Click here to go to the NEW College Discussion Forum

Let's be honest here. How much of a difference does going to an Ivy school make vs. comparable research U or Liberal Arts School. Why should I choose UPenn or Harvard over Amherst, Swarthmore or Northwestern.

What I'm getting at is this: is it worth all the extra effort to get into an ivy league school at the cost of reducing one's HS life to nothing and quickening the process of burnout and emotional breakdowns (you need to talk to my shrink).

By Mmccullough (Mmccullough) on Friday, January 02, 2004 - 10:37 pm: Edit

Many Ivy Leaguers would argue that going to Harvard or UPenn is going to make your life a lot easier in the long run (for grad school, employment, etc.). Plus, everyone knows Harvard & Yale inflate their grades, so while you might burn out in high school trying to get in, college won't be nearly as bad . (I LOVE to start arguments lol).
But, on a more serious note, I'd definitely look at what field you're trying to get into & what type of college atmosphere you want. If you want to go to that big red brick museum in the middle of Cambridge as opposed to a little red brick school in the middle of nowhere, then that's what you should shoot for. You'll get different experiences out of each.
The Ivies are going to have more prestigious professors, better internship opportunities, and more inside hookups w/ alumni for future employment. Have fun in high school, but also look beyond the hours of sleep you'll lose for those four years...you'll be doing just that to get into Amherst anyway (it's harder to get into than UPenn).

By Jetboy1857 (Jetboy1857) on Friday, January 02, 2004 - 11:23 pm: Edit

In short, the "Ivy League" stamp isn't really all that some on here seem to think it is. Although there may be some effect, for undergrad it's mainly limited to just Harvard and Princeton and mabye (if you push it) Yale.

You should ignore the school name and decide what school offers the best undergrad program for what you are interested in.

My parents are Ivy alumns and I think they would tell you hands down that although those schools have a strong although (compared with many other places) small alumni following... your own personal achievements ect. will FAR outweigh the name of your school. Don't expect the name on your degree to get you a job, get you into grad school, ect... you'll have to do that on your own.

From reading this forum it's obvious that most people have some sort of "Ivy" disease. There are great schools, but generally are not the best in most fields. If this is the best fit for your program and you can honestly say that there is not other department in the country that is better for you then by all means go for it (I'm Ivy accepted ;-) ), but DO NOT think that you will get any sort of bonus out of the name. If you think like that, you'll get scooped by more seriously minded folks... if you focus on your own work and stop worrying about your brand name... then you'll really go places!

By Cbmac (Cbmac) on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 08:27 am: Edit

The only benefit I can think of is that the alumni organizations are a lot stronger at most of the Ivies than at top LACs (partially because the latter have smaller graduating classes).

There is usually a critical mass of alumni from each of the Ivies in major cities in the US, as well as around the world, and enough are active in each major city to allow a viable club to exist. I worked in both London and Frankfurt (Germany) and was active in Brown and Penn clubs while I was there. They give you the opportunity to meet people of similar background if you move to a new city. If you are a professional or executive who has to move around a lot, you might find this particularly helpful.

Also, the richest ones (Harvard and Penn, for example) have clubhouses in New York that an alum can join and then use as a place to have meetings, take a shower between flights, even stay over night.

But this is not to knock the alumni associations of LACs. I know a lot of people who went to Amherst, and they have very active clubs all over the place. But the critical mass of alums are not always there because of the smaller size.

By Lki (Lki) on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 01:32 pm: Edit

I think it may be interesting to add where I'm coming from on this issue. Both of my parents attended Ivy League schools UGrad and went to UPenn for grad school. My mother (Brown) tells me that it makes no difference and that LAC's might offer a better education. My father (Columbia), who is a diplomat/politician in Europe, tells me that at least in Europe, and supposedly more generally, it makes a big difference. In fact, he has made the following hierarchy:

Harvard

Princeton, Yale

Columbia, Stanford (not technically Ivy League).


It is his strong belief that the preceding schools make a significant difference in the prestige of one's career and the facility with which it is achieved.

(on a side note, I should add that my uncle went to Princeton)

By Voigtrob (Voigtrob) on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 01:41 pm: Edit

Oh MAN Lki that's some crazy legacy you got goin on there, you lucky bastard. ;P

By Thedad (Thedad) on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 02:42 pm: Edit

In diplomacy/politics, the name of school might indeed bring a certain cachet. In most fields, I think Jetboy is correct: it's what *you* do, not the name of your school.

Some of the assumed benefits of an Ivy are slippery: "more prestigious professors" doesn't matter very much if they're not very accessible or don't teach that many undegrad courses.

For "internship" programs it depends on what and where: there are plenty of non-Ivy schools, from Georgetown & George Washington to Amherst & Smith that are very good with internships and in some fields probably better than generic Ivy offerings.

An Ivy name on your degree might be of assistance early in your career, getting some job interviews that might be otherwise difficult to get, but the longer you're out of school the more your individual track record is going to count.

By Lki (Lki) on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 03:26 pm: Edit

yeah but i'm not sure the legacy helps me: none of my parents contribute much.

In fact, my dad gave up a six-figure salary to go work in Eastern Europe for $1000 a year (though it has gotten him lots of pretige)

By Sac (Sac) on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 03:41 pm: Edit

No college is worth burn-out in high school. Do your best while getting enough sleep, having some social life, exploring what really interests you. Then, see what your options are. Perhaps diplomacy still relies on a "blueblood" network. On the other hand, perhaps someone who goes to Middlebury and picks up several foreign languages might do just as well in this day and age. Very few fields only have one path to entry. The graduate school is more important for most, and there are hundreds -- not dozens -- of undergraduate institutions from which, if you shine, you will get into the best graduate programs.

By Haon (Haon) on Saturday, January 03, 2004 - 04:41 pm: Edit

First of all, you will have to work just as hard to get into top LACs as you would for Ivies. If AWS were Ivies they'd be right smack in the middle for selectivity.

Secondly, Cbmac says that Ivy alumni organizations are smaller than LACs...possibly this is true for some Ivies and some LACs but in general LACs have VERY strong and active alumni organizations. Williams has arguably the most active alumni association in the world (the idea of alumni association COMES from the Williams association...it's the oldest). Amherst and many of the other elite LACs have extremely strong alumni associations, stronger than many of the Ivies.

What you have to understand is that for most jobs, you Undergraduate degree is not especially important. In those jobs where it is important (I-Banking for one), the top LACs are seen in the same light as the Ivies. For most jobs, the importance lies in where your graduate degree is from, and looking out how schools are at getting their students into top grad programs, the LACs are comparible to the Ivies. WSJ's ranking of top feeder schools for the elite law/business/med schools found that Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore were all in the top 10 in the country (Williams was ahead of all of the Ivies other than HYP). Duke and Stanford (two non-ivies) were also in the top 10 (6th and 4th respectively I believe).

By Cbmac (Cbmac) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 09:40 am: Edit

"What you have to understand is that for most jobs, you Undergraduate degree is not especially important. In those jobs where it is important (I-Banking for one), the top LACs are seen in the same light as the Ivies. For most jobs, the importance lies in where your graduate degree is from, and looking out how schools are at getting their students into top grad programs, the LACs are comparible to the Ivies. WSJ's ranking of top feeder schools for the elite law/business/med schools found that Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore were all in the top 10 in the country (Williams was ahead of all of the Ivies other than HYP). Duke and Stanford (two non-ivies) were also in the top 10 (6th and 4th respectively I believe)."

Hoan, I agree with everything you say in this paragraph. But besides Williams, Amherst and maybe Swarthmore and Wellesley, I am not sure how many LACs have really strong and truly national/international alumni networks. Places like Pomona, Wesleyan, Middlebury and Haverford are great schools, but in London I have never come across them and usually the American alumni organizations tell each other about what they are doing.

Also, keep my original point in perspective. I was saying that strong alumni networks with broad geographic coverage were really the only thing that differentiated the Ivies from top LACs (with some exceptions as you point out). Unless you foresee working in finance or diplomacy, I do not see this as being very relevant to choosing an undergrad college.

By Collegeparent (Collegeparent) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 01:18 pm: Edit

Cbmac, I think you need to look again at the Wall Street Journal feeder school article. The sampling was very limited in the schools mentioned (I think only 3-4 LACs) and the Ivys mentioned (again only about half of them), especially the grad schools, were quite small. Because that WSJ article is so flawed in its approach, other schools, especially top tier LACs, with equal if not superior stats for getting grads into exceptional postgrad schools ( and not limited to the three areas WSJ polled) were left unmentioned. The skew and limitations in that feeder school article almost demands that it be dismissed because of who was omitted instead of who was mentioned, but since it's WSJ, it won't be. I would hope that WSJ rethinks and expands it in its next outing.

In the meantime, I might refer you to a recent Kiplinger article about academic quality vs. costs & aid, which I think is more balanced: http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/privatecolleges/privatecollege.php?sortby=RANK&orderby=flip&states965B965D=ALL&myschool965B965D=none&outputby=table

However, I do most heartily agree with you about the LACs having exceptional alumni networks that can help enormously, and are better than most Ivys and elite universities. Such schools as Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Colgate, Davidson, Grinnell, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Swarthmore, Tufts, and Vassar quickly come to mind. Among women's colleges, Wellesley, Scripps and Smith. And among other LACs, schools such as St. Lawrence, Bates, Colby, Pitzer, Colorado College, Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence, Dickinson, F&M, Denison and Hamilton have solid alumni networks.

I'm sure there are others. Perhaps CC should conduct its own poll on LACs & grad schools per profession such as WSJ did. Any takers?

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 01:46 pm: Edit

This link only lists the top ten schools that have the largest percentage of graduates who recieve their Ph.ds, but it may give you some idea of what departments are stronger at those schools.
http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html

By Hypspomonagi (Hypspomonagi) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 01:56 pm: Edit

I found this

From Harvard

While grade inflation is a national phenomenon , former Harvard dean Henry Rosovsky and University of Pennsylvania lecturer Mattthew Hartley say it is "especially noticeable in the outragehously expensive IVY League. The expectation of Private school students that they are entitled to a high GPA is so ingrained that one Harvard professor, Harvey Mansfield, has two-grade policy. Professor Mansfield hands out a merit-based grade which is shown only to the students and an inflated grade which gets recorded on transcripts.

From Vanderbilt

55.3% of the 1393 Vanderbilt graduates during the 2001-2002 school year received Latin honors, as opposed to 29.85% receiving honors in 1991-1992, according to the University registrar.

"But that is still not even close to Harvard," said.


From Stanford


"What about my precious med school applications?h some of us screamed. gHow am I going to get into law school with a bunch of eCfs on my transcript?h others cried out.

That night, the phone lines were busy as our perplexed Australian professors spoke to the folks back at Stanford. gDonft worry,h they told us in the morning. gYour grades will be eadjustedf to Stanford standards at the end of the course.h So we settled down, relaxed a bit and went back to being the mellow Stanford students we pretended to be in the first place.

But this experience left me thinking. Honestly, I donft think wefre much worse than our Harvard.

Having a high GPA at a state school is a bigger accomplishment than having a high GPA at a private school says Vidya Prabhakaran, Former president of Yale College Council.


From Yale

Grading at Harvard has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the past few months. Several major publications, including the Boston Globe and The New York Times, published articles revealing the high percentage of Harvard students who receive A's.

And in an incident that provoked angry responses from Harvard students, Tufts University Dean of Undergraduate Education Charles Inouye, himself a Harvard Ph.D., was quoted in the Tufts Daily as saying Harvard students were "essentially a lazy bunch" and "not that smart."


From Princeton

U-Councilor Chris Wendell '03 asked whether cooperation between the Ivy Leagues could prevent students at a particular school from receiving lower grades than their peers.

"The chances that we are going to disadvantage our students is nonexistent," Malkiel responded.

Neither Princeton nor similar institutions have been able to find longterm solutions to grade inflation, she said.

"There isn't any magic solution," she said.


From WPost

The last time I gave a C was more than two years ago. That was about the time I came to realize that my grading had become anachronistic. The C, once commonly accepted, is now the equivalent of the mark of Cain on a college transcript. I have forsworn C's ever since.

At Pomona College, C's are now less than 4 percent of all grades. About half of all grades at Pomona, Duke, Harvard and Columbia are in the A range.

By Cbmac (Cbmac) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 02:37 pm: Edit

"Cbmac, I think you need to look again at the Wall Street Journal feeder school article"

I didn't look at it and don't intend to look at. Hoan was challenging some of my points. One of his points was that some LACs have better placement success at top grad schools than some Ivy League schools. I think he is right. If you think the source he cited to support his point (a WSJ article) is flawed, take it up with him.

By Jetboy1857 (Jetboy1857) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 03:38 pm: Edit

Grade inflation has become such a problem at most of the Ivies and some other schools too that a trancscript from those schools no longer means anything. It's obviously gives a list of the areas studied, but offers those reading them little info on the students true academic abilities in comparison with their peers. Most are typically just seemingly randomly filled with a splatter of A's and A-. The effect this has on a graduating student will varry on the field... by in something like science or engineering (which are traditionally considered one of the toughest majors to keep and maintain super high GPAs at "less-inflated schools") a student would be at a marked disadvantage. Admissions boards know what the inflated schools are and thus two transcripts from two different schools with the same GPA won't have the same impact.

Despite what students might feel, in the long run grade inflation only hurts students by making the academic achievements of those who truly deserve the high grades look unimpressive impressive compared with their peers at other universities. Unfortunetly, due to the intense pressure on faculty the problem at the aforementioned schools just keeps getting worse.

By Mike (Mike) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 05:33 pm: Edit

What really matters in college is how hard the student works to gain knowledge. College rep can give you a bit of first step but in the end the student's efforts will make the most difference over a lifetime

Mike's Dad

By Collegeparent (Collegeparent) on Sunday, January 04, 2004 - 06:51 pm: Edit

Apologies, Cbmac -- And Hoan's right about the LACs doing better than the Ivies at the top grad schools, but I stand by my comments about the skew of the WSJ article and its limited data base. Also, Mike's Dad makes a very valid point, one which all too oftens falls on deaf ears. Matter of fact, recent studies have shown that it isn't the college a successful person attends, but the ones he tried for and didn't get into, that are more of an hallmark of a student's eventual success. Like Browning said, a man's reach should exceed his grasp -- and it is the risk takers who aim high who usually hit the bullseye.

By Haon (Haon) on Monday, January 05, 2004 - 07:24 pm: Edit

I agree, the WSJ article was far from perfect...however, it wasn't entirely bad. They chose med, law, and business school...the three most popular grad schools. I agree, a more comprehensive group of grad schools would be better but once you start including less-popular ones you run into problems -- there are few schools that don't have a large amount of students going to med/law/business schools but there are many schools that will send many students into engineering and not english and vice versa...once you start including programs other than the three included you really have to include all, and then it just gets too complicated. A listing of total number of students at any grad programs does not reveal anything--many programs are not selective to get into.

The second problem with the survey is which "top" programs they chose for law/med/business schools...if they do this survey again they MUST include a larger range of "top" programs. They don't even follow their own grad school ranking when deciding which programs are "top." However, a more comprehensive group of top programs probably wouldn't radically change the rankings--schools would fall and schools would rise but a jump or fall of more than 10 places is extremely unlikely. This is really the first survey of its kind, and while it's far from perfect it does show that the top LACs are very comparible with any of the top Unis for grad school placement...

As for alumni networks, I was under the impression that most top LACs (not just AWS) had very strong alumni networks...maybe others aren't quite as international as AWS but I'm fairly certain that in general LACs do have excellent networks.

As for grade inflation, Hypspomonamagi just reposted the post from somewhere else...he's posted the same on some other forums. Yes, many schools have grade inflation but grad schools and employers are very aware of it...all in all grade inflation really affects nothing--top schools with no grade inflation fair just as well as top schools with large amounts of grade inflation in post-grad areas.

I agree with Mike's Dad...ultimately what matters is what YOU do with your education and your life. College helps but without initiative you will get nowhere. However, this is no excuse for not going to the best college that's right for you--a good college will help you more than a bad college will.

By Gs86 (Gs86) on Thursday, January 08, 2004 - 05:17 pm: Edit

"My father (Columbia), who is a diplomat/politician in Europe, tells me that at least in Europe, and supposedly more generally, it makes a big difference. In fact, he has made the following hierarchy:
Harvard
Princeton, Yale
Columbia, Stanford (not technically Ivy League).
It is his strong belief that the preceding schools make a significant difference in the prestige of one's career and the facility with which it is achieved. "

In my opinion, Lki, such a HUGE generalization cannot be made, especially when the entire college process has become almost completely random and is under scrutiny from every intelligent and logical mind out there. Maybe this was true way back in the day when all top Ivy grads were white males from rich prep schools, but certainly that is not true today.

By Mnm86 (Mnm86) on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 11:42 am: Edit

though Lki is generalizing...his point about europe is true. the ivies are more well-known internationally than even the very best LAC, and because many people who aren't intimatly knowledgeable about a particular educational system (ie many european employers) if a student intends to live/work in europe, having an ivy degree presents an incredible advantage, while here, an employer might consider a job applicant with an ivy degree similar to one with a very good LAC degree.