A degree from a household-name Ivy university has cachet, and the kinds of employers we’re talking about don’t tend to ask for a GPA from the kinds of candidates we’re talking about. Also, a lot of the perceived value from going to these schools is about the connections you make in them. Your fellow students at Harvard or Yale or Princeton are future leaders of businesses and NGOs and universities and nation-states, and your professors are past or current ones.
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Exactly. These schools are just addresses in the old boys’ network.
And as far as “future leaders” goes… None of them will ever provide any actual value to the company at which they will serve at some point. They will come in, make some changes, drive the company into the ground, get booted, get a parachute (or make it so the company is attractive to a larger one and is sold) and start that over again somewhere else.
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Sorry, I went to college with too many rich twits. Why work hard and learn things when there is the Greek system to hand you test files with all the answers? Or hire a tutor (who is also the TA, who is grading the homework, anyway).
The high-end universities in the US (and, from what I hear, the UK, too) really have two purposes for the students: 1. work hard and learn things; 2. network with people. Depending on your goals and background, you might need to do varying degrees of the two. If you’re a rich twit, you can go light on #1 and focus on #2. You don’t actually need to know organic chemistry to work in your best friend’s dad’s hedge fund.
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Prince Bush’s Old Money parents also knew how to get him into Yale without all the angst and drama and cut-outs I’m reading about here (he had the benefit of being a legacy in addition to whatever donations they made).
Most of the parents in this case didn’t seem to know how the American version of the game was played. For example, one of them spent $6-million on and via this convoluted service to get his little dimwit into USC (perhaps tricking little dimwit into thinking he got in on his own). Meanwhile, in 1998 the Kushners spent $2.5-million in straightforward donations ($3.8-million today) to get their gormless and empty-eyed son into Harvard. The former parents are now under criminal indictment, while the latter did nothing illegal.
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It’s a lot like grad school. The PhD program I attended is top 15. There are less than 20 total graduate students and only 3-4 new students get in each year. It’s really selective. Once you’re in though, you have to go out of your way to fail.
I know some people who went to undergrad at Harvard and Yale. They said they don’t think it was much harder than a top level state university. The people who went to MIT and Stanford said school was pretty challenging though.
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Geez, no wonder the UCLA kids riff on USC as “the University of Spoiled Children.”
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William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman, and their hopefully college-bound progeny.
(Not really, that’s former “Bachelor” star Andy Baldwin and they’re in the middle of respecting the National Anthem)
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That’s Filliam H. Muffman to you and me.
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This aged well…
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I’ve seen Legally Blonde. Swimsuit videos are clearly the way to go.
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No. I wouldn’t think that. That’s messed-up.
The problem is these specific people faking disabilities to spoof a test, for money. There’s nothing wrong with the idea that someone with a disability is a human being who can attend university.
People with some form of disability do their own tests. It’s cheaters who don’t.
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What’s worse, the person who suggests the fake disability ploys notes that, once the disability is on the record in re: the entrance exam, the kid will be able to continue using that lie to get extra time on exams once he’s in the university. These are true scumbags.
Not at all. A diverse student body is a major priority for these schools, and neurodiversity has become part of that initiative. As a result, there are plenty of perfectly intelligent and competent students with dyslexia, ADHD, or who are on the autism spectrum in major universities who are given special accommodations during exams.
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At least a couple of the schools in that opening image don’t really have an athletics program of their own, so I’m surprised to see them listed with this story.
People who cheat the tax code probably thought, whats one more lie eh? Might as well go down the rabbit hole. When Bernie Sanders says society is rigged for the rich and powerful, this is what he means.
Time to elect a progressive like Sanders or Warren.
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That’s a gross over-generalisation. It sounds like the school your friend went to may not have fostered inclusion, or he may not have been inclined to handle the academic material despite his intelligence, or both. But there are other research universities (including Ivies) that make room for students with manageable learning disabilities, and there are students with learning disabilities who can and do thrive in them (just as university isn’t for everyone, neither are vocational schools the only post-secondary education options for people with learning disabilities).
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Start by educating yourself, before you dismiss people for silly reasons.
There are legions of people with disabilities that thrive in universities (even “fancy schools”). Certain schools of education are “not for everyone”, but I’m glad you’re not the one making the decision about which whole groups to pre-exclude.
There are countless ways that society is improved by people having access to university, even if they don’t meet a cookie cutter standard.
You’d think having a learning disability would be enough reason to disqualify someone for a fancy school.
Messed-up.
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