How Ivies Brainwash HS Students Into College Zombies

Like Kyle Massey’s cancer, it's a hoax to believe the ONLY ticket to WS or any great business success is an Ivy degree. It seems that some monkeys out there have been brainwashed & zombified into thinking this way, thanks in part to their glaring brands, ominous prestige, and flawed rankings. However, this post will show you why you’re dead WRONG! Read on to find out the three secrets [and then some] on how you can achieve greatness and save some green without them...



How many of you monkey’s have this notion beaten into your brains?

You need to attend an Ivy League college to get the best jobs and salaries.

WRONG! In a follow-up to their original 2002 study, two economists Dale and Krueger from the Mathematica Policy Institute and Princeton University find that earnings between graduates that were rejected by Ivies and attended less selective colleges were relatively indistinguishable over the long-term [i.e.10+ yrs.].

A far more reliable predictor of success when adjusting for omitted variable bias, is average SAT scores of the most selective college applied, not the one attended. Further, it turns out that those who fare better financially from attending Ivies are either Black, Latino, low-income families, or first generation graduates not those of more advantaged families.


Think the Ivies charge an insane amount of tuition to bankroll an all-star faculty?

WRONG! The think tank, Center For College Affordability And Productivity conducted a 2012 study and found that the top 25 colleges with the best professors don’t contain a single Ivy! As a matter fact, the number one best college for professors for three years running has been Oklahoma Wesleyan University. See for yourself at Rate My Professor which was used to conduct the study.


Think an undergraduate from an Ivy makes you one of best candidates for any job?

WRONG! It turns out that reputation matters more at the graduate level if you’re going for WS gigs. There’s a good amount of forum discussion on this but I found one simply titled, Harvard Business School that has some good insight from senior monkey’s. However, the wisdom of IlliniProgrammer discusses this in a more financial context and concludes...

When prestige is underpriced and undervalued - like it was in the '60s and '70s, that's when you go for it. My kids will be going to HBS if the economic cycle plays out like I think it will - just at the time everyone will be telling me I'm insane to be paying the premium. But right now, I don't see the catalysts I need to see for growth in the financial sector and I see a lot of catalysts for growth in sectors where prestige doesn't matter as much as networks.



THE BOTTOM LINE...

DON’T BE A ZOMBIE AND FOLLOW THE IVY PATH AS THE ONLY MEANS TO SUCCESS.

Why? See these posts...
1. B-Schools And Why Harvard Is The Cancer of Colleges
2. 5 Reasons Why An MBA Is Useless For A Startup
3. College Rankings, Do They Really Matter?

Still not convinced? Here are 50 More Reasons Not To Attend An Ivy.


Questions, comments, or concerns? Put it below.

 
ChrisHansen:

seriously flawed methodology and logic about where the best professors are.

"For the third year in a row, Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville, Okla., came in first among schools with great professors. On its website, the school says that it "is known for its bold and clear mission which emphasizes the Primacy of Jesus Christ, the Priority of Scripture..."

hahahaha...nice to see how much critical thought went into this thread.

 
Best Response

You're going to get a lot of flak for this post, but #1 and #3 pretty much sum up why I chose a non-Ivy. #2 is a good point, but what the data is really saying is that Christian colleges are known for smaller class sizes and professors who take a more personal approach. The professors aren't necessarily more intelligent or accomplished.

Great post. The truth is much more complicated than this post alone lets on, but your points are excellent and not talked about enough. +1

 
klaasv:

Everyone clearly wants to if the money aspect is left out of the equation.

While it's true Ivies charge a huge amount of money, it's no more than other top schools (eg Stanford, MIT, etc.) and Ivies' financial aid programs are also fairly comprehensive.

 
<span class=keyword_link><a href=/resources/skills/finance/going-concern>Going Concern</a></span>:
ChrisHansen:

seriously flawed methodology and logic about where the best professors are.

"For the third year in a row, Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville, Okla., came in first among schools with great professors. On its website, the school says that it "is known for its bold and clear mission which emphasizes the Primacy of Jesus Christ, the Priority of Scripture..."

hahahaha...nice to see how much critical thought went into this thread.

I bet you only actually had two or three HAs, four is suspect.

 
watersign:

if you have the chance to go to an ivy..you're dumb as hell for not taking it. lol

I would rather go to UMich as a preferred admit to Ross than Brown... any day. Not only can the public school save 150k+, the recruiting is no short (if not better). Social scene and athletics are no competition either.

Ivies are a great option. But they aren't the only option.

 

Whatever you say guys - but if you knew how kids at my Ivy walk into OCR junior spring and land BB SA positions without even knowing what EBITDA is a week before the interview, it would probably make your blood boil. When I see how hard kids at non-targets bust their balls to get IBD interviews and then compare it to some people I know, it even makes me kind of sad.

Yes the Ivies are incredibly expensive financially and they nickel and dime you for everything. And the financial aid packages are not as generous as they seem. Say you have two parents who both work decent middle class jobs that make 60k/year (120k/year total). You're likely to get anywhere from 15-25k in financial aid (on average from what I've seen you can correct me on this). Still after-tax, can your parents really afford to shell out 30k a year in tuition for you? A lot of my friends that come from solidly middle class/slightly upper middle class families take out loans.

Yet despite this, I would still say it's worth it to go. I elected to go to one over a strong regional semi-targer (UT Austin). Freshman year, financially wise, I thought I made the wrong decision. I still have doubts. But the opportunities pretty much fall in your lap, and the access is unparalelled. At a solid semi-targert or non-target, the best and brightest might go to JPM/Citi in NY. Here, middle of the pack kids end up there while the smartest kids head to BX/Silverlake/etc. If you can work hard and place in the top 10% of students at an Ivy, your opportunities are tremendously magnified over a similar caliber student at a non-target. If you are average (and at an Ivy you can always compensate hard work for natural intelligence, so there isn't too much of an excuse for being 'average' unless you're in a quant/STEM major) at an Ivy, there will however likely not be too much of a tremendous difference than if you had just networked at a non/semi-target.

 

Using Rate my Prof as a "scientific" study is about like using the Bible as a totally factual historical book. Religions for the most part are all exactly the same. In fact most major religions have close to 90% repetition of major events, the only real difference is what things are called. The stories are the same, the time lines are the same. The only differences are the names of people and the locations in which they took place. So yea, using rate my prof is a joke. Students wont rate the really great professors highly if their class was hard and really challenging. Its almost an inverse relationship the lax and laid back professors get pushed to the top because students want the easy A.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 
heister:

Using Rate my Prof as a "scientific" study is about like using the Bible as a totally factual historical book. Religions for the most part are all exactly the same. In fact most major religions have close to 90% repetition of major events, the only real difference is what things are called. The stories are the same, the time lines are the same. The only differences are the names of people and the locations in which they took place. So yea, using rate my prof is a joke. Students wont rate the really great professors highly if their class was hard and really challenging. Its almost an inverse relationship the lax and laid back professors get pushed to the top because students want the easy A.

Wait, are you implying that a site that allows users to denote the 'hotness' of their professors with a cartoon chili pepper shouldn't be used for academic research?

 

Thank you all for your comments! I see support for both sides of the post and I'd like to address a few of them...

ChrisHansen:
Seriously flawed methodology and logic about where the best professors are.
Rate My Professor is simply an online review by 15M students of their professors. To my knowledge, it's unattached from the colleges and I think it lacks any real incentive for professors to get ranked highly in return for good grades. Here's an analogy, if an expensive Amazon product [Ivy professors] were great then wouldn't it be reflected in its customer reviews [students]? If it's not and you're already convinced it's a great product, then would you deem the reviews [15M] as biased or unscientific as well? I'm not an advocate for the site or their methodology but without proving Rate My Professors shortcomings we just have to take it into consideration the possibility that Ivy professors may not be the best.
coleslaw:
I don't go to an Ivy but I still disagree with this. Anyone who doesn't go to one on. This site clearly wants to. They are what they are for a reason.
Herein lies the problem, some of you monkeys think in-a-box...it's Ivy or bust and NOTHING else! First, Ivy or not, the study by Dale & Krueger shows that in the LT salaries are about the same. So as far as financial success is concerned, attending an Ivy or a close substitute is relatively moot. Second, the article 50 Reasons Not To Attend An Ivy lists individuals that are probably far more successful than your run-of-the-mill IB yet not a single Ivy degree was obtained! Third, here's an anecdotal point. I work with a women whose daughter NEVER went to college yet she's making about $250K, IB salary. How? She's aggressive, she networked, and works like a ox. She started locally [my hometown] and is one of the top representatives for what she does at DELL. She went to a public school, is from a middle class family, and as an aside her brother went to Syracuse University and is a VP at CS and makes even more money than she does!
Who Am I? | See what GMngmt is all about at About.Me
 

My quote function isn't working but I'd just like to point out GMnmgt that if your anecdotal friend's daughter had done all those things (been aggressive, networked, worked like an ox) at an Ivy she would have gone even further. Getting to where an average student does at an Ivy is definitely possible from a non-target, but it is very difficult for the non-target to achieve the same result as an exceptional student at an Ivy unless they go the entreprenuership route. But in that case, college matters little.

 

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