Bluebird of happiness

re your latter question: I very much doubt it. Not that I have an elaborate sample set of students and their acceptances, but I know that top schools routinely reject students with nigh-perfect stats while accepting ones with somewhat lower scores, and I know that students frequently are rejected from a "lesser" school and accepted to a "better" one. So it's not that.

Some factors I think are in play:

* The common app. This basically didn't exist when I was a senior. It was probably just getting underway seriously when you were. Now it's huge. The common app tremendously reduces the hassle of applying to multiple colleges; applying to four is not substantially harder than applying to three, and so forth. As long as you can afford the application fees, the bar to applying widely is much lower.

* The fact that the number of high school students has increased while the number of spots at top colleges basically hasn't, so I believe it is actually more competitive now than it was when we applied. This naturally increases the stress on students and drives them to estimate their odds lower than we did, making it important for them to apply to more schools.

* The fact that admissions is such a crapshoot and this is, I believe, better publicized than it was when we were applying (or maybe it was and I just didn't know it, going to a high school where many didn't go to college at all?). People in any kind of private school or suburban district know plenty of people who seem like more qualified applicants than themselves but have been rejected from schools they want to go to. Increase panic as per step 2.

* And lastly, students are idiots about their applications. Didn't you know there are only about 20 good schools in the country? And it's important to go to a good school. And any school you haven't already heard of cannot possibly be a good school, and those 20 schools are obviously better than all the other several thousand. In short, the whole idea I'm sure you were taught of 2 safeties/2 matches/2 reaches? No one does that. It's still a meme that's in the air (and, really, it's harsh to say *no one* does it), but it's more like 1 safety because safeties are insulting, and 5 matches or something (because your odds are so low at all of them...). Naturally this inflates everyone's number of apps. While we're at it, it makes those 20 popular schools' acceptance percentages drop, which makes them look more terrifyingly competitive to high schoolers (even if they're not because many of the applicants may not be qualified), and also makes their US News rankings go up, which makes them obviously better than all those schools you haven't heard of (or have, whichever, because Case? not on the list, ergo clearly it sucks or something; you see the wisdom of the high schooler).

* Oh, yeah, speaking of the wisdom of the high schooler, it doesn't help that basically none of them have any perspective, because they don't have the life experience, so they don't really know what college is for and what the job market is like, and this makes it possible for the vortex of stress and freakiness to increase without rational bound.

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I agree that many 17 yr olds are idiots. I certainly was one to some degree.

You know I think one of the things that kept me from being too idiotic was that I actually spent a lot of time looking at the US News rankings. I had the ranking for 1993-1997 and I could sit there and compare each year. It quickly becomes clear that the fomula they use is to some degree arbitrary and changes every year. One year Alumni donations will be 20% of the score, the next 25%. Who cares how many alumni are donating money? Instead of trying to get kids to ignore the ranking I almost think kids should encouraged to examine and question them. But maybe I'm giving stressed out 17 yr olds to much credit.

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rms10.livejournal.com

Who cares how many alumni are donating money?

I used to think that, but right now I'm pissed at Case (as are a lot of other people), so I'm not giving them a dime. And in fact, their donations have really dropped lately. I got a great education there, but right now I'd be a bit leery of encouraging someone to go there for undergrad. So there's not necessarily a tight relation between alumni donations and the quality of the school, but there are some interesting correlations.

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I'm not sure how much alumni donations indicate quality, but they do indicate satisfaction -- both with the education and the experience you had as an undergrad, and with the general policy direction of the school now. Rates of alumni donation, and whether or not there's been a substantial change in the percentage of alumni donating lately, do supply meaningful information -- not that I considered them at all when I was applying.

(I teach at a K-9 school that has substantial rates of alumni donation. That says something astonishing about student satisfaction; it's very hard for primary schools to outcompete high schools and colleges in the race for alumni money. It's an indication that we're doing something really special...which we are. :)

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eirias.livejournal.com

All good thoughts. Yes, the fact that technically-perfect-but-uninteresting students get rejected is a good reason to reject my hypothesis!

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I was taught 3 of each, and I applied light - only 7 schools. And my safety schools weren't much safer than my reach schools, but I knew I was a good candidate and for most of my schools, it'd be a matter of what the applicant pool was like. I ended up going to one of my safety schools, because I didn't apply to any bad schools. MIT rejected me, but then, it rejected everyone from my school that year. As far as I can tell, MIT just places quotas on how many smart, wealthy kids it takes from Long Island schools.

Not that I was the most qualified for MIT, but they also rejected some kids more qualified than I was.

Which is the known trade-off for going to a wealthy and good school. Do well at a poor school and you stand out, you're bound to get into all sorts of places. But it's a whole lot harder and you're much less likely to do well at a poor school. Do well at a good school, and you don't stand out unless you've managed something far more extraordinary than the average genius has the time, creativity, or understanding of the world to do while still a teenager.

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I know the MIT admisions people definitly say they're all about "good fit". I know I at least have some input on the student being a good fit based on the interview. I don't know how the kids they actually admit compare though.

I applied to 5 schools. Though I really was only interested in 3. I think that was around average for kids at my school.

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I agree with

ukelele. I would advise high school kids to ignore the "branding" that big universities do. I mean they are buying an education, not a pair of blue jeans at The GAP. I think that the #1 question most parents and prospective students should be asking is: How does this school reward good teaching? Is excellence in teaching and education a primary consideration for granting tenure? Some kids might thrive at a high power research oriented university, but most won't. They'll get lost and get a slip of paper which says they earned an education when really all they did was drink and go to football games. Yet, they all want to go to these huge ass universities where they are just a number because they are victims of advertising who have been brainwashed to want a product against their better judgement. It is also unfortuate that parents also push their kids to go to big-state-U because in state tution is cheap. But again they should NOT approach buying an education like buying a used car.
IMHO small regional liberal arts colleges are the best value for your education dollar out there. Their focus is on educating students rather than collecting tuition to pay for building big research labs or sports stadiums. The small guys might cost a little more than in-state at big-state-U but you'll probably put yourself into debt going to big-state-U anyway. And the degree from a solid small liberal arts college will get you further not only for sticking out from the crowd but also for the more individualized education you'll get.

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I think you underestimate both the number of people who thrive at big schools and the caliber of many big-state-Us.

I was all about my extremely small alma mater, but it had strengths and weaknesses, and it's not for everyone. I know someone who was deciding between my school and a somewhat larger (though not huge), less teaching-oriented place and chose the bigger, because he felt he'd run out of social opportunities at mine. I know someone who specifically wanted a place where he'd be a number, someplace he could melt into the woodwork and do his own thing unseen. And there are plenty of people whose academic interests are so varied, or so obscure, that typically only a large school will support them well.

Which is to say, I am all about diversity in school options :). I think that, as a whole, we are much better served by having many different kinds of schools for many different kinds of students. You can go to your small liberal arts school, and I'll go to my small engineering school, and everyone else can go where they go.

Hm. I also think you're wrong about people going to big schools because they've been brainwashed by branding. The trendy schools today are, by and large, *not* huge research universities. The trendy schools are mostly small liberal arts colleges or the Ivies (which are, for the most part, undergrad-focused and not huge, though there are exceptions). Only a small number of huge schools are trendy at the moment (offhand, that's Berkeley, WUSTL, NYU, and maybe Penn). People go to big state schools, not because they are trendy (except Berkeley), but because they are cheap -- either they're in-state so they actually are cheap, or they're out-of-state and people erroneously assume public schools are cheaper than privates (not factoring in financial aid). They may be the first choice for this reason. They're also commonly used as safeties, and people may end up going there when their dream admission doesn't materialize or comes with too high a price tag, or the price difference just doesn't seem rational compared to the difference in educational options. (One person in the college_help community last year turned down Harvard for U of Washington, having gotten little to no aid at Harvard and realizing, when you come down to it, UW is a good school with a lot of opportunities for an ambitious person, and Harvard may be good too but it's not an extra hundred thousand dollars worth of good. Choices like that.)

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Okay, I do agree that it is very sage advice to say to-each-their-own. High school counselors should be doing their jobs in that respect. Personally, I went to a small-state-U (by midwest standards of "Big"): The University of Virginia. I think that getting a good education at a larger school has more to do about your own initiative and what you make of it. Bassically you could study basket weaving and football and get the same degree as someone who really busted their butt to be well-rounded (not that basket weaving and football aren't worthy pursuits but they don't make a well rounded education under most circumstances). I think at a smaller school there is less of a chance that you fall through the cracks or end up with some glaring blind spot in your education. I agree that with you that what is "right" (I hate the word in this context) depends on the individual.
I would like to see more "consumer" pressure on schools to put an emphasis on teaching. This selfish motive is why I keep throwing out the questions about teaching as questions prospectives should be using. I know that there are a lot of students who end up at big-state-u who are dissatisfied with the amount of interaction they get with their professors. Most of those schools sell themselves as doing it all including great teaching but cavet emptor! They aren't really emphasizing teaching if the primary consideration come tenure time is $$$ brought in in grants. That's all I'm saying there.
Last, I find it funny that the schools you would consider big brands are almost entirely different from my list. Of course I've got MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell.... but then there is Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, Duke, Wake Forest, UNC, (dare I say) Virginia.... Maybe I've sat in too many meetings about the future of universities where all the talk is about marketing and branding. My experience at least is that this is what the people running these universities I named think of when they are setting goals and mapping out future plans and directions. Think of all the random high school kids you see in the midwest walking around wearing pansy-blue North Carolina paraphernalia. Aside from the fact it makes me sick as a Wahoo, aren't they just victims of advertising? When I think about this, I think this is unfortunately more of a factor in the lower classes, which could really benefit from some good solid guidance about the different kinds of universities out there and what could really be the best fit for them. Because for them, this is their one shot at upward mobility and big-state-u is going to be happy to impersonally take their money without necessarily giving these kids what they need to make something with their lives.

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I know that all schools are obsessed with branding these days :). (My alma mater has been taking it in a rather dubious direction...) But the schools I see kids treating as trendy, the must-have applications, the dream schools, are pretty much never the big state schools. In fact, they tend to underestimate the quality of these schools; places like Michigan and UVA get some credit, but not nearly what they deserve. It's all about the Ivies (perenially trendy), MIT and Stanford (honorary Ivies), Chicago among certain folks, and a pretty random subset of liberal arts colleges (like, Claremont McKenna's trendy and Macalester isn't, even though they're of comparable quality so far as I know). State schools, except for Berkeley and maybe UCLA and sometimes the student's own home state school, are generally assumed to be not very good even when that's unfair.

Where I think state schools win big-time on the publicity front (and this probably drives the midwestern sweatshirts you see) is sports. People who care about sports are following the fortunes of the big schools, because by and large the small schools *can't* compete on that kind of playing field. People whose college dreams revolve less around education and more about sports or a social scene are going to be into their favorite teams.

I also completely disagree with your last comment. I think big state universities have been a critical factor in upward mobility. That's their charge and tradition, really...providing education at affordable rates. It's true that many people are poorly informed about what their options are (I come from West Virginia; you don't need to tell me about education and poverty), but it's also true that a degree, any degree, opens a lot more doors than no degree, and a college, any college, is going to tremendously broaden the horizons of someone whose family doesn't have a tradition of higher education. Yes, I wish college counseling were better (the counselors at my high school couldn't help you if you were interested in going to school out-of-state, and in fact regarded you with a mixture of awe and confusion, like you were some kind of weird prodigy), and I wish people knew a lot more about their financial aid options so they didn't feel they had to go to their state school if it wasn't a good fit. But even more I wish that state schools were not facing the financial crises they do which are forcing them to cater more to folks with less need, and shunting the people with financial need away from the flagship schools; this is a big problem in Massachusetts right now. I would in no way disparage the good work state schools are doing for lower-class kids and I think you are entirely wrong about the opportunities they are left with afterward. They may not end up acculturated along a particular upper-class, ivory-tower track, but that's hardly important.

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kirin

It once again depends on the population you're looking at of course. Around here there's a huge population of high school students for whom UNC-CH is the place to go - and not just among people fixated on sports, though there's plenty of those too. (Consequently it's pretty competitive for a state school.) Our company VP was telling us it was an uphill battle just to get his daughter to seriously consider anywhere else. I think it just kind of permeates the culture around here (unless, of course, you happen to be more interested in Duke...).

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I wouldn't say that state schools are critical to upward mobility but rather that affordable education is a critical factor in upward economic mobility. The nominal mission of many state schools is to provide just that: equal affordable access to higher education for all. In truth I think that promise often falls short. Especially larger state school have started to think of their existence more in terms of a business model just as a means of financial survival. To me, this is a foreseeable result when state legislatures have so irresponsibly cut public funding to public institutions of higher learning. I am not saying that under those pressures it isn't possible to have a leadership that maintains the promise of higher ed for all but often it is only and empty slogan. Right here at the University of Minnesota they've tried to close the General College because it is bleeding money, when that college more than any other satisfies the thirst for cut-rate access to higher education.
Smaller public state schools have started to pick up some of the slack but still there is this problem of how to fund them with the state legislature is delinquent. The community colleges have started to pick up a lot of the slack there and the state of Illinois for example has at least acknowledged that to some extent through their education funding and growth of University of Illinois Springfield as a primarily upper division university.
I think that in a perfect world, you are right, that the publicaly operated universities should be the utopic open door to futures for kids that financially need some help. The reality these days though is something different. There is a rat race for research to bring in $$ and people who are excellent teachers but not bringing in the $$ are penalized rather than rewarded. I can see how this gets us maybe over onto a debate on school vouchers because it is in many ways the same catch-22 that public high schools are facing. And I find it sad that we're destroying our higher ed institutions the same way.
I disagree that just a piece of paper saying you graduated college is an big advantage. Yes, a college degree is a minimum requirement for many jobs. However, I'm focused more on what that piece of paper stands for and I think that what it stands for means so much more for upward mobility than just having any old parchment does. It's the old give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish he eats as long as there are fish to catch argument. Higher education has the ability to change, mold, and mature the world view of young men and women. I hate to see that opportunity wasted by putting someone in an environment that doesn't give them that experience in a form they can digest. I think as far as public catch-all education goes, we should be focused on that.

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tiurin.livejournal.com

I think that the median and average lifetime earnings of a college graduate vs. a high school graduate(and HS graduate w/some college) pretty much makes a definitive argument that it _is_ a big advantage. IIRC, it was something like 50k/year for the college grad vs. 30k/year for the HS grad.

I strongly doubt that the difference in income can be primarily attributed to improved maturity and critical thinking skills. As a former Hokie(who, btw, laments the school's sellout to big-time athletics), I'd estimate that over 75% of the students(and this is being conservative) are there primarily to get the degree. Any broadening of the mind is a byproduct.

I also doubt that most non-technical jobs truly require a college education. I suspect for the most part, the college degree is just another way of carefully regulating the flow of workers into the job market.

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I think your observation about Virginia Tech says something about that university (and I don't mean that in the stereotypical condescending tone Wahoos use to speak of Hoakies :)). Va Tech is a place that students go mostly to just push tin and punch out a degree. No problem with that if it is what you want and expect going in. IMHO a college degree should be more and I think most employers looking for college graduates expect it to be more.

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tiurin.livejournal.com

It was intended to say something about that university. I'd wager that, given that Tech is considered an above-average school, that the percentages are even higher most places. There are no doubt those students at better schools as well, though in diminishing percentages. I've sure met plenty of 'em from Ivies though- albeit the undergrad degree is used to punch out a law/med degree.

I think we just have to face the inevitable- that the majority of college students are there mostly for financial gain. Your opinion(and mine as well) is that a college degree should be more, but I doubt most employers outside of highly competitive fields/companies really pay attention to the "more".

Hell, I'm told it often works in reverse in investment banking. If you have an Ivy degree, it could be in Art History and you're still set. OTOH, you'd have to be a damn sharp math major at State U. to get the same kind of notice.

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And on the other end, for those who are bright but poor... you can self-educate, but then it's still hard to get jobs. You can demonstrate you have the skills, but I've seen how skills and work experience can both still lead to a severely limited set of job options when so many jobs require a college degree, even when that degree doesn't mean anything for whether you can do the job. You can learn the skills in many places, but only a college will give you a magic piece of paper that will broaden the jobs you can do.

Right now I'm sitting back and watching a complete moron try to teach my partner psychology. She has a Ph.D. and no understanding of science... and not much understanding of psychology... and no understanding of how to teach (she'll spend college class time having students read out of the book). He keeps coming home and telling me horror stories. I seriously want to go to the small, poor community college and say, let me teach this. I only have a BS in the subject, but at least I won't be teaching anything blatantly false and stupid, plus I can teach. But you can't teach unless you at least have a masters, so even the daydream is stifled. And those poor students are being given a horrible view of psychology. And being mistaught information about how the body works. And being given a model of science that breaks the principles of science. But she has a Ph.D. so she has a job.

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kirin

I felt the same way listening to akiko's stories of the overview computer-stuff class she had to take in her Pharmacy department. Man, I could teach that class better. Though in that case, I don't think it was so much an issue of him being completely dumb, as just having no qualifications for that particular subject.

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I'm with you there. If you need someone to teach then you should hire someone who can teach, not the person who has the most impressive resume, biggest grant potential, or highest powered research.
I think that in a lot of areas there is a disconnect between what employers expect a degree to mean and what it really means. I hear senior people complain all the time about how the kids coming out now don't know their stuff as well (although that is partially the "I walked to school everyday in a snow storm up hill both ways" syndrome). It isn't fair to the people who work their butts off to make their degree something more or the people who are self taught with native ability. I think as a society we are obsessed with rating people emperically when we're all people so you can't rate everyone on some objective linear numeric scale.

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MIT and Stanford (honorary Ivies),

eww, no. We hate the Ivies ;)

In my highschool the trendy schools were the southern schools. A lot of Duke, UNC, and UVA. Those schools were really pushed for various reasons. MIT was very unpopular. Standford was very popular but no one every actually got in. (My mother tells me our college counselors pissed them off at some point).

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Hey, it's not meant to be a compliment or anything ;).

Really, I'm not expressing my own thoughts here; I'm expressing the sentiment I see a lot of among teenagers.

(Anyway, I know exactly what to make of MIT and Stanford: Mudd's cheap competition. Everyone's gotta have a second choice, I guess. ;)

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Berkeley, however, has some huge positives... mainly cost. If you've been in California for a year, Berkeley is remarkably cheap for a well-known university. And it's actually fairly good at many things. So, it's very hard for anyone in California to get more value for the price than Berkeley... which also probably means it attracts a fair number of intelligent people who might decide the price differential made it not worth going to a big name school.

Oh, and the trees are lovely. It's got big redwoods and eucalyptus trees in this lovely little, quiet, grove where you can just sit and read.

So, maybe it is overestimated, but it's not a bad place. Of course, I decided not to apply there for undergrad because I was afraid that in such a large school, I'd get lost. And I don't know to what extent that would have happened. This May we get to find out if my lothario got in... I really, really hope so, because he only applied to the one school. There are no other local schools he could apply to, and we don't want to move. In order to qualify as a transfer student and be able to major in CS, he had to have a specific set of requirements that didn't qualify him for any other local university. And having too many credits totally disqualifies you.

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Oh dear! I wasn't saying Berkeley was bad or overestimated at all -- actually I think it's a fabulous school and agree CA residents can scarcely do better -- I'm just saying it's trendy right now. The fact that trendiness isn't based on quality doesn't mean that trendy schools are bad. Some of them are outstanding -- Chicago and Brown were high on my own lists. They're just not necessarily more outstanding than non-trendy schools, or good fits for everyone.

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(All of which, by the way, is also to say I think there's no such thing as a #1 question that *all* students should be asking themselves. Students have different needs and the questions they should be asking themselves should accordingly be different. The goal is to find a good fit; saying everyone should go to small liberal arts schools is equally as straitjacketing as saying everyone should go to trendy schools. And, coincidentally, if they *did* ask themselves different sets of questions tailored to their unique personalities and needs, they would find themselves interested in different sets of schools, and a lot of the pressure and competitiveness would go away...Ah well. A girl can dream.)

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Well that kinda is the question. What *type* of school would meet your needs? What do you want out of your education? Those are good sorts of questions to ask. I bet a lot of kids give little thought to this. I had a strong idea of the type of school I wanted and I think that helped a lot. It kept me from just blindly applying to random brand name schools. It was still stressful though :)

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Yeah, I was pretty clear it was Mudd or nothing for me :). Good thing I got in.

To be fair, I see some kids asking themselves those sorts of questions, and being honest with themselves about who they are and what opportunities and culture they want. Unsurprisingly, these kids seem to narrow down their college lists to a reasonable level ;). But I see a lot of people who just know that they want a "good" (aka prestigious) education, and a lot of people who are looking for a school with a strong program in X. I, of course, think this is ludicrous, because I've *been* to college and I know that most people change majors, and that the strength of teaching in your department is a pretty small factor in your overall satisfaction, but hey, these are 17-year-olds so of course they know what they're going to do with the entire rest of their lives. And I think our culture right now is really fixated on qualifications, and school reinforces this; it's easy for students to understand what to do with a piece of paper, and it's easy for them to think about entering major X to go into career Y, but they don't understand that it's not all about your career, and that most of the skills that will help you do your job well, or be hired at all, don't come from pieces of paper. So you'll get the student looking for strong programs in, oh, English, and of course almost every school in the galaxy has an English major, and it's usually one of the more popular majors, so they get this list of 20 schools with absolutely no common thread other than, ooh, popular English major.

(Obviously sometimes the major thing is very important to consider. If you think you might want to study, oh, Hungarian in college, that's going to severely limit your options and you'd better look for schools with Hungarian programs. But aside from that...sheesh! Would that they came up with 20 schools that they thought they might be happy at, and then investigated the strength of their English majors, and cut the list accordingly.)

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rms10.livejournal.com

At the same time, I would have hated a small liberal arts college, because most of them were the size of my high school. Case was just barely large enough, but even it was driving me crazy by senior year.

Conversely, though, when I was applying to college I knew I didn't quite have the self-confidence to navigate a big university, so I didn't really consider Ohio State. And avoiding the little schools and the huge schools meant I didn't have much left in the middle.

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