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From a 2020 paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics by Raj Chetty on college admissions to Ivy League colleges (plus Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke). It features Chetty’s usual immense sample sizes from theoretically secret data sources (IRS, Census, testing agencies, etc.) that nobody had the chutzpah before to think that they could data mine:
Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States
Chetty et al write:
The impacts of income-neutral allocations at the most selective colleges differ from those in the broader population. At Ivy-Plus colleges, the fraction of students from the bottom quintile remains essentially unchanged under income-neutral allocations in absolute terms (rising from 3.8% to 4.4%), but the fraction of students from the middle class (the second, third, and fourth income quintiles) rises sharply, from 27.8% to 37.9%, as shown in Table VI. Figure V, Panel A shows why we see the biggest effects on the representation of the middle class by plotting the parental income distribution of high SAT/ACT (≥1300) scorers alongside the parental income distribution of actual Ivy-Plus enrollees. Children from the bottom-quintile are represented at nearly the same rate as one would expect given their test scores; children from the middle class are underrepresented at these colleges; and those from the top quintile are overrepresented.
Figure V, Panel B presents a more granular depiction of the degree of over/underrepresentation by parental income. It plots the share of students with an SAT/ACT score of 1400—the modal and median test score among actual Ivy-Plus students—who attend an Ivy-Plus college. Rather than a flat line, which would have indicated that 1400-scorers from each parent income bin attend an Ivy-Plus college at the same rate, we observe an asymmetric U-shape, with higher attendance rates in the tails. In particular, 1400-scorers with parents from the top and bottom quintiles attend Ivy-Plus colleges at 2.4 and 1.6 times the rate of middle-quintile children with comparable test scores, respectively. We find similar patterns at other test score levels; see Online Appendix Table XII.
Here is some more data from Chetty that I’ve manipulated.
Here are the highest paid alumni in terms of median income in their early thirties. The top of the list tend to be 6-year pharmaceutical programs so I’m not sure they should be counted as undergrad:
| name | par_median | k_median | Kid/Parent median |
| Saint Louis College Of Pharmacy | $92,500 | $123,600 | 133.6% |
| Albany College Of Pharmacy And Health Sciences | $95,800 | $115,800 | 120.9% |
| MCPHS University | $83,300 | $112,700 | 135.3% |
| University Of The Sciences In Philadelphia | $95,300 | $102,700 | 107.8% |
| Massachusetts Institute Of Technology | $141,000 | $98,500 | 69.9% |
| Babson College | $140,500 | $95,300 | 67.8% |
| Stevens Institute Of Technology | $96,000 | $92,100 | 95.9% |
| University Of Pennsylvania | $175,300 | $91,800 | 52.4% |
| Princeton University | $218,100 | $90,700 | 41.6% |
| SUNY Maritime College | $103,800 | $90,500 | 87.2% |
| Duke University | $196,000 | $87,500 | 44.6% |
| California Maritime Academy | $113,100 | $85,800 | 75.9% |
| Kettering University | $100,100 | $85,400 | 85.3% |
| Worcester Polytechnic Institute | $109,500 | $85,200 | 77.8% |
| Stanford University | $172,600 | $84,800 | 49.1% |
| Massachusetts Maritime Academy | $105,300 | $84,800 | 80.5% |
| Georgetown University | $195,100 | $84,400 | 43.3% |
| Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | $114,200 | $84,100 | 73.6% |
| Rose – Hulman Institute Of Technology | $109,500 | $83,600 | 76.3% |
| California Institute Of Technology | $124,500 | $83,000 | 66.7% |
| Harvey Mudd College | $139,800 | $82,400 | 58.9% |
| Harvard University | $174,000 | $81,500 | 46.8% |
| Colorado School Of Mines | $111,500 | $81,500 | 73.1% |
| Lehigh University | $138,300 | $81,200 | 58.7% |
| Cornell University | $143,300 | $79,800 | 55.7% |
| Bentley University | $119,600 | $79,800 | 66.7% |
| Georgia Institute Of Technology | $126,000 | $78,900 | 62.6% |
| University Of Notre Dame | $165,400 | $78,800 | 47.6% |
| Carnegie Mellon University | $134,400 | $78,400 | 58.3% |
| Villanova University | $159,900 | $78,300 | 49.0% |
| Washington And Lee University | $226,700 | $78,200 | 34.5% |
| Rice University | $149,200 | $76,700 | 51.4% |
| Dartmouth College | $185,500 | $76,600 | 41.3% |
| Yale University | $199,700 | $76,000 | 38.1% |
| Digipen Institute Of Technology | $95,200 | $76,000 | 79.8% |
| Maine Maritime Academy | $85,300 | $75,900 | 89.0% |
| Columbia University In The City Of New York | $169,600 | $75,300 | 44.4% |
| Lafayette College | $156,700 | $75,300 | 48.1% |
| Johns Hopkins University | $142,300 | $75,000 | 52.7% |
| Case Western Reserve University | $118,200 | $73,400 | 62.1% |
| Bryant University | $116,900 | $73,300 | 62.7% |
| Clarkson University | $94,600 | $73,300 | 77.5% |
| Tufts University | $187,900 | $73,100 | 38.9% |
| Vanderbilt University | $197,900 | $72,800 | 36.8% |
| Milwaukee School Of Engineering | $91,700 | $72,700 | 79.3% |
| Northwestern University | $168,500 | $72,600 | 43.1% |
| Santa Clara University | $149,900 | $72,500 | 48.4% |
| Illinois Institute Of Technology | $91,600 | $72,300 | 78.9% |
| College Of The Holy Cross | $157,000 | $71,900 | 45.8% |
| Boston College | $168,400 | $71,800 | 42.6% |
These are the 50 most Rich Kid Colleges (i.e., parents of students have the highest median annual incomes) sorted by the ratio of kid’s median income during early 30s divided by parents’ median income: e.g., among rich kid colleges, the University of Pennsylvania (with its strong on business) is the only one where the average kid earns over half as much as the average parent.
| name | par_median | k_median | Kid/Parent median |
| University Of Pennsylvania | $175,300 | $91,800 | 52.4% |
| Stanford University | $172,600 | $84,800 | 49.1% |
| Villanova University | $159,900 | $78,300 | 49.0% |
| Lafayette College | $156,700 | $75,300 | 48.1% |
| University Of Notre Dame | $165,400 | $78,800 | 47.6% |
| Harvard University | $174,000 | $81,500 | 46.8% |
| College Of The Holy Cross | $157,000 | $71,900 | 45.8% |
| Duke University | $196,000 | $87,500 | 44.6% |
| Columbia University In The City Of New York | $169,600 | $75,300 | 44.4% |
| University Of Michigan – Ann Arbor | $156,100 | $68,700 | 44.0% |
| Georgetown University | $195,100 | $84,400 | 43.3% |
| Northwestern University | $168,500 | $72,600 | 43.1% |
| Boston College | $168,400 | $71,800 | 42.6% |
| Princeton University | $218,100 | $90,700 | 41.6% |
| Dartmouth College | $185,500 | $76,600 | 41.3% |
| Tufts University | $187,900 | $73,100 | 38.9% |
| Emory University | $175,700 | $67,800 | 38.6% |
| University Of Richmond | $180,600 | $69,600 | 38.5% |
| Pomona College | $161,600 | $62,000 | 38.4% |
| Amherst College | $181,300 | $69,300 | 38.2% |
| Yale University | $199,700 | $76,000 | 38.1% |
| Trinity University | $153,200 | $58,100 | 37.9% |
| Washington University In St. Louis | $180,200 | $67,500 | 37.5% |
| Wake Forest University | $191,500 | $71,500 | 37.3% |
| Vanderbilt University | $197,900 | $72,800 | 36.8% |
| Hamilton College | $164,600 | $60,300 | 36.6% |
| Franklin & Marshall College | $162,900 | $57,800 | 35.5% |
| Washington And Lee University | $226,700 | $78,200 | 34.5% |
| Bowdoin College | $177,600 | $61,000 | 34.3% |
| Colgate University | $208,900 | $71,500 | 34.2% |
| Wesleyan University | $165,300 | $56,500 | 34.2% |
| Williams College | $184,000 | $62,600 | 34.0% |
| Carleton College | $152,000 | $51,700 | 34.0% |
| Trinity College of Hartford, CT | $198,000 | $67,300 | 34.0% |
| Brown University | $197,000 | $66,900 | 34.0% |
| Haverford College | $174,200 | $57,200 | 32.8% |
| Connecticut College | $170,500 | $55,500 | 32.6% |
| Rhodes College | $164,400 | $52,000 | 31.6% |
| Bates College | $176,900 | $55,900 | 31.6% |
| Southern Methodist University | $176,400 | $55,400 | 31.4% |
| Furman University | $156,700 | $48,100 | 30.7% |
| Davidson College | $208,500 | $60,300 | 28.9% |
| Kenyon College | $168,400 | $48,000 | 28.5% |
| Colby College | $208,700 | $59,200 | 28.4% |
| Colorado College | $154,600 | $43,600 | 28.2% |
| Middlebury College | $219,600 | $61,800 | 28.1% |
| Skidmore College | $175,400 | $47,500 | 27.1% |
| University Of The South | $174,200 | $46,600 | 26.8% |
| Yeshiva University | $180,100 | $46,400 | 25.8% |
| Landmark College | $179,000 | $21,700 | 12.1% |
And here are colleges with parents making six figures that do the worst job of getting the child back close to six figures:
| name | Parent median income | Child median income | ratio |
| Landmark College | $179,000 | $21,700 | 12% |
| Lynn University | $149,800 | $28,300 | 19% |
| School Of The Museum Of Fine Arts | $109,600 | $25,000 | 23% |
| Warren Wilson College | $104,100 | $23,800 | 23% |
| Berklee College Of Music | $119,300 | $27,400 | 23% |
| California Institute Of The Arts | $108,700 | $25,300 | 23% |
| Sarah Lawrence College | $146,500 | $34,300 | 23% |
| School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago | $105,800 | $25,500 | 24% |
| Yeshiva University | $180,100 | $46,400 | 26% |
| Hampshire College | $119,300 | $31,200 | 26% |
| Bard College | $117,900 | $30,900 | 26% |
| Rhode Island School Of Design | $142,800 | $37,800 | 26% |
| Maryland Institute College Of Art | $117,100 | $31,300 | 27% |
| University Of The South | $174,200 | $46,600 | 27% |
| Evergreen State College | $100,200 | $27,000 | 27% |
| Skidmore College | $175,400 | $47,500 | 27% |
| Brigham Young University | $119,600 | $32,600 | 27% |
| Middlebury College | $219,600 | $61,800 | 28% |
| Savannah College Of Art And Design | $114,900 | $32,400 | 28% |
| Colorado College | $154,600 | $43,600 | 28% |
| Colby College | $208,700 | $59,200 | 28% |
| Kenyon College | $168,400 | $48,000 | 29% |
| University Of The Arts | $100,600 | $28,700 | 29% |
| Franciscan University Of Steubenville | $102,500 | $29,500 | 29% |
| Davidson College | $208,500 | $60,300 | 29% |
| Marymount California University | $104,900 | $31,300 | 30% |
| University Of North Carolina School Of The Arts | $106,800 | $32,000 | 30% |
| Reed College | $121,900 | $36,900 | 30% |
| Oberlin College | $127,100 | $38,900 | 31% |
| Reinhardt University | $101,500 | $31,100 | 31% |
| Furman University | $156,700 | $48,100 | 31% |
| Saddleback College | $100,600 | $31,100 | 31% |
| St. John’s College | $110,900 | $34,500 | 31% |
| Samford University | $131,000 | $40,800 | 31% |
| Truett Mcconnell College | $103,100 | $32,200 | 31% |
| Southern Methodist University | $176,400 | $55,400 | 31% |
| Bates College | $176,900 | $55,900 | 32% |
| Rhodes College | $164,400 | $52,000 | 32% |
| Vassar College | $145,100 | $46,000 | 32% |
| Wheaton College of Wheaton, IL | $130,900 | $41,500 | 32% |
| Elon University | $146,000 | $47,300 | 32% |
| Belmont University | $116,700 | $37,900 | 32% |
| Connecticut College | $170,500 | $55,500 | 33% |
| William Peace University | $105,900 | $34,700 | 33% |
| Haverford College | $174,200 | $57,200 | 33% |
| Hollins University | $110,700 | $36,400 | 33% |
| Meredith College | $107,700 | $35,500 | 33% |
| Pitzer College | $131,900 | $43,500 | 33% |
| Saint Mary’s College | $130,600 | $43,100 | 33% |
| College Of Charleston | $119,500 | $39,900 | 33% |
And here is some more Chetty data: top 100 colleges for patents per capita among his sample of younger alumni:
| College | Alumni | total_patents | Patents per cap |
| California Institute Of Technology | 861 | 280 | 0.33 |
| Massachusetts Institute Of Technology | 3919 | 1058 | 0.27 |
| Harvey Mudd College | 733 | 190 | 0.26 |
| College For Creative Studies (Detroit) | 498 | 123 | 0.25 |
| Stanford University | 6755 | 1309 | 0.19 |
| Milwaukee Institute Of Art & Design | 640 | 124 | 0.19 |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 4651 | 837 | 0.18 |
| Kettering University | 2365 | 393 | 0.17 |
| Illinois Institute Of Technology | 1082 | 158 | 0.15 |
| Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | 4724 | 588 | 0.12 |
| Cooper Union For The Advancement Of Science & Art | 788 | 96 | 0.12 |
| Rhode Island School Of Design | 1421 | 154 | 0.11 |
| Clarkson University | 2548 | 274 | 0.11 |
| Colorado School Of Mines | 2433 | 246 | 0.10 |
| Rose – Hulman Institute Of Technology | 688 | 64 | 0.09 |
| Worcester Polytechnic Institute | 1810 | 164 | 0.09 |
| Dartmouth College | 4505 | 369 | 0.08 |
| Case Western Reserve University | 3304 | 266 | 0.08 |
| Michigan Technological University | 5039 | 405 | 0.08 |
| Lawrence Technological University | 1263 | 89 | 0.07 |
| Milwaukee School Of Engineering | 1755 | 122 | 0.07 |
| Georgia Institute Of Technology | 9706 | 666 | 0.07 |
| Rochester Institute Of Technology | 7410 | 481 | 0.06 |
| Princeton University | 4508 | 278 | 0.06 |
| Harvard University | 6819 | 386 | 0.06 |
| Philadelphia University | 2405 | 129 | 0.05 |
| Cornell University | 13161 | 664 | 0.05 |
| University Of California, Berkeley | 19443 | 919 | 0.05 |
| Lehigh University | 4628 | 216 | 0.05 |
| Rice University | 3066 | 143 | 0.05 |
| Letourneau University | 1191 | 50 | 0.04 |
| University Of Michigan – Ann Arbor | 23437 | 972 | 0.04 |
| Stevens Institute Of Technology | 1344 | 55 | 0.04 |
| Wentworth Institute Of Technology | 2972 | 120 | 0.04 |
| Duke University | 7027 | 269 | 0.04 |
| Florida Institute Of Technology | 1685 | 62 | 0.04 |
| University Of Rochester | 4321 | 157 | 0.04 |
| New Mexico Institute Of Mining & Technology | 661 | 24 | 0.04 |
| Washington University In St. Louis | 6277 | 227 | 0.04 |
| California Polytechnic State University | 13986 | 501 | 0.04 |
| Johns Hopkins University | 4247 | 147 | 0.03 |
| Alfred University | 2044 | 70 | 0.03 |
| Savannah College Of Art And Design | 4675 | 160 | 0.03 |
| North Carolina State University | 18534 | 622 | 0.03 |
| Yale University | 5183 | 173 | 0.03 |
| Oregon Institute Of Technology | 1354 | 45 | 0.03 |
| Brown University | 5998 | 195 | 0.03 |
| University Of California, San Diego | 15391 | 497 | 0.03 |
| Pratt Institute | 2241 | 72 | 0.03 |
| Northeastern University | 11878 | 380 | 0.03 |
| Northwestern University | 8027 | 256 | 0.03 |
| New School, The | 2691 | 79 | 0.03 |
| Iowa State University Of Science & Technology | 19581 | 573 | 0.03 |
| Purdue University | 41852 | 1167 | 0.03 |
| University Of Washington System | 22467 | 613 | 0.03 |
| Columbia University In The City Of New York | 5529 | 149 | 0.03 |
| Claremont Mckenna College | 1175 | 31 | 0.03 |
| University Of Cincinnati | 23911 | 619 | 0.03 |
| Bradley University | 5040 | 128 | 0.03 |
| University Of Notre Dame | 9280 | 234 | 0.03 |
| Grinnell College | 1479 | 35 | 0.02 |
| Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University | 21219 | 499 | 0.02 |
| Bowdoin College | 1836 | 41 | 0.02 |
| Pomona College | 1555 | 33 | 0.02 |
| Art Institute Of Fort Lauderdale | 2237 | 47 | 0.02 |
| University Of Michigan – Dearborn | 3053 | 64 | 0.02 |
| University Of Pennsylvania | 9653 | 201 | 0.02 |
| University Of Evansville | 2368 | 48 | 0.02 |
| Bucknell University | 3759 | 76 | 0.02 |
| Lafayette College | 2303 | 46 | 0.02 |
| Swarthmore College | 1408 | 28 | 0.02 |
| Christian Brothers University | 1058 | 21 | 0.02 |
| Western Washington University | 10996 | 218 | 0.02 |
| Michigan State University | 32656 | 640 | 0.02 |
| University Of Detroit Mercy | 1600 | 31 | 0.02 |
| Vanderbilt University | 6817 | 132 | 0.02 |
| Trinity University | 2686 | 49 | 0.02 |
| Seattle University | 2583 | 47 | 0.02 |
| Tufts University | 4963 | 89 | 0.02 |
| University Of California, Santa Barbara | 15825 | 280 | 0.02 |
| University Of California, Los Angeles | 20325 | 354 | 0.02 |
| North Dakota State University – Main Campus – Fargo | 8597 | 149 | 0.02 |
| University Of Southern California | 13653 | 229 | 0.02 |
| College Of Wooster | 2147 | 36 | 0.02 |
| University Of Dayton | 7419 | 123 | 0.02 |
| University Of Colorado System | 31081 | 513 | 0.02 |
| Whitman College | 1666 | 27 | 0.02 |
| Western New England University | 2415 | 39 | 0.02 |
| Wellesley College | 2298 | 37 | 0.02 |
| Boston University | 15311 | 246 | 0.02 |
| Marquette University | 7675 | 123 | 0.02 |
| California State Polytechnic University, Pomona | 9572 | 151 | 0.02 |
| Marist College | 4248 | 65 | 0.02 |
| Brigham Young University | 28861 | 441 | 0.02 |
| University Of Saint Thomas of Saint Paul, MN | 4941 | 75 | 0.02 |
| University Of Virginia | 13592 | 206 | 0.02 |
| Montana State University Bozeman | 9221 | 139 | 0.02 |
| Gustavus Adolphus College | 2854 | 43 | 0.02 |
| DePauw University | 2537 | 38 | 0.01 |
Playing the two ends against the middle? Maybe it’s good that the smart kids in Red State America are staying at home instead of being siphoned off to Cambridge. Charles Murray would probably say so.
Did a subcontinental write this headline?
Okay college freaks. Who should be added to this list? Caltech obviously; maybe Williams & Amherst? Swarthmore? Hopkins? Rice?
It’s something of a catenary curve, held up on both ends.
It’s supported on the poor end by outreach and anti-white “affirmative action,” plus scholarships and other financial handouts that one must be below middle-class to receive. Elite institutions love that shit.
On the rich end, it is held up by money and being “in the club.” Legacies, to some extent, but just being very rich helps. (Let’s say, for example, that your daddy is named Kushner and he “donates” five million bucks to Harvard. You are a mediocre son-of-a-criminal, but you get in.)
Sure, there is also the fact that high IQs are more represented among higher incomes, but if that were proportional here, you would see more not-quite-so rich applicants get in from the middle of America. They would be white and very capable.
On end you've got the rich and connected; on the other you've got the beneficiaries of the rich and connected's noblesse oblige.
These days even the upper-middle class are getting priced out of the Ivies, even if their kids can through some miracle get admitted.
When we Calvinists started looking at universities for Daughter C a few years ago, it became obvious she was not wanted at the big-name private universities. We would have been left bearing the entire price of four years' attendance, which is a small fortune, at all such institutions.
They all do the same thing in terms of financial aid:
---scholarships/awards for academic merit: nothing whatsoever
---scholarships/awards for having the right color skin/being properly 'disadvantaged': free ride
There's not much else on offer.
Georgetown, Duke, Rice, ALL OF THE MAJOR UCAL AND FLORIDA CAMPUSES ON NICE CAMPUSES, BYU which is for the swotter Mormons and Boise which is for Mormons who do not study like Asians when they are in high school, Northwest, Chicago, STONY BROOK , and did I mention Georgetown?
Just kidding, that was a phony list.
Here is the list you want. Go to a big law firm site. Type in the box where they say “school”, any school with one and only one partner is not the school you are looking for.
As far as technical schools go, well, if you think the average MIT grad can beat you in bridge or at blackjack, why do you care anyway? And if you think you can beat the average MIT grad at bridge or blackjack, why do you care anyway?
High tuition. Very rich pay cash. The poor receive grants. Middle-income admits are price-sensitive/loan-averse.
The graphs reflect those who the Ivy’s ultimately matriculate. Middle income admits are more likely to opt for less expensive, public colleges.
Thus, B’s U-shape.
If you’re looking for global recognition/prestige, none of the above, except maybe Caltech. Caltech is no doubt academically rigorous, but it’s also relatively small; MIT has better international name recognition, even though it’s likely not as good.
I might add Northwestern, but it’s also fine to leave it off.
Incidentally, after moving to Hong Kong many years ago, I discovered that many non-Americans assume that ‘the Ivy League’ includes Stanford, Chicago, and maybe Duke/Northwestern. They simply equate ‘Ivy League’ with ‘the biggest-name US universities’. Some find extremely hard to process the fact that the association has to do with sports. This just doesn’t compute outside the USA.
There can be no liberal arts colleges on such a list internationally; they don’t get the same respect as insitutions with ‘university’ in their names.
For Europe Ivy League simply means "most socially selective and most expensive"
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia MIT, Stanford and possibly Cornell. Chicago sounds too blue collar.
They have never heard of Dartmouth or Brown.Replies: @Polistra, @The Last Real Calvinist, @Anonymous Jew
Consistent with Brazil The Model. A strong stable middle class means the all-knowing oligarch cannot do whatever he wants to do.
So, what happens when the path to advancement or even staying the same status for middle class people is blocked? All that Green status signalling and stern warnings from Greta Thunberg and some scowling black rapper won’t suffice.
HYPSMC is abbreviation used on the undergraduate admissions forums.
So the Ivy League are still the schools of the élite but the poorest receive higher representation because of Affirmative Action and other such policies. The immediate follow-up would be: what is the racial breakdown of the students in that poorest quintile? I’d imagine we’d find some shockingly skewed results in favour of native Indians and Blacks, etc.
https://uh.edu/engines/CD-GhostsInTheBooks/images/catenary.jpgIt's supported on the poor end by outreach and anti-white "affirmative action," plus scholarships and other financial handouts that one must be below middle-class to receive. Elite institutions love that shit.On the rich end, it is held up by money and being "in the club." Legacies, to some extent, but just being very rich helps. (Let's say, for example, that your daddy is named Kushner and he "donates" five million bucks to Harvard. You are a mediocre son-of-a-criminal, but you get in.)Sure, there is also the fact that high IQs are more represented among higher incomes, but if that were proportional here, you would see more not-quite-so rich applicants get in from the middle of America. They would be white and very capable.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Reg Cæsar
This is too true. We didn’t exactly need The Data Raj to explain this to us.
On end you’ve got the rich and connected; on the other you’ve got the beneficiaries of the rich and connected’s noblesse oblige.
These days even the upper-middle class are getting priced out of the Ivies, even if their kids can through some miracle get admitted.
When we Calvinists started looking at universities for Daughter C a few years ago, it became obvious she was not wanted at the big-name private universities. We would have been left bearing the entire price of four years’ attendance, which is a small fortune, at all such institutions.
They all do the same thing in terms of financial aid:
—scholarships/awards for academic merit: nothing whatsoever
—scholarships/awards for having the right color skin/being properly ‘disadvantaged’: free ride
There’s not much else on offer.
There’s an immense amount of data in Chetty’s article, but I didn’t see that, although it’s so voluminous I might have overlooked it.
My family was in the middle, not rich and not poor. So, unlike the rich students and the poor students, I had my arms in the greasy pot sink at the university dining hall for four years. This was time not studying and not benefitting from other aspects of the college experience. Please don’t tell me I learned job discipline, because I learned that at other times. I thought someone should add, to the economist and university-treasurer perspectives, the pot-sink perspective.
Do you have a link for this? Based on the large number of what sound like “art” type schools on the list, e.g. College For Creative Studies (Detroit), Milwaukee Institute Of Art & Design, Rhode Island School Of Design, etc., it looks like he might be including both utility and design patents in his list. If so, that would be a pretty useless comparison. Utility patents are what most people are referring to when they talk about patents – it covers a new and non-obvious invention. A design patent is closer to trademark – it covers any non-functional design element of a product. As an example, here is a design patent on a dress:
Yes, exactly. To add to my post above, where I noted that lots of non-Americans don’t realize that Stanford, MIT, and Chicago aren’t in the Ivy League: they are equally shocked to discover that Dartmouth and Cornell actually are IL.
Isn’t the number of patents pretty surprising for most of the schools? MIT and Caltech are not surprising, but I had never really heard of Harvey Mudd College or College For Creative Studies (Detroit). I guess that’s my ignorance but I never hear their names mentioned.
Harvard, Princeton and Yale came in lower than I expected – roughly around the University of Michigan. But those Ivy League schools are the hardest to get into. What am I missing? Is it just a bunch of business and political majors? And various social sciences that don’t get patents?
Steve, regarding your table of ‘rich kid colleges’: am I right in understanding that the institutions at the bottom of the list are actually the ultimate ‘rich kid colleges’, i.e. among the 50 listed, Penn is actually the best value (and hence the least ‘rich kid’) because its graduates make salaries that are closest to their parents’?
Harvey Mudd is part of the Claremont consortium, and is actually pretty famous as a hard sciences/engineering school. Unfortunate name, though.
https://keithroysdon.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/roger-c-carmel.jpg
About the patents: remember, those three, Stanford, CalTech, Harvey Mudd are all about computers and programming. the patents may be mostly programs, not actual physical gadgets.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
Patents relate to a relatively small number of intellectual pursuits.
Even in our benighted age, there are students who major in things like History, English, Classics, Philosophy, Literature, and the Fine Arts. And of course there are the ‘social sciences’ as you mention.
World Scholarship Liberal Arts College Best of all in America!
At many second- and third-rate colleges in the USA, you’ll find a surprising number of foreign students–often Asian. They did their homework trying to figure out where to attend, but they didn’t do their homework very well.
Supposedly the trend has reversed a bit, and fewer Chinese and Korean (and almost no Japanese) students are making the trek to our less illustrious institutions in recent years. I hope so, for their sake.
I will say that I didn't realize Stevens graduates did so well financially.
They all sound the same to him or her. In fact they all sounded the same to me, when I was a kid. You have to go through an intensive indoctrination starting in middle school to get these nuances.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Reg Cæsar
Interesting conflation. Elites have long wanted an end to class mobility, but environmentalists HATE HATE HATE the middle class, the American standard of living, and the material costs of class mobility (eg, a bigger car). What is going to happen? Nothing. We will be voiceless peasants and the current president illustrates the kind of concern and leadership we can expect.
100% correct.
For Europe Ivy League simply means “most socially selective and most expensive”
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia MIT, Stanford and possibly Cornell. Chicago sounds too blue collar.
They have never heard of Dartmouth or Brown.
It would appear to be easier to remember MC SYPH. Oh well.
For Europe Ivy League simply means "most socially selective and most expensive"
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia MIT, Stanford and possibly Cornell. Chicago sounds too blue collar.
They have never heard of Dartmouth or Brown.Replies: @Polistra, @The Last Real Calvinist, @Anonymous Jew
Funny you say that about Brown, because for many years Brown was known as the Eurotrash choice among the Ivies. Penn was always known as the “Jewish Ivy” but really they’re all pretty Jewish.
Incidentally, it’s perfectly fine if the phrase “Ivy League” is taken to mean ‘venerable’ ‘exclusive’ or ‘prestigious’ and even if other colleges are believed to be Ivy League even if they’re (strictly speaking) not. Though (as Calvinist says) the association is in its origins an athletic conference, I say let a hundred flowers bloom. Or at least a dozen or two.
Re the middle class (the class that binds a modern democracy together - why? Bc it has feelers, or "shoots" in classes both above & below) it's a sad fact that many of these colleges, such as Harvard, are so damn rich they don't need to charge ANY student tuition.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @That Would Be Telling
In the UK the terms "redbrick" and Russell Group are often used interchangeably to indicate those universities outside the Oxford/Cambridge elite who are nonetheless older and more prestigious than the post-1960s "degree factories" that exist around every other corner even though Oxford and Cambridge are both in the Russell Group and the Group includes places that are not strictly speaking redbrick
Then we have the very old Scottish universities ( plus Trinity in Dublin ) who don't quite have the Oxbridge cachet but who are referred to as "ancient" to further distinguish themselves from the modern hoi polloi and what they see as arriviste redbricks.
At the bottom of course it is all branding and marketing. Udemy oor Coursera is as good as any of them..Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist
It pays to be Eutectic. Ask Morty.
Be a Eutectic! Smack it down, reflect it! Our scary pharmaceutic troll will smash you in his mortar bowl.
For Europe Ivy League simply means "most socially selective and most expensive"
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia MIT, Stanford and possibly Cornell. Chicago sounds too blue collar.
They have never heard of Dartmouth or Brown.Replies: @Polistra, @The Last Real Calvinist, @Anonymous Jew
I don’t know about in Europe, but Chicago’s reputation as an academic heavy-hitter is well-established here in Hong Kong.
Cornell is an odd one, I agree. It’s possible its overseas reputation maybe slightly exceeds its domestic one. I think its name might be better-established here because it’s a (relatively) realistic choice for outstanding local students looking to go to a ‘famous’ US university.
https://uh.edu/engines/CD-GhostsInTheBooks/images/catenary.jpgIt's supported on the poor end by outreach and anti-white "affirmative action," plus scholarships and other financial handouts that one must be below middle-class to receive. Elite institutions love that shit.On the rich end, it is held up by money and being "in the club." Legacies, to some extent, but just being very rich helps. (Let's say, for example, that your daddy is named Kushner and he "donates" five million bucks to Harvard. You are a mediocre son-of-a-criminal, but you get in.)Sure, there is also the fact that high IQs are more represented among higher incomes, but if that were proportional here, you would see more not-quite-so rich applicants get in from the middle of America. They would be white and very capable.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Reg Cæsar
Or bedbugs in the floorboards. And crawling up the wall.
The standard HBD view seems to be that the rest of us just have to take it on the chin when some autistic traitors who did well on the SAT decide to cheat us.
However, I’m of the view that it only takes a certain threshold of intelligence to pretty much figure out how we’re being cheated. In fact, on issues like race, I’d say a majority know the truth. There are millions capable of organizing an effective resistance to what’s going on (partially because non-sociopaths cooperate better).
I’ve got a couple of friends who worked in admissions for private liberal arts colleges of the perfectly-fine-but-not-exceptional ilk, of which the USA boasts such a precarious surfeit. They clued me in years ago as to just how valuable full-fee-paying overseas students are to a small college on a tight budget.
Small college admissions offices will work very, very, very hard to convince even a handful of overseas students to sign up, including sending admissions officers on expensive international tours. One of my friends said taking even a couple such trips would be worth it if he could sign up just one international student.
Christian colleges also try to make connections with students via church/denominational ties.
The number of Chinese and Indian students in our colleges should be zero. Stephen Miller floated that to Trump -- cancelling all Chinese student visas -- but somebody else talked Trump out of it. Would have been a truly great move. Oh well.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist
In my ignorance I always thought “Ivy league” essentially referred to “old” private colleges, like Yale, Harvard etc (old buildings covered with….. Ivy?)
Re the middle class (the class that binds a modern democracy together – why? Bc it has feelers, or “shoots” in classes both above & below) it’s a sad fact that many of these colleges, such as Harvard, are so damn rich they don’t need to charge ANY student tuition.
See also the epic fight between Princeton and a family which donated money to be spent on its Wilson Center. You can be sure there's plenty more fudging where that came from, whereas the stringent way the donation for Harvard's Widner library was written is legend, and that general pot of money is also what's behind the swimming requirement of various of these institutions (technically the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, he died in the sinking of the Titanic).
Tucker was on fire in that clip. He gets some shit for LARPing as a populist right winger when he comes from big money and has political connections, etc., but I don’t care. He is the only guy on TV willing to even try saying the right things.
How come Chetty gets all this sweet data, and nobody else does?
Don’t worry, TPTB are working furiously to make the Middle Class a thing of the past.
Listened to a podcast presented by a New York private school guidance counsellor and it seems like one thing that is taken very seriously is working out exactly where a student fits for the purpose of using their Early Decision shot. More get taken by percentage due to the enrolment commitment which helps yield, but in theory only one is possible. So for many people good advice seems to be not to aim quite as high as you might think. And it is not just academic fit either. A school, even non scholarship, that needs a women’s lacrosse goalie, will be more likely to take an ED applicant who fulfils that need than someone who does not. And the kind of college this guy gave as an example is Colby. And looking at the list here it has quite wealthy parents. Colgate, Middlebury and Trinity (CT) could be similar on this list.
I expect this kind of planning means wealthy families get a better result than a good student with less advice who might apply to Ivies when not quite up to the standard and ends up in their safety school.
Does the data for average earnings in early 30’s have any detail behind it? Does it only include people working full time, or is it reduced by people doing masters degrees, working part time, stay at home parents etc?
Either way, it doesn’t seem a good advert for spending big bucks on education assuming cheaper decent instate options are available.
Stanford/MIT/Chicago or Stanford/MIT/Columbia? (Probably Chicago because it’s grouped with Stanford and MIT.) Isn’t Columbia at least as high powered as the U of C? They both share the disadvantage of being in the inner city, although there has been increasing gentrification in recent years.
As a life-long resident of New Jersey, I can tell you that William Paterson is considered to be a joke college, with the local residents ironically calling it “Harvard on the Hill”. It did host one of Steve’s College Bowl tournaments.
I will say that I didn’t realize Stevens graduates did so well financially.
My impression has always been no, not quite.
U Chicago only has about 2K undergrads but about 4k post grad students and sort of post doc faculty.
UC biz school has one or two single billion guys that no one on here would have heard of.
And no yo do not want to be anywhere near there.
Re the middle class (the class that binds a modern democracy together - why? Bc it has feelers, or "shoots" in classes both above & below) it's a sad fact that many of these colleges, such as Harvard, are so damn rich they don't need to charge ANY student tuition.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @That Would Be Telling
I thought it was common knowledge, the name Ivy League should have clued you in that it is a college athletic conference. It was set up in 1954 so its eight members could all play each other in sports. It isn’t necessarily the best eight schools in America. The fact that the Andy Bernard character on The Office is a Cornell alumnus wasn’t an accident.
Any data on who exactly these middle class admits are either? I’ve noticed in my social circle that kids of college profs do better at the college admin game than I would expect. Lots of bright people with bright kids in random US locales and making middle class $.
MC for McDonalds?
Staying at home means falling of the track of affect finance, politics, healthcare, etc in the future.
Everyone should understand the difference between normally distributed career fields versus log-normal career fields. Pharmacy, physical therapy, chemical engineering are normally distributed career fields where the starting pay is great but one gets the job by having the credential. A log-normal career field is something like law where a few lawyers make a fortune, 50% of law school graduates never practice, and there is a field in the middle.
Remember the difference between lawyers and physicians is that there are paralegal job adds that say no attorneys need applying but there are no nursing job adds that say physicians need not apply.
If they are shocked that Dartmouth and Cornell are in the Ivy League, I would guess that they’ve never even heard of Brown.
Re the middle class (the class that binds a modern democracy together - why? Bc it has feelers, or "shoots" in classes both above & below) it's a sad fact that many of these colleges, such as Harvard, are so damn rich they don't need to charge ANY student tuition.Replies: @ScarletNumber, @That Would Be Telling
Note before you can make such calculations you have to know how much of their endowments are earmarked for stuff that can’t be used to cover tuition. At many if not most of these places including the one I attended tuition money is particularly prized because the institution can spend it in any what they want, whereas the money that’s earmarked is often precisely so because the donors don’t trust the administrators.
See also the epic fight between Princeton and a family which donated money to be spent on its Wilson Center. You can be sure there’s plenty more fudging where that came from, whereas the stringent way the donation for Harvard’s Widner library was written is legend, and that general pot of money is also what’s behind the swimming requirement of various of these institutions (technically the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, he died in the sinking of the Titanic).
Wooliness as to terms like this is commonplace.
In the UK the terms “redbrick” and Russell Group are often used interchangeably to indicate those universities outside the Oxford/Cambridge elite who are nonetheless older and more prestigious than the post-1960s “degree factories” that exist around every other corner even though Oxford and Cambridge are both in the Russell Group and the Group includes places that are not strictly speaking redbrick
Then we have the very old Scottish universities ( plus Trinity in Dublin ) who don’t quite have the Oxbridge cachet but who are referred to as “ancient” to further distinguish themselves from the modern hoi polloi and what they see as arriviste redbricks.
At the bottom of course it is all branding and marketing. Udemy oor Coursera is as good as any of them..
Indeed. The last time I looked the number of Chinese students in America was something like 350,000. Think about that. And that doesn’t include Indians, Arabs, whatever else. It’s a national disgrace. No doubt the Corona panic has reduced numbers, but they will spring back pretty quickly. It seems every Indian I meet at work — and there a loads of ’em — has been to some American MBA program.
The number of Chinese and Indian students in our colleges should be zero. Stephen Miller floated that to Trump — cancelling all Chinese student visas — but somebody else talked Trump out of it. Would have been a truly great move. Oh well.
Wealthy parents + low-salaried kids = exclusive girls’ school. Someone else is underwriting their “careers”
I have to wonder if some portion of the current cultural movement to remove standardized testing, supposedly on behalf of blacks, is actually primarily motivated by rich parents who see that their middling children can’t compete with smart middle class whites and Asians in a meritocratic process. I think in decades past, there were quite few middle class kids who made the effort to apply to elite schools, so the children of the elite had less competition. Now with more and more interest in elite colleges, the rich kids cannot maintain their expected access to wire institutions.
It’s in their interest to remove the SAT requirement so colleges are forced to weigh extracurriculars more, which is the area where wealth can most easily buy an advantage, such as trips with the NYT to Peru.
It seems that C is Caltech.
Chetty’s use of score cut-offs is very tricky.
One chart uses 1300+ and the other 1400+. If you are are an un-hooked non-URM (under represented minority — which really boils down to being black, as hispanics get a boost but not much of one, and there are too few native American applicants to these schools to matter), you are not getting into any school on that list with 1400 on your SATs. Yes, the average may be 1400, but not for white kids without a sob story. And it’s way, way harder to get in with a given set of stats if you are Asian. And it’s way harder than that if you are an actual Asian applying from China or India.
Building a chart which uses an SAT score 1300 as a cut-off for “competitive” for this group of colleges is absurd to the point of being disingenuous.
A huge question even in his in his more granular chart is how the distribution of scores in the 1400 – 1600 range vary along his income spectrum. That is, it may be that the average SAT score in the upper income percentiles is much, much higher than in lower percentiles. A simple way to address this would be to use a cut-off of 1500 or even 1550, which is a more realistic estimate of what you need to be in serious consideration for HYPSMC without some huge hook.
That pretty much confirms my personal experience (two kids with Perfect GPAs, lots of APs all with maximum grades, National merit, and perfect SAT). Some extra-curricular. White and male. The first one applied to a couple of Ivies (one top early application, the second more marginal). He wasn’t admitted to either in spite of literally perfect academic. All black and female Muslim students in his magnet HS program while no as good academically were admitted to Ivies usually with generous scholarships. Princeton used to be a bit more meritocratic than Harvard or Yale until two years ago when admitted a significantly increased record number of NAMs admitted and trumpeted this as a major achievement.
I suspect that one consideration in admission decisions is that given our level of household income, we were not going to have any financial aid at all, but with more than two kids, full tuition to Ivies would have been a significant financial burden. We were in fact not prepared to pay full tuition and I assume they have a prediction model (they ask for detailed income and assets info on the parents of applicants so have some good idea of the willingness to pay) and really don’t want to admit applicants who are likely to decline. Hence the focus on the kids of really wealthy parents or on really poor (preferably NAMs) on which they spend their financial aid.
Our second kid only applied to two State Universities.
I am not bitter, both kids have full tuition in a good State U and I was never prepared to willingly pay a lot of money to the parasitic progressive university bureaucracies. My older son says after talking to former classmates who went to Ivies, is that the Curriculum and level of efforts in Ivies are on average significantly less demanding than for STEM programs in State Universities at the undergraduate level. The value of Ivy degrees is really just signaling based on the selection. By making the selection less rigorous for a growing share of students, they will somewhat devalue their brand, especially for the lower tier. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton would have to really screw up to stop being valuable global brands. Not so sure for Brown or Rice.
What in the hell is the College for Creative Studies?
Mudd humbly bills itself as “the nation’s top liberal arts college of engineering, science and mathematics,” but I had to look up Harvey Mudd himself to see who the heck he was. For a higher PR profile I’d suggest they rename themselves Harvey Milk, or Harcourt Fenton Mudd.
Very expensive, and very liberal. We visited and decided to cross it off the list for my very technical son (now about to graduate from a different university, which gave him a generous academic scholarship.)
About the patents: remember, those three, Stanford, CalTech, Harvey Mudd are all about computers and programming. the patents may be mostly programs, not actual physical gadgets.
For something a bit more concrete than my impressions of these schools far away from me, US News and World Report ranks these two schools plus MIT, UC Berkeley, and Harvard at the top in biology graduate programs. Chemistry the same set, but with Caltech not unexpectedly at the top without a tie, the rest one tenth point below. Physics about the same, with Princeton tying three of these one tenth point below. For computer science Caltech gets an 11th place rank far below the first and second tier schools (with lots of rank ties), although that doesn't mean they don't do good and patentable work, just don't know, academic CS isn't really a field I follow. Not generally patentable is math, where Princeton is #1, then the other five schools except Caltech is some distance down at #9 with lots of ties.
For overall engineering, note some of these include ties, Stanford ranks #2, Caltech #4, ditto EE and MechE. AeroAstro Caltech #1, Stanford #3, ChemE Caltech is #2, Stanford #4, Civil Engineering Stanford is #4, Caltech's program which doesn't offer an undergraduate degree doesn't place. Materials Engineering Stanford #4, Caltech #7.
Why are these schools so good, and how do they stay so good? I don't know for these ones, but the TL;DR for MIT is a lot of oversight and power placed in committees made of outsiders to the extent they aren't currently active members of the MIT community. Tenure only goes to those who are #1 or 2 in their subfield, maybe 3, and they must be adequate teachers, and with extremely rare exceptions they teach all the classes. No adjunct professors with a very few exceptions that prove the rule like SF author Joe Halderman, author of The Forever War, otherwise all are tenured or tenure track.
Harvard I know less about, but being Harvard they do the sort of thing you'd expect, junior facility are hired with the understanding they're very unlikely to become full professors and finish their careers at the school. For full professors Harvard just makes offers to the very best people they can lure to it, in this it's very unlike any other research university I know anything about, frankly doesn't sound collegial.
I’ve never even heard of Landmark College. What’s wrong with me?
It’s not common knowledge. Swear. But it clears up a lot. I’ve always wondered why Brown is “Ivy League” and Stanford/Duke aren’t.
So, there are eight Ivies and seven Seven Sisters (back when they were women’s colleges). Which Ivy was the bachelor? Did people gossip?
Thanks.
This emphasizes my point that Cornell is the oddball of the Ivies, as Rutgers was still all-male at the time the Ivy League was founded, with Douglass as its sister school.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @Hibernian
I had my arms in the greasy pot sink at the university dining hall for four years.
I was pumping gas and fixing flat tires in the brutal summer heat and freezing winter cold to pay my way through community college, undergrad, and grad school.
My PhD sister and her medical doctor husband are delaying early retirement to (foolishly) pay $60K per year for their daughter’s BA Psychology degree at Georgetown.
Nowadays, applied science majors pay some of the highest tuition rates in the school, and scholarships accrue to numb skull jocks who couldn’t care less about science.
In any event, if she is pretty and can get her MRS degree, more power to her.
Heck, why not another list. UCLA, Cal, Virginia, NC, Michigan, maybe Texas, maybe Georgia Tech.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @JMcG
I had a lot of friends who went to Brown in the late 1980s when it was at it’s peak. They said it was the only Ivy that didn’t use “need blind” admissions, which resulted in the highest percentage of wealthy foreign students. Also a lot of children of Euro barons (e.g. Claus von Bulow) and other assorted royalty.
Stanford requires at least 1 year of physics and math to graduate. Nearly 60% of Stanford grads graduate with a STEM degree each year, compared to less than 30% (and mostly Biology) at HYP. Columbia has a core curriculum that requires heavy reading. Princeton is known as the most academically rigorous Ivy with the least grade inflation, but it also has a clubby reputation with some eating clubs serving as networking grounds for jobs on Wall Street. Cornell is probably the most known for STEM among Ivies. Brown and Yale are the weakest for STEM among Ivies, and most liberal.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
Are trust fund withdrawals taxable income? Having no income doesn’t necessarily mean that you are poor. These low-income admitted may simply come from families wealthy enough to not need income.
For Europe Ivy League simply means "most socially selective and most expensive"
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia MIT, Stanford and possibly Cornell. Chicago sounds too blue collar.
They have never heard of Dartmouth or Brown.Replies: @Polistra, @The Last Real Calvinist, @Anonymous Jew
I’ve been patently waiting for a Populist Southerner governor like George Wallace to make a huge issue about de-certifying really bad Lib Leftist Ivy League colleges from his state.
Just make it reality that the states of Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky no longer recognize any degrees from Harvard, Yale, Brown, Colgate etc.
Why stress and moan about all the ridiculous Lib Leftist cult marxist nonsense being pushed at these long dead Ivy League schools.
Go with the idea:
Fine, you want to think like Elizabeth Warren or drink like a young George W Bush – OK, you better stay the rest of your life in Cambridge MA, New Haven CT slums, because your degrees aren’t worth anything in fly over Midwest and Southern States.
It’s been the exact opposite that yokels in places like Texas and Tennessee have shameless pandered to these Ivy League degrees Texas having been handed over to the Bush family.
So, the system is working. Keep those social climbers in the 2nd quintile in their place!
Is there any evidence that some other scholar/researcher of some repute asked and was refused? Remember, these are anonymized data and the government likes to give it (at some cost of preparing it) per FOIA. Private entities – they may or may not give it to you based on their policies and preference. Plenty of other entities like Pew collect social science data from governments and produce reports. In fact, Pew’s reports are a lot more incisive than anything Dr. Chetty produces.
How is a non-American to know the prestige difference between Massachusetts institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, New York Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology?
They all sound the same to him or her. In fact they all sounded the same to me, when I was a kid. You have to go through an intensive indoctrination starting in middle school to get these nuances.
If you want to become a scientist, I suppose you won't necessarily learn about it until middle school or so as I did when I read Have Space Suit, Will Travel which has one hidden agenda of telling you what you need to learn to get into it, as well as correctly describing its rejection letter as being very nice.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @Paperback Writer
The list of colleges that do a bad job of getting their grads up to higher income levels by their early 30s is dominated by art schools and wok-ish liberal arts colleges (predictable), as well as devout Evangelical/Catholic/Mormon colleges like BYU, Samford, Belmont and Franciscan. In the latter case, these will have high numbers of female grads who drop out of the full-time workforce by their early 30s because they’ve married and had kids. If Chetty’s taking the median of all graduates’ individual income, he’ll get low ratios for these kind of schools.
Here are a few sort-of relevant thoughts I’ve been meaning to send to Steve.
[1] It is stunning how _little_ difference in median income it makes going to an elite college. Even data regarding mid-career 90th percentile incomes (near $200k for many schools) shows that going to Harvard doesn’t make a qualitative difference compared with many other colleges.
[2] The true economic value of going to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford (HYPS) is that you can major in what used to be called the humanities and still get the Goldman/LBO/hedge fund job that puts you on the path toward membership in our Financial Disservices Oligarchy. Recruits from other colleges need to know something (e.g., data science or engineering) or someone (e.g., Dad’s friend from the Knickerbocker Club).
[3] Third, there are elite colleges and then there are elite colleges.
There are six undergraduate institutions who have long been a cut above all the rest, with Harvard of course being primus inter pales: Caltech, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, and Stanford, or what I’ve longed called the CHYMPS (pronounced “chimps”).
The best way to see this would be to count the percentage of each college’s class that are among the 2000 (or 2500?) National Merit _Scholars_ (not just Finalists, and not recipients of ‘sponsored’ scholarships). Each of the CHYMPS has long had about 9%-14% of its matriculants qualify as full National Merit Scholars. The next level of top-flight schools (e.g., Duke or Columbia) would be closer to 5%. In recent years, Caltech, Harvard, and MIT have pulled away a bit (clustered closer to 14%) from Princeton, Stanford, and Yale (clustered closer to 9%). Duke (about 7%) is now nipping at their heels.
[4] I believe one major factor in the decline of bright (lower-)middle class White kids at places like CHYMPS, and particularly at HYPS, was the re-centering of the SAT circa 1996.
Back in the ’70s and ’80s, as the dean of a very elite HYP-feeder prep school told a crowd of us once, the single most important piece of information about an applicant was his SAT Verbal score. This was probably because
(i) college work back then was more ‘verbal’ and less quantitative than college work today,
(ii) the SAT Verbal had the highest ‘ceiling’ of any widely taken standardized test,
(iii) the SAT Verbal was the hardest to improve with coaching, and
(iv) the SAT Verbal had sub-scores for Analogies and Reading Comprehension, and the Analogies section might have been the most g-loaded component of the entire SAT. Apparently top schools cared about those sub-scores then, or the College Board would not have generated them.
During that halcyon era, Harvard used to say, undoubtedly with some exaggeration, that they ignored SATs (Math or Verbal) _unless_ they were below 550 or above 750.
Thus, the _one_ thing that a poor or middle class white kid from a mediocre high school could do to demonstrate he had the intellectual ability to do well at HYPS was to score over 750 on the SAT Verbal.
In time, the Analogies section was removed. In 1996, the SAT was ‘re-centered’. The Math scores were raised slightly. But the Verbal scores were raised so much that anything over 730 under the old test would register as an 800. Presto: SAT Verbal scores over 750 no longer ‘existed’.
One can imagine how grateful colleges were that they could advance “diversity” and fund-raising without ever being put in the awkward position of _knowingly_ rejecting potential intellectual outliers because they were White and would need financial aid.
This is just one of many examples of how social engineering ostensibly designed to advance “fairness” and “equality” is actually designed to divide the proles and protect the one percent of the one percent.
They've also formed an important network. In my analysis of Forbes 400 richest, 140/400 are Jews. They concentrate in 5 industries: Finance, Real Estate, Retail, Casinos, Pharma; in 4 geographic areas; NY, FL, CA and to a lesser extent, IL (Chicago area). And many attended HYUC among the Ivies (U for UPenn-Wharton), plus NYU.
Duke was not seen as a serious school until the early 2000's, when they became popular for children of the wealthy from the Chicago area, mostly Jews. It's reputation is still more regional than national. Most people outside the East/Southeast don't know much about Duke.
Staying home means you are missing out being on the stage where you can have impact commensurate with your abilities, with consolidation whole company HQs are moving to the coast leaving only rump operations in the middle. Think of a city like St. Louis, two decades ago it wassail a place to be for young aspiring professionals, HQ of companies like AB and leading marketing agencies, today it is a shade of that.
It’s in their interest to remove the SAT requirement so colleges are forced to weigh extracurriculars more, which is the area where wealth can most easily buy an advantage, such as trips with the NYT to Peru.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
This sort of thing is covered quite extensively with lots of useful citations in our very own Ron Unz’s “The Myth of American Meritocracy; How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?” Eight years old but as far as I know even more accurate and useful today.
Its now where NEAR as rigorous if thats what you mean.
U Chicago only has about 2K undergrads but about 4k post grad students and sort of post doc faculty.
UC biz school has one or two single billion guys that no one on here would have heard of.
And no yo do not want to be anywhere near there.
Steve
Off topic…but interesting:
I’m coming across Hindu names…first and surnames that sound dam near Irish…..Paric…Patrick……The Hindu who covers the Yankees:Sweeny Murty…..Not a Celtic Name:Saxena(when I as reading about the Saxena Integral(Special Functions Stuff)-John Saxon the actor(Who is Italian)……..Anyhow, America still should have implemented a National Origins Immigration Policy Post-1945 excluding Hindus-Sikhs-Muslims…..no 1964 Civil Rights Act which gave us the 1965 Immigration Reform Act……
About the patents: remember, those three, Stanford, CalTech, Harvey Mudd are all about computers and programming. the patents may be mostly programs, not actual physical gadgets.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
I don’t know about Harvey Mudd, but while Stanford is one of the world’s four top computer science schools (along with UC Berkeley, CMU, and MIT), it does a lot of world class science, and unless Caltech has radically changed since the last time I checked, it’s a science school with some really serious engineering departments, and a computer science program that’s probably too small to get it highly ranked, although I’m a lot more familiar with its undergraduate program than its graduate ones. So there’s going to be plenty of patents on processes as well as concrete things like “physical gadgets.”
For something a bit more concrete than my impressions of these schools far away from me, US News and World Report ranks these two schools plus MIT, UC Berkeley, and Harvard at the top in biology graduate programs. Chemistry the same set, but with Caltech not unexpectedly at the top without a tie, the rest one tenth point below. Physics about the same, with Princeton tying three of these one tenth point below. For computer science Caltech gets an 11th place rank far below the first and second tier schools (with lots of rank ties), although that doesn’t mean they don’t do good and patentable work, just don’t know, academic CS isn’t really a field I follow. Not generally patentable is math, where Princeton is #1, then the other five schools except Caltech is some distance down at #9 with lots of ties.
For overall engineering, note some of these include ties, Stanford ranks #2, Caltech #4, ditto EE and MechE. AeroAstro Caltech #1, Stanford #3, ChemE Caltech is #2, Stanford #4, Civil Engineering Stanford is #4, Caltech’s program which doesn’t offer an undergraduate degree doesn’t place. Materials Engineering Stanford #4, Caltech #7.
Why are these schools so good, and how do they stay so good? I don’t know for these ones, but the TL;DR for MIT is a lot of oversight and power placed in committees made of outsiders to the extent they aren’t currently active members of the MIT community. Tenure only goes to those who are #1 or 2 in their subfield, maybe 3, and they must be adequate teachers, and with extremely rare exceptions they teach all the classes. No adjunct professors with a very few exceptions that prove the rule like SF author Joe Halderman, author of The Forever War, otherwise all are tenured or tenure track.
Harvard I know less about, but being Harvard they do the sort of thing you’d expect, junior facility are hired with the understanding they’re very unlikely to become full professors and finish their careers at the school. For full professors Harvard just makes offers to the very best people they can lure to it, in this it’s very unlike any other research university I know anything about, frankly doesn’t sound collegial.
They all sound the same to him or her. In fact they all sounded the same to me, when I was a kid. You have to go through an intensive indoctrination starting in middle school to get these nuances.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Reg Cæsar
I am very biased, but it’s my understanding MIT as “MIT” (when is it or Caltech referred to as something else unless it’s a formal thing?) has achieved a world wide reputation in the last three or so decades. Caltech for undergraduates is a very small, ~250 students per class, very specialized very science focused program with core science and math requirements ~2/3rds longer than MIT’s, and at least for math a lot harder, you start with one of the proof based calculus texts.
If you want to become a scientist, I suppose you won’t necessarily learn about it until middle school or so as I did when I read Have Space Suit, Will Travel which has one hidden agenda of telling you what you need to learn to get into it, as well as correctly describing its rejection letter as being very nice.
Based on the kid-income/parent-income ratio, it seems sending your kids to one of these expensive fancy schools is a bad deal, but it might not be. I did an analysis of Forbes’ 400 richest Americans in June 2020 and where they went to school, and found some interesting stats:
1) 21% of the richest 400 went to just 2 schools: Harvard & Stanford.
The undergrad(U — including dropouts) and grad(G) split is as follows:
Harvard: 15 (U), 34 (G), minus 3 who went to both U and G, so total of 46/400, or 12%.
Stanford: 14 (U), 25 (G), minus 3 who went to both, so total of 36/400, or 9%.
The Grad school for both is mostly MBAs, with a few JDs.
2) The next 19% came from just 5 schools:
UPenn (16 U, 7 G, 2 went to both, so total 21)
Columbia (7 U, 13 G, 2 went to both, so total 18)
Yale (11 U, 1 G)
NYU (8 U, 4 G)
USC (12 U) — biggest surprise for me.
Which means, 40% of the 400 richest came from just 7 schools.
3) The Ivy League tally is as follows:
Harvard (46 total): 15 U, 34 G (3 to both)
UPenn (21): 16 U, 7 G (2 to both) — overwhelmingly from Wharton both U and G
Columbia (18): 7 U, 13 G, (2 to both)
Yale (11): 11 U, 1 G
Cornell (9): 8 U, 1 G
Dartmouth (8): 8 U
Princeton (7): 7 U
Brown (6): 6 U
———————–
Total: 126 including both U and G, or 32%.
4) Other elites:
Stanford (36): 14U, 25G, minus 3 to both
USC(12): 12 U
NYU (12): 8 U, 4 G
U Mich (9): 7 U, 2 G
UCB (9): 7 U, 2 G
Chicago (8): 3 U, 5 G
Northwestern (7): 3 U, 4 G
UVA (5): 2 U, 3 G
Duke (5): 4 U, 1 G
MIT (4): 3 U, 1 G
Amherst (4): 4 U
UT-Austin (4): 4 U
Caltech (2): 1 U, 1 G
Rice (2): 2 U
So, I guess the message is, if you want your kids to be filthy rich, send them to Harvard or Stanford, undergrad or grad doesn’t matter. If they can’t get into either, then Wharton, Columbia, Yale, NYU or USC. After that, U Mich, UC Berkeley, Chicago and Northwestern are also good bets.
[1] It is stunning how _little_ difference in median income it makes going to an elite college. Even data regarding mid-career 90th percentile incomes (near $200k for many schools) shows that going to Harvard doesn't make a qualitative difference compared with many other colleges.
[2] The true economic value of going to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford (HYPS) is that you can major in what used to be called the humanities and still get the Goldman/LBO/hedge fund job that puts you on the path toward membership in our Financial Disservices Oligarchy. Recruits from other colleges need to know something (e.g., data science or engineering) or someone (e.g., Dad's friend from the Knickerbocker Club).
[3] Third, there are elite colleges and then there are elite colleges.
There are six undergraduate institutions who have long been a cut above all the rest, with Harvard of course being primus inter pales: Caltech, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, and Stanford, or what I've longed called the CHYMPS (pronounced "chimps").
The best way to see this would be to count the percentage of each college's class that are among the 2000 (or 2500?) National Merit _Scholars_ (not just Finalists, and not recipients of 'sponsored' scholarships). Each of the CHYMPS has long had about 9%-14% of its matriculants qualify as full National Merit Scholars. The next level of top-flight schools (e.g., Duke or Columbia) would be closer to 5%. In recent years, Caltech, Harvard, and MIT have pulled away a bit (clustered closer to 14%) from Princeton, Stanford, and Yale (clustered closer to 9%). Duke (about 7%) is now nipping at their heels.
[4] I believe one major factor in the decline of bright (lower-)middle class White kids at places like CHYMPS, and particularly at HYPS, was the re-centering of the SAT circa 1996.
Back in the '70s and '80s, as the dean of a very elite HYP-feeder prep school told a crowd of us once, the single most important piece of information about an applicant was his SAT Verbal score. This was probably because
(i) college work back then was more 'verbal' and less quantitative than college work today,
(ii) the SAT Verbal had the highest 'ceiling' of any widely taken standardized test,
(iii) the SAT Verbal was the hardest to improve with coaching, and
(iv) the SAT Verbal had sub-scores for Analogies and Reading Comprehension, and the Analogies section might have been the most g-loaded component of the entire SAT. Apparently top schools cared about those sub-scores then, or the College Board would not have generated them.
During that halcyon era, Harvard used to say, undoubtedly with some exaggeration, that they ignored SATs (Math or Verbal) _unless_ they were below 550 or above 750.
Thus, the _one_ thing that a poor or middle class white kid from a mediocre high school could do to demonstrate he had the intellectual ability to do well at HYPS was to score over 750 on the SAT Verbal.
In time, the Analogies section was removed. In 1996, the SAT was 're-centered'. The Math scores were raised slightly. But the Verbal scores were raised so much that anything over 730 under the old test would register as an 800. Presto: SAT Verbal scores over 750 no longer 'existed'.
One can imagine how grateful colleges were that they could advance "diversity" and fund-raising without ever being put in the awkward position of _knowingly_ rejecting potential intellectual outliers because they were White and would need financial aid.
This is just one of many examples of how social engineering ostensibly designed to advance "fairness" and "equality" is actually designed to divide the proles and protect the one percent of the one percent.Replies: @anon
And of course the Verbal score emphasis favors Jews, which explains the heavy Jewish enrollment in the Ivy League.
They’ve also formed an important network. In my analysis of Forbes 400 richest, 140/400 are Jews. They concentrate in 5 industries: Finance, Real Estate, Retail, Casinos, Pharma; in 4 geographic areas; NY, FL, CA and to a lesser extent, IL (Chicago area). And many attended HYUC among the Ivies (U for UPenn-Wharton), plus NYU.
Duke was not seen as a serious school until the early 2000’s, when they became popular for children of the wealthy from the Chicago area, mostly Jews. It’s reputation is still more regional than national. Most people outside the East/Southeast don’t know much about Duke.
By any chance, did you study applied science at a state university? If so, you were had.
Those institutions were established, political considerations aside, in order to provide ~100% free-rides to such technicians, i.e. the economy building laborers of the future. Yep.
At the outset, money (from land sales) was set aside, in tax-free, perpetual trust, to forever cover the cost of teaching such students.
The liberal arts majors are the ones who should’ve been scrubbing the pots, if they should have even been admitted to the school in the first place.
Nowadays, applied science majors pay some of the highest tuition rates in the school, and scholarships accrue to numb skull jocks who couldn’t care less about science.
Elizabeth City State University?
Cornell is not a diploma mill.
It's also the youngest by far. Even little Cornell College in Iowa is a few years older.
In the UK the terms "redbrick" and Russell Group are often used interchangeably to indicate those universities outside the Oxford/Cambridge elite who are nonetheless older and more prestigious than the post-1960s "degree factories" that exist around every other corner even though Oxford and Cambridge are both in the Russell Group and the Group includes places that are not strictly speaking redbrick
Then we have the very old Scottish universities ( plus Trinity in Dublin ) who don't quite have the Oxbridge cachet but who are referred to as "ancient" to further distinguish themselves from the modern hoi polloi and what they see as arriviste redbricks.
At the bottom of course it is all branding and marketing. Udemy oor Coursera is as good as any of them..Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist
When we were looking at UK universities for Daughter C, we ran into these categories, and just gave up trying to sort them out. In any case, the distinction between ‘has always been a university’ and ‘used to be a poly’ is easier to identify and apply.
They say it’s the easiest Ivy to get into, but the hardest to get out of.
It’s also the youngest by far. Even little Cornell College in Iowa is a few years older.
The number of Chinese and Indian students in our colleges should be zero. Stephen Miller floated that to Trump -- cancelling all Chinese student visas -- but somebody else talked Trump out of it. Would have been a truly great move. Oh well.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist
Yes. If you figure each of those students is paying on average, oh, let’s say 60K/year for tuition/room and board/fees/etc., then that’s 21 billion USD a year flowing into the US higher ed sector. That’s good money, all right.
But after doing that calculation, I looked up Harvard’s current endowment: 42 billion. Harvard could pay an entire year’s tuition and fees for all 350K Chinese students in the USA and still have half of their endowment left over, which is certainly more endowment than they’ll ever need.
The time for busting up the barely-veiled wealth machines to which the Ivies are attached like lampreys is long past.
They all sound the same to him or her. In fact they all sounded the same to me, when I was a kid. You have to go through an intensive indoctrination starting in middle school to get these nuances.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Reg Cæsar
The Gits, the Nits, the Clits, and the Mitts.
Landmark is a college in Vermont that caters to students with learning disabilities which explains their ranking in Chetty’s table.
One chart uses 1300+ and the other 1400+. If you are are an un-hooked non-URM (under represented minority -- which really boils down to being black, as hispanics get a boost but not much of one, and there are too few native American applicants to these schools to matter), you are not getting into any school on that list with 1400 on your SATs. Yes, the average may be 1400, but not for white kids without a sob story. And it's way, way harder to get in with a given set of stats if you are Asian. And it's way harder than that if you are an actual Asian applying from China or India.
Building a chart which uses an SAT score 1300 as a cut-off for "competitive" for this group of colleges is absurd to the point of being disingenuous.
A huge question even in his in his more granular chart is how the distribution of scores in the 1400 - 1600 range vary along his income spectrum. That is, it may be that the average SAT score in the upper income percentiles is much, much higher than in lower percentiles. A simple way to address this would be to use a cut-off of 1500 or even 1550, which is a more realistic estimate of what you need to be in serious consideration for HYPSMC without some huge hook.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist
This is absolutely true, except that it’s worse than you think.
I’ve got a friend here who runs a consultancy business trying to get Chinese kids into top US and UK universities. He told me that a white or Asian kid applying to the HYPSMC apex stands little chance of getting a second look with an SAT under 1570, even if that kid is a typically outstanding applicant with all of the requisite APs/IB, stratospheric GPA, broad and deep extracurriculars, service/volunteering, etc.
If you’re the wrong color, to be admitted you have to be rich and connected, play a position that a university sports team needs, or have some incredible ‘hook’, like winning a national-level (or even international-level) musical or academic competition of sufficient prestige, or founding an NGO or business that gains significant coverage in the mainstream media, etc.
Cornell was always co-ed, plus then-all-girls Elmira was right down Route 13.
This emphasizes my point that Cornell is the oddball of the Ivies, as Rutgers was still all-male at the time the Ivy League was founded, with Douglass as its sister school.
Not that this would dissuade them, but a BA in Psychology is useless, even from Georgetown. Ideally she will parlay it into a school hiring her as a GA while she gets her MA. The rule of thumb is that if you are paying for graduate school, you are doing it wrong. The school should be paying you.
In any event, if she is pretty and can get her MRS degree, more power to her.
Right.
Lynn College in Florida caters to rich kids who don’t like studying. As far as I can tell, it’s a 1980s teen sex comedy come to life.
Plus JFK Jr 🙂
Ugh about your sister and her husband. I feel strongly that if you can’t get a good private school to foot all or most of the bill (presuming you need the help) you’re better off attending a good state school. Of course this assumes you’re a resident of one of the several states which have good state schools. If you’re not, and you have kids approaching college age, you should probably move.
Heck, why not another list. UCLA, Cal, Virginia, NC, Michigan, maybe Texas, maybe Georgia Tech.
That’s disturbing. A friend has sent two daughters there. I had no idea of it’s reputation.
I had a dining hall dish washer work study job, too, my freshman year, earning minimum wage. Then I got A’s in calculus which enabled me to become a math tutor the following semester, for double minimum wage. The year after that I got engineering co-op jobs for triple minimum wage. I took away two things from my cafeteria worker days – a hatred of menial labor and the trick to core a head of iceberg lettuce like a pro.
If you want to become a scientist, I suppose you won't necessarily learn about it until middle school or so as I did when I read Have Space Suit, Will Travel which has one hidden agenda of telling you what you need to learn to get into it, as well as correctly describing its rejection letter as being very nice.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @Paperback Writer
It certainly has, but you might not be aware that “New York Institute of Technology” has zero prestige. Not less prestige, but zero. If you aren’t clued into these things, it’s confusing.
This emphasizes my point that Cornell is the oddball of the Ivies, as Rutgers was still all-male at the time the Ivy League was founded, with Douglass as its sister school.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @Hibernian
Right, plus it just occurred to me that Brown had Pembroke from way back.
Harvard-Radcliffe
Princeton-Sarah Lawrence*
Yale-Vassar
Brown-Pembroke*
Columbia-Barnard
Dartmouth-Mount Holyoke
Penn-Bryn Mawr
This leaves Smith and Wellesley. For them, it's lights out at 10; candles out at 10:30
Duke does not belong in the top twelve. It is a basketball team with a school attached. What is it known for academically? No one knows.
Most people put the schools in these tiers:
Tippy Top: HYPSM — the 5 total crapshoots for even the most overqualified, unless they’re hooked.
Top ten: Ivies + Stanford + MIT
Top twelve (IMO): UChicago, Caltech
UChicago was not even in the top twenty just five years ago, and then they got a Jewish president and he started playing games. Chicago started using EA, ED, EDII to try to get lots of kids to apply and commit. They send out the most ridiculous amount of marketing material. Both my kids started getting promotional brochures from them in sophomore year. By junior year they were getting stuff from them monthly, huge colorful pop up cards for the school. In senior year they were getting brochures weekly, sometimes twice a week, reminding them to apply. This is a school that’s seriously into marketing to bump up their rejection rate. One of my kids applied EA and got deferred, they wanted him to opt for EDII, he said no thanks, and he knew he was out, National Merit Scholar notwithstanding. They are definitely playing games to bump themselves up on USNews. It’s hard for me to give them any respect. A school that is truly prestigious does not need to send out so much marketing material. HYSM never sent either of my kids anything. Princeton did for one of them, but only one letter.
Heck, why not another list. UCLA, Cal, Virginia, NC, Michigan, maybe Texas, maybe Georgia Tech.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @JMcG
The University of Washington does very well in some global rankings.
Wisconsin used to rank quite high, but I get the sense they’ve been slipping.
Except the “C” is for Caltech, not Chicago, in HYPSMC.
Caltech. (See: proximity to “M” in the list.)
The usage on the college admissions discussion boards is generally either “HYPS” (for those not interested in science and engineering) or “HYPSMC” (for those who are).
According to Daniel Golden in Price of Admission, no one took Brown seriously until JFK Jr. enrolled, I think in the 80’s. His grades weren’t good enough for Harvard, despite the heavy family connection. Since then Brown started recruiting heavily from Europe and Hollywood. Lots of rich/royalty/celebrity kids love Brown because it doesn’t have a core curriculum. All other Ivies require you to take minimum a math and a science (any science) class, not Brown. You never have to see math or science again if you don’t wish to.
Stanford requires at least 1 year of physics and math to graduate. Nearly 60% of Stanford grads graduate with a STEM degree each year, compared to less than 30% (and mostly Biology) at HYP. Columbia has a core curriculum that requires heavy reading. Princeton is known as the most academically rigorous Ivy with the least grade inflation, but it also has a clubby reputation with some eating clubs serving as networking grounds for jobs on Wall Street. Cornell is probably the most known for STEM among Ivies. Brown and Yale are the weakest for STEM among Ivies, and most liberal.
Yes, thanks; I was unclear and created an apples and oranges situation. I was just giving some examples of universities that people over here assume are ‘Ivy League’. Chicago is one of them, and it happens it has the same initial letter as Caltech. Some people here also assume other ‘famous’ universities such as Duke and Northwestern are Ivies as well.
I don’t think Cal Tech is assumed to be an Ivy quite as often; it’s smaller, less well-known if you’re not in STEM/engineering, and it’s got the obvious ‘Tech’ in its name — although having said that, lots of people here assume MIT is an Ivy, and it’s the same.
I doubt the administration could say no at a time it was boasting it had the largest number of intercollegiate school sports clubs and teams in America, including tiddlywinks. Seriously for the latter, I knew someone who had been on the team and as I recall they went to Europe to play some games.
Correct, they were sibling schools, but Pembroke, like Douglass and Elmira, was never considered a Seven Sisters. As far as I can tell, here were the matchups, some official, some not
Harvard-Radcliffe
Princeton-Sarah Lawrence*
Yale-Vassar
Brown-Pembroke*
Columbia-Barnard
Dartmouth-Mount Holyoke
Penn-Bryn Mawr
This leaves Smith and Wellesley. For them, it’s lights out at 10; candles out at 10:30
Or maybe I’m just speculating too freely…
Heck, why not another list. UCLA, Cal, Virginia, NC, Michigan, maybe Texas, maybe Georgia Tech.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @JMcG
Is Penn State a good school or just a huge school? Serious question. I realize they aren’t very selective, but I’m assuming a good education can be had there.
MIT technically was an “Ivy” long before that became a name used for the schools it played football with starting in 1881. In 1901 the student body voted to disband the intercollegiate squad for it being a distraction from its mission; per Wikipedia it’s last game was played against Harvard. Allowing the formal creation of an athletic club to play football in 1978 was said to have been controversial for some years afterwards, see the link for how it was initially formed under the radar of the administration.
I doubt the administration could say no at a time it was boasting it had the largest number of intercollegiate school sports clubs and teams in America, including tiddlywinks. Seriously for the latter, I knew someone who had been on the team and as I recall they went to Europe to play some games.
Stanford requires at least 1 year of physics and math to graduate. Nearly 60% of Stanford grads graduate with a STEM degree each year, compared to less than 30% (and mostly Biology) at HYP. Columbia has a core curriculum that requires heavy reading. Princeton is known as the most academically rigorous Ivy with the least grade inflation, but it also has a clubby reputation with some eating clubs serving as networking grounds for jobs on Wall Street. Cornell is probably the most known for STEM among Ivies. Brown and Yale are the weakest for STEM among Ivies, and most liberal.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
According to a friend who was a computer science student at Harvard in the 1980s, a not unknown example of someone who wanted to go to MIT but let his family pressure him into Harvard, at that time all you had to do to graduate was prove you could do algebra, and he was quite incensed about it. It would be surprising given Harvard’s legitimately legendary math department and as I recall an old program to teach normies the calculus, and present day things like its also legendary hardest in the US first year Math 55 class, which Bill Gates attempted and Richard Stallman (RMS) excelled in.
I liked it better when it was known for being an Ag school, i.e. before the downstate rich kids turned it into a haughty, pre-med factory.
I don’t doubt it. Harvard now offers an intro level, little math based physics class for minorities and women, to “encourage” them to be interested in physics, which is the biggest lie. If they can’t even hack basic calculus based physics in college, they have no hope of being physics majors.
Even Stanford has watered down their intro physics classes. They used to offer only calculus based physics in introductory physics, then they introduced a set of algebra based ones, no doubt to accommodate their increasing number of affirmative action admits, mostly Latino, who now make up 17% at Stanford. My kid complained about a bimbo in his Classics class who doesn’t seem to know or care about anything other than Latino pride. I told him unfortunately I think we’re subsidizing her no-doubt tuition free education.
If you want to become a scientist, I suppose you won't necessarily learn about it until middle school or so as I did when I read Have Space Suit, Will Travel which has one hidden agenda of telling you what you need to learn to get into it, as well as correctly describing its rejection letter as being very nice.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @Paperback Writer
And another thing. Unless you or your parents are geeks, or super-obsessed with prestige, if you aren’t from the US, you won’t get the nearly imperceptible differences of class attached to various land-grant universities. University of Virginia, University of Michigan, University of North Dakota… all have different prestige temperatures.
Or understand the difference between University of Florida or Forida State University (I still don’t).
Or comprehend that if you go to Williams or Swarthmore or Amherst (pronouncing it w/out the “h”) you’re as much of a blueblood and a snob as anyone from Harvard, and that Princetonians are a class apart from all the rest (in my experience).
It’s the little things.
I know Columbia was in the doldrums from the late 1960’s until at least the mid 1990’s in terms of prestige, there were years in which they took half the students that applied. Their decline and bounce back coincided pretty closely with NYC’s rise and then fall of violent crime.
This course is really evil, as well as stupid as you note. In terms of making a living after college very few minorities, and I suspect few women, will take their Harvard undergraduate degrees and pursue real physics careers unless they’re truly interested, they can make far more money in easier much less risky careers. And for those who are interested, or get interested by taking this course, it holds out a false hope they can do it for real, since calculus based first year physics (classical mechanics and E&M) doesn’t even rise to the level of table stakes to become a physicist.
I have a friend who attended their famous journalism school, indeed during that late ’60s to mid ’90s high crime period. The thing that most impressed me, after the raw fear of having a gun shoved into his face, he’s just not a physical combat oriented person, was how totally prepared the Columbia office for handling this was. To for example offer him much safer housing and otherwise do whatever it took for him to not withdraw.
This emphasizes my point that Cornell is the oddball of the Ivies, as Rutgers was still all-male at the time the Ivy League was founded, with Douglass as its sister school.Replies: @Paperback Writer, @Hibernian
My Alma Mater Iowa State was nominally coed from the start (immediately Post Civil War) with 2 women and about 20 men. After a year or so there was a new President who wanted it to be all male. He persuaded one of the women to quit, but couldn’t get permission from higher up to expel the other one. A little more than 100 years later when I started out there, the ratio was 60% male, 40% female. There were very few women before WW2.
I’m Australian, so I miss a lot of fine detail about the US (Australia too, I wouldn’t be surprised!)
actually, all those little things VANISH in the WORLD WHERE GUYS WHO GET HOT CHICKS are successful, AND WOMEN WHO GET GUYS IN THE TOP TEN PERCENT are successful ——- trust me, the little differentiations among QUALITY COLLEGES are a big fucking joke to people who understand how the world works ……
The graph is deceptive, making it look like zillions of rich kids (and poor kids) are in the school. In reality, the money graph is filtered through a graph of how many students or applicants there are at each level of income. That graph will be the opposite, an upward bulging parabola or bell curve. The end result is roughly a flat horizontal line. So there is an even distribution of kids by income at the schooll. The horror!