption was that individuals from the Ivies and similar were more likely to have the critical thinking skills (and perhaps polish) necessary to interact with high-level clients. (When reviewing transcripts, there was also the assumption among some senior staff that an "A" at a state school was probably closer to a "B" or even a "C " at an Ivy.) Unfair, sure, but I have to admit that it worked fairly well in many cases. At the same time, there were candidates from far less prestigious schools who so distinguished themselves in their cover letters that it was impossible not to offer them an interview. Those candidates usually worked out well too.
2
I’m practicing law for 40 years now. My parents were not college graduates. I didn’t attend an ‘elite’ college or law school. I love my work, and I’m proud to say that I’ve helped thousands of people, from all walks of life, over the course of my career. Not one has asked me where I went to school.
When are parents going to learn that it’s not about their kids going to ‘the best’ schools. It’s about their kids going to the best schools FOR THEM! Why put a mediocre student in an Ivy League school, other than to brag on Facebook? It’s a recipe for failure that does a real disservice to their child, and, unfairly excludes a qualified student who was denied that seat in the classroom.
70
@Hk Indeed. My first thought when this story broke was to note the ego of the parents in manipulating the aspirations of their child. What a waste. I can only imagine the shame many of these young people are feeling right now. Shame on the parents for attempting to leverage their wealth and prestige while using their children to pad bragging rights. Pitiful.....
2
One source of money not mentioned is the student from another country. Lots of Asian and Middle Eastern students are on university, and smaller college campuses, because for whatever reasons, they can pay full-fare tuitions, and perhaps even more.
In the same vein, there are many parents who can afford to send their kid to college and need no financial assistance. (Yes, some of these families do exist.)
10
@Susan Yes here in TN tuition for many is actually free, any other state that wants to do so can follow the lead of a state that is generally poor.
1
And your point is?
1
hmmmm. i graduated high school in 1969.
hitchiked and worked in europe for 3 years.
fantastic experience.
waitressed for a bit to get some money when i got back.
went to a state school , humboldt!!
got a nursing degree and worked ever since.
some of us are just slated to be worker bees and live a little life.
xxooxxoo
61
@Pamela
If you have worked in nursing in your career you have not led a "little life". You have helped many people in various health situations. I have cousins who are nurses and a niece who is a radiology tech. They all provide essential services to countless people as I am sure you have done. I have survived two serious operations and hospitalizations and am very grateful to the nurses who 24/7 took care of me and encouraged me when I felt really down. No, you have not led a little life. You have done more than most of us with advanced college degrees. You have helped people in dire need.
97
Just an observation that nurses are educated with entry level nursing transitioning from a BSN to a MSN. Clinical care reflects a knowledge of social and physical sciences.
1
@bkbyers As an RN for many, many years, thank you for that response. You made my day.
1
My take on America has changed as I've aged. I saw it as a wonderful moral country a a youth, and see it as the pluperfect corporation now.
It was founded upon free property and free enterprise above all else and is basically a company with a flag and an anthem. It's like a hyper Apple, where people fly its logo on their clothes and would literally die for it. Imagine the loyalty of customers to an Apple like that, and that is our America. It feels like a massive fraud where cash is king and it's every man for himself and patriotism is used to motivate those who would look behind the curtain.
33
@AG
The United States, despite all of the great rhetoric of the Founding Fathers, was founded and counted on slavery to build its economic infrastructure. It relied upon slaves and countless illiterate immigrants to dig canals, build railroads, factories, roads, and other infrastructure. It counted on Asians and Hispanics to do the hard labor and harvest crops to feed the nation. This is still the case.
Jefferson's high-flown words about freedom did not erase his slave owning and treatment of the people he owned. Ditto for George Washington, Madison, Monroe, Jackson and other presidents. We live under the legacy of slavery and its aftermath during the failed Reconstruction era and the century of Jim Crow oppression.
1
"The sole reason to attend Harvard Medical School is to eliminate that nagging questionn in one's mid-fifties -- 'I wonder where my career would have gone if I'd only attended Harvard Medical School?' If you can live without asking that question, any medical school will teach you more than you can learn." -- My father's summing-up 45 years ago.
59
Funny thing!
I did apply to Harvard medical school, I never heard back from them! Never, That was 25 years ago.
I went to middle of the road med school. I am doing fine, managing partner of my group, patent pending on medical device, etc...
One more thing, I had a part timer in my group who is faculty member at Harvard, I got rid of him, he was too much to deal with.
1
This article misses the point completely. The metric these families care about is prestige, not future earning potential.
77
@Mallory Yes so just remove the prestige for many people and then it will go away. I really don't think that say Harvard is all that, now MIT is all that!!
1
“Students who are poised to succeed tend to do so even if they don’t get into the Ivy League.”
Poised to succeed? How was that measured?
So much handwaving in this article.
26
I believe the study looked at people accepted at an Ivy, but went to a non-Ivy. The non-attendance at school did not have a statistically significant impact on their careers. The conclusion was the admissions people at Ivy schools know how to pick career winners, but the actual educational piece of the process was as good in other programs.
1
Remember a certain girl named Kate Middleton? Who met her future husband at St. Andrews? I'm not saying she went there to meet him--probably didn't even know he would be her classmate when she matriculated there. But don't overlook that as the reason many parents send their kids to certain schools. SMU is hardly held up as an institution of great intellectual excellence, but plenty of families send their kids there to mingle and meet the "right kind" and hope to make a future match. Same goes for any # of schools and that includes USC, which plays a large part in this latest scandal. As long as parents and their kids want to keep their kids in a bubble and hope to mate them with desirable genetic matches, this self-selection will go on. I'm guessing a student like, oh, say, Tiffany Trump didn't enroll at Penn for the school's Classics department, for example.
51
@Kemal Pamuk
Actually, Kate had a poster of Prince William on her wall as a teen and knew full well that he would be attending St. Andrews . She followed him there in the hope of meeting him...and the rest is history.
1
@kemal pamuk: comments from Downton Abbey?
1
@Jeff Kresch The more things change, the more they stay the same.
White-collar unpaid internships are an acceptable way to cheat in college admissions. Students from low-income families can’t afford to work for free, even if they had the connections to score such gigs. It’s ironic and kind of obscene that wealthy corporations such as Goldman Sachs, which could easily afford to pay interns, don't, while some of their potentially best recruits must pull long hours at low-paying, physically and mentally deadening jobs that drain them of the time and energy to study (which affects their grades, and so on down the line).
But then, businesses aren’t meritocracies, they're networks, and since corporate recruitors tend to hire people from the same comfortable, well-connected backgrounds as themselves, unpaid internships might be the best way to weed out the poor people.
However, universities traditionally advocate meritocracy, and traditionally believe in admitting smart, hardworking students who would most benefit from college. Abolishing unpaid internships would promote such meritocracy, but since that’s impossible, evaluators should at least be skeptical of them, since they largely indicate class status and little else.
Meritocracy would also be served by abolishing tuition and offering low-income students living stipends so that they can devote their time to study. Some universities can already afford to do this. However, this is America; we pay lip service to intelligence and hard work, but we know what really matters.
27
@sloan ranger I was a summer intern at Goldman Sachs before my senior year of college. I was paid more than $30 per hour in year 2000. That is absolutely not true that this company employs any free interns.
18
@sloan ranger In fact the current screening/interview process for firms like GS is geared towards diversity of all sorts these days and the pay is considerable.
4
@VK My apologies for mistakenly believing that Goldman Sachs does not pay interns. I'd heard that was the case and after a short perusal of internship opportunities on the GS website didn't show any mention of salary, I assumed that was true. Thank you for correcting my misassumption.
1
And this is exactly the true shame of this. The kids who bribed there way onto these campuses are leading privileged lives and would continue to live privileged lives with or without attending a particular college. The same cannot be said for those seeking to rise up of out of challenging situations.
20
These elite schools can only educate a sliver of the population. Instead of griping about how unfair life is, our time would be much better spent figuring out how to improve education for the masses.
45
@Mr. B Or improving the masses, here college tuition is free.
1
All this might be true, but parents and society in general still operates on the notion that where you went to school, if not decisive, indicates you are a cut above the rest. If that were not the case, why do people lie about where they went to school? One example, a locker room friend while discussing this very scandal, mentioned he graduated from a well known public university here in California and then casually added the first name of a famous Ivy League school for his MBA. By chance, I had a link to his web page and saw that his mention of, let's say "Harvard"--it wasn't--turned out to be not the Harvard we all know but an obscure "school" that is infamous as a diploma mill. Why his CV even includes this notorious "school" amazes me, but the point is that he felt he needed at that moment in the locker room to fudge his CV. How many others do this and worse? All to accessorize their histories.
6
I have an undergraduate degree from USC, and a master’s from Arizona State. I’m incredibly proud to be an alumni of both schools, which each prepared me for a career in diverse and valuable ways. Both can give you a great education if you apply yourself - and both are a waste of time if you simply cheat and skate your way through.
Neither institution deserves the stereotypes and reputations they apparently have among the Hollywood and well-heeled elite.
14
This article puts all emphasis on earnings. Totally wrongheaded.
People often want non-monetary benefits (duh, ever heard of "learning"?) Students at state u are often too busy on gaming the system to polish their report cards, the only way to stand out from the enormous crowd, to focus on learning, and to take some risks. At Yale, Stanford, etc., you have some breathing space knowing your degree (Not to mention a Yale Prof's recommendation, potentially priceless) will give you credibility without the highest GPA; at State U., you dont have this luxury.
Also, nonsense that paying somebody to take the SAT for you (so you don't have to pay for the Kaplan course or spend 400 hours training for the test) means "you're not Supreme Court material" (intellectualy). Your're perpetuating the myth that the test tests intelligence, rather than your having studied for it. We know this not to be the case. Yes, talent levels at both extremes will substantially affect scores, but preparation is in MOST cases decisive.
The reason people usually cheat is not to obtain opportunities they're not (intellectually) equipped for, but to spare themselves having to jump through all the procedural hoops and exert the effort. Most students who cheat to get into a school are intellectually capable of doing just fine there. The hardest part, just about always, is getting in.
9
Totally disagree with your thumbing your nose at state school students. I was one of them and my fellow students were every bit as engaged in their studies as anywhere else. I’ve never heard of anyone being asked for their GPA in a job interview at any rate. And for the record, I’ve done very well in my career in spite of my pathetic state school degree.
1
Reader, I apologize if I gave the impression of slighting you. definitely not my intention at all, and I firmly believe a student can get just as good an education at a big state university campus as he can at an Ivy, an Amherst or Williams or MIT. I'm likewise convinced a student can get a terrible education at any of those elite places and that it happens all the time. My point was a somewhat narrow one: students at those elite collges have 4 advantages: a relatively large (though not necessarily the majority) percentage of students who are extremely talented and/or accomomplished (albeit amid a very great number who merely passed themselves off as such to the admit commuttee, through years of impression management and "overachievement") contributing to one's education and inspiring one; a prestigious degree that to a degree makes sacrificing grades for the sake of learning and growth easier); faculty under less pressure to foster competition for grades among students and feeling less beholden to taxpayer impression of the needs of the community, usually understood economically; curricula and policies systematically reflecting the 1st 3 factors I mention. At a state school, without these luxuries, you face a more uphill climb to get the advantages they entail. But you can still learn just as much. Moreover, most students fail to take full advantage of those opportunitues anyway, and learn much much less than strong state university students.
This article is somewhat disingenuous. As someone who has tow siblings with Ivy Leagues degrees (Brown University and Princeton University) , I know the value of what an Ivy League degree can do for you. I have seen the opportunities and advantages they have had that myself, the graduate of a land grant university have, in general, eluded me. This is not to say that I have done poorly. Quite the contrary, I have done pretty well.
And yes, the elite ivy league degree is beginning lose some of it once impervious advantages, but it still tremendously benefits those that have one over those that do not. At least for the time being.
23
@InfinteObserver I think you're contradicting yourself. You say you've done pretty well, but are you saying you would've done a LOT better with the Ivy League degree? You don't know that. Likewise, you don't know how much better you siblings could do in a different environment.
I think it's a tiny advantage to be part of the elite, in terms of initial judgements. In reality, if it's something serious, then it's a question of what you do actually accomplish, rather than where you come from (or even what you accomplished in the distant past), that matters, not only in the US but also the world.
1
People will pay top dollar to jump through hoops thinking it will get them to lawns they imagine to be greener... but only because they didn't first take a hard look over the fence.
8
For the well-heeled it's simply another measure of status, another trophy to collect, another toy to flaunt . . . Nothing new really.
14
@PS
Absolute nonsense. Some of us actually went to experience the very finest of education.
1
For already-affluent families, one of the major motivators for steering kids toward prestigious colleges is the assortative mating quotient: the parents hope that their children will meet prospective mates from similar backgrounds who share their worldview, culture, and tastes. Though these colleges are making a bit of progress in diversifying their student bodies, the odds are still good that affluent kids will have ample dating/matomh prospects among other affluent kids. This matters more to many such parents than "bragging rights" or boosts in social capital, neither of which they need.
8
ample dating/mating prospects, that should read
1
I am concerned this scandal will diminish the overall importance of higher education. Not the institutions per se, but the gaining and exchange of knowledge. When viewed through the Trump lens--which proudly prioritizes ignorance--it is a clear danger.
6
Given the number of Ivy graduates involved in the corruption of our government, corporations, and institutions, this question really doesn't matter. The more important question is, how can these colleges block the entry of these sociopaths to prevent them from taking the first step that these colleges enable? Would there have been a financial crisis without all the amoral and immoral ivy grads making their quick bucks?
There is an admissions crisis. Too many sociopaths - even if they are smart enough to qualify - are being admitted to the Ivy League.
23
@Djt
They are probably being accepted into these schools by similarly sociopathic idiots.
1
The issues with college begin long before college. College is not for every person. I've worked with people who have master's degrees who are abysmally ignorant. I've worked with people who are brilliant and have the same degrees. All the degree signifies is that the person completed the necessary credits to obtain it. Employers like degrees. They use them as a substitute for intelligence, experience, and the hunger to learn.
I know someone who did help juniors and seniors prepare their material for college. But he had them do the work themselves. He did not write their essays, get someone to take their SATs or ACTs, or do anything other than help the students figure out what colleges might be suitable for them. That's the sort of help most students need because of how colleges advertise themselves.
My regret is that I never applied to an Ivy League school. I was in the top 10 in my high school senior class. My parents convinced me I was the stupidest creature alive. The guidance counselor was the sort who needed to be wined and dined to do his job. I've often wondered if I would have had a better time in life and college had I gone to one where classes were smaller. My mistake was going to a large school because I didn't want to be noticed. No one explained to me that large might not be the way to go.
I think parents need to grow up before they send their kids to college.
7
@hen3ry - I'm sorry your parents were critical of you, because it must have been painful. But for what it's worth, I attended an Ivy League school and there were lots of big classes - and lots of professors hired for their research and big names, not for their interest in, or skill for, teaching. The prestige doesn't necessarily result in a better education. I have the impression that smaller classes and more personal attention from professors are actually easier to find at less elite schools.
7
Even if your family is elite, you can't make it where the big money is--in finance and law--without being totally credentialed by success at the best colleges and universities in the country, on the undergraduate and, especially, the graduate level. All that really counts now at the top of the meritocratic pyramid is raw brilliance and the demonstration of it at the top schools. How else could (dot) Indians be so successful now at the top of the American pyramid, when their parents had no social capital at all here? If you want to try to get rich and powerful by being the CEO of a top corporation, you can apparently just as easily go to Auburn as MIT, like Tim Cook. But anyone who tries to get into a top investment bank's or law firm's highest levels should fuggedaboutit without degrees from the very top.
12
So if the only goal of an education is to make as much money as you can then I guess a College or University that supports the highest level of thinking and teaching is worthless. At least that seems to be what this article suggests.
The vast majority of hard working students seek the highest level of education. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to attend the best college you can get into AND afford.
Don’t confuse the greed and elitism of of few people with the value of any educational opportunity- even an expensive one.
11
No, Olivia Jade would not have done “just fine” at Arizona State*with her lackadaisical attitude towards scholastics. While ASU is required to take in a fairly large Freshman class due to its mandate as a state school, it nevertheless has huge drop out rates during the first couple of years because the curriculum is just as rigorous as any other college especially in the STEM areas of study as well as degrees in Economics, Journalism, Business etc.
Even the softer areas of study require that you show up and finish your work on time and take exams which this young lady wasn’t interested in doing.
Maybe her father would prefer that she would had been a USC drop out versus an ASU drop out because that was direction she was headed towards in any case at either university.
*Although I understand the author’s overall point regarding elite education and class.
11
@Annabelle Or better yet just hang out and party with college people, no need to actually attend. That is the college experience, or as some have indicated a way to get married to someone wealthy.
1
Obama and Clinton could have made a statement by sending their daughters to colleges other than Harvard and Stanford. They could have helped diffuse the Ivy League illusion. Maybe these colleges are all about rubbing shoulders with the children of rich and powerful. But most employers have to test graduates because an Ivy League degree is no guarantee of intelligence or competence, but it probably means they are on the inside. Elizabeth Warren lying about being in a Native American tribe to get into Harvard now seems most unfortunate.
8
Last I heard, Sasha Obama was choosing university of Michigan over Ivy League. Elizabeth Warren grew up without any advantages and graduated from univ of Houston and Rutgers Law School. She did her law degree while balancing studies with parenting a toddler.
1
@Rick - I agree with you in general. But Warren was already in law school at the time she listed herself as a Native American. I think it was a silly and essentially disingenuous thing to do - it seems clear she thought of herself as having Native ancestry and was proud of that, but she had all the advantages of being white so listing herself as a minority seems meaningless. But the Boston Globe looked into this in detail and found no evidence that it played any part in her school or job offers, or that she tried to use it to promote her career.
1
Did you overlook Bush and Trump who sent their children to Yale and Penn?
Look how many readers have used this forum to mention immediately that they went to an elite school or graduated in the top 10% of this or that. (Now can I mention my kid goes to Brown? Yes, a “minor Ivy”.) This affirms people love status. The point of the discussion is being missed.
16
This is why I despise the wealthy, the can never have enough. Read the other article about cheap billionaires. It is not enough for them to have more money that generations can spend in their lifetimes, they find it necessary to cheat more deserving people out of a education so that their kid can get a education that they will never use, or worse it will allow them to become another hedge fund manager or CEO to better steal pensions and gut companies for their assists and discard them.
12
@Paulie It is just some of the "wealthy" depending on how you define it. Try remembering that.
1
I would hire someone who majored in a STEM field at a state school before someone who majored in political science or a field ending in "studies" at any school, elite or not.
9
I read somewhere else that these parents who bought their over privileged kids access to elite schools would have done those children a much better lifelong service by teaching them to have genuine principles. Elite education is wasted on students whose parents are, and apparently have trained their children to become, terrible human beings.
12
It’s actually hilarious that these wealthy parents went to such lengths to get their ultra-privileged children into “elite” schools. For what? To be the one at the yacht party who also went to USC? No college would have kept these kids from maintaining their ultra-privileged status. They don’t even need degrees, or gainful employ at the end of it, which is largely why the rest of us do that whole “college” thing.
12
The most pressing issue here is not whether any of these schools represent something “important”, it’s that students who earn athletic scholarships on merit of ability are very likely cheated out of a position on a team.
This liberal privilege racket is not the worst among our country’s leftist-wealth, heinous hypocrisies, but it’s right down there with the others.
5
It was doubtful anyone actually lost a position on a team. The success of the program was it operated in the area of a group the coach thought could help the team, and got admissions priority, but did not “work out” once on campus. If any of them had a scholarship of some kind, they quickly dumped it once on campus, repaid any funds spent and disappeared off the map as far as any tracking mattered. It seems the coaches were proven performers and got the benefit of the doubt from admissions on potential players. Obviously the admissions slot would have gone to another candidate, but probably not an athlete.
1
And then there is that deafening silence coming from the privileged right-the smug and purposeful perpetrators of inequality. Lose the ridiculous assumption that this is a “leftist” scandal because even in SoCal, it is far from it.
1
@JBC - How do you know whether the parents who did this are liberals or leftists?
1
Elite schools really just serve to feed the parents’ ego.
These parents never ask their kid if they’re happy.
I like Mark Cuban’s take. He chose his state school because it was cheapest.
8
My father went to Yale. My sister went to Yale. My brother went to Trinity University. I am self educated.
There is/was no difference in our level of intellectual accomplishment.
If you are less intelligent a prestigious degree might make a difference. If you are more intelligent, in my experience, it does not.
11
What happened here is wrong but so is admission based on your parents donation or some affirmative action quota. In all cases someone who deserves admission is excluded because some one else less qualified was admitted
9
Networking and Nepotism
Rubbing elbows with wealth and fame and tradition.
Best jobs available
Bright futures.
Supportive leaders ,lobbyists and corporates
Presidential pardons
No jail time for most white collar crime.
8
A lot of these parents who fraudulently embarked on this college scam to get their kids into these schools are business people— private equity founder, Jeweler, Media executive, a physician, etc.
How ethical are these parents in their daily business transactions?
11
I have heard this before, and it confirms what I've always assumed from experience: There are a lot of great universities, and great professors everywhere. If you know what you're doing, any school can work for you. But the social capital conferred by elite institutions on people who lack it makes sense.
The more I read about this case, the more I think what terrible parents these are. First, despite all the resources they have to provide their kids, many of said kids seem to lack much in terms of academic ambition. Second, they don't seem to have instilled in their kids the idea that the parents' success belongs to the parents, not to the kids, and that the kids may get assistance, but need to work for their own.
I may not be a famous actor or a law firm chairman. I have not sent my sons to SAT prep classes or hired them a college counselor. Maybe they won't end up at Harvard but they'll do fine, and they will know that while they were given a good education and high expectations, their success is their own. And I as a parent will retain my integrity and dignity.
9
I believe anyone can do well in life, and that it really doesn't matter if you go to an elite or state school, or even a good community college program. I also think its a myth you need to go to an elite school to have great success. Excellence will take you far in life, as long as you don't believe the elitist hype.
5
I started my education at the University of Houston where my English Class was huge and divided into sections tutored by grad students. I felt out of place at such a big university especially as I had gone to a small, Catholic high school and as I was a foreign student.
I transferred to Rice University and it changed my life.
My classes at Rice were much smaller and the professors were always available in office hours. They even had lunch with us.
There were so many lectures, readings and plays going on in the evenings for learning outside the classroom. There were some very wealthy students who fitted in wearing the same scruffy jeans and tees as everyone else.
My professors encouraged me and I ended up going to Graduate School in English at Columbia. The irony is Columbia while being better known was not as nurturing an environment as Rice.
While the names of both these schools were useful and opened doors, what meant the most to me was the rich academic experience I got.
I now teach at a CUNY Community College and I have some very intelligent students who write beautifully and could have thrived at a place like Rice. But they never even thought about applying there.
Instead of austerity budgets and constant cost cutting we need to put much more funds into public universities and community colleges, That way they can offer smaller classes and more cultural offerings and students can get more attention. We need to even the playing field.
55
@Shelina S. Or do as you did, find a school that meets your desires, learn and work from there. Small classes for things that might not matter, and that many great students do in High School are not a benefit to some.
1
As someone from a big family of small means, I want to say "thank you" to the university admissions officers who admitted me solely on my admission essay, grades, and test scores. The admissions scandal has revealed to me how much Northwestern, the University of Illinois, Duke, and U.C. Berkeley changed my life by accepting me though I had nothing to offer but myself. Your admissions officers will never know how much you changed me. You opened exciting worlds to me. You transformed me. The world is so beautiful to me now, so intricate and multi-dimensional, so different from where I started. Not only did you change my life for the better, but I've taught my children this richer, better world because of you. Again, thank you.
33
@sloan ranger Great they did their job properly, and you benefited. Most do exactly that, only a few are corrupt.
1
My sister and I are evidence that the studies are accurate. Our parents were not high school graduates. Our background is working class. Our test scores were above the 99th percentile – in the top slice of the 99th percentile. Because we attended schools in poor neighborhoods, we did not go to elite colleges. We both won New York State Regents scholarships but, in those days, kids from white ethnic backgrounds and working class high schools were not encouraged to apply to the Ivy League.
We did, however, apply to and attend elite graduate schools. I also attended an elite law school. My sister and I are both securely middle-class, and I earned for years a salary in the upper 1%. The only reason that my sister did not earn a salary in that percentile was that she turned down an offer from Goldman Sachs to teach public high school math. Her politics are better than mine, I guess, because I took the money.
Following the scandal, I wonder how many kids from my background who qualify for elite schools, are turned down to make way for applicants whose families pay their way in. It’s always been true that legacies are admitted even with mediocre grades - a legal way of buying your way in – but this cheating scandal makes clear that elite school admissions are often about money, and that students who could actually profit from the credential and contacts that an elite college or graduate school provides are denied those opportunities.
15
I was halfway through this piece when I realized something: as a society we have distorted education's value beyond recognition.
Education is supposed to make you fit to participate in our society. You should be able to read, write, and do whatever else is needed to understand how and why things work -- and to recognize when they don't.
Vocational education is valuable, but when did all education become vocational, as the studies cited herein suggest we view it?
A degree is no longer to be valued as an achievement in itself. It's simply a token to be deposited in the slot machine of post-collegiate life, with everyone crossing his or her fingers they hit at least a modest jackpot.
The students aren't to blame: they're playing the game we adults made. We're the ones who have made life after school the desperate, fraught enterprise it is -- the one that has so warped our perspective that those who can afford to are trying to buy their kids safer seats. We adults are the ones who have created a system that rewards fraud and corruption.
Maybe our values are out of whack. Maybe our system is out of whack. Something's out of whack, that's all I know.
34
One of my sons was granted a full ride at an elite school in Boston - his professors saw something in him that turned out to be right - he worked for an organization for world peace for many years and did not get rich or famous, but the world is a better place for people because professors see something in them that is better than average. Lets not be too hard on choices people in responsible places make - of course they can make mistakes but then we all do.
9
One of the quirks of social science studies is that if you go on crunching the numbers in different ways, you will get the result you are looking for. It is not surprising that those who got in on quotas succeeded. The universities, corporations, government and non-profits also have quotas to fill.
6
@Rahul, or they are actually qualified, and not just “quotas.”
1
Yes. Everyone wants “diversity” and claims “diversity” = better. Except of course in basketball, golf, swimming, etc where no one would ever consider one’s race, sex, or sexual orientation to be of any benefit to a team.
1
I see and appreciate the comments by many that we should not look upon elite schools only as a way to get high-paying jobs. They indicate that there is more to the elite college experience than the impact on income and wealth.
Just curious.. Would be good to know how many of these graduates entered the workforce with $100,000+ debts.
Sometimes money does matter.
5
@MJB
I don't have the link. But many ivy league grads have very low debt levels. I think a lot of them have less than 20k per student on average for undergrad. The majority of students are 1%ers whose parents can drop 160k on them. The minority of poorer students usually get excellent aid packages with few loans. There may be a subset of the middle upper class from high COL areas that gets majorly hosed as usual, but I'm not sure.
8
@MJB Money always matters if you want to eat, have a place to live etc. And yes massive debt matters too.
1
All valuable points but for one key metric: assigning $$$ to success. Those who choose the public sector, such as academia, government, research, etc., don't pull high salaries. But they may win Nobels or Pulitzers, or become director of an agency. Equating success solely to income is a false measure.
46
@James
"Nobels or Pulitzers." There's that darn elitism again. We have to win somethng prestigious to count.
1
I did learn to earn a decent living for the rest of my life from my undergraduate education. that’s huge. But what stands out for me is that I learned that I was from a specific culture, that I had an accent, that there are many cultures and that I was from a particular one. I found this surprising and disorienting.
7
And, I hope, mind and heart expanding.
1
I’ve always felt that the quality and motivation of the student is more important than the school. Teachers tend to teach to the middle and most of them have no idea what to do with those at the top. Elite schools are inherently conservative and too deferential to the establishment. If you can read and you want to be a great student you need to hit the library physically (or these days online), read widely, read critically and ask the questions no one is asking. I went to a government high school and a good but not the best University. Now I’m doing my PhD at University of Melbourne at the best law school in Australia and ranked one of the best in the world and while I’ve learnt a lot, I still find it wanting and at times maddeningly conservative and snobby. The main benefit to me is what others think of it’s reputation. But, I reckon if you want to be at the cutting edge of the cutting edge, you need to strike out on your own, rather than waiting to be spoon fed. I drive myself harder than any Professor would.
5
I went to a UC - decent public university system in California. For the most part there weren’t extreme income gaps/class differences because it is a public institution. My classes were small and I did well. My senior year, I was selected for a US State Department internship. A young woman told me about the internship. She was an immigrant from Europe and spoke French, more serious and mature than our peers. At the internship I met students from Stanford and Georgetown. They weren’t smarter than me but they showed me how to network. I met a grad student from Ohio State business school and he taught me the importance of a firm handshake. Getting into an elite college/internship/experience etc provides you with new perspectives and if you are lucky, opportunities. I won’t forget peoples generosity in sharing their knowledge and I try to pay forward by sharing information about my experiences.
44
I wonder how many of these children of famous, wealthy parents really care about getting into elite colleges. Could it be that the main motivation for the parents is how it reflects on them to be able to say, "My daughter is at Stanford" or "My son is at Yale."
65
I'm not arguing with the data, but when you measure "the benefits of attending a highly selective college", you automatically limit your results to "benefits" and outcomes that are measurable, like income and wealth. Those are only some of the ways students may benefit from attending, say, an Ivy League college. A narrow focus on those gives a cramped, miserly notion of what education can mean to a student.
My own experience was that I was a gifted, shy kid in an excellent but large public high school. I had access to great teachers and great classes, and I got into the Ivy of my dreams, but I felt like an invisible misfit going through the motions. Here is what changed my life about attending a highly selective college: for the first time ever, I was surrounded by gifted peers who were as excited about learning and as intellectually curious as I was. They didn't laugh at my interests -- they shared their own. It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. I am now decades away from that shy teenager. I earn plenty, enough to support a comfortable but not lavish lifestyle -- better than my parents', but not hugely so. I wouldn't have much impact on the economists' data. But I still recall with wonder my mind's awakening and the lifelong impact of those four years. You can't measure those.
123
@Dean Thank you for this. MIT did the same thing for me, a rebellious, feminist, science loving girl who was viewed as, ahem, unusual, by her high school peers and teachers. MIT provided a thrilling intellectual adventure that I couldn't have experienced anywhere else. And it gave me my husband and soul mate, the greatest gift of all.
36
@Dean
I got the same experience from the University of New Hampshire. Granted I mostly hung around with graduate students and UNH had a stellar professoriat at the time (and all classes were taught by professors). but when I compare my experience to a peer who went to Harvard, I have no doubt I got the better education.
15
@Margaret: I am so glad you had that same experience! And I agree -- I remember a student a year ahead of me who went to Harvard and, after his freshman year, came home and told us that his classes might as well have been delivered "by a janitor reading cue cards on a TV monitor." That was over 40 years ago. I never forgot those words, clearly, and they influenced my thoughts about college. I pray that all motivated students find their intellectual awakening. My brilliant grandfather never had the chance to go to college. Yet he awakened himself -- and sent both his sons to Harvard. His grandchild turned Harvard down.
12
It is interesting to me that the assumption is that what is important about getting into a selective school is that you will make more money. What I value about the privilege of attending two graduate schools at an Ivy League university is the intellectual stimulation from professors and fellow students. For me, the excitement of ideas and rigorous intellectual analysis beats financial success hands down. That makes this even more tragic, as students who appreciate the intellectual privileges are losing out, at least in some cases, to students who aren’t interested in intellectual pursuits at all.
19
What's a flagship public research university as opposed to just a public research university? I'm sure there is a difference but what marks the difference?
1
@J Oggia There doesn't appear to be a fixed definition, but generally it refers to the most prominent public university in a state (e.g. UT Austin, UNC-Chapel Hill, UC Berkeley and UCLA, University of Washington).
3
Flagship schools for states receive extra funds for research and likely get a full range of postgraduate programs. Even the state of Texas cannot afford to have law and medical schools at every state institution. These items rarely impact the actual education an undergraduate student receives, but they impact the quality of the applicants to the undergraduate school. In some states like Michigan, the flagship schools are the biggest. In other states, maybe California and Virginia, they are not.
1
Think UC Berkeley or UCLA compared to UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Merced, UC Davis. The flagships are typically the oldest institutions.
1
Going to the school rated #4 or maybe #6 at the time (a transfer from a state college, I still don't know how I got in) my future success was made possible through meeting other smart and capable students, who went on to succeed as well. I will leave a decent fraction of my estate to the school for scholarships. No Trump or Kushner would have dared apply to my school, because you had to test in, not buy in.
8
I attended the University of Washington in the 70s. My mother was an admissions officer there through the 80s. Foreign students were a significant and invaluable presence when I was there. That diverse presence ended soon after I graduated because the State insisted on favoring local students. I am alarmed to see people blaming foreign students for the difficulty of getting into college. I learned as much from Nigerian and Haitian students as from my professors.
After graduation I taught for three years in a private prep school—ALL my students got into their first-pick colleges. This year I retired from teaching in a small, rural, and poor public high school for 40 years. Over the years, I have written recommendations for students who went on to graduate from high-prestige schools such as Yale, Brown, Reed, Stanford, Duke, University of Chicago, and Pepperdine, not to mention the Naval Academy and Quantico. The doctor's son went to the state school (not even the Honor college) and the daughter of a teaching assistant went to Brandeis.
It was never easy for "ordinary" people to get into "top" schools when I was young, it is still not easy, and that is unlikely to change any time soon. But some of my students worked hard, had impressive resumes, and great stories to aid their admission. And luck. All had luck, all had persistence and support.
8
@Jan Priddy
Jan, I hope you keep up with the literature on academic rankings. UW is ranked higher than most of the schools you listed, if you look at GRADUATE school rankings. Overall, UW grad programs are ranked higher than Duke and certainly higher than Brown!! If I had to name the best school in the country, I would pick U of Chicago, and I certainly did not go there.
I find legacy students to be pathetic. They happened to be born lucky. I do think that they are discovered.
I have been to most campuses in the U.S.. Several of them have buildings that are fake Gothic buildings. One such school is in Durham, North Carolina.
2
interesting insight that it benefits minorities more than anyone else. and its exactly what our society needs---more fluid upward movement by its diverse population.
however the bottom line is that if you want to be successful regardless of endeavor, your will be successful based on grit and determination---not parchment.
12
Can someone confirm what I think I just read. Ivy league plus schools provide social capital and prestige, but no better an education than an successful public institution. Which says a lot, and we should always keep in mind.
19
@RMurphy doubtful. It depends mostly on the student's interest in intellectual matters
1
As someone who went to elite and non-elite universities and come from a middle class background, I found that the elite college experience have the following benefits: (1) networking and potential employment contacts, (2) a much more ambitious, smarter and switched on cohort, which led to further motivation for me to do better, (3) on average, better teachers, and (4) generally a cushier, nicer studying atmosphere. So, if my kids have the elite college option, I would think it is worth it. Not worth it to commit a crime to get them in though.
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@Beat
Agree with your points as someone with a similar educational background and who now teaches at a public regional where most students are underprepared and the faculty are both overworked and lazy. The brightest and most motivated to get ahead, but all the students would be helped by higher quality teaching and expectations as much as being around more motivated peers. Also, many of my students work part or full time even though the cost o attend is relatively low, which has a serious drag on their school performance.
1
I was an undergrad at MIT, and got my MS at Stanford and my PhD at Berkeley, where I spent most of my career teaching. I don't think this makes me a brilliant expert on much of anything, but maybe it gives some credibility to my ideas about elite colleges.
There is something profoundly clueless about reducing the college experience to how much money you end up making. (In my case, top 20% but nowhere near the top 1%.) I think it's mostly about the people you get to hang out with, but not in the sense of friends who'll get you a high-paying job later in life. The faculty and, more important, the students at the elite schools stretch your mind.
This is assuming you have a mind to be stretched, and aren't narrowly focused on how much money you're going to have when you grow up. In my case, I got to hang out with giants of computer science such as Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert, Gerry Sussman, Hal Abelson, John McCarthy, Terry Winograd, and Alan Kay. Only one of those (Winograd) was my official teacher in a formal class, but I learned everything I know from them and others. (Special mention to Mike Eisenberg, who died yesterday, too young, and deserves an obituary in the Times.) I learned not only about computer science but about ethics and about education, my ultimate career.
Those poor kids in the study who benefitted from elite college didn't just get good jobs. Maybe for the first time in their lives, they got a good education, which is priceless.
165
@Brian Harvey Indeed, one of the most important things I learned from attending an Ivy League was that making money was not the most important thing in the world. I was exposed to delightful, esoteric, and unprofitable topics that I fear I never would have encountered otherwise.
10
@Brian Harvey Thank you for this line: "There is something profoundly clueless about reducing the college experience to how much money you end up making." It seems like every study or article I read about the value of a college (this article included) somehow measures by how much money the graduates make. Some students, and thankfully some colleges, aspire to something more.
6
@Maria Katalin Yes. I wanted my children to attend a college where the students had ideas. My daughter made her choice for one school, after visiting several well-known colleges, because at that school all the students she met had a strong interest in something.. The other students were an important consideration along with the faculty and ahead of "prestige."
1
Whether you like it or not, it matters an enormous amount if one wants to go into a great graduate program (especially medicine or law - and further on), and also makes a huge difference when applying for jobs.
All things being equal the person from an "elite" school will be taken on before someone who is from some other "class" of school.
Rather like being an Eagle Scout. It clearly differentiates you from others.
15
@Bob I went to a big public state school for undergrad and got into a top 10 medical school.
I don’t think it really matters. If you’re gonna succeed you’re gonna succeed.
20
@Brian I attended a top 10 law school about 25 years ago. Sure, the first-year picture book reflected that some of us were from less prestigious institutions. But dozens and dozens were from the Ivies and their equivalents. For every one student from, say, Hunter College, maybe there were 20 from Harvard. The clear message was that my law school did not draw deeply into the applicant pool from less selective colleges. Three years later, the first-year-associate picture book at my huge, prestigious NYC law firm confirmed the same principle with respect to law schools. I would never assume that where a kid goes to school doesn't matter. At the very least, in terms of law salaries, it could make the difference between paying off your student loans in 5 years or in 30.
10
@Bob I don't believe that the happiness and life satisfaction curve is any better for those who attend elite undergraduate and graduate or professional schools than it is for those who attend public universities or less prestigious private ones. There are plenty of miserable folks with Harvard law degrees or Stanford MBAs sitting in Manhattan offices.
8
Most universities are, in some sense at least, “selective,” but such a mythology has grown up around places typically described that way that’s it’s become really hard to get people to understand that there are literally hundreds and hundreds of great schools all across the country where students will do well and flourish. Given the constraints on the job market for faculty in higher education, many great scholars and teachers work at “non-elite “ schools and their students benefit from them. This scandal is so sad and its goals so pointless.
14
I’m not too sure I agree with the article on the whole.
I’ve seen the effects an Ivy League education can have versus avg private (intelligence notwithstanding).
I’m thinking that, at least in the pharmaceutical industry, ivy is king.
4
Nope. I’ve worked in pharma for 25 years. Ivies are not king. Far from it.
2
A study based on who graduates from college is sort of missing the mark since the question has to include the facts about how many students who are admitted as freshman actually make it to graduation. Only admitting this variable can we tell how much of a difference selectivity vs. less selectivity makes.
7
It matters in certain careers, like finance and law, where reputation is more important than talent.
For everyone else, skills and personality are much more important than the name of the school on your college diploma.
12
@Matt And even for finance and law, it's the school the MBA or JD was earned at that matters, not where the undergrad was from. My three children all went to good, but not at all elite, schools for undergrad because they were what we could afford. The kids worked hard for four years and then all three were admitted to Ivies for grad school. To the extent that diploma matters, it's the final one that is key.
16
Interesting that Wall Street recruits from schools with the most cheating on admissions. Nobody cheats to get into most state colleges. Wall Street prefers those with larceny in their blood.
1
My son, coming from a low-income family, went to an elite college because it was a good fit for him intellectually, not because it was a stepping stone to wealth.
He spent a year afterwards doing Americorps service, working with disadvantaged kids.
He is enrolled in an elite law school because he loves the law and wants to do some good in the world.
In my experience, this is more the case rather than the exception in the young people I know. Of course there is privelige in higher education and the world, but let’s not paint with such a broad brush.
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@NYC Parent so I assume he will donate 90 percent of future income to charity?
1
@NYC Parent Do suggest that your son take comparative law and study the civil law, which is more rational, just and just plain civil than our system. If he sticks to US common law, he may hate the law and find he can do little good.
1
I don't doubt the study's findings. However, is the only gauge of the successful college career the paycheck afterward? I say this not to argue the article, or the issue DOJ uncovered, but if we use salary post-college as a marker, why do people major in art and sociology in college? Those tend not to be your moneymaker majors. That said, the only reason, I see, for a ivy league college is connections, something the weathly already have.
18
As an upper-middle-class student, I was previously swept up in the idea of elite schools. I currently attend a public university and am now grateful that I didn't end up at a name brand school. To those who challenge that there is less intellectual stimulation at non-elite schools, I disagree-I have found many people who out in the work and strive for excellence. But I have also found it very grounding to be among people who value experiences over straight-As. America has an obsession with elite schools, but I completely agree that if you have the drive to be successful, you will be successful wherever you go. I think the benefits of elite schools are best served to lower-income, minority students who would otherwise not have access to the resources available at such schools.
48
The irony here is that Olivia Jade's parents might have actually made a difference, at great sacrifice, through Jade's loss of reputation, into turning her direction in life into something more meaningful. Sending her to a prestigious university probably wouldn't have worked anyways in making her more mature--but this scandal just might be the ticket.
17
Education undoubtedly changed since the time some 50+ years ago when I made the jump from an average midwestern city university to an elite Ivy League school to earn my PhD. I had earned an electrical engineering degree in a cooperative program- actually a wonderful program that afforded me to cover my expenses and get valuable industrial experience for later work. However, the teaching was proforma, humdrum and largely unexciting and limited in intellectual breadth. Arriving at the Ivy League school was like stepping into the sunshine of a bright promising day. Teachers were actually spending time with students post lectures and their offices were always open. Based on my undergraduate thesis, which involved devices based on quantum phenomena, I decided to pursue a career in physics, for which I had not been adequately prepared in my EE program. But my professors and their assistants gave freely of their time to bring me up to speed. I had the fortune to take courses from 4 Nobel laureates, one of which spend up to half an hour past his lectures discussing various problems with us, often morphing into philosophical and historic issues. It was the most intellectually stimulating time of my life and wished that I had had a similar opportunity in undergraduate school. But I did leave with my PhD nevertheless.
68
Maybe the difference was that you were a graduate student.
1
I attended a top school, so did my brother (Harvard/Yale). We were not from the economic elite. I have watched my friends after graduation. There is one clear pattern:
Those who came from great family wealth or famous last names have become wealthy and famous. Those who worked in the dining hall and borrowed money to be there are struggling to keep a foothold in the vanishing middle class.
Elite institutions are like anywhere else. If you are not well connected going in, you are not well connected coming out.
274
A subset of elite college students may be aided in getting from the bottom 20% to the top 20%, but it is unlikely that they will make it to the 1%. Another subset are more genuinely interested in the life of the mind than connections, and will end up randomly distributed in the socioeconomic strata. For the most part, I believe that your observation holds.
16
@Randolph Rhett
I completely agree. I did not go to an Ivy league (not by a stretch) but I was an older student, first college graduate in my extended family that went to a top 15 public research university in a competitive pre-professional track while working 3/4 time to support myself and commuted. I was too poor to afford trips and internships (unlike my younger peers) and was mostly unavailable to join study groups. I did not make student friends, had no connections after graduation, did not know I should have "done research" with professors to obtain letters of recommendation, and graduated with average gpa. I have been super lucky in that I am employed but should I get laid off for over six months, with diminished industry contacts, I will quickly rejoin the low working class I came from.
4
@Randolph Rhett
I completely disagree. I went to Wesleyan, so on par with the Ivies and my sister, a Dartmouth grad, and I used to look at the college rankings each year to see what school had a higher rank.
Our father was on the fire department and my mother was a book keeper. My sister and I are both first generation college, and now both doctors (me a PhD and her an MD).
Some of my affluent classmates were lazy and have not been successful. Some have been.
One of my classmates who was also heavily supported by financial aid, developed a class in radio as an undergraduate, got a summer internship with NPR (which was subsidized by Wesleyan), ended up as a translator for NPR when The Wall came down as she was doing a Fullbright in Berlin. She is still working at NPR, now as a reporter (which may or may not put her in the top 20% come to think of it, but I would count her as highly successful).
There are many other classmates who were in the financial aid cohort who have done quite well. I completely agree with the assertion that attending an elite school gives you credibility when you go for a job interview or apply to graduate school. I feel like I can stand in the room with the brilliant people I get to work with every day. I would not have believed that I was really smart without external, independent confirmation that my college gave me, I credit much of my success to my college, and donate to financial aid accordingly.
This article is an illustration of the complexity involved in admissions.
The deductive reasoning that ends with "Ms. Giannulli's parents would have taken something their daughter didn't need from someone for whom it might have been life-changing" is a bridge too far.
The likelihood that someone without privilege would have inherited the crew team spots awarded to Ms. Laughlin's daughters is infinitesimal. This is privileged on privileged crime.
It's tragic that we've arrived at this, but tennis, sailing and soccer coaches aren't keeping underprivileged kids out of their universities, the schools' prioritization of athletics is.
75
@gio I am glad you brought up sports. Our obsession with it at all costs comes to this. I really do not get the need for such greed, greed for greed's sake -- just another example of lack of values and being oblivious to it. I am sure they thought no one was "getting hurt." The rules apply only to the little people.
7
Oh so many reasons to be happy about living in Canada. All prestigious universities are public. My husband and I both went to top tier schools but I’m sure I’d be in virtually the same spot if I’d gone to a tier three school. Also tuition didn’t bankrupt me despite getting the maximum government loan (OSAP) amount all four years I was in school.
36
Being someone who worked on Wall Street and having a Ph.D. I got to see not only the the recruiting from the university side, but also from the corporate side as well. So I have a couple of remarks.
To get into the coveted NY investment banks analyst programs you almost must come from an Ivy school. This includes MIT/Stanford. It almost even comes down to which frat or eating club you went to because the alumni typically return to their university to assist HR with recruiting. You might get a serious look at if you have a 3.8 gpa from a good the next level down. I.e. duke/northwestern etc.
HR maintains contact with university department heads and they would refer their best students. He sets up an office for the interview and it's done very secretively. Or a partner at the firm may tell HR that they MUST go to his alma-mater and recruit. Again it boils down the best students. The placement center may never know that the recruiting occurred.
From a student -networking standpoint it's a game of a asymmetric information on a very deceptive way. The student tries to build his own contact list without giving up any of his own contacts.
Once you have the job, there is still networking that goes on between grads from the same university. But the mentoring part seems to be the most valuable. There is also networking based upon nationality, especially among the Indians.
17
This is such an impoverished analysis. Is it not possible that some students want an intellectual challenge, irrespective of the financial "pay-off"? It seems difficult to argue that one is bound to find more motivated and more intellectually capable students at more competitive colleges and universities, even if not everyone at these schools fits that description, and even if one finds such students at less competitive institutions.
I teach at a school decidedly lower on the academic food chain, and if there is one complaint I hear from my brighter and more hardworking students it is that they do not have an intellectual community. On the college tour with my child, I always asked the tour guide, "Do your professors give you extra credit for attending lectures in the evenings?" If the answer was "yes," I could be pretty sure the overall environment was not particularly intellectual, and students only attended these co-curricular activities if they were bribed.
My child worked hard in high school and is looking forward to being in an intelletually stimulating environment, something that was sorely absent in our high school. My child is not calculating the amount of the first paycheck upon graduation. I understand that some families need a "return on investment" and I do not scoff at that. I just want to say some students, regardless of their financial status, are also motivated intellectually.
42
@sj What an excellent comment and observation. I went to a school (Ivy League) and spent my time reading, going to outside lectures, and immersed myself in the intellectual and cultural life. That was the true reward of education. I was too busy learning to go to the ephemeral parties.
10
@sj
Amen! Impoverished "rich" people, indeed.
It is actually depressing to read—especially in the NY Times—this kind of analysis of the worth of a college education. Life is so much more than your salary, good grief! My daughter is also looking forward to being in an intellectually vibrant community in college, soon, and I can't wait for her to have that opportunity, if she can. She's hard at work to achieve that—no strings to pull here.
7
I finished my first courses in undergraduate a few years ago and have been contemplating returning back to university to pursue another degree.
Granted I have looked here in the UK, E.U., and of course the U.S. With that in mind, I find it highly disconcerting that as developed countries we push for an educated society because and informed society is a thriving citizenry. To see what is happening in with schools where admissions can be bought, is a huge blow to the very endeavors of academia.
Is there any place left that has not been shadowed by the hand of corruption?
9
@Grace Wells
You have touched on the crux of the issue, which is this:
The public interest in, and purpose of, education is to serve the undivided needs of a thriving democratic society. It is not to serve the individual-qua-individual. I.e., The government's overriding interest is not to guarantee my son or your daughter a spot at a qualified university. Rather it is to guarantee that society has enough qualified doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, etc. to meet its needs.
We, in America have lost site of the proper function of government when we reduce it to serving our private interests, i.e., my kid, my roads, my garbage pick-up, my parks, my, my, my...
Subsumed in this view, is the fact that justice itself is an indivisible public good, and justice cannot be had without equal opportunity. Seen through this lens, the question is not whether this particular minority person is as qualified as that particular non-minority person, but rather whether higher education is meeting society's need ensure that the professions represent a cross section of the public that they will be serving,
e.g., A medical profession only representing upper income white males cannot serve a pluralistic society. (Neither could teaching profession consisting of only women.)
And, welcome to America. Forty years of anti-government, pro-private sector propaganda has led us to this privatized view of the role higher education and merit of affirmative action.
4
The author really glosses over the fact that in order to move to the 1%, an elite school is required. Of course the 1% is not important or even realistic for everyone, but for many, the 1% is the American dream. If you aspire to be a CEO or a groundbreaking doctor, of course an elite school will facilitate that more effectively than a less selective institution! Picture the average Harvard student vs. the average state school student, or the average class discussion in a Harvard classroom vs. that at an average school. Of course kids are pushing each other further in the Harvard classrooms, creating more innovative ideas, and fueling each others motivations to reach higher ground - that's why they got there in the first place! Think about the the resources, the connections, and the brand names of those colleges, too. I'm not saying that you can't achieve the same level of "success" at UMass as you can at Harvard, I'm just saying that elite schools make this path way easier.
More importantly, it's troubling that the only measure of "success" discussed here is wealth. How about an article or a research study that looks at how much kids enjoyed and learned from their institutions? Or how different types of schools affect satisfaction in one's career or at home? Or how different schools prepare students to engage in open minded discussions? I'm fairly confident my "elite" liberal arts college helped me achieve those things where my state school would've fallen short.
26
@Ank
I received all of my education at a top tier research state university (Wisconsin) and as an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to take upper-level courses as soon as I was ready for them. I even took some graduate courses during my junior and senior years. Wisconsin had top-level departments in my fields of interest (math and applied mechanics) and I am confident that no ivy-league school could have offered any better intellectual opportunities.
The quality of one's intellectual experience at university involves both the opportunities that are available and one's willingness to take risks to challenge oneself.
18
@Ank IF you have the ambition and drive to be successful, it doesn't matter where you go, or even if you go to at all. Steve Jobs went to Reed (and dropped out I believe). I'd say it's a good, even elite college, but it is not the Ivy League or even Stanford. There are lots of other examples. I'd even argue if you have some kind of a dream (let's assume that accomplishing that dream will get you into the top 1% of income at least - which is about $450,000/year), you should follow the path that lets you accomplish that dream. Sometimes it may involve going through an elite institution and sometimes it may not, or it may be some mix. There are many many professionals which can reach that with or without an Ivy League.
And outside of that, in the world of business, you can do even better. My wife graduated sixth grade (her highest) and when she ran her own business, by the time she sold it, her income would've put her in the top 1% at that time (she "retired" at 38).
2
@Ank - An actual study of men with incomes greater than $500K, or fortunes greater than $5 million found that in each 100:
The average age is 47 years old
90 to 95 made the money themselves; only 5 to 10 inherited it
90 are college graduates; 10 are not
For those who are college graduates, 3 out of 4 did not attend an Ivy League school
1
@David in Upsate NY:
I agree completely. Our oldest attended The College of Wooster, a small liberal arts school in Ohio—also in Loren Pope’s book. She visited, fell in love and received a scholarship. The price tag is ridiculous, but...they make perfectly clear that they accept A students and C students: they all have contributions to make and through learning with, and from, each other —
they go into the world more capable and understanding humans.
In response to this recent incident, Wooster sent a tweet saying ‘we have scoured our admissions records, and we regret to report that we discovered that some of our Quidditch recruits cannot actually fly’.
Our family laments what some of these kids could have gained from such an inclusive, small, supportive school. And what the schools could have gained, and paid forward, with a wealthy family’s financial contribution.
26
@Lissa These wealthy parents should have been scouring the country for a college that fit the needs and talents of their children. No one benefited by them bribing their way into a school that their child would not succeed in, or be happy at. In a way I feel sorry for these rich kids.
5
@Jo:
Those parents were not interested in needs, talent, fit, or happiness. They were seeking the best possible identification, a label on the kid’s forehead as it were, to assure the kid’s continuance in the 0.1%.
Many students in the purportedly elite institutions are not there to enrich the life of the mind but to maintain their status. And from the perspective of 40 years in graduate/professional education, I can assert that not a few of them are as dumb as dirt (but usually well connected and quite polished).
2
This piece misses the point. Those parents weren't motivated by their children's educational attainment or career prospects. Probably wasn't about the children at all in some cases. They simply thought they could buy some status by having their offspring accepted at prestigious colleges. Much like joining the right country club. Turns out they could.
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@wyleecoyoteus
I felt that precisely about Olivia Jade G. She says in her video, “I don’t really care about school”.
Than why was she there? Why did Lori Loughlin and her husband commit fraud to get her in? This video can't be the first time Olivia uttered that sentiment.
Was it because her parents wanted her in a school befitting her perceived place in the l% class or something about USC would impress her parents friends?
Not letting your child choose their own career path or college is called a control freak in my neck of the woods. It's usually because the parents are using the child's successes for their own gratification and validation as parents.
There's a video of Lori Loughlin doing that exact thing, bragging about Olivia's Youtube career as if that validated her as a great parent to her progeny.
14
It appears to be the way to keep up with the uber-rich Joneses. I guess it's hard to brag about your wealthy kid who somehow didn't have the grades for one of these schools, and the poor kid will have to hang his head in shame.
1
@sandi Very good points Sandi.
1
Years ago Loren Pope wrote a book "Looking beyond the Ivies". It was an invaluable book in helping me help my children attend the college that was right for them. I think more parents and students need to concentrate on finding the school that is right for their child or for them and not on the name or fame of the school. In the long run they will do much better at the right school.
16
The problem is self-perpetuating.
I have probably interviewed a thousand candidates for positions in a high-end management consulting firm. We would scan resumes quickly looking for candidates, limiting the interviews only to those from prestige undergraduate universities and "top-10" MBA programs. We chose to focus where we knew 10% of the students might meet our spec as opposed to only 1% of the students at the high quality state university next door.
Is that fair to the top students and non-elite universities? Of course not. But it is very efficient. The difficulty arises when students recongize this and strive to attend elite universities because they know that's where the investment banks and strategy firms will recruit. And once that happens, it justifies the highly selective approach taken by these firms.
23
@MJB Interesting assessment. I was a really poor girl whose parents refused to even fill out the forms for financial aid. I was graduated from a lesser campus of a state university and later received my MBA from the same state university. Somehow I managed to talk my way into a job with a money center bank. While there, I was assigned to work with a major management consulting firm working on a reorganization of the bank. I so impressed one of the partners that he asked if I was interested in joining the firm. I told him I was. He then asked where I had attended school. When I told him, I was told the school "was not good enough." I was considered top notch at what I did; more than one recruiter phoned me on a semi-regular basis. And more than one responded in the same way as the consulting firm partner. My daughter attended an Ivy; my son a state university and then Johns Hopkins. I wanted neither to experience my sorrow at being denied opportunities merely because my school was not quite good enough. I now am looking into 529 Plans for my first grandchild, still an infant but just the same...
6
@MJB
Management consulting is a field that focuses heavily on prestige. I did have a friend that did that for Deloitte and literally said he went into companies and made wild unfounded guesses for a large sum and left. He did say a lot of his coworkers were ivy league grads but many were clueless.
If you're looking purely at it from a money standpoint he made 70k/yr starting in NYC which is okay (given the COL it's average). But four years later I was making over 100k/yr at another job related to my major from a state school.
Of course liberal arts grads from State schools usually won't make 70k or 100k until mid career if ever. But to technical STEM grads management consulting is often middle of the pack salary wise.
1
Larry Summers made a couple of comments on TV last night. He said that the elite schools should expand their enrollment so they can admit and enroll all of the well qualified students who apply. He went on to say that the state colleges and universities should be funded so that the education a student receives there would be on the level of the education he or she would receive at one of the elite schools. I think now what is needed to implement these recommendations is the money and the will.
Any suggestions regarding the specifics?
18
@Surreptitious Bass: to pick one example: Stanford would at least admit 20,000 to 30,000, of the 45,000+ who apply vs about 2000, as they do now. That’s a conservative estimate of how many of the applicants are qualified.
If they did that they wouldn’t be elite any more. Maybe that’s a good thing but I doubt the institutions would see it that way.
Also, as another response to this comment indicated, this would mean a ten-fold increase in size. Pretty difficult to pull off. In Stanford’s case there is no way Santa Clara County would let them expand their campus to that extent. It’s already hard to get planning permission to add a single new building. And Stanford already owns a lot of land. An urban school like USC or Columbia would have even more difficulty.
A further repercussion would be the disastrous effect on lower tier institutions. Many of these are quite good, but they would be forced to accept much, much less qualified students or simply go out of business all together.
2
@MayberryMachiavellian There is no evidence supporting the prediction that is how many students would actually enroll given that many students apply to more than one of the "elite" schools. Larry Summers was making a general recommendation. We would have to critically evaluate the relevant information from all of the schools in order to get a better understanding of what the actual number of enrolled students would be.
I agree with Larry regarding expanding enrollment, but also understand that there are limiting factors that are real and not artificially imposed. I wrote the tag line for a reason. Obviously, "there a lot more to it than that," as the old saying goes.
1
My family went into debt to put me into an elite high school education. I got into and excelled at an excellent private college on my own merits, thanks to that elite high school that prepared me beyond what was expected for freshman classes.I was also 25K in debt, and I put 40K to go to Ivy League grad school. I have made it ALL back and now live a very financially secure life (I am 40 and not a banker or lawyer). I have gotten interviews and worked overseas because of an Ivy league school resume. My present job could care less - and I certainly don't feel smarter for going to Columbia. But the truth is, doors open when you don't have connections and money. And I'm speaking from a minority woman who was born in the Bronx. It matters for those of us who don't have parents and friends of parents to get us internships and make introductions. And now that I have two children, I feel I don't have to make the same investment as my parents, because I am educated, have a network of contacts, multi-country experience, etc. The playing field is different when you come from an educated, upper class family.
168
I attended college on a football scholarship. with 4 other siblings. I was son of a gym teacher father. By the time I graduated I had transferred to a better school, studied as hard as the years I played football and ran track . How important is elite admission to future profession? I graduated with a PhD from Penn. I never had much trouble finding a teaching position before I retired, let alone working at a few top-notch consulting firms.
From the lower middle class I experienced a change not only in the students and friends from my childhood through an Ivy institution, but also the ability to meritocratically advance. A much different scenario than many of my rich classmates, where meritocracy was laughed at by "my betters". Their world was different than mine, as it continues to be today.
17
This author measures college only in terms of how it impacts future earning. That reflect a very American way to measure a person's life - by how much money that have. There is much more to a good education than making money.
Those who measure themselves or others in dollars are lost. I don't mean to single out this author. He is just part of what so much of America has succumb to, the obsession and worship of money. A good education doesn't always change that, but it certainly can.
39
@Avid NYT reader
THANK YOU for writing! Exactly my thoughts.
1
I went to Berkeley and had a friend went to Stanford. We both came from pretty middle class families (by Bay Area standards). Kids from Stanford certainly get some opportunities that kids from Berkeley don't and kids from Berkeley definitely get opportunities that kids who go to a less prestigious school won't get. Particularly as it relates to recruiting for internships and full time jobs after college. There are employers who are choosy which schools they visit to do recruiting and on-site interviews.
That being said, my friend who went to Stanford rubbed elbows with kids who are super wealthy and well connected and those kids got the really special/cushy opportunities through their parents networks and just because he knew those kids did not mean he had access. I suspect those kids would have had those opportunities whether or not they went to Stanford.
20
@LL
OK. Education comes out of choices, circumstances, environment, and of course personal motivation. But, just playing the odds, I would bet that you got a better education, in terms of knowledge, experience, and exposure to new stuff at your absolutely superb “public ivy.” I bet that your friend had more opportunities for connections. Students should choose what best fits them.
But as a lifelong academic, were I the parent of a brilliant high school student with a genuine craving for knowledge, I think I know which university I would hope my child would choose. If my child were smart but interested mostly in connections, I suspect his/her choice would be different. Suum cuique.
1
In short, what you do matters more than where you go -- that's the message I give all my students -- and their parents.
28
The real problem is the growing disparity in resources among universities. As a matter of public policy we should ensure that public money, both the direct appropriations and the indirect ones that make donations to rich private colleges tax deductible, are redirected to the schools that most young people attend, not funneled to the few schools attended by the 1% and a few select brilliants students added in for diversity.
9
While most of this article makes sense and the current college admissions scandal is reprehensible, I don't buy the assertion that the children who gained admission through the scandal took the places of the underprivileged and truly deserving applicants whom the article asserts would have benefitted most from the applicable schools. Those minority and low income students would have had their own advantaged track for potential admission. Thus, the likely victims who lost out on admissions probably were middle to upper middle class kids who had no special path to the schools or actual athletes who might have qualified for the improperly obtained athletic slots.
122
@Gail
Lower income or less advantaged qualified kids don't always get a full ride. Even with scholarships they are often left talking out student loans. They may not have perfect GPAs or test scores because theyir h.s. was not good enough to prepare them or their parents could not pay for test prep or they experience family discord that is distracting. This problem is not one-dimensional.
Do you think I would be working 3 jobs to put my Hispanic middle-class public school kid thru Columbia University in New York City if I didn't think that going to an Ivy League school would make a difference?
429
@Parent clearly, you didn’t read the article. It says that for people who didn’t come from wealth, prestigious schools help give students social capital that they didn’t already have. But for students from wealthy families, going to a prestigious school doesn’t help gain more connections that they weren’t already able to get.
43
Perhaps your kid is in a degree program not offered in Texas, in which case that would make sense. But if not, what's wrong with in-state options like the University of Texas in Austin? Or any of the outstanding universities in Texas?
23
As a mentor to MBA students at a top 10 business school....my advice is spend the money on an MBA
20
How does academic research measure success? Maybe I'm earning $250,000 as a mid level manager 20 years after graduating a state school BUT what I really wanted was to be a CEO which might have happened if I had attended Penn. Am I still a success? From a societal standpoint of course. But from a personal standpoint? What these prestigious really represent is a a leverageble network for climbing up. When your roommate in college later runs a capital venture firm, it may be easier for you to secure funding for your entrepreneurial project, etc... Doors open with relationships..
49
@Reality Check - Actually, if you look where the CEOs of the S&P 500 went to school, it was mostly state schools.
1
@Reality Check measuring your success relative to others’ is a recipe for disappointment
1
This whole fiasco sounds more like the parents needing to brag about their brilliant children they probably ignored to get ahead and less about what's actually good for them.
10
If you google the economists named in this article, you will find that nearly all of them are students from and/or work at the top post-secondary institutions in the country. Princeton, Cornell, Harvard, Columbia. (ok a few don't but most do). Name brands matter even when the NYTimes article is about how it doesn't matter.
Most people don't have ivy league degrees and live perfectly fine lives. But if you want to do something highly competitive and prestigious (academia, good STEM jobs, law, finance, consulting, media, journalism, management trainee programs, etc), you get to start 30 or even 60 paces ahead of everyone else if you graduate from the right places.
151
@Niche
This is it in a nutshell. Lots of tip-top professions don't give you a second glance if your PhD is from the wrong school.
5
A note to all the folks who keep noting how they got into college 20, 30 or 40 years ago: your college acceptance experiences (and mine) are no longer relevant. I am a parent of high school seniors now, and I am telling you, it is far more competitive now to get into the same schools we all got into decades ago. The actions of parents, kids, coaches, admissions officers all reflect this new reality. In total, there are about the same number of seats at colleges and universities in the US as 30 years ago, but with the rise of the common app, more kids going to college, and more applications coming from overseas, it is like a giant, insanely competitive game of musical chairs. There are simply not enough seats for all at selective colleges for all the qualified applicants, and there are more people trying to get at those seats. Parents and kids are looking for an edge -- anything that will set an applicant apart from the pack. I have seen the impact of this mindset even at the earliest stages of education, with parents enrolling 8 year olds in "elite" club sports teams, fighting for a seat in the highest middle school math class, and organizing internships for 16 year olds. It is nuts, and it is unlike anything we experienced as applicants. So, spare us all your stories about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to get your elite education 30 years ago...kids and families today have it WAY harder than we ever did.
481
@Get Real
I work at a high school College & Career center; I agree, the culture with college apps is out of control. Our kids are anxiety bubbles for no good reason.
STOP the insanity and go to state college. Do well, learn to be an adult and find your way in this world.
Parents need to allow kids to fail while they still live at home. We are creating a bunch of 18 year olds who do not know who they are because parents have programmed them and hand held them “for fear” they might fail.
I regularly have seniors admitted to Cal Berkeley who cannot address an envelope or get their haircut or go to the dentist alone!
89
Thank you for explaining to our fellow readers what is happening NOW. I too have a high school senior. He has 1520 SAT’s (same score others paid for), gpa of 4.4, takes only honors, AP or dual enrollment classes, close to 200 hours of community service, and tons of art-related extra curriculars, but no sports skills. He has not been admitted to any school that accepts less than 50 percent of applicants, and is busy wondering what is wrong with him. The pressure on kids today is ridiculous.
68
I agree completely, the game has changed, it is totally different. Now I truly understand the very well written “break up” letter our student received from her USC application. We are not in that playing field - and might I add, thank a higher Power.
12
First I think we need to define a “good” school and a good education. Is it just job training, or are we talking about the development of true critical thinking skills and problem solving ability? What major? Give me a top grad from a midwestern state flagship campus over any mid-ranking elite grad any day. The true outcome can only be rated years after graduation. How far an individual goes in their chosen field is far more dependent on ability and drive than pedigree. At least that’s how it is in the real world.
12
@Jean Sims- Please expand on "Is it just job training" Folks with "just job training" keep me warm in winter and cool in summer. They also help me get places I want to go.
1
I would like to know how these kids, who got in to "elite" universities through their parents' bribes, performed once they were admitted. If they performed just as well as their peers then to me the whole system is a sham. If I paid the coach of an elite youth travel soccer team thousands of dollars to place my child on the team, he would get sniffed out the first time he steps on the field because the doesn't play soccer. Shouldn't it be roughly the same in the classroom?
7
Very few schools exist where people actually flunk out. If you don’t have to work while in school and not interested in a competitive grad school, you can find a major and survive pretty well.
9
@Michael Blazin
So it is a sham? Perhaps they should have a lottery system for liberal arts and humanities spots at these universities since basically anyone can do it.
3
There’s a saying at Harvard that the next hardest thing to getting into it is failing out.
An education at any school can be made as hard or as difficult as the student wants it to be.
6
For me it mattered a great deal. I could not remotely afford them, but elite colleges like my Ivy League undergrad school in New England have the endowment and more important, the social mission it takes to recruit and pay for students like me, from diverse backgrounds.
One step down into say, Colgate or Bucknell would make little difference in education. But these schools offered me vastly less attractive packages, reflecting their own circumstances.
25
Yes, high name recognition credentials are a great benefit to those who are not part of the traditional student base. Yet, there is still elitism at the core of these institutions: the legacies, the Frats and Sororities that are usually closed to those less well off, and simply the fact that you tend to stand out in the crowd both on and off campus.
Despite our ideals of being a totally democratic culture where hard work is rewarded, the old-boy-network still rules both in academia as well as the workplace. Even your given name sets you up for a pre-meeting positive or negative.
Books like: "Hidden Figures" showed the degree to which the non-white people had to work to just get in the door and how little recognition is ever given. Consider that it took many decades and a movie to get general recognition for those women at NASA.
We have an open and un-healed wound in America: slavery compounded with lingering elitism left over from our days of Monarchy that has never gone away. But those at the top have it all figured out - they convince us that they earned all they have and therefore deserve all the power and privilege. Just stop bothering them and they might create a job for you - what do you know about horticulture?
7
With regards to the recent college admissions scandal:
I want to know why the New York Times has not been asking why haven't the children involved been arrested?
Why isn't the law being applied equally?
Yes, they are the children of celebrity, doctors and lawyers. But they are 18 plus years old or more and are considered adults. As adults, they should be held to account!
5
@The Critic In some cases they didn't know or at least it can't be proved they knew. And being aware of what the parents are doing is different than writing the check, legally speaking. The investigation isn't over and some found participating in fraud may face charges.
7
@The Critic- I would not be too concerned. I believe they will have plenty of opportunities to be arrested during their lives.
14
Maybe if the system didn’t insist that the only Supreme Court candidates worthy of consideration must come from wealthy places like Harvard or Yale, then we wouldn’t get ridiculous Supreme Court decisions like the idea that corporations have the same rights as human beings.
594
@Scott that was Lincoln who promulgated the concept starting in the 1850s when he was counsel for the Illinois Central
4
@Scott Particularly since corporations are not natural beings but are established via statute. How can you not limit the rights of something you create which is not a living being and not in and of itself, intelligent.
2
@Scott,
Liberal Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sontomayor, and Kagan all have Ivy undergraduate and law degrees. (The very conservative Clarence Thomas and late Antonin Scalia, had Ivy law degrees but went to non-Ivy colleges).
5
No school is elite. The same thing happens elsewhere. When you give an education to someone who works hard and has earned their spot they do better than some spoiled kid who doesn't work.
13
This article puts the emphasis on earnings as an outcome of college, but in my experience as both student and college administrator, I would put the emphasis on certain opportunities and networking as the benefit of elite schools. In certain professions, such as federal-level appointments where the appearance of hiring the best people is key, your school counts. If you want to be a professor, your school matters. But for most careers, it doesn't really matter so much, as long as you learn something. Someone talented in business, for example, doesn't necessarily even need a degree. A family member became extremely wealthy off of his businesses, after having taken only free community college classes in management. By the way, in classes at an elite school, I often had grad assistants; the big name teachers were instead researching their next books.
12
I was a placement manager in Chicago and NYC for 9 years. The two major points we noticed within the first 30 seconds, after we checked references and background, were eye contact and a strong handshake.
I'm hoping the Ivy and elite schools teach that, because with the internet and solid smartphone use, it seems to be sorely lacking.
8
@mainesummers If you care this much about eye contact and a strong handshake, you are a sheep waiting to be sheared. A firm handshake and direct eye contact are the stock in trade of a conman. Shy people, people on the autism spectrum, and people from non-Western cultures would fail your test no matter how hardworking, honest, and talented they were.
99
His point was those items were bare minimums and candidates need to have them. Good grammar does not define excellence. While many people without good grammar are not excellent performers, you cannot be excellent in almost all businesses without good grammar.
5
@Michael Blazin -- Indeed. Laypersons will have no idea if your stance in a matter of legal or medical consultation is correct. But if you mis-write, if you mis-spell -- they will say, "She can't be trusted with detail," and will think less of you.
1
Harvard grad. Got in the old-fashioned way- hard work & smarts. Scholarship student, but came from a home environment where I was privileged to have well-educated parents who valued education above all. I did not focus on having my two-daughters attend "elite" colleges. They got into those colleges and decided not to go into debt to attend. They went to UMASS Amherst, received a top-notch education and now daughter 1 will be attending a top-tier B-School next fall. I never bought into the hysteria that consumes parents around college admissions. It's marketing-hype that robs your soul and pocket-book.
222
@Elizabeth Graham Our daughter transferred out of a fancy private college where she didn't fit in to go to U-Mass, and still thanks us for the support and encouragement. We also have no regrets about the decision. A key point she told us during a parents weekend was how many of her labmates were high schools valedictorians and other high-achievers. Thanks for sharing.
16
@Elizabeth Graham
You're undermining your own argument.
You claim that going to an elite school doesn't matter (even though UMass is a top school and hardly a community college) and your proof is your humblebrag about your daughter "attending a top-tier B-School next fall"
If there are no elite schools, there are no "top-tier" schools either and attending the latter shouldn't be some kind of proof.
33
@Elizabeth Graham Good on you!! Many of these stories gloss over the sad reality that attending an elite private university is as important to ego-driven parents as it is to the student.
6
Will getting into an elite college help your future career ?
Depends most of all on the subject you plan to study
None of the social connections you make at college will help you solving the problems that Intel will throw onto you as an engineer, physicist, chemist, mathematician or computer scientist. T
On the other hand, as mentioned in passing in the article, should you want to become a Supreme Court judge , the social connections you made at College are all important. EVERY one of the current members attended either Harvard or Yale - out of 200 + accredited law schools.
A statistical improbability that indicates that to succeed to the Supreme Court connections you made at College are of utmost importance.
So my advice is : Weight the both a) the impact of the social connections you can make at College and b) and the knowledge you can acquire on your future career before your deciding which college to attend
17
"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material."
I would suggest you watch the next Supreme Court confirmation hearings and see what "Supreme Court material" is. I'm wondering if some of those faces were photoshopped .
218
@Fighting Sioux The students haven't been charged because apparently almost none of them knew what their parents were doing; the parents went to a lot of trouble to insure they didn't suspect. They probably feel humiliated now; and most if not all of them will probably be expelled from the universities their parents bribed their way into.
3
@Fighting Sioux, yes...or don’t wait for the next confirmation. Just watch the last one on YouTube.
3
'There were strong benefits for the subset of black and Hispanic students, and for those whose parents had few educational credentials.'
If they graduate. These students still have to be able to handle the academic curriculum. They need to take classes that will actually lead to a good paying job (and not hide out in the 'studies'). And they have to balance their home environment which may know little or even be dismissive of them going to a selective college.
These students deserve a chance but again schools are giving them spots where others would benefit more in the long run.
There is a big in between the wealthy who criminally pay to get in and those who get points for racial and economic diversity.
Again, middle and working class non black and Hispanic are ignored.
4
Let's be frank--this college bribery scandal is especially abhorrent given that these children/students are going to college just "to do it" with no real purpose or intent. One need only to look at Loughlin and recognize that college played no meaningful role in her life or career--why would it for her child?
59
I understand the underlying thesis here, but is this how it really works in elite college/university admissions? These schools tend to have "buckets" they "need" to fill. Is some mediocre student from a privileged background really stealing a spot in the bucket of students on the lowest socioeconomic tier? Or is the fraud taking a seat from a stellar student also from privileged background? I suspect those rich white fake coxswains are taking spots from white, rich legitimate coxswains, not some inner-city, first-generation college student.
Not that this justifies ANY of it, but you're not likely convincing anybody here determined to get a kid into an elite school.
My family's experience with elite private school admissions is that there are two tracks at many of these schools, even during the ED process - one for hooked students, one for unhooked. The admission rate for hooked students, however that school defines them (and at elite liberal arts colleges athletic talent is a HUGE boost), your odds of admission might be two or three times that of the unhooked student.
When you're looking at two white kids from the same private high school, for example, the kid with the higher GPA and test scores will be denied while the legacy/athlete is accepted.
18
@Lee Rosenthall There is often a very good reason for this. Elite universities look for "stars", not for "grinds". They want students who "do things" - who actually have a life as well as study.
Legacies also are very quick to fit in at universities. This is often a major problem for that 1/3 of the freshman class that is made up of under-represented minority and first-generation students - they often have a really hard time finding their niche. So there have to be some students who do this quite quickly or the school is just one big mess.
A student who is a top athlete at any prestigious high school (think academically demanding here), and who is also getting good grades and test scores, shows he can handle a lot - good time management skills. He also brings something to the table that the schools want - excellence. The same could be said for a student who is winning music contests and is outstanding, or a published writer. They bring something to the table.
College admissions will never be transparent as there is great subjectivity involved. But be assured, I doubt that any Ivy is accepting students whose SAT score is 1000 and GPA is 2.0, even if their grandfather donated the money that built the stadium. They could not do the work if admitted.
10
@India
Maybe. Maybe not. Read Daniel Golden's "The Price of Admission." Many of these legacies/athletes do not excel academically. They are mediocre students at those elite schools. In the situation I know of firsthand, both hooked students had very wealthy grandparents, who were also alumni. I suspect that's what "tipped" them, not any great athletic skill.
And it's not like the unhooked student fell off the proverbial turnip truck. He, too, attended elite independent schools for several years and was very active in extracurriculars.
No, he didn't get into the fancy-pants school he applied to ED, but he had plenty of options by the end, and while I'm sure it hurt at the time, he will suffer no lasting loss. Because he was SMART, took a big merit package at a state school, and will have an engineering degree (and no debt) when he's done.
The Upshot's Kevin Carey claims that, "It is in some ways a case of one-percenters lusting after the privileges of one-tenth-of-one-percenters — possibly risking infamy and prison to buy something that, the evidence suggests, provides little value for their privileged offspring."
Let's point out that attending an Ivy League university, with their massive endowments, means that most students graduate with little or no debt whatsoever. That matters to the mass of American young people who are increasingly burdened with college debt.
And the claim that, "students who are poised to succeed tend to do so even if they don’t get into the Ivy League" is highly misleading. One has only to go through the Ivy League-heavy lists of Rhodes Scholars, the Ivy League-heavy lists of Fortune 500 CEO's, the lists of highly remunerated Wall Street investment bankers and Manhattan law firm partners to know that getting into an Ivy League university is a valuable ticket to big money in one's career.
America knows all that. The Upshot should admit it.
23
@Sean Did the Ivy make the man or did the man make the Ivy? My late husband taught secondary school math in independent schools. He always said that National Merit Scholars are ADMITTED, not MADE by such schools. I think the same could be said for the Ivies and other prestigious schools - they didn't create these highly successful people, they admitted them.
The cream does tend to rise to the top. Those with high intelligence, self-discipline and who are self-motivated, will do well anywhere. What they will gain at an Ivy is the opportunity to be surrounded by similar people. These kind of minds feed off one another, and in most of such schools, they will also have access to top professors who are like them. Well, perhaps not at Harvard - lots of grad students teaching undergraduate courses there - but at other Ivies, there will be top people actually teaching the classes.
13
99.9% of Ivy League graduates are not Rhodes Scholars, Supreme Court justices, Fortune 500 CEOs, or investment bank and Manhattan law partners. Yes, many of the above come from the Ivy League. The point of the article is those graduates have a greater chance of getting through those wickets, but it is only relative to much smaller chance for graduates of other programs. If I buy a 100 lottery tickets, I have a better chance of winning over someone that buys one. It still does not make the purchase worthwhile. The Ivy League is fine, I have a degree there, but it cannot define your life. These celebrities clearly lost the idea of cost/benefit and will likely pay a price for that poor choice.
7
@Michael Blazin -- These statistics drive alumnus / alumna loyalty. For many Ivy graduates, that thick letter at age 19 was the high point of their selectability: They were going to matriculate at Princeton ! -- After Princeton? Well, most of them dropped back into the unremarkable pack. Ah, faded glory; ah, Alumni Day! Feel special again and write a cheque to Nassau Hall ...
2
For 5 years I worked as a middle manager in an enormous, extremely profitable financial institution. Our group was "elite" (not me, but the group was ;-) and our recruiting reflected that: every year we recruited 25 undergrads & PhDs to join our group of ~200.
These jobs were plum - undergrads STARTED at ~$65k base (plus year end bonus!). So, where do you think our group's leadership recruited from?
The sad fact was the undergrad candidates from the Ivy/top schools were extraordinarily well prepared, perfectly mannered and were mostly very diligent, humble employees. I'm ashamed to say, I really didn't *want* to like these prep school, Ivy kids but by and large they defied the steryotype.
Sometimes we'd get candidates in from "lesser" schools. They almost always lacked the preparation of their Ivy counterparts.
The heartbreaking part is this: That prep wasn't really necessary to their job but it always made them seem more attractive. Its not a kid from Fordham's fault that he didn't perfectly understand derivatives, but when stacked against a kid from NYU who interned at his daddy's PE firm who do you think the group chose?
The above is how wealth perpetuates. Companies really do try to get diverse people in the door but with a catch: its a racially diverse recruiting group from Amherst, not CUNY.
I wasn't cut out for financial services but many great kids are, they just get overlooked.
57
You've nailed part of the problem - companies no longer want to train entry level recruits. That would require them to actually spend some of the enormous piles of cash they sit on and treat employees as people, not assets.
5
65k bonus is what every chump with an engineering degree makes here straight out of school, regardless of their alma mater. Going to an elite school at $100k debt then getting paid 65k will saddle you for decades of repayments, while that ASU grad laughs all the way to the bank.
2
The education may be the same, but one cannot argue that the status opens doors.
Given all things being equal, having Harvard on your resume will get you places that having Arizona State will not.
78
@pat I agree, but I can't see what advantage having USC vs Arizona State would give one. USC is a bit of an anomaly - it has a very low acceptance rate, but the grades and test scores of those they actually admit, are far lower than those at other universities with similar accepted percentages.
What this actually means is that there are a LOT of families who want their child to go to USC (well-known in CA as the University of Spoiled Children), but that they're not that outstanding academically. It does have social cachet in CA, so that is desirable. But Goldman Sachs is not going to be as impressed with a USC candidate as one from Yale.
40
@India Your opinion of USC is outdated. Check the average GPA and SAT scores for incoming freshmen and you'll find they're on par with UCLA and UC Berkeley, and higher than Michigan or other top public schools. The previous USC President Sample wanted to remake USC's image and did an amazing job upgrading the academics by spending big to attract high-achieving students with full-ride scholarships. The school has raised billions for the endowment and upgraded the faculty and facilities to boot. You could look at NYU and see a similar picture. Of course Goldman Sachs will be more impressed with Yale, but one could say they'd also prefer Yale to Dartmouth, Chicago, Washington University and host of other top schools.
4
@pat Your opinion of USC is outdated. Check the average GPA and SAT scores for incoming freshmen and you'll find they're on par with UCLA and UC Berkeley, and higher than Michigan or other top public schools. The previous USC President Sample wanted to remake USC's image and did an amazing job upgrading the academics by spending big to attract high-achieving students with full-ride scholarships. The school has raised billions for the endowment and upgraded the faculty and facilities to boot. You could look at NYU and see a similar picture.
1
One of our daughters graduated from an ordinary college just outside of Boston. The starting salary of her first job surpassed the average of every other school in the Boston area, except MIT.
8
@Jon And just think what she would have made had she graduated from MIT!
8
When the United States finally tips into its second Civil War, the one that's raplidly approaching on the basis of massive discontent with the wealthy, all of these aspects of privilege will seem quaint. And dangerous to those who have partaken of them.
5
Old meme in poker: "play the player, not the cards."
I've interviewed 100s of job candidates, from many colleges. Always require a brief, complex case study that requires quant/qual skills. A major math or grammar error -- 99 percent of the way, to rejection.
The education staff, parents and students, they just never get it. Not the diploma -- it is the individual. Look at WashDC -- every five years, an "investigation" into how many phony, dime-store PhDs are on "research papers." As predictable as winter snow in Montana ..
8
There is a similar effect at the other end of the education system. Teachers in the earliest grades spend an inordinate amount of time and resources working to improve the skills of students who really should be in an alternative education program rather than the regular stream. The results of all this effort are often minimal and disappointing. As a result, students with far more potential are often sidelined or neglected and may miss out because a good, attentive education in the early grades is what would even the playing field for them later in life.
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@Don B I
Those hs students don't necessarily belong in an alternative stream. Often they come from poor or working class families where they don't receive help in reading and writing at home or in early childhood education. They are already behind when they start first grade and unfortunately they stay that way usually because people don't want to pay the taxes needed to create a level playing field.
Graduation from elite colleges matter if your terminal degree is bachelor’s degree. Otherwise, only your graduate school matters.
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@Kodali
somewhat, but not completely.
Someone with a Yale BA is always a Yalie regardless of the grad school he/she attended - will always carry that on his/her resume and always has access to that alumni network. And a Harvard or MIT bachelor's degree greatly increases your chances of getting into top grad schools - or getting into grad school at all.
It shouldn't make so much difference, but it does.
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@Avid NYT reader Both Kodali and Avid NYT Reader are both right. Harvard and Yale matter, the others don't. A Harvard connection will almost always be mentioned, even when it has nothing to do with the writer's letter or OpEd or the topic of the piece. Otherwise one writes, "when I was in college."
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The author notes: "When you’re a 19-year-old YouTube star who spends spring break on a billionaire’s yacht, life tends to work out."
Please note that the billionaire with the yacht is a Los Angeles real estate mogul and chairman of the board of trustees of USC, the school attended by the 19-year-old YouTube star (who appears to have gained admission to USC fraudlently).
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For far too long, too many people (in the media and the public at large) have given effusive credit to certain named institutions (hint: beginning with "H", "Y", "P") and haven't looked at the fine work of smaller, "less prestigious" colleges and some state universities.
The allegations of this scandal, if proven true, are outrageous. But part of it relates to marketing and media.
It's way past time to look more closely at each graduate, from wherever she/he may have gone to college (or not), and not reward the diploma over the skill set.
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@Muleman -- Oh, fiddle-dee-dee. Sifting through resumés, assaying fhirty different variants on "Why you should hire me"? "H", "Y", and "P" (without which, yes, you can't spell "hype") are shortcuts. They offer branding and, in general, assure acceptability if not excellence. Why isn't each graduate, from Whatever U or from H / Y / P, screened individually? Ask yourself why Chinese and Japanese hospitals don't screen babies with jaundice for alpha-1-antitrypsin storage disorder. It's because that's not an East Asian disease. Those hospitals don't look for zebras when horses are in the paddock. Or: The race may not always be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor the safe job offer to the H / Y / P graduate, but that's the way to bet.
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@Muleman. Your comments about effusive credit Given by both the media and the public reminds me of how my eyes glaze over when I’m talking to someone in their 60s and they’re still talking about their day is it Princeton or Harvard or Yale. Lord it’s boring.
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"But if you’re the kind of student who needs to pay someone to take the SAT for you or to photoshop your face onto the body of a varsity water polo player, you’re probably not Supreme Court material."
Can this still be said?
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@jch Oh please. You may not like our most recently appointed Justice, but no one has ever thought he was stupid, in fact, as a judge on the US Court of Appeals, he was greatly respected as having a fine mind.
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I went—on scholarship—to an elite school. I couldn't afford lunch, while other students complained that the skiing was so much better in Switzerland. But going to that school changed my life forever, let me escape from my redneck background into another world. (And by the way, I crammed for the SAT.)
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I made my way from apartments in North Hollywood through junior college and onto flagship public universities for bachelors and advanced degrees, on Pell grants, work study and summer jobs, loans and shoestring living. It changed my life too. None of the schools I attended were 'elite' (but all boast alumni whose inventions, innovations and enterprise shaped world we live in). Nor were the great friends for life I made. I don't think we missed a thing.
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The bit about Supreme Court clerkships really frosts me. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, anyone?
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I attended a top ten college and a top ten professional school. The mere fact that I attended each, and that each appears on my resume, has opened doors in small but meaningful ways, though had I been unable to serve well at any point along the way, I would have quickly been fired. I've seen plenty of prestige resumes wash out.
At the same time, the great majority of successful people I've met in my career have NOT attended particularly prestigious institutions. What has set them apart has been (1) native intelligence, (2) outsized ability, (3) passion for their chosen vocations, and (4) drive.
It would be hard to overemphasize the importance of drive.
All of us -- especially the media -- tend to overestimate the importance of a name brand school and underestimate the importance of the individual who actually emerges into the world.
In yourself, in your kids, focus on what's inside.
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@Peter- I would argue that having two Top Ten schools on a resume and the built-in support network associated with the two Top Ten schools opened doors in a very large way that is not available to many. Congratulations on working hard and becoming successful.
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@Fighting Sioux
No. The great majority of the very successful people around me did NOT attend super prestigious schools.
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@Peter You're correct. Most have attended top public state universities. It is just as you have stated - intelligence, ability and drive, with drive being probably the most important.
What a prestigious university does offer, is the opportunity to be surrounded by classmates who are very bright and often highly driven as well. Such students tend to feed off one another. They will end up with great "ability" - they already had the intelligence and drive when they were admitted.
I'm not sure in 20 years the same statistics will hold up. With more and more state universities facing serious financial cutbacks, even the tops ones are using more and more adjunct professors and the quality of the instruction is going to go down significantly. The "ability" part may just not be as good in the future.
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The resources of elite colleges can play a pivotal role in assisting certain groups of students to reach the upper echelons of leadership positions and wealth. This is fine and good. But while Americans have long viewed earning an undergraduate degree as a means of achieving upwards social and economic mobility, the missions of these institutions are not to address income inequality; they are more about providing a range of experiences that will help their graduates to succeed in life generally.
Current notions of entitlement cut several ways. Should only those who can benefit most in socioeconomic ways be allowed to enter elite institutions? Should institutions cease favoring applicants of alumni parents (some of whom may make significant gifts to their alma maters) to achieve this?
We may all feel comfortable judging the extremes. But there is a middle ground that doesn't get much attention. I was fortunate to attend an Ivy League college and an elite private-institution business school to earn my MBA. My family made this possible, and we paid full tuition. Was I any less deserving of admission? Did someone "suffer" because I took a spot at each? Was some terrible opportunity cost paid? I think not. We the fortunate still need these institutions, too.
Having interviewed applicants to both institutions, hiring people for 40 years, and working a public university, I believe, more often than not, it's the student -- not the school -- that determine's one's success.
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@Sam in Atlanta You seem to be a bit defensive. The point, as I understood it, is that the parents who CHEATED to get their already-gilded-with-privilege offspring into big name schools were undoubtedly taking spots from qualified students from lower social-economic strata who would have benefited much more from the opportunity. Not that a student like yourself, who got into great colleges on merit and who was able muster the resources to pay your way, is getting away with anything. You should be (and it seems are) proud of that. Doesn't it burn you just a bit to think about some billionaire doofus cheating his or her way into the same thing you worked hard for?
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@Susan Points taken. Yes, one wants to feel that admission is based on notions of merit and achievements earned. I've seen many an Ivy League education squandered. In the end, and in most cases, it's not just the resources of the institutions that determine success -- it's how any given student makes good use of them. Elite schools attract bright, accomplished, ambitious applicants -- but they have no monopoly over them. Again, the individual -- not the school -- is, most often, the critical determination of success.
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That Supreme Court clerks and justices come from a handful of "elite" law schools says more about tribalism than the inherent intellectual superiority of their graduates. In fact, the similarities among Supreme Court justices in the parts of the country they come from, as well as their educational background and professional experience is one of the court's weaknesses.
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@WT Pennell
The tribalism is widespread throughout many private companies.
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Sadly, SCOTUS is stacked with Roman Catholics who were indoctrinated to male supremacy and the rights of fetuses over their mothers. Now it is apparent that the Elite pedigree is disreputable and for sale. The harm that this can do is in the White House now.
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@WT Pennell
SCOTUS clerks make a poor example of anything except maybe of what happens when an important institution surrenders much (most?) of its function to a tiny oligarchy that lacks experience and knowledge of the nuts and bolts of how law is actually practiced and litigated.
As for the supreme court, I always find it ludicrous when six Catholics and there Jews get together and lecture a still largely Protestant country on legalities and illegalities of their religious practices.
Even worse is the intellectual inbreeding that results when former clerks (now professors) recommend to other former clerks (now judges) which would-be former clerks (now law students) should be chosen to work for them and actually write much of content of court opinions which, like it or not, are governing the country.
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It’s about the process, how much a student applies her or him self at any institution, that often dictates outcome and quality of life. Gaining admission to an elite college as the end game is as hollow as the paid for acceptance letter.
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In the immediate future, colleges and families alike will conclude that the College Board is not a worthy gatekeeper.
I have no opinion on whether the SAT/ACT is a valid or useful test. But as a close observer of the college admissions marketplace, I do think now is the turning point for how colleges and the larger public view the tests.
Just this year, the U of Chicago became test optional, the most selective college to do so. Several instances of overseas cheating, have displayed that international testing scene is completely corrupt. The Blum suit fostered cynicism among Asian-American families by steering the narrative toward disparate test scores among racial and ethnic groups. The College Board moved the AP test registration deadline to November, seemingly for financial gain. And now this crass admissions scandal, largely based out of California, has exposed the vulnerabilities of the system and the lengths to which rich parents will go to break the rules.
Look for more highly selective colleges to abandon the SAT/ACT. Look for more investigations of the College Board. Look for the details in rulings in the Blum case, likely in June.
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@Cousy I think the SAT/ACT do far more to identify cheating than they want anyone to know - if you don't know how they identify cheating, it will be harder to be good at doing so.
In my local midwest paper this AM, the admissions directors of two local universities stated that they have often been contacted by the ACT (the require exam for their schools) and told that the scores of a particular student may be fraudulent and to look carefully at that application. I'm sure this happens a lot.
What most people don't realize is that Mr Singer was NOT able to get these students into more prestigious universities just by fraudulently raising their test scores. Such institutions regularly reject applicants with perfect test scores! Just raising their score would be no guarantee at all!
What did happen was that even though they were fraudulently being recruited as an athlete, their tests scores were still not high enough for acceptance, thus the need to improve those scores. This happens all the time to highly recruited athletes - those test scores and grades must go up or they will not get an actual acceptance. They will bend only so much.
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I was excepted to a state college the old fashioned way. I could run and jump like few others. I still feel guilty that kids from my high school far smarter than I were not selected to attend the prestigious state university. Some of them let me know that they were not happy either. I suppose it isn’t much different than someone paying a bribe to get their lesser qualified kid in. It just isn’t for all to see. I received a wonderful education and am very appreciative.
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@DA Getting an athletic scholarship is an achievement to be proud of. Paying a bribe to get into a select school is a crime and a huge ethical lapse. Be proud of yourself, you did it right. And if you ever looked at a minority student at your school and thought "affirmative action, doesn't really deserve to be here," think a little bit about that. Not saying that you did, by the way -- but that is a common belief among a lot of college students.
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But you know what they call the student who graduates last in their class from Yale - a Yale graduate.
I went to a private university for undergrad (which I paid for myself) and went to law school at night while working full-time at a public university. There were a ton of law firms who wouldn't even look at my resume because I didn't go to a top 10 or 15 school. It was so disheartening because I was just as smart and worked just as hard as the kids at those top 10 schools, but I had to support myself while going to school.
In the days when search engines and algorithms do the first screening for jobs, key words like your college or university name may keep you from ever getting your resume in front of HR to plead your case.
I have one child in college and one about to start the search. I'm beyond heartbroken at what this has become. I was a first generation college graduate in my family and one of the first to get a graduate degree. I don't know that the opportunities I had in the late 70s and early 80s are available for my own girls.
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@knitter215 I have a friend whose son and his girlfriend has a bet. He bet that he would have more job offers if he went to his state university and finished in the top 5 in his class, and she bet that if she went to a far more prestigious private law school, she would have more offers, even if only in the top 20% of her class.
Guess which one won. It was the state law school grad who was No 3 in his class. His girlfriend had no job offers being far further down, and eventually joined the FBI just to have a job.
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@knitter215: I understand your concern. Law school is different. 1) A student now is better served by going to an affordable public college and doing really well there, as undergrad GPA is as important in law school admissions at many top schools as the LSAT. 2) If the student wants to work at a big, top-ranked private law firm, the kind that recruit at Top 15 law schools, then that's where the student needs to go. If the student goes to a lower ranked law school, he or she should be open to a wider range of jobs, including more regional or smaller firms. They may favor the state's public law school. Many interesting and exciting legal employers consider more than law school ranking when they hire. It's still a good idea to strive for a top 30 law school.
If your daughters want to follow you to law school, top grades and top LSAT scores are much more important than where they went to college.
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It's worse than that when you consider how artificial intelligence and offshore outsourcing are decimating entry level law positions for graduates from any schools other than the Ivies.
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At the same time, research from the Equality of Opportunity Project found that while many kinds of colleges can help students move to the top 20 percent of the income distribution from the bottom 20 percent, moving to the top 1 percent from the bottom 20 percent almost always requires a highly selective institution.
That kind of sums it up. For most of these kids it wouldn't have mattered, but the opportunity cost for less privileged children is huge. It does matter.
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I felt hit by a brick when I learned just how elite the elite schools are. I sat at a job fair for engineering graduates. After dismissing the idea of working as an engineer, I heard someone ask about preferred schools for engineering graduates. The human resources representative said, "Oh yes, our company only hires from the top 10% schools in the country." A young African American woman said, "Well, some of us can only afford to go to state college." The white HR woman replied, "Well I worked my way through college." The HR woman had no idea of or didn't care about how much privilege was involved in her getting into that elite college and getting that lucrative job that helped pay her way through it.
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Did the HR person say she went to the top 10% school? Probably not. She was offering idea that other ways exist to succeed. It is a marathon, not a dash. Work in a smaller firm, do well and move up to the same firm that would not look at you right out of college. Degrees make a difference at the outset, but after 5 years, no one cares.
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While many worry about whether or not their little darling will be admitted to the "right" school to further whatever career may follow, in the case of most of the parents in this so-called admissions bribery scandal were more concerned about BRAND. They wanted to brag about how much their child was doing at THAT school, showing off college choice, just as they flaunt jewelry, a pricey handbag, designer dress, etc. Nothing second tier for these folks. It wouldn't look good.
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@Coco Pazzo - Great point! Why else would somebody wear a Princeton Dad sweatshirt, or Dartmouth t-shirt when they didn't attend the school. Really nutty stuff. I've seen this a lot in LA where one child is at an Ivy and another is at UCSD. Guess which t-shirts and sweatshirts the parents wear....need I answer?
5
"This kind of analysis isn’t devised to detect certain narrow pathways to elite professions that run through a handful of top colleges. "
Er...this is point! Arriving in the top 50 percentile of any of the elite professions (law, medicine, the sciences, academia etc.) requires attendance and doing well at a fair to top undergrad school in order to gain admission to a top class post grad school which in turn gets you a job at a top law firm etc.
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I work in recruiting and have for many years. An Ivy League degree is not the "free pass" that everyone thinks it is. I'll hire a hard-working, smart, motivated individual from a lesser school (with a good GPA, communication skills, writing skills) any day of the week.
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@Sarah99
good, and given a choice between an elite educated person and one with a non elite education, whom will you choose?
1
Nice comment but maybe think about eradicating phrases like "lesser school" from your mind. If you say it then you think and feel it too.
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After dropping out of two major universities to become an itinerant hippie in the 1960s I graduated as a "mature student" from Sonoma State Unversity, where I felt less lost in the crowd and had a much closer relationship with my instructors. Even better, my employer at the time picked up the tab!
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My wife is from the Midwest. I’m East Coast born and raised. She thinks the prestige factor is an East Coast thing, and she may be right. Wall St, big Consulting and others tend to recruit from the schools their top execs attended. Especially when you get to the MBA level. I know my degrees from Columbia undergrad and B School not only helped start my career but were valuable along the way. Of course, I almost lost an opportunity when a CEO asked if I has participated in the ‘68 campus riots. I missed it by a year.
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@Cloud 9 This is spot on.
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@Cloud 9: I just naturally associate an Ivy League education with pretense and social climbing. As for your wife, wasn't she aware of Midwest schools like the University of Chicago, Northwestern, etc., that aren't on the East Coast?
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I went to an urban Catholic college, the kind that serves mostly first-generation college students. My cubicle mate at my first job, who had attended an elite school, observed my parents had paid a fraction of what hers had and I'd gotten as good an education. She thought that unfair, while I thought it the best kind of fair.
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This is a good perspective.
I think it comes down to what your measuring stick is. Is it lifetime earnings? Is it economic mobility? Is it equity? Is it status and prestige? Is it having a great network?
I have a friend who's daughter wen to Yale. 100% legitimately got in. She hated it. It was just the wrong fit for her.
Parents should be much more concerned about the right "fit" for their kids than going to the most prestigious school available. At the end of the day, that's where both individuals and society will be better off.
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In general, applicants and their families should be focused on going to the college with the highest retention and graduation rates, no matter what kind of socioeconomic background they have. Top colleges tend to have the highest of both.
As my kids enter the process, I am urging them to look up the "retention rate" in the second section of each college's Common Data Set. This measures how many freshmen come back for senior year. Over 95% is excellent. Over 90% is very good. Over 85% is acceptable. Anything less is a red flag, especially for a private college.
10
I graduated from an “elite” school - Johns Hopkins - and I can honestly say the credential meant nothing in terms of my success in my chosen career. When it came time for my own four children to go to college, they all happily went to UConn, where the education they received was every bit as useful as mine from Hopkins. I’m proud to be the mother of four Huskies and so glad we didn’t get caught up in the waste of time and money that is the College Admissions Trap.
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@Annie Kelleher
Same! I went to NYU and found that the expensive private college option didn't offer anything better than a large public college. Both of my sons went to Penn State and received an excellent instruction there, with first rate professors, tons of job offers and solid paychecks. Moreover, both felt they received a well-rounded education and benefited from the diversity of the student body at a public university.
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@Annie Kelleher
It may be true for certain fields but as a PhD in the life sciences, I only got accepted to the top school because a schoolmate of mine from the year before had done so well that it made them appreciate that my university might be okay. Otherwise they only looked at Stanford, Cal, Harvard, and MIT students. The rest of us were just lucky to get in.
5
Go UCONN -- proud Huskies mom @Annie Kelleher
3
Good observation-people that would benefit most are squeezed out by those benefitting the least. The institutions of higher learning can fix the problem.
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