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They're not worthless, but they're certainly not objective. My son missed an Ivy because of an admissions deadline SNAFU. It was his top choice in schools, and
by debacle 4y ago
They're not worthless, but they're certainly not objective.
My son missed an Ivy because of an admissions deadline SNAFU. It was his top choice in schools, and he was pretty upset about it.
Two family members employed at the school told us it was the best thing that could have happened to him. They didn't allow their children to apply there, because they see what is happening at the school.
This mirrors the trajectory of a local university, once a pretty prestigious school (circa 1980s/90s), now near last in enrollment and falling fast. If you were older and didn't have school age children (or weren't school age yourself), you would never know.
Schools' prestige has a lot of momentum behind it, and it could take 20 years before a once prominent school tanking becomes common knowledge.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoIf you're studying a technical field, an Ivy is probably not a great decision, but if you're going for a liberal art or if you are looking for a prestige signal, they are unparalleled.
- kevinventullo 4y agoHighly depends on the field. Among the top mathematicians who attended undergrad in the US, a large proportion went to Harvard.
- valarauko 4y ago> If you're studying a technical field, an Ivy is probably not a great decision Sadly that's not really the case in the biological sciences, especially when you're looking for a tenure track job. If you look at people who enter tenure track jobs at even state schools, they invariably have pedigrees from Ivy schools, including postdocs.
- colinmhayes 4y agoThe main value add of undergrad is networking and prestige, not education. That's why Ivys are still an unparalleled value proposition, even if their education is similar to the rest of the top 50 schools.
- debacle 4y ago"The main value add of undergrad is networking and prestige, not education." I think this might be true in software engineering and maybe law, but it's certainly not true in the medical field, engineering, etc.
- atdrummond 4y agoIt’s true for US medical students, since the MD is gated to four year degrees that are mostly orthogonal other than the few required science courses.
- radicaldreamer 4y agoExactly! It’s not about the academics (not to say the academics are bad at most Ivy’s), it’s about meeting and interacting with your peer set.
- ISL 4y agoThere is also utility in having the faculty in every single department of a school be above average in quality. It makes exploration and collaboration much more rewarding. There are non-Ivies like that, too, but by and large, the Ivies are all pretty good at every subject. (I don't want to take away from the networking/peer-capability point, which really matters, but rather add another reason to consider the fancy schools.)
- screye 4y agoIvies have pretty tiny STEM departments for the most part. Massive state schools like UMich, UWisc, UW, GATech have a much larger faculty and tend to be better for exploration.
- foobarian 4y agoWould love to hear any details you can share (without potentially identifying bits) about the issues.
- debacle 4y agoNothing scandalous: - Severe GPA inflation - Not being able to compete with nearby state schools for all but two programs, while being much more expensive - Elitism that comes with being an Ivy - Students are in many ways competing against each other (in certain programs)
- screye 4y ago> nearby state schools Are Ivies near any of the generally top tier state schools ? My intuition was that the best state schools were near Chicago and in California. I do feel like state schools do outcompete nearby 'prestige' private schools in those two regions. UPenn -> Maryland Cornell -> Buffalo Harvard, Dartmouth -> UMass Yale, Brown -> UConn Columbia -> SUNY Stony brook Princeton -> Rutgers ________ I know UMass, Rutgers and UMaryland have strong CS & Engineering programs. Dunno much about the other schools or other programs though.