Buying your way to ivy league

[bae]

Yeah, I'll miss it. Do you?

I didn't miss it at all, until my daughter started going there and I got to go back without all that academic pressure :-)

I finally, on her graduation day, purchased the wool cloak from Landau's that I'd been dreaming of for 30 years.

[pinkytoe]

My former boss at the university where I worked was a New York transplant who received a humongous salary and perks (including plum job for wifey) to move down to the nether regions of Texas and lead our dept. He never stopped putting down all us yokels and eventually moved back so his kids could go to elite private schools at the demands of his wife. I still remember his mean comments about applicants that he had to review for admission. He was the epitome of a snob and gave me a bad taste for "yankees".

[catherine]

I didn't miss it at all, until my daughter started going there and I got to go back without all that academic pressure :-)

I finally, on her graduation day, purchased the wool cloak from Landau's that I'd been dreaming of for 30 years.

Landau's! They had a sidewalk sale in December and I bought a hat for BIL for Christmas. And in the 90s I bought a skirt on sale there that I wore for YEARS. I loved it.

[bae]

Landau's! They had a sidewalk sale in December and I bought a hat for BIL for Christmas. And in the 90s I bought a skirt on sale there that I wore for YEARS. I loved it.

My previous splurge there was a wool hat I bought my senior year, it's still going strong.

The main walkable shopping area by the University sure has gone upscale over the years. But there are still a few student-affordable gems tucked away here and there.

[flowerseverywhere]

I have a friend, Princeton '72. His wife is Princeton '72. His son was applying to Princeton. His son did not give in.

At the time, his Dad was a billionaire, and had endowed a chair at the Computer Science Department at Princeton. One of the kid's other references was a billionaire, Princeton '86, and was contributing heavily to the school. I wrote the kid a good reference as well, as he was my summer intern, and I too went to Princeton.

Kid did not get in. Went to UC Santa Cruz, and I think he came out better for it.

I've been involved in the Princeton admissions process for decades now. As I understand it, it is pretty darned random. Almost everyone who applies has sufficient objective qualifications. The decision-making process involves "designing" a class with the correct overall composition of talents and interests, and weighs heavily towards applicants who are "interesting" and not just cookie-cutter checklists.

So if you are a really good violist from the Pacific NW, and Princeton decides they want 2 of them for the incoming class, and your application doesn't get dragged out of the pile until after they've already picked two, you are out of luck. If yours is the first they grab, you are set.

I'm convinced my daughter got in on the strength of her essay about goat-farming on a small remote island. And her viola skills.

thank you for your perspectives, along with the others who have had some experience on recent admissions. What a mess.

[iris lilies]

My previous splurge there was a wool hat I bought my senior year, it's still going strong.

The main walkable shopping area by the University sure has gone upscale over the years. But there are still a few student-affordable gems tucked away here and there.

One of my closer acquantances/friends has one of those Important Olde Money families who have ancient land holdings in Virginia that date back centuries. Anyway. She went to Cornell for physics which was a radical change from Expectations of her female lineage who went Bryn Mawr or Radcliffe or which ever one of those seven sister colleges. Her brother went to Harvard fed from the New Hampshire prep school Phillips Whatever.

They seem, not especially successful by financial standards or societal standards, but they both have carved outlier lives in modest living circumstances.

It seems to me thst the Olde Money trappings present quite a burdon. Her family trust is something she has to fuss with on th regular.

Because I am aware of these Ivy League connections, and because I am getting older and less concerned about societal connections, these issues are interesting but no longer as fascinating as theywould have been to me 30 years ago.

More on this in another post.

[Tammy]

Our 3 kids all have 4 year degrees. All 3 scored high on tests but decided on their own to go to the local community college for the first two years. They all hate debt.

Then all 3 finished their last years at the local private church affiliated college. Because it was there and they got scholarships and they could keep working while they finished,

All 3 of our kids are all about the practicalities, the substance, and totally unimpressed by externalities. I wonder where they got that from ?!? Ha

[iris lilies]

This school is

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a typical turn of the century or post 19th century square box. it’s where I went to school. It is where my parents both went to school. It is where my uncle went to school.


My uncle went on to discover the age of the earth. He also went on to be the lead scientist responsible for removing lead from leaded gasoline.


Merit rises to the top. Mediocrity and merit can share the same square box and we will all fulfill our destinies.

[jp1]

This thread has been fascinating to me. My high school was a decent inner city school (Zoegirl is East still a decent high school?). I graduated at about 10% in my class without especially trying. (I didn't have extra study aids or tutors but got a 1310 on my SAT without particularly trying, which apparently was pretty good.) My parents weren't concerned about where I went to college, only that I did go to college. And what that college would cost. When I got offered both a half tuition music scholarship and half tuition academic scholarship to a private university that was trying to improve their standing in the world my parents agreed that it was the right place for me. Almost 30 years later I feel like the decisions we made back then were good ones. I'm doing quite well and no one has cared about the details about my college education. I only knew a few people in high school that were obsessed with getting into the "right" school. They were all focused on specific career paths. Partner at McKinsey, or some particular other path like bae's daughter. It probably made sense for them to aim for a specific institution. The rest of us, seemingly not so much.

I've read plenty of articles in the last few years about how competitive the college admissions process is today. Part of me wonders if it's all just a lot of hype by universities that want to justify their existence. Surely a lot of the young folks today are like me. They need an education for the jobs they hope to obtain, but do they really need some fancy-pants elite education? It's possible that things have gotten a lot more competitive but have they really?

[LDAHL]

Merit rises to the top.

Well, it can improve the odds of rising to the top anyway.