Is an Ivy League education much better than public universities/colleges?

[SDS]

13 minutes ago, RochesterRob said:

  I've been told somewhat different.  There is more competition for the top students coming out of high school today versus a generation ago.  Depending on the curriculum state as in Penn or Ohio is very acceptable to some of today's students.  Some Ivy programs only have a small handful of people competing for the last couple of open chairs.  Contrast this with a generation or two ago when far more students felt they had to obtain an Ivy League degree.  Perhaps a couple dozen students competing for the last few open chairs.  I'll admit when I went through it many many years ago there was a lull for my curriculum so I only was in competition with a couple other students for the spot I ultimately got.  How do I know?  I was told by my advisor who was not bashful and believed in military type motivation.  

 

You have been misinformed.

 

https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2017-18.pdf

 

The CDS is a survey most colleges submit to provide some level of transparency. Scroll down to section C. There you get the 25th and 75th% percentiles of the SATs. 25% of those enrolled have a 1590 or better on the SAT. I'm certain they could fill an entire class with 1600 if they so choose. The majority of the lower scores is due to Harvard seeking diversity in geography, academic interest, specific talent and maintaining a racial balance (as current lawsuit by Asian students is challenging). They admit 5% of applicants. Legacy matters only if you are still a really good - great student, although I'm sure substantial financial gifts can buy someone's way in. The 1460 25th percentile shows that the top 75% are all capable students. Some like David Hogg get in due to life experiences. He certainly has a unique resume that would enrich the conversation of the student body.

 

 

[SDS]

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy-admissions-offer-an-advantage-and-not-just-at-schools-like-harvard

 

To what degree people consider legacy an issue is up to them. This article states 14% of enrolled students are legacy at Harvard.  So, yes - it is a huge advantage considering the 5% admittance rate and the fierce competition to grab one of those spots, 14% legacy is still fairly low given what I think most people assume Harvard let's in.

[RochesterRob]

39 minutes ago, SDS said:

 

You have been misinformed.

 

https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2017-18.pdf

 

The CDS is a survey most colleges submit to provide some level of transparency. Scroll down to section C. There you get the 25th and 75th% percentiles of the SATs. 25% of those enrolled have a 1590 or better on the SAT. I'm certain they could fill an entire class with 1600 if they so choose. The majority of the lower scores is due to Harvard seeking diversity in geography, academic interest, specific talent and maintaining a racial balance (as current lawsuit by Asian students is challenging). They admit 5% of applicants. Legacy matters only if you are still a really good - great student, although I'm sure substantial financial gifts can buy someone's way in. The 1460 25th percentile shows that the top 75% are all capable students. Some like David Hogg get in due to life experiences. He certainly has a unique resume that would enrich the conversation of the student body.

 

 

  A lot of information to wade through but I did not see anything about students who may have made an Ivy a second or third choice versus being a primary or sole choice which in part is my point.  As presented I really did not see anything new as reserving seats for things other than academic achievement is nothing new.  The degree to which is done most likely varies by curriculum.  

[SDS]

11 minutes ago, RochesterRob said:

  A lot of information to wade through but I did not see anything about students who may have made an Ivy a second or third choice versus being a primary or sole choice which in part is my point.  As presented I really did not see anything new as reserving seats for things other than academic achievement is nothing new.  The degree to which is done most likely varies by curriculum.  

 

That's where you look at yield. Harvard admits 2,000 and 1700 attend. Which to be fair, is an astronomical yield that most other schools don't enjoy. So, in this case - people who get admitted to Harvard don't have Ohio State as their number one choice.

 

My understanding is that the top of the Ivies don't offer merit aid, so you are either rich enough to pay the $300k for 4 years or are poor enough to get financial aid. Those in the middle often choose their state schools. I am going through that right now. We can do University of Maryland for $25k or University of Rochester for $58k (he did get merit aid there). Everywhere else we are full pay parents for a kid who got a 1510 on his SATs.

[BringBackFlutie]

I think there are all sorts of factors that go into difficulty.  For me, the two big ones are the depth of concepts taught in a course, and the difficulty of the courses (i.e. testing).  I went to a very difficult private school in Western PA for engineering.  At the other 3 colleges I went to, the concepts were as deep as the text books.  At this school, the text was a requirement from a curriculum standpoint, but 90% of what we learned and tested on was whatever the hell interested that professor.  Tests weren't standardized- they were just made to be difficult.  Some professors really liked confusing word problems that combined multiple concepts (from the text and their heads) AND various thought patterns/outside concepts ("well, I figured this Calc 2 problem would be easy, since you know this play on words from your summer reading in 9th grade English!").  Others would give you so many problems that you couldn't finish the test in 50 minutes, and people would have to practice speed just to get a passing grade.  There was rarely a curve, and if you got a C, you were told "well, I understand you're upset with your grade, but you should be happy.  C is average."  To get good grades you had to know the material like the back of your hand, know everything else you've ever learned anywhere, know the professor and how they thought, and have a little bit of luck.  This place was full of 4.0ers and 1600 SATers.  They graduated with 2.9s and were extremely happy to have survived.

 

I used to talk to my friend who was in the same major at Cornell.  While she and I were taking classes that were teaching concepts at about the same difficulty, the testing was straightforward, and there was far less incentive to learn the base concepts at Cornell.  They'd pass 75% of the kids no matter what their test scores were.  Curves are outrageous at Ivy League.  At my school, professors didn't care what your SAT was, and repeatedly told the guys with 4.0s that it's nice they're so good at school, but when they get to work, their boss wouldn't care about their grades, and would care that they could solve problems they'd never seen before and keep to deadlines.  At her school, if you got in with a 4.0, they wanted to make sure you kept that status, so that you left their school looking "smart."  So I entirely understand the OP in that regard. 

 

Long story short, the difficulty depends on the school you go to, and it's absolutely true that the freedom to make courses difficult at the professor's discretion is not there at Ivy League schools, since they want their students to pass.  There's also a dilution due to diversity quotas that Ivy Leagues are required to meet.

Edited March 4, 2019 by BringBackFlutie

[SDS]

6 minutes ago, BringBackFlutie said:

I think there are all sorts of factors that go into difficulty.  For me, the two big ones are the depth of concepts taught in a course, and the difficulty of the courses (i.e. testing).  I went to a very difficult private school in Western PA for engineering.  At the other 3 colleges I went to, the concepts were as deep as the text books.  At this school, the text was a requirement from a curriculum standpoint, but 90% of what we learned and tested on was whatever the hell interested that professor.  Tests weren't standardized- they were just made to be difficult.  Some professors really liked confusing word problems that combined multiple concepts (from the text and their heads) AND various thought patterns/outside concepts ("well, I figured this Calc 2 problem would be easy, since you know this play on words from your summer reading in 9th grade English!").  Others would give you so many problems that you couldn't finish the test in 50 minutes, and people would have to practice speed just to get a passing grade.  There was rarely a curve, and if you got a C, you were told "well, I understand you're upset with your grade, but you should be happy.  C is average."  To get good grades you had to know the material like the back of your hand, know everything else you've ever learned anywhere, know the professor and how they thought, and have a little bit of luck.  This place was full of 4.0ers and 1600 SATers.  They graduated with 2.9s and were extremely happy to have survived.

 

I used to talk to my friend who was in the same major at Cornell.  While she and I were taking classes that were teaching concepts at about the same difficulty, the testing was straightforward, and there was far less incentive to learn the base concepts at Cornell.  They'd pass 75% of the kids no matter what their test scores were.  Curves are outrageous at Ivy League.  At my school, professors didn't care what your SAT was, and repeatedly told the guys with 4.0s that it's nice they're so good at school, but when they get to work, their boss wouldn't care about their grades, and would care that they could solve problems they'd never seen before and keep to deadlines.  At her school, if you got in with a 4.0, they wanted to make sure you kept that status, so that you left their school looking "smart."  So I entirely understand the OP in that regard. 

 

Long story short, the difficulty depends on the school you go to, and it's absolutely true that the freedom to make courses difficult at the professor's discretion is not there at Ivy League schools, since they want their students to pass.  There's also a dilution due to diversity quotas that Ivy Leagues are required to meet.

 

The only school that fits that description is Carnegie Melon - in particular the Comp Sci department.

[Kevbeau]

7 minutes ago, SDS said:

 

The only school that fits that description is Carnegie Melon - in particular the Comp Sci department.

Georgia Tech is similar. I had professors introduce concepts on midterms/exams. It threw me my first semester, coming from a more traditional education where you were graded more on your ability to memorize and regurgitate.

Edited March 4, 2019 by Kevbeau

[RochesterRob]

5 minutes ago, BringBackFlutie said:

I think there are all sorts of factors that go into difficulty.  For me, the two big ones are the depth of concepts taught in a course, and the difficulty of the courses (i.e. testing).  I went to a very difficult private school in Western PA for engineering.  At the other 3 colleges I went to, the concepts were as deep as the text books.  At this school, the text was a requirement from a curriculum standpoint, but 90% of what we learned and tested on was whatever the hell interested that professor.  Tests weren't standardized- they were just made to be difficult.  Some professors really liked confusing word problems that combined multiple concepts (from the text and their heads) AND various thought patterns/outside concepts ("well, I figured this Calc 2 problem would be easy, since you know this play on words from your summer reading in 9th grade English!").  Others would give you so many problems that you couldn't finish the test in 50 minutes, and people would have to practice speed just to get a passing grade.  There was rarely a curve, and if you got a C, you were told "well, I understand you're upset with your grade, but you should be happy.  C is average."  To get good grades you had to know the material like the back of your hand, know everything else you've ever learned anywhere, know the professor and how they thought, and have a little bit of luck.  This place was full of 4.0ers and 1600 SATers.  They graduated with 2.9s and were extremely happy to have survived.

 

I used to talk to my friend who was in the same major at Cornell.  While she and I were taking classes that were teaching concepts at about the same difficulty, the testing was straightforward, and there was far less incentive to learn the base concepts at Cornell.  They'd pass 75% of the kids no matter what their test scores were.  Curves are outrageous at Ivy League.  At my school, professors didn't care what your SAT was, and repeatedly told the guys with 4.0s that it's nice they're so good at school, but when they get to work, their boss wouldn't care about their grades, and would care that they could solve problems they'd never seen before and keep to deadlines.  At her school, if you got in with a 4.0, they wanted to make sure you kept that status, so that you left their school looking "smart."  So I entirely understand the OP in that regard. 

 

Long story short, the difficulty depends on the school you go to, and it's absolutely true that the freedom to make courses difficult at the professor's discretion is not there at Ivy League schools, since they want their students to pass.  

  Curves can be outrageous but not always in the way you would expect.  I had a intro stats instructor (full professor) state in the very first class that yes the class would be graded on a curve but the bulk of the volume was set at a C +.  If you wanted to grade higher than that for the course then you needed to out perform the bulk of the class.  She never worried about protecting your previous achievements.  I seldom saw a situation where the curve was set at A- - B+ range for the bulk of the students participating.

[SDS]

2 minutes ago, RochesterRob said:

  Curves can be outrageous but not always in the way you would expect.  I had a intro stats instructor (full professor) state in the very first class that yes the class would be graded on a curve but the bulk of the volume was set at a C +.  If you wanted to grade higher than that for the course then you needed to out perform the bulk of the class.  She never worried about protecting your previous achievements.  I seldom saw a situation where the curve was set at A- - B+ range for the bulk of the students participating.

 

That's an asinine way to grade a STEM class unless you administer tests in a such a brutally difficult way that essentially everyone "fails" and you need a way to distribute grades somehow.

 

We had a junior year Optics course at Rochester on Aberration theory where the tests were so long and difficult that if you had the answer key in front of you - you could barely transcribe the answers, let alone answer them thoughtfully.

[RochesterRob]

3 minutes ago, SDS said:

 

That's an asinine way to grade a STEM class unless you administer tests in a such a brutally difficult way that essentially everyone "fails" and you need a way to distribute grades somehow.

 

We had a junior year Optics course at Rochester on Aberration theory where the tests were so long and difficult that if you had the answer key in front of you - you could barely transcribe the answers, let alone answer them thoughtfully.

  You have a good understanding of what went on then.  Formulas written on college lined paper was permissible for the final but as the instructor said you still need to know how to apply those formulas to the test questions.  

[SDS]

5 minutes ago, RochesterRob said:

  You have a good understanding of what went on then.  Formulas written on college lined paper was permissible for the final but as the instructor said you still need to know how to apply those formulas to the test questions.  

 

Being an Optics major, our cheat sheets went to 11. We had a couple guys utilize red/green cellophane glasses and essentially write their formulas on their paper in colored ink, over the top of each other, to double the amount of info they could take into tests.

 

Me? I wrote so effing small most people wouldn't know there were letters there.

[BringBackFlutie]

3 minutes ago, SDS said:

 

Being an Optics major, our cheat sheets went to 11. We had a couple guys utilize red/green cellophane glasses and essentially write their formulas on their paper in colored ink, over the top of each other, to double the amount of info they could take into tests.

 

Me? I wrote so effing small most people wouldn't know there were letters there.

That's what I always did. 

[Lurker]

22 minutes ago, SDS said:

 

The only school that fits that description is Carnegie Melon - in particular the Comp Sci department.

 

If so, that's a pretty big Apples and Oranges comp to the Ivys, which are at their core (at least undergrad), liberal arts institutions rather than STEM schools.   

 

It's absolutely true that the top engineering and computer science schools are way harder than ANY liberal arts program.   But we're getting far off the original topic if we're going down that rabbit hole...

[Seasons1992]

I went to Ohio University (public), which is frequently referenced as the "Harvard on the Hocking (River)."

 

Did I go to both? Do I win both Showcases?!

 

[Augie]

4 hours ago, SDS said:

Lol at old people puffing their chest and talking about their Ivy “back in my day” experiences like it is relevant today. 

 

The admissions process today for top 20 schools, let alone the Ivies, is brutal and I can assure you - you did not get accepted through the same process as kids are today. 

 

My son is only 26 with two undergrad degrees and a Masters from FSU. He’s certain that he wouldn’t get in there today. The bar keeps rising for the state schools because they are more affordable, hence attractive. He was declined at UGA and a guy who does interviews for them said if he’d checked a box saying he was Lebanese he’d have been instantly accepted, but my FIL would have rolled over in his grave! My SIL used to be in admissions at Vandy and UVA and they only have so many spots for each “bucket”. 

 

I have a friend going through the process with his daughter. She goes to a nationally ranked public “school for the gifted”. She’s in the top 3% +/-  of her class and is getting turned down at all the top schools. The top kids all apply at the top schools, and the top schools only take so many from any particular HS. Had she gone to a less competitive HS should would have been #1, so it seems to be working against her. It’s been a while since we went through this, so maybe I’m out of touch? 

[teef]

26 minutes ago, Augie said:

 

My son is only 26 with two undergrad degrees and a Masters from FSU. He’s certain that he wouldn’t get in there today. The bar keeps rising for the state schools because they are more affordable, hence attractive. He was declined at UGA and a guy who does interviews for them said if he’d checked a box saying he was Lebanese he’d have been instantly accepted, but my FIL would have rolled over in his grave! My SIL used to be in admissions at Vandy and UVA and they only have so many spots for each “bucket”. 

 

I have a friend going through the process with his daughter. She goes to a nationally ranked public “school for the gifted”. She’s in the top 3% +/-  of her class and is getting turned down at all the top schools. The top kids all apply at the top schools, and the top schools only take so many from any particular HS. Had she gone to a less competitive HS should would have been #1, so it seems to be working against her. It’s been a while since we went through this, so maybe I’m out of touch? 

it also has to do with what the college/university is trying to accomplish on a national scale.  when i was in school, our college was trying aggressively diversify the geography of the student body by looking out west.  in my freshman year, the top three states of students coming in were massachusetts first, new york second, and california third.  I knew competitive students from my area who didn't get in, where a roommate of mine from san diego was not the strongest applicant in the least.  he did fine, but if he was from the north east, i don't think he would have gotten in.

[billsfanmiami(oh)]

36 minutes ago, Seasons1992 said:

I went to Ohio University (public), which is frequently referenced as the "Harvard on the Hocking (River)."

 

Did I go to both? Do I win both Showcases?!

 

 

I’m sorry you didn’t get into Miami...?

[GoBills808]

I'm just guessing here but I'm going with probably.

[SDS]

48 minutes ago, Augie said:

 

My son is only 26 with two undergrad degrees and a Masters from FSU. He’s certain that he wouldn’t get in there today. The bar keeps rising for the state schools because they are more affordable, hence attractive. He was declined at UGA and a guy who does interviews for them said if he’d checked a box saying he was Lebanese he’d have been instantly accepted, but my FIL would have rolled over in his grave! My SIL used to be in admissions at Vandy and UVA and they only have so many spots for each “bucket”. 

 

I have a friend going through the process with his daughter. She goes to a nationally ranked public “school for the gifted”. She’s in the top 3% +/-  of her class and is getting turned down at all the top schools. The top kids all apply at the top schools, and the top schools only take so many from any particular HS. Had she gone to a less competitive HS should would have been #1, so it seems to be working against her. It’s been a while since we went through this, so maybe I’m out of touch? 

 

You are right on from what I know. 

 

There is a high school in northern Virginia called Thomas Jefferson that produces intellectual machines. Because they are all so talented, they hurt each other because although they are all deserving of the best educational institutions, they won't all get admitted to the same university because they are from the same high school. So, they get sprinkled around the top 20 (which is not a hardship by any means, just that their choices are artificially limited by their peers.)

[apuszczalowski]

I think it all depends on what your looking to get wna what your going there for. Sometimes it is just the name that your getting, being able to say you attended Harvard or Yale.