Say "No" To Ivies!
Apr 09 '05
The Bottom Line Why I'm at Rutgers instead of Yale.
In the course of parenting events, it sometimes is necessary to lay down the law. If you have a promising child, the choice of a college is not something you can totally leave to them. I mean, it's your money, and a lot of it is at stake. I'm not saying you should absolutely hold out; I'm saying your kid should give you a good reason. A $160,000 reason.
In my case, my parents made my decision for me. I applied to seven schools: Rutgers, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and University of Virginia. They made me fill out much of my financial aid papers myself, so I knew exactly how they were doing financially. I knew if they wanted to, they could afford any of these schools.
Well, I got rejected from Stanford, waitlisted and then rejected from Princeton, waitlisted (twice!) from Harvard and then rejected. I got into Rutgers, UNC, UVa, and Yale. Now, for my father, the choice was clear. I was to go to Rutgers since I got a full scholarship there. I must admit I was little upset how he just brushed off UNC and UVa (hello? number one public school in the nation!) and even Yale. It was especially upsetting when Yale offered us $20,000/year in financial aid, well over our calculated "need". Yale for half price; isn't that a bargain? My father among other things told me that if I were to go to Yale, I wouldn't have enough money for pizza and beer.
I went to Rutgers. Now with other various scholarships, I essentially get paid to go here. I'm going to use my scholarship money to buy me some wheels. I'm happy I go here. I mean, I get paid to learn. What a riot.
Contrary what one might think, going to an Ivy League undergraduate school isn't the biggest deal. First of all, to get a professional job, most likely the kid will end up going to a graduate or professional school. So it's not just enough to graduate from Princeton. A C student from Princeton isn't really going anywhere that a B student at Rutgers can't. There was an article in the USA Today how less and less CEO's of major companies are coming from Ivy League colleges.
"If anything, the CEO trend away from Ivies is intensifying. So far in 2005 there have been 24 new CEOs named to run Fortune 1,000 companies, according to public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. USA TODAY found only one, Corning's soon-to-be-CEO Wendell Weeks, with an Ivy League degree, a Harvard MBA ('87)."
And Weeks got his undergraduate degree at Lehigh. The newest CEO of Sara Lee, Brenda Barnes, went to Augustana College. Never heard of the school? Me neither, but 4 other CEO's have come out of that no-name school of 2,200.
"'We alums at Augustana, we say there might be other schools that open more doors,' says Barnes, who declines most interviews but was quick to come to the phone to talk about her alma mater. 'Once we get in the door, we stand up better than anybody.'"
The bottom line is that no matter what school you go to, if you are exceptional, you will rise to the top in your professional. Ivy league colleges may open more doors, but people from other schools may stand up better. Why? Well, how much real world experience do you think one gets from going to say, Princeton. In a beautiful town, with all other well-off students, kids don't exactly learn how to interact with people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In the seedy town of New Brunswick and Piscataway, I've gotten to know quite different people. I am a middle-class kid who doesn't have any real difficulty with money but is always short on spending cash (my scholarship money is in the bank) and occasionally has to take up odd jobs. I have a friend whose family is in the same situation as me, but his dad throws money at him. I have a friend who's struggling to work to pay for school.
My advice is to send your kid to a public school. However, there is a thin line to tread. Don't be like my father and make it so obviously about money. Offer to buy her a car or something if they go to your state school. Or offer to send him to an out of state public college. If your kid has his heart set on some school for some particular legitimate reason (not "it's the number one party school"), then by all means do everything possible to help them. If your kid wants to go to Princeton to have a class taught by Toni Morrison, well that's a valid reason and you should do everything possible to support him. However, suggest several times the benefits of public school. The brightest students of a public school like Rutgers can go to any school a Harvard graduate can.
Know what your kid wants to study. When I applied to colleges, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I hated science and math. Yet my dad kept bugging me to apply to MIT. He said it would only take 10 minutes, but bottom line is if you spend 10 minutes on an application, you're not getting in. He also kept bugging me to apply to his alma mater, Purdue, and the schools he wanted to go to but couldn't, Univeristy of Illinois and CalTech. Don't make your kids live in your shadow. No matter what my dad wants, I'm never going to be a scientist like him. If your kid has his heart set on a specific field, an Ivy school might not even be good at that area. For example, Harvard doesn't have the strongest engineering program. If you kid wants to be an industrial engineer, for example, and knows already that's what he wants to do for the rest of his life, send him to the best school possible in that specific field. Odds are, it won't be Columbia.
Send your kid where he wants to go. Just make sure he understands that an Ivy League education is neither a prequisite or guarantee of success.
The USA Today-"Wanted: CEO, No Ivy Required"
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2005-04-06-cover-ceos_x.htm
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