NEWS: Ivy League Schools Don't Want You More Than Ever

I still have my rejection letter from Northwestern. It was one of the saddest days of my life. Ultimately, though, I wouldn't trade the experience I had going elsewhere.

If too high a number of people are scoring too high, they've obviously adapted to the test and it needs to be made more difficult.

I was listening to a piece on NPR (I think it was on "All Things Considered") and they were talking about the pressure that high school students face to go to college. While I believe that postsecondary education is essential in modern society, I do not believe that everyone is cut out for college. College is being pushed on far too many people who just shouldn't even be thinking about it. We're sending teenagers the message that they won't be anyone of consequence if they don't go to college, and that's bullshit. The world needs tradesmen and skilled workers just as much, if not more, than it needs another doctor or lawyer.

High school guidance counsellors are doing a great disservice to our nation's youth by pushing college on these kids. If a kid isn't cut out for college, the guidance counsellor would be one of the first to figure it out, and should counsel the kid on other postsecondary options (HVAC certification, for example). Sure, people who graduated from university have earnings that level off at a higher point, but money isn't everything. If I made an assload of money, but still hated my career and dreaded going to work each day, wouldn't that be a problem? Anyhow, guidance counsellors should be able to tell the students what they need to hear without fear of retalation from the students' parents.

That is all.

When I was in high school, I applied to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and UC Berkeley. I only got into UC Berkeley.

When I graduated from Berkeley, I got essentially the same job that I would have had I gone to Harvard. However, my parents didn't have to mortgage their house to send me there.

Its true that when I went to college, Arnold had not yet gutted the UC system so tuition was still semi-reasonable. My point is that fixation with Ivy League schools is nothing more than brand-name hysteria. You get substantially the same education and are equally likely to be "successful" coming out of the state university of whatever state you happen to live in.

As we always said at Berkeley around Big Game time - FUCK STANFORD

Heh. And as a result you need post secondary education to do things that you didn't even need high school for a generation ago. Someone is making a killing.

Berkeley's honestly still pretty prestigious.

Just sayin'.

And while I do think college is perhaps overhyped, and it's certainly true that not everyone is cut out for it, it's still required much more widely than it used to be, in a large number of fields. Hell, simple data entry, something I had personally figured would be a decent, low-requirement fall-back in case I couldn't turn up programming or support jobs....still requires a college degree (in things I did not study) more often that I would have ever have expected. (Though what's really killing me is that virtually without exception all of the jobs require at least three years of experience. How I'm meant to get that experience....well, I can only assume they think I have magic.)

Australia is the same with the you have to go to college/university crap but irony it is those that are going to college like carpenters, elctrians etc that are starting to earn big dollars since there is a glut on the market for graduates in all other fields that come from the so called be all and end all of uni. Now you are more likely to be served at a maccas counter by a uni grad as by a school drop out due to the fact that more ppl are graduating then there are jobs available forcing down the wages of these jobs. It is manily only those in the medical industry in Oz that are suffering from a loss in numbers.

As always, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Im still in college, and I just got recruited to a management consulting practice, and have another consulting place trying to bring me on as well. And when I look at a lot of my friends who have graduated, a lot of them are working shit jobs they had _during_ college. In a just and loving world, the positions would be reversed.

Networking, Networking, Networking. It's what's for dinner!

Or, more likely, lunch.

Power lunch.

I do not feel bad for these kids who slide into depression when the Ivy League rejects them. I think it's rather funny.

Irony! Twelve years ago, due to the decline of the average test-taker's score, they "recentered" the scores, resulting in score inflation for everyone.

Margot_Dent saved Latin. What did you ever do?

I also wrote and directed a hit play.

This image alone makes all of my efforts worthwhile.

Best play ever, man.