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Is anyone else appalled by that sentiment? If the whole point of going to an Ivy League school is to obtain an education that supposedly exceeds all others in

Is anyone else appalled by that sentiment? If the whole point of going to an Ivy League school is to obtain an education that supposedly exceeds all others in terms of quality (and cost), who cares how you got admitted, as long as you leave with a degree? These students, at least in the case of Columbia's School of General Studies[1], take the same courses along side regular students and graduate with the same BAs/BSs, albeit granted by a different resident college. These are people clearly capable of handling the coursework of an "elite" institution who would otherwise be kept out by overly restrictive admission requirements, requirements which clearly have more to do with perpetuating the institution's prestige than anything else. What's next, looking down at transfer students for not taking all of their courses at the school they graduated from? And what about legacy admissions? If we're so concerned about distinguishing between those who were vetted by a selective, supposedly aptitude-based admissions process and those who weren't, shouldn't we assume those graduates who attended the same elite schools their parents did benefited from some form of legacy admission and hold that against them as well? 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_School_of_General_Studies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_School_of_G...

Nrsolis 16y ago
Forget what that "other" person said. If you have a degree, you have a degree. I get the same letters pleading for alumni donations that Eliot Spitzer gets. It's unfortunate that there are some that cling to a model of social hierarchy that is predicated on beauty contests rather than actual objectively measurable achievement. I'm argue that someone who earned a degree from Harvard or Yale or Columbia that did the work and earned the grades deserves no less respect than someone who did all that AND passed an admissions process. That process is the only thing that TRULY separates the non-traditional from the tradition student.

Nrsolis 16y ago

Forget what that "other" person said. If you have a degree, you have a degree. I get the same letters pleading for alumni donations that Eliot Spitzer gets. It's unfortunate that there are some that cling to a model of social hierarchy that is predicated on beauty contests rather than actual objectively measurable achievement. I'm argue that someone who earned a degree from Harvard or Yale or Columbia that did the work and earned the grades deserves no less respect than someone who did all that AND passed an admissions process. That process is the only thing that TRULY separates the non-traditional from the tradition student.