College entrance "scandal"

DozerB said:
Yeah, I was sort of leading the witness with those questions, because what you've said is undeniably true, and anyone with a brain can pretty easily come to that conclusion. Especially in our business, is the Naval Academy or Princeton grad any more capable than the Ohio State or Texas A&M grad (though the A&M grad will certainly be the most obnoxious about his alma mater)? Of course not. They're all 2ndLts who have to figure it out the hard way. There's no standardized testing as a platoon commander for which you can study all night and day and get a 100%. But when it comes time to transition (careers, not genders) the former have an undeniable advantage, probably due to either the prestige/shock factor or alumni network, or a combination of the two.

I've known Community College grads who I would pick to be on my team every day of the week, and Harvard grads who were so infatuated with their own intelligence that they didn't even care to know their Marines' names. And vice versa. Not to mention degree program. In no universe is chemical engineering at the University of Georgia easier or less meaningful than a Philosophy degree from Yale (obviously). But I'd be interested to see a study comparing like-degree programs from a state school and a top 10 Ivy. I'm not sure what they would "measure" in terms of actual career field effectiveness, but I'm sure it could be done. Or even just interviews with Fortune 500 CEOs to see if the recruiting factors actually translate over to success factors once those individuals are hired.

Disclaimer: I barely passed state college so if you're thinking I'm just a dumb, bitter, liberal-arts-degree holder that just needed a piece of paper in order to commission, you're probably not ENTIRELY wrong.
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As a group, I think that Academy grads have a definitive and measurable advantage over both their ROTC and OCS counterparts through the company-grade ranks. About the time they become senior captains most of that has evaporated. But Academy grads are grossly over-represented in terms of commissioning numbers at the highest grades, so if you want to make a career out of it as an officer, it might pay to go the Academy route.

When it comes to the study you inquired about, this one isn't a direct match but it's pretty telling:

The median annual earnings for an Ivy League graduate 10 years after starting amount to well over $70,000 a year. For graduates of all other schools, the median is around $34,000. But things get really interesting at the top end of the income spectrum. The top 10 percent of Ivy League grads are earning $200,000 or more ten years after starting school. The top earners of other schools, on the other hand, are making just a hair under $70,000.
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It might be hard to tell if this is causation (i.e. going to one of these schools is what made these people earn so much more than their peers) or it might be simple correlation (these folks were going to be rock stars regardless and would have been making that high-end $$$ regardless of where they went to school). I fall on the "causation" side.

I have a degree from a military junior college and one from one of the schools mentioned in the report, and as a broad categorization, if I had to pick between the two I'd rather have a team picked from the high-end school than the low-end, open-admission one. Of course I'd rather cherry pick the best from both...

Not everyone who graduates from any school... Ranger School, BUD/S, the police academy, UPENN, whatever, is going to be a special person. But it does seem to make it more likely.
 
Marauder06 said:
Elite schools is the great leavener of opportunity in the US. They open the doors to the levers of power in business, education, politics, and the media.
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Americans don’t view “those people” favorably. I’ve worked for managers from elite schools and I, as well as many peers, prefer to work for people from the service academies or a long military career. I’ve encountered a lot of “stupid people” (socially unaware or lack of practical experience) from the Ivy League but they don’t realize it and seem to expect minions to cower due to their degree vice knowledge. I owe my financial status to experience and mindset acquiring from the military.

I will never touch the power levers of the government and I’m fine with that. I would not want to rub shoulders with Page, Strok, Mcabe, Comey, Clapper, Hayden, Brennan, etc.

I think throughout history the military has afforded more Americans with opportunities for upward mobility than just elite education alone. However, GI Bill —> Ivy League degree = golden goose!
 
Devildoc said:
Blowing up the NCAA would be helpful. But definitely eliminate that sliding scale.

Our friend is in sports information for Duke football, she said that 75% of SEC football players would not qualify at Duke (she held the same position for one of the Mississippi SEC schools). College athletics, the NCAA, and admissions are such a racket.
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My alma mater has lost it's fair share of home state athletes to other schools, because we wouldn't budge on minimum test scores. There are State run schools out there that do maintain standards...any those that don't.
 
Marauder06 said:
I’m not talking about the schools, although they may bear some culpability as well. The schools should sanction the students if they got in through bribery, or at least make them re-apply. And if they knew they cheated to get in, they should have their degrees revoked if they are grads.

The people who didn’t get in should sue the people who defrauded them out of their spots in these life-changing schools.
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Marauder06 said:
I think some people don’t appreciate what a big deal this is because they don’t realize how life-changing it can be to go to one of these schools. The resources and opportunities afforded by some of these institutions put their graduates on a path not just to the middle class, but to the upper strata of the upper class.

Look at the people who run this country and look at where they went to school.
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I completely agree with Marauder on this one. I had always suspected, but didn't quite understand it myself until I simply put one of those schools on my resume. Organizations that never even emailed me back gave me interviews (and I have applied to a metric fuckton of internships) before I had even attended Day 1 of the program. The biggest thing is that recruiters and top notch organizations rely heavily on reputation of the school/program and their alumni base on entry-level hiring.

It would amaze you the level of networking just inherent in attending one of these schools. There are professors people take simply because they used to be someone high up at X company or agency and a referral from them basically assures you a job. There was a small competition held this past weekend on campus that resulted in an automatic internship for the top 2 winning teams. The State Department in particular hires the vast, vast majority of its Foreign Service Officers from the top 10 international relations grad schools with just ONE of those schools making up the equivalent of the next 5 combined, and I would imagine other foreign policy-related government agencies hire similarly. I cannot tell you how many ambitious undergrads at my old school would have killed for opportunities like that.

Now with that said, coming from a small town in the Deep South, I certainly don't feel like I belong here in a cultural context that is for damn certain. These just aren't my people, and while there are a ton of just plain good people here, I find myself missing home a lot simply for the Southern feel. I have stepped off the plane and noticed a palpable difference by just sitting in a random restaurant back home vs one in DC. On the other hand, when I go home and tell people that I go to X school, my parents and I both feel the need to say that the Army is footing the bill when I hear the inevitable "Oh that must be expensive!" while I doubt many of the students here have heard similar comments.


DozerB said:
A great point that was raised in all of this is that if these prestigious, elitist institutions are so academically rigorous, then how did unqualified/underqualified cake-eaters manage to stay enrolled, and in some cases, GRADUATE? Could it be that the myth of superior academic rigor at Ivy League schools is an oft-repeated yet inaccurate myth and that these top-tier schools are not so academically challenging after all?

As a state school graduate, I don't want to say I hope so, but I hope so. #MakeStateSchoolGreatAgain
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I can tell you that the rigor is not much different, and it is a myth except for maybe, maybe in the STEM fields but that's only due to better facilities rather than rigorous curriculum. I have 2 degrees in different fields from my old small state school with a range of electives through different departments. I am now in a different field for my masters along with a certificate in yet another different field (4 fields in total). Not only this, but I went to a pretty reputable language immersion program where many of the kids from these schools go to get their language requirement out of the way or get recruited for international jobs. The level of academic rigor is perfectly comparable. What I have definitely noticed is the difference in the quality of the average student. ROTC allows me an opportunity to interact with undergrads from about 4 different schools, and I expected far more of a bell curve than I have seen. Even in the younger classes, almost all of these kids really are high quality individuals.

Now this big name school has far more interesting (re: specialized) classes along with a much larger cadre of qualified and experienced professors with a vast range of not only extra-curricular clubs (the kind that actually do impressive stuff rather than just show up once a month and take dues) but even continuous skills workshops in negotiations, coding, entrepreneurship, etc. Many of these things would not have been taken full advantage of by the average student at my old school, but are very competitive to get into here. Regardless, what I have noticed is that the quality of student is what determines the quality of education.

Take one class with X assigned readings and 2 papers. Student 1 does the bare minimum to get an A since 25% of the final grade is class participation. Student 2 engages with the material and on his own time reads history on the material for context and even buys a book from a prominent scholar on the subject from Amazon's latest top seller's list for current perspectives on the subject. Student 1 writes his papers in the typical "I read the stuff and can do a simple inference on what that means" in the basic college format. Student 2 takes a risk and examines an emerging dilemma in this subject and offers his own analysis and recommendations in an innovative and story-telling fashion that is actually fun to read. Both students get A's but who gets a better education? Now assume Student 1 goes to Harvard and Student 2 goes to Mississippi Delta State (made up).

I firmly believe that the military is one of the best options for an individual with middle to low income background to improve their lot in life, and I am still just a cadet. I heavily attribute my acceptance in this program to having an ROTC scholarship on my application whereas many of these grad students went to top 100 and most commonly top 20 schools worldwide with extensive international experience. Now, our academic performances are perfectly equivalent, but how can a middle class or lower kid from an unranked state school stand out to get accepted into something like this without the military or comparable thing? They can't afford to go take an unpaid internship somewhere let alone spend 10s of thousands of dollars to study abroad when most of those scholarships are reserved for the top-ranked schools.
*Note: I am reading Strangers in Their Own Land about not-exactly-redneckville Louisiana (my home state), similar in essence to Hillbilly Elegy, and this is a subject that really means a lot to me. I keep using unranked because there are plenty of high-quality state schools (NC State, Ohio State, etc.)

Additionally, I know that rich people will always do rich people shit, but things like the Harvard admissions scandal and the very concept of legacies really pisses me off. Do you want to know one of the most institutionally entrenched reasons for this concept of "privilege"? Look at legacy admissions. Marauder is right that these types of schools can be life-changing, and a rigged system like this especially for a largely liberal apparatus like the Ivory Tower is one of the foundational reasons for the vast polarity in our society right now.
 
Dienekes said:
The State Department in particular hires the vast, vast majority of its Foreign Service Officers from the top 10 international relations grad schools with just ONE of those schools making up the equivalent of the next 5 combined, and I would imagine other foreign policy-related government agencies hire similarly.
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As I noted with @Marauder06 , you’re not making the case you think you are. State FS officer are by and large fricken idiots who believe the shit they’ve fed via their silver spoon education. The best FS guys I’ve met were from the service academies and had real world experience.
 
lindy said:
As I noted with @Marauder06 , you’re not making the case you think you are. State FS officer are by and large fricken idiots who believe the shit they’ve fed via their silver spoon education. The best FS guys I’ve met were from the service academies and had real world experience.
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Hence the rest of the post about education quality. I've heard similar things about State and its ineptitude. The point, though, for example purposes only, is that FSO is still a highly coveted gig with significant potential for follow-on success in the private sector while the department only hires from a small subset of the actual eligible population. The ultimate point being that those schools help you get where you want to go. I never said they'd be good at their jobs.
 
Dienekes said:
Hence the rest of the post about education quality. I've heard similar things about State and its ineptitude. The point, though, for example purposes only, is that FSO is still a highly coveted gig with significant potential for follow-on success in the private sector while the department only hires from a small subset of the actual eligible population. The ultimate point being that those schools help you get where you want to go. I never said they'd be good at their jobs.
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I’m not saying they’re “bad” but clueless how the real world works and that causes problems when folks are trying to get stuff done. I think collectively they are Ivy League and are legends in their own mind.

There still are people who want to earn their lot in life and avoid the easy path. Money and prestige isn’t everything...but it sure does help!!!
 
lindy said:
I’m not saying they’re “bad” but clueless how the real world works and that causes problems when folks are trying to get stuff done. I think collectively they are Ivy League and are legends in their own mind.

There still are people who want to earn their lot in life and avoid the easy path. Money and prestige isn’t everything...but it sure does help!!!
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"Legends in their own mind" is a very accurate descriptor of (most of) the FSOs I've met.

There was a point when I considered pursuing employment with State. Meeting their people changed that for me.
 
Totentanz said:
"Legends in their own mind" is a very accurate descriptor of (most of) the FSOs I've met.

There was a point when I considered pursuing employment with State. Meeting their people changed that for me.
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Like any agency, theirs has no shortage of clowns which paint a horrible picture for the good ones. I know some that are outstanding people...and then, I know some that I wouldn't let wash my car without supervision.
 
lindy said:
As I noted with @Marauder06 , you’re not making the case you think you are. State FS officer are by and large fricken idiots who believe the shit they’ve fed via their silver spoon education. The best FS guys I’ve met were from the service academies and had real world experience.
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OK, that’s great. But by what metric are you measuring? Personal anecdotes? That’s not a particularly good way to back up an argument. Facts are better. The great advantage of facts over anecdotes is that facts help us overcome our biases and jealousies and take an objective look at a particular topic. So let’s look at some facts:

The fact is, the common measurement of national power consists of four basic elements: diplomatic, information, military, and economic. In our country many, if not most, of the people in the highest levels of those areas are typically educated either at an Ivy League school (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth) or an elite school like Georgetown, Stanford, or UCLA, or one of the Service Academies (West Point, Air Force Academy, Naval Academy, Coast Guard Academy). Many of the schools I just named are at the heart of this current admissions scandal, and others have had their own admissions-related issues in the past.

The fact is, graduates from those schools have better connections, more opportunities, and better earnings potential than those who don’t:

The median annual earnings for an Ivy League graduate 10 years after starting amount to well over $70,000 a year. For graduates of all other schools, the median is around $34,000. But things get really interesting at the top end of the income spectrum. The top 10 percent of Ivy League grads are earning $200,000 or more ten years after starting school. The top earners of other schools, on the other hand, are making just a hair under $70,000.
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And, as others (including you) have mentioned, the key benefit to those schools are the branding and the connections. Those are the foundations that facilitate long-term success for many of the people who are the tops of their fields.

The fact is, whether we like them or hate them or think they’re stupid or whatever, elite schools, particularly the Ivies, are grossly over-represented in the biographies of the people who run our country and influence our lives.

Just a few examples (including schools that do not fit into the ones I listed above):

Military
Almost all of our top military leaders have an elite school connection.
Gen. Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: MA from Georgetown and another one from The Fletcher School.
GEN Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army: Princeton undergrad, MA from Columbia.
Gen. David Goldfein, Chief of Staff of the Air Force: Air Force Academy.
Gen. Robert Neller, Commandant of the Marine Corps: University of Virginia and Pepperdine
ADM John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations: Naval Academy.

The Supreme Court
Every single sitting Supreme Court Justice went to law school at one of the the Ivies. Only one of them didn't graduate from Harvard Law or Yale Law. Only one of them didn't go to an Ivy as an undergrad (although it was also a prestigious school):
Chief Justice John Roberts attended Harvard for both undergrad and law school.
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh attended Yale and Yale Law.
Associate Justice Alito attended Princeton and Yale Law.
Associate Justice Breyer went to Stanford and then Harvard Law.
Associate Justice Ginsberg went to Cornell, then started law school at Harvard before finishing at Columbia.
Associate Justice Gorsuch did undergrad at Columbia and then Harvard Law.
Associate Justice Kagan... Princeton and Harvard Law.
Associate Justice Sotomayor... Princeton and Yale Law.

Last Five Presidents:
The last five presidents of the United States all have a connection to an Ivy league school.
Donald Trump earned an MBA from UPENN.
Barack Obama went to Columbia for undergrad then Harvard Law.
George W. Bush did Yale undergrad and Harvard Business School.
Bill Clinton went to Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale Law.
George H. W. Bush went to Yale.

Last Five SecStates:
Three of the five last SecStates had a connection to an Ivy, four of the five attended an elite school.
Mike Pompeo: West Point and Harvard Law.
Rex Tillerson: University of Texas.
Hillary Clinton did Yale Law.
John Kerry did Yale Law.
Condoleeza Rice: Notre Dame and U Denver
On a side note, the prevalence of Ivy Leaguers within the State Department is such that a common complaint is that it is "too white, male, and Yale."

Economy
The Five Richest People In America
Jeff Bezos went to Princeton.
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.
Warren Buffett : UPENN and Columbia.
Mark Zuckerberg (as mentioned, dropped out of Harvard).
Larry Page did MA and PhD work at Stanford.

Media
Rupert Murdoch (Fox News, many others) went to Oxford (his current wife went to Yale).
John Stankey, the CEO of Warner Media (CNN) got his MBA at UCLA.
Jeff Zucker (NBC, CNN) went to Harvard.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, started his company while a student at Harvard (before dropping out).
…there are probably many more I’m not going to look up any more.

So, to conclude, correlation is not necessarily causation. If you go to an Ivy League school you are not guaranteed to be a billionaire, a general, a President, or the owner of a major media outlet. But chances are you WON’T be one of those, in America, unless you have the branding, the connections, and yes the education, that comes from one of these schools.

That’s why the stakes are so high, that’s why so many people are willing to do ANYTHING to get themselves or their children into these schools, and that’s why the rest of us should care. Because the people who go to these schools end up running our country and making decisions that affect all of our lives.
 
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@Marauder06 , I was not measuring but merely passing along experience from personal interactions over many years. I 100% agree that an Ivy League degree on the wall enables higher salary and better opportunities.

My position is that a brand of sheepskin is not equated to knowledge, skills, and ability.

I don’t disagree. I just think the school impresses the people who went to that school and not the American GenPop.
 
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