I don't know if I would recommend forcing your kids to try to get in. Whether people are willing to admit it or not the degrees are closer to a Rolex watch than

I don't know if I would recommend forcing your kids to try to get in. Whether people are willing to admit it or not the degrees are closer to a Rolex watch than they are 'success'. Framing it as if you need a Harvard/MIT/Princeton/Stanford degree to succeed is a false dichotomy. The students at these places commit a lot of academic fraud, my school is changing the honors code to adjust to this new reality. The parents of the students hire consultants to help them create fake credentials to help them get in, they play obscure sports, they join academic clubs like the math team they don't even like. It's not a pretty site. Although objectively, students from these schools have more opportunities, the opportunities are at the kind of places that are themselves kind of fake like top financial firms and it's much easier to create a fake startup when you have a nice degree. I'm put off by how toxic this all is. Goodhart's Law is playing out. I am in favor of having good STEM schools, which is what the schools should do, but I don't think we can do that and simultaneously overvalue prestige rankings. The schools have contributed to tribalism across the country. They are really becoming a net negative I think.