Anyone attend an "elite" college/university?

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I'm not going to be hiring anybody for anything, because I plan to be an academic, so don't worry about me. A lot of the most brilliant people have actually been self-educated - tons of philosophers, Einstein, H.L. Mencken - and I think of myself as being primilary self-educated as well, so, you don't have to worry about me.

However at least one person, Alex, seems to be in denial here. I know *dozens* of people at Columbia who have done nothing but show up to class and are going to be making 6 figures as I-bankers at age 22, and seven figures before they turn thirty. Yes, it is possible to get those jobs from anywhere, but it's much, much easier if you go to an Ivy. These people don't even work particularly hard. It's called connections/networking, and it's a big part of going to an Ivy League school. I was considering med school, and my advisor said that it is not at all uncommon for people with a 3.3 to get into solid med schools. Try that coming from Local State U and see what happens. My dad is actually on the board of admissions at UAB Medical School, and he says that the board members swoon when they get an application from even a school like Vanderbilt. They poop themselves at an Ivy app.

Now I'm wishing I hadn't started this thread, especially since almost no one has responded in the affirmative. I was hoping to find out what other aspies had experienced in such environments. I am not trying to toot my own horn or anything like that. I will freely admit that I have met several people on WP whose educations are quite unimpressive who are much, much smarter than anyone I've met at Columbia, save maybe one or two exceptions. Intelligence and success do not correlate even close to perfectly with undergraduate education. However, to deny a strong correlation is to be an absolute moron incapable of seeing past your own jealousy and educational shortcomings.

P.S. Alex, I go to an Ivy, you don't, and I think I know a lot more about its advantages than you do.

P.P.S. This is nothing personal, no hard feelings, you seem like a cool cat, I just think you're talking out of ignorance or even something worse here

Easy there. I think you're getting the wrong impression. In fact, I'd like to go to a film school like Columbia for my mfa, but that's due to the specific program they have, not because of prestige (I have a Columbia admissions brochure hanging on my bulletin board so I don't forget).

But I don't see how going there would make you successful. If you're going to be successful, you become successful. Case in point, Steven Spielberg ended up getting rejected from good schools like UCLA (a "Local State U" in your words) and he's more famous than any director who graduated from a top film school.

So don't think you have a necessary advantage just by going to an Ivy league. And my school is one of the Virginia public Universities that are actually quite hard to get into and have some very well known professors, some of them are nobel laureates and won the pulitzer prize.


PS. you've never been to a state university like UCLA, USC, GMU, UVA, or William and Mary so I think I know more about its advantages than you do. Oh wait, we're using faulty logic... Well at least I'm able to recognize faulty logic when I see it.

And honestly, your school just might have a better undergraduate program than mine. I've never been there, however, and couldn't tell you either way.

Elite schooling?

Nah, it really is pointless unless you're not resourceful enough to read books in your private time, and your parents can dish out thousands of pounds just for a bloody name and the status that comes from going to somewhere like Harvard. So long as an educational facility does its job, there's no point wasting cash.

I have long had the theory myself that successful people make themselves successful. But certain careers, in fact most, require certain credentials and/or connections if there is even hope of getting your foot in the door. I don't need to go to a state school to know what it's like - I've spent plenty of time on the U of Alabama campus, and 99.999% of the people there are drunken neanderthals. No thanks. Heck, 70% of the people at Columbia are drunken neanderthals. It's not even about the education I will be receiving at Columbia - it's a purely logistical matter. I wish that simply reading books were enough, but oftentimes it's not. How can reading books get you into Johns Hopkins med school? It just can't. Try it - apply, and on your app say, "Well, I have a GED, and I've read a lot of books." Is the next person going to argue that going to Andover or The Collegiate School is not an advantage over going to some school in the ghetto and dropping out in favor of a GED? It's really not that hard to grasp. Plenty of people who graduate from Ivies will make little money and die alone and addicted to drugs, just as plenty of people from state schools will make a real difference in the world. But the fact is, it *is* an advantage, and to suggest otherwise is simply laughable.

Oh, and also all of those schools you mentioned like UVA are top 25 school's for god's sake. Yes UVA is a great school. Where you go to school opens doors for you, and I'm not just saying Ivies vs. Non-Ivies. Surely you would not deny that you will have an advantage coming from somewhere like UVA vs. Jethro Cletus State Community College?

I keep hearing about people in Texas spending exorbitant amounts of money on Baylor University (a large, private Christian university in Waco, Texas--about halfway between Austin and Dallas). I feel you can get a better education at a state university for less money.

Tim

I think I'm so far the only one who's posted here in this thread who goes to an Ivy League school. However, I started off by taking classes at a community college, did my undergraduate at UC Berkeley, a very good school but a state (public) school nonetheless. I also worked a lot before undergrad and after I got my bachelor's, so I'd like to think I've gotten a very wide range of backgrounds. Butch, you're totally right that name and reputation do matter, but I think Alex and others are trying to point out that reputation and prestige are not the be-all end-all of "how to be successful at life." Your theory that "successful people make themselves successful" is only half right. It's because a lot of career events and circumstances happen by chance, in addition to connections and actual skill. Just look at the legacy system, it's easier to get into an Ivy if you're related to somebody who went to an Ivy. It's a bit of a self-perpetuating system, but as you pointed out, not everybody who goes to an Ivy works particularly hard, or is particularly smart. The reputation opens doors outside of the ivory tower, but the question that I had alluded to earlier was whether such a thing as reputation really should open such doors.

The prestige from the college name itself establishes a connection, so correspondingly those people who can establish good connections regardless of which school they went to will have a greater chance of being successful. It's one of the reasons many people with AS have a lot of problems with this regard, because their interpersonal skills suck so bad that they're unable to establish those connections.

By the way, it's perfectly fine to want to stay in academia, but that by no means guarantees that you are immune from the prestige bug. If you're in the sciences, as a professor you will be hiring postdoctoral fellows in your lab, and among the selection criteria are the graduate school the fellow went to, and who the applicant's dissertation advisor was. A lot of people like to think that the ivory tower is somehow free of the "corrupting influences" of the corporate world, but I've found from 4 years of corporate work and 4 years of Ivy League graduate school that those corrupting influences totally exist in academia. There's no way to avoid it, but in the event that I become a professor, I wouldn't even look at where the person got his degree from. What I focus on more is what the person can do.

As an aside... so glad that graduate school admission doesn't rely on extracurriculars. For my program it required previous work experience (academic and/or corporate/government), relevant bachelor's program, statement of purpose and references. My program admitted students from all sorts of universities, many from small liberal arts schools, many from state schools (even CSU Fresno), and few from other Ivy League schools. Of course graduate school admissions are way different from bachelor's programs. The head admissions director here told me that it was my corporate experience that really made him think I was an excellent candidate to the program. My references aren't famous by a long shot, and my GPA was high but not stellar. I didn't even discover anything exciting while working, it was just that I took responsibility when presented and made sure it was varied.

I agree with the above post, basically. Sorry I got snappy back there, it's just annoying when I have worked very hard for years to put myself in this position where I feel I have the greatest chance of success, and then someone says I'm a victim of brainwashing.

we all are. the media determines how we perceive certain things.

You are correct. Everything we believe is based on something, usually something external that has been fed to us.

Plus state colleges offer a bigger variety of academic programs. I chose Midwestern State because of small class sizes, and because their geology program allowed me to take algebra/trig-based physics (as opposed to calculus-based).

BTW, Midwestern is Dr. Phil's alma mater.

Tim

Out of curiosity, how old are you/what year are you in school, ButchCoolidge?

I used to be really obnoxious about academic achievement when I was a senior in high school/freshman in college. I was convinced that I graduated at the top of my high school class, got high SAT scores, and got into a selective college because I worked harder than everyone else. Now, as a junior in college, my perspective is totally different. I think I achieved so much academically because I was given the gifts and socioeconomic circumstances to do so. It was always expected that I would go to college and my parents always made sure that nothing came ahead of schoolwork. I didn't have to work a job in high school because my parents provided everything for me. I was raised to value education. If I had grown up in the ghetto with a high school dropout as a mother and no father, I bet I would have achieved much less academically. And it wouldn't be because I wasn't hard-working.

As far as reputation of the school goes- I've learned to care less about that. My school's reputation may give me an edge someday when it comes to getting a job or getting into grad school, but there are many other important factors, too. I don't think someone who graduated from a state school with a 3.95 GPA in Chemistry and three summers worth of lab research experience is going to have much trouble succeeding in life. Life is what you make of it and you can make a lot of it whether you attend a state school or Harvard.

As for blasting my school's name out on the Internet- I have no need. I honestly don't care what a bunch of online people think of me or my school. On the other hand, I would care if my identity were figured out because I shared my school's name.

Butch I have a question for you. How early did you start the application process and how did you go about it?

I was encouraged to apply to the Ivies, they even sent me letters with applications enclosed. I was very busy with school and other things so I had a very hard time getting the time to do anything with the applications. I started the process during my senior year. Then I learned that the Ivies required that you take some SAT IIs, I didn't even know there was such a thing, and I had to get that done at the 11th hour. I ended up using the Common App and I think that is the reason I didn't get in, my interviews weren't very good either, one area where I wish I could turn my AS off. Did you do early decison/early action?

I go to a very small but very prestigious liberal arts college in Texas. Speaking of Columbia, the other day one of my classes was tought by a guest professor from Columbia. There was another time where I had one taught by a professor visiting from UNC Chapel Hill. I'm still stumped as to how a college of 1300 in Nowhere, Texas can hook things like that up.

Very well said!

Yes and no - My University is technically a part of Cambridge University. However... it's a bit pants, really. Sure, we have full access to their libraries and so on... but they hate us, and we hate them. Largely because they're a bunch of snobs, and tend to look down on us.

Yesterday I was introduced to a new professor in the film department at my University. She's a famous documentary filmmaker.

The reason I mention this is that she used to teach at Swarthmore, Wellsley, and MIT but my school has a program to hire distinguished professors from prestigious universities so they can teach undergraduates at my school by offering them double what the other schools are paying them. I'm under the impression that famous professors at prestigious universities usually don't even teach undergraduates so this program doubly cool. (although the goal of this program is to give my school the reputation of a "public ivy" ).

I'm tired of commenting on the prestige factor, I'm not sure if I ever made myself entirely clear but whatever.

As for the two questions posed to me - 1. I'm 21, going to be a senior this year, and 2. I suppos I started the process the summer before my senior year, visiting colleges. I thought I did well in my interviews, but looking back, I have no clue. I really found it impossible for me to get across just why I'm so special in my applications. Maybe if I'd been aware of my AS, I could've done a better job. I knew that I would be one of the smartest, most gifted and driven people no matter where I went, and sure enough, that's the case, but for some reason it didn't come across on my app. I used the common app, but by choice. Looking back, that was probably really stupid, but they swore it didn't matter and I believed them, like an idiot. The whole process is such a crock... I knew a guy with straight A's and a 1600 who didn't get in anywhere except Duke, and I swear he's smarter than 98% of the people at Columbia. Getting the best qualified, most gifted people is sadly not their goal. I applied early action to Harvard and was deferred and then rejected in April. I was waitlisted at Princeton and Yale, and I tried to get into Princeton off the waitlist, but it wasn't to be. Sometimes I actually wish I had gone to Amherst - I think liberal arts colleges can be fantastic. You get so much more attention - smaller classes, etc. I've had so many awful lecture classes at Columbia (but some great ones too). In the end I'm really glad I went to Columbia, in fact I probably wouldn't go anywhere else now even if I could. The most unpleasant and challenging aspect of Columbia has also been rewarding beyond anything I could've imagined, and that is that my whole bubble, my perception of what people are like and who's out there and what real life is like, after growing up in a very sheltered, conservative environment, has been completely shattered. It was tough and very scary at times, but I am seriously 10x the person I was before I went up there, having learned to deal with all different kinds of people and situations and cultures and all of that jazz. I think if I had gone to Princeton, I would've have developed even a fraction as much as I have now, because it would've been white picket fence Polo-shirt-land all over again.