College entrance "scandal"

Devildoc said:
Just for my own edification, can you show me a top 10 sociology program? And where a bachelor's degree in sociology can get you into the job market > $60k? Or English? Or art history? Or women's studies?

A degree with any of these from a Yale, Duke, Princeton, Stanford will probably get you more money than a Northeastern Montana State, but generally that is globally not the case. I would even argue that a degree from one of those schools will not get you much more then from a school that is not top-tier. Graduate school, maybe. Undergrad, I don't think so.
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High tier schools funnel into finance and consulting which pays a lot. It's sufficient and necessary to have a high GPA for high tier firms, and it's alsosufficient to major in art history or women's studies. We don't even have a finance major at my school (lower ivy) and people go to high tier firms and start with salaries above 70k. I imagine if we had no people who wanted to "save the world" and took lower paying jobs the average would be much higher. It is, in fact, generally the case that you make more money. All the evidence (salary statistics) points toward this conclusion.

It's very much worth it. It's a golden ticket to a lot of money, if that's what you want. I'm part of an organziaiton that targets veterans for these schools specficially because it changes your life so much.

Top Colleges For Getting Rich
 
Lefty375 said:
High tier schools funnel into finance and consulting which pays a lot. It's sufficient and necessary to have a high GPA for high tier firms, and it's alsosufficient to major in art history or women's studies. We don't even have a finance major at my school (lower ivy) and people go to high tier firms and start with salaries above 70k. I imagine if we had no people who wanted to "save the world" and took lower paying jobs the average would be much higher. It is, in fact, generally the case that you make more money. All the evidence (salary statistics) points toward this conclusion.

It's very much worth it. It's a golden ticket to a lot of money, if that's what you want. I'm part of an organziaiton that targets veterans for these schools specficially because it changes your life so much.

Top Colleges For Getting Rich
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Totally agree (and I have said as much earlier): high tier schools have higher earning power by virtue of being high tier schools: the alumni network, name recognition, etc. And if (big 'if') one can parlay that soft social major into something other that what the major actually is, than good on you. Golden ticket and all. But an undergrad sociology degree in and of itself from Harvard isn't going to see a significant change in salary or job than the same degree from Eastern North Carolina Polytechnic College.

BTW, what is a "lower Ivy"?
 
Devildoc said:
BTW, what is a "lower Ivy"?
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It's a silly distinction for the IL schools that are somewhat easier to get into. Which schools fall into that category vary, but usually it's Dartmouth/Brown/Penn/Cornell/Columbia. The thing is that all of the schools have single-digit acceptance rates, and the distinction really only matters to bourgeois weirdos and anxious HS seniors.
 
Salt USMC said:
It's a silly distinction for the IL schools that are somewhat easier to get into. Which schools fall into that category vary, but usually it's Dartmouth/Brown/Penn/Cornell/Columbia. The thing is that all of the schools have single-digit acceptance rates, and the distinction really only matters to bourgeois weirdos and anxious HS seniors.
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Thanks for the clarification. To me an ivy is an ivy is an ivy.

Not for nothing, I have a friend who went to Princeton, his tag line is "I got in, how hard can it be?" That is my tag line about Duke. I loathe the snobbery.

As an aside, interestingly, UNC-Chapel Hill has county-apportioned acceptance ratios (it's a state mandate), and children of faculty are given unofficial priority. So locally (my county and neighboring county) it is harder to get into UNC-CH than Duke; outside of these two counties, the ratio flips.
 
Devildoc said:
Totally agree (and I have said as much earlier): high tier schools have higher earning power by virtue of being high tier schools: the alumni network, name recognition, etc. And if (big 'if') one can parlay that soft social major into something other that what the major actually is, than good on you. Golden ticket and all. But an undergrad sociology degree in and of itself from Harvard isn't going to see a significant change in salary or job than the same degree from Eastern North Carolina Polytechnic College.

BTW, what is a "lower Ivy"?
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In addition to what Salty said, sometimes you might hear a reference to the "Big 3" or "HYP Ivies,"often made disparagingly towards the "non-HYP Ivies" which is everyone except for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (HYP). It's a silly, elitist, and unnecessary distinction, kind of like arguing over what SOF unit is best.
 
Devildoc said:
Not for nothing, I have a friend who went to Princeton, his tag line is "I got in, how hard can it be?" That is my tag line about Duke. I loathe the snobbery.
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I've met a lot of Yale undergrads who, when asked where they go to school, will name one of their residential colleges (think Hogwarts). "Oh, I go to Trumbull College, it's a little liberal arts school in Connecticut." It's kind of a humble-brag because you always ultimately find out that they went to Yale, I guess the false modesty makes the impact of finding out they went to Yale bigger, or something. :rolleyes:
 
@Marauder06 I guest lecture at Duke; the program is an accelerated bachelors program (18 months), and they all already have undergrad degrees. They come with degrees from everywhere, and the elitist snobbery I get from those who went to Ivies and some of the high-tier public scools is remarkable. I knock them down when I tell them, "yes, but apparently you couldn't get a job, otherwise you would not have come to Duke for another bachelors degree...."
 
Devildoc said:
@Marauder06 I guest lecture at Duke; the program is an accelerated bachelors program (18 months), and they all already have undergrad degrees. They come with degrees from everywhere, and the elitist snobbery I get from those who went to Ivies and some of the high-tier public scools is remarkable. I knock them down when I tell them, "yes, but apparently you couldn't get a job, otherwise you would not have come to Duke for another bachelors degree...."
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Not college related directly, but I'll never forget my junior year of high school. That summer, I took a semester's worth of college chemistry, including labs, in three weeks. What my professor said, I think applies to graduate school, at top institutions.

"You all came here top in your class. Most of you as number one in your class. That doesn't matter anymore. You're all at zero right now"
 
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