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I think prestige is kind of a crock. I went to public school my entire life except for a year and half overseas, and I went to Purdue which was for me the cheap, in-state option and had scholarships to cover the tiny tuition costs. My cousin went to a prestigious private school for her entire life, and then to Wesleyan College which is apparently a fairly prestigious private college that costs a zillion dollars. She's by far smarter than me, but we graduated in the same field, I ironically had the better degree and resume, and we both got hired to do the exact same job at the exact same company in the exact same city when we were done. In her case her parents paid for it (and mine probably would have too if I'd wanted to go somewhere expensive) but my overall experience was so much cheaper and got me to the exact same place. I'm sure it's harder for lawyers, where the supply / demand graph is much different, but rather than debating on public vs. private, or how much to save for college, for my kids I'd much rather focus on what they're going to school to learn, and how much they care about learning it. That's what will really make a success or failure, not the name of the school on your diploma. I think, anyway. (And you guys kind of agree I think since you keep telling people not to be lawyers at all!  )
Sophia fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Dec 19, 2010 |
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Dec 19, 2010 18:13
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I mean, you can dice these things a million ways, and there are a billion different anecdotes and personal experiences. But prestige isn't a crock. It might be a lovely thing to be obsessed with, and it's one of the reason status-obsessed lawyers are so goddamn insufferable. But those doors do open for people with those kinds of connections. They may open for people from other schools and situations too - but not as easily, not by default.
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Dec 19, 2010 18:26
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Petey posted:Right this is an example of what I mean. The differences are insane. It is not something that I realized as a lifelong public school kid. But the elite private high schools - you pay for them because yes, the education is good, but mostly because they will get your kids into Ivies, with prestigious private schools as the safeties. Also, the best private schools are vaguely religious, so that's kind of a no-go.
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Dec 19, 2010 18:27
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Petey posted:I mean, you can dice these things a million ways, and there are a billion different anecdotes and personal experiences. Since we're in the Lawyer and Law School thread: undergrad "prestige" is pretty meaningless. Go to a state school. Get a good GPA. Get accepted to a top law school. Save 4 years of $45,000 tuition. (Get stuck with the remaining 3 years of $40,000 tuition)
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Dec 19, 2010 18:41
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gvibes posted:This seems to be very much an east coast thing. In the Chicago area, there are some good private high schools, but I think the top schools are public. Well, IMSA is one of the best schools in the country, and the suburban schools like Naperville are terrific, but there are plenty of private schools that send kids to sexy places that you might not have heard of but they're still sending them. I don't know that it's an east coast thing so much as the most prestigious private schools are on the east coast because they're the oldest and thus most well-connected. But there are still plenty of others in most major cities across the country. TheBestDeception posted:Since we're in the Lawyer and Law School thread: undergrad "prestige" is pretty meaningless. Go to a state school. Get a good GPA. Get accepted to a top law school. Save 4 years of $45,000 tuition. Oh absolutely - for the purposes of law school undergrad prestige matters close to nothing. Petey fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Dec 19, 2010 |
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Dec 19, 2010 18:51
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Petey posted:I mean, you can dice these things a million ways, and there are a billion different anecdotes and personal experiences. I see what you're saying, and I'm not trying to downplay that idea of advantages. I've certainly had a ton of advantages in my life, and I would never say that I bootstrapped my way to where I am - that's ridiculous. But the last couple of pages in this thread have made me kind of laugh, I guess. For me, if your kid is going to succeed, they'll succeed wherever they are.
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Dec 19, 2010 19:06
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On the west coast the best schools are pretty clearly public. Cal, UCLA, UCSD, Washington. Most of the UC schools are top tier. The only real exceptions are Stanford and Cal Tech.
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Dec 19, 2010 19:08
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Sophia posted:For me, if your kid is going to succeed, they'll succeed wherever they are. Absolutely. But the upper bound of success is set, or at least bent, by your opportunity. For example, lots of high schools have talented math kids. But only a subset offer the ability to cross-enroll at a community college if they tap out the math courses. And even fewer offer, for example, the AMC, which is the first test in a series of tests leading eventually to the USAMO and the IMO. Same goes for USNCO, USAPhO, USACO; the Siemens and Intel STS fairs; and so on and so forth. There is an entire constellation of elite academic programs that a comparatively tiny percentage of high schools (public or private) offer access to. One of my best friends in high school was a terrific engineer who went to Cornell and did very well. But my high school didn't even offer AP Physics B, much less PhysC, E&M, or Mechanics, or either of the top science fairs. He's doing fine now, but he could have really set himself apart. Obviously the standard for success is relative - you don't have to be a USAMO qualifier (one of the top 400 math students in the country) to be a success. Lots of people do fine. But one of the things I've come to learn is that the difference in academic opportunity between the best secondary educations in the country and even the good secondary educations is incredibly vast. It's insane. And it's something that, unless you have reason to learn about it, you'd never know. Anyway, this derail is longer than but not nearly as appetizing as tacochat so maybe we should just go back to agreeing that there are no jobs and everyone will die alone.
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Dec 19, 2010 19:23
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speaking of preftige http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19steinberg.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=prestige&st=csequote:Among the most cited research on the subject — a paper by economists from the RAND Corporation and Brigham Young and Cornell Universities — found that “strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution, and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time.”
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Dec 19, 2010 19:23
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Linguica posted:speaking of preftige http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19steinberg.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=prestige&st=cse Yeah BusinessWeek ran a similar ROI study, here is their listing of schools and their ROI: http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/bs_collegeROI_0621.html
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Dec 19, 2010 19:31
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I'll say the biggest thing about attending an "elite" school is that you're surrounded by tons of highly motivated people. Of course, the top people at MIT/Harvard/Stanford are going to be identical to the top people at ASU. It's the group of people in the middle that's the real difference. Going into fields like i-banking, consulting, medicine, and hard science is seen as expected, and that forces your expectations up to a higher level. I'll say a soft factor like that is more important than any additional research/extracurriculars you might have the opportunity to do attending a fancy school.
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Dec 19, 2010 19:47
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Petey posted:Well, IMSA is one of the best schools in the country, and the suburban schools like Naperville are terrific, but there are plenty of private schools that send kids to sexy places that you might not have heard of but they're still sending them. Of course if even if you go to one of the best schools in the country (  ) if you go to undergrad and law school at public institutions and then get a job working for the federal government, you've pretty much wasted all that advantage.
MaximumBob fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Dec 19, 2010 |
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Dec 19, 2010 20:52
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MaximumBob posted:Of course if even if you go to one of the best schools in the country ( And worse yet, you might end up a Bears fan.
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Dec 19, 2010 21:09
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Petey posted:And worse yet, you might end up a Bears fan. Let's be fair, next week anyone of any moral character is a bears fan.
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Dec 19, 2010 21:11
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I want to say the elite high school --> better undergrad sounds like a crock, but here's the thing: I come from a family that never went to college or stressed that stuff in the slightest. I went to a public HS and I had a good SAT and GPA and sports and poo poo, but I applied to exactly three schools: UW, NYU and USC. I applied to NYU and USC only because a chick I was into said she did. Sure, I had heard of Harvard, but I had no idea about good schools like Duke and Johns Hopkins. And I really had no clue whatsoever about this prestige idea. I love UW and everything with me and higher ed has worked out pretty darn good so far, but if those elite high schools do offer something, it's information on more possibilities after you're done there. I think that has value.
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Dec 19, 2010 21:45
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evilweasel posted:Let's be fair, next week anyone of any moral character is a bears fan. I had to express solidarity with a Steelers fan today. Do you have any idea what that does to a man?
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Dec 19, 2010 21:48
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Petey posted:Absolutely. But the upper bound of success is set, or at least bent, by your opportunity. In Florida, every public high school student can dual-enroll for free at any level of post-secondary education, including state universities. I did it my senior year because I had finished AP Computer Science my junior year, and the only high school credit I needed to graduate was another year of English, so the rest of my senior year was spent at FIU. Between that and AP credits, I got my BS in three semesters and a summer. funny story: Nobody told me how college courses were numbered, so I wound up taking my senior-level coursework for my BS my senior year of high school.
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Dec 19, 2010 22:40
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Honestly, I think the best thing you can do for your kids is strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly suggest that they take at least one, preferably two or more years off between high school and college. I went to one of those elite universities, and the number of people who didn't take advantage of the possible connections is probably like 90%, at least (me being one of them). You will get so much more out of college just by knowing what you want out of it. That can change, but you can't go in wanting nothing in particular. The attitude that we have here for law degrees - that you're loving stupid to go just to go - should really be the attitude for college, as well. And on prestige - the soft value of prestige is really, really high. When people perceive that you're competent in one area of your life, they assume you're competent overall, and much quicker to trust you. It's an in that will help you out in really subtle (and unsubtle) ways. This is less important if you're going corporate right away, but in any field where business is conducted more casually getting to be seen as someone who graduated from Harvard is awesome (ESPECIALLY internationally). No Wave fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Dec 19, 2010 |
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Dec 19, 2010 23:50
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No Wave posted:Honestly, I think the best thing you can do for your kids is strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly suggest that they take at least one, preferably two or more years off between high school and college. I went to one of those elite universities, and the number of people who didn't take advantage of the possible connections is probably like 90%, at least (me being one of them). You will get so much more out of college just by knowing what you want out of it. That can change, but you can't go in wanting nothing in particular. The attitude that we have here for law degrees - that you're loving stupid to go just to go - should really be the attitude for college, as well. This is true, gap years rule.
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Dec 19, 2010 23:54
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God, no. If they need time before college, do a PG year. A kid right out of high school taking a year or two off is asking for trouble.
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Dec 19, 2010 23:54
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Forever Zero posted:http://www.economist.com/node/17723223?story_id=17723223 The Economist posted:Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value).
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Dec 19, 2010 23:57
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So what does a typical 18 year old do to survive?
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Dec 19, 2010 23:58
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Petey posted:This is true, gap years rule. Edit: On the other hand, it made me really appreciate being in school, so I certainly worked hard to get good grades after that (moreso than I already did).
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Dec 20, 2010 00:01
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evilweasel posted:God, no. If they need time before college, do a PG year. A kid right out of high school taking a year or two off is asking for trouble. I think it depends on the student. For students who need to become more mature, a PG year is good. For students who are already pretty adult, there are some awesome gap opportunities nowadays. I know some students who spent 18 months in Mexico on Peace-Corps-lite opportunities, things like that. And then there's always just working, or starting your own business, or continuing to do research...etc
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Dec 20, 2010 00:44
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I have been able to compare and contrast (on an anecdotal level), because I went to a small rural public high school, while my wife went to a fairly big name East Coast private boarding school. I somehow managed to get into the same elite undergraduate institution that she did. However, there was an extreme difference in our first year and preparation for the undergrad institution. Pretty much everything she encountered she could say that she had already done, or had a good grounding in it from her high school. I, on the other hand, was basically blasted by everything. That tends to happen to you when your yokel public high school doesn't offer classes like "Calculus" and "Physics." My wife was simply much further ahead than I based on her private high school training, which was hugely different than mine. She had the opportunity to take every AP class (and managed to test out of just about everything). Meanwhile, I was getting blasted in my standard level calculus class (how I did not test in to the remedial level I'll never know). It tends to break your confidence a little bit when the prof says, "Who here hasn't done derivatives and integration," and you are literally the only one in the class who raises his hand. That was sweet, not that it has scarred me to this day or anything (okay, it has). That obviously translates to first and probably even second year performance. What people who talk about "pluck" and "working harder to pick it up and catch up" never seem to loving understand is that the kids who went to private school who literally have about 2-3 more years of worthwhile knowledge than you do aren't exactly sitting around on their asses do nothing. They're often working just as hard as you do, and making sure they keep that 2-3 years worth of advantage. Then there is the simple factor of grades - who on average do you think is going to do better in their first or second year? The kid from a junk public school who doesn't know a thing about calculus or physics or any foreign language, whose English teacher always gave them papers back with, "98 - Nice Work!" on it but never actually taught anything substantive, like not to overuse passive voice? Or the kid who went to a private school and got intense interaction with his teachers, who by the time he entered college had six years of French or some other language, who had been intensely trained in AP subject such that he was capable of acing all of them? Some times it is as simple as the ability to get easy As in the first couple of years. Our undergrad institution required that we take at least 1.5 years of a foreign language. My wife went in to class, her professor listened to her speak and told her not to bother coming back, as she spoke fluent French with a flawless accent. He told her he would just give her an A for each semester. Having six years of French will do that for you, as you started learning it in your early teens. Meanwhile, bumble gently caress from the sticks here had the distinct pleasure of competing with kids like that, while having no language background whatsoever. That type of superiority in prior training can (as I have seen it first hand) lead to superior grades, particularly in the first couple of years. So if you are undertrained by a crappy public high school (and realize that most people are not going to Stuy or some other "comparable to private" high school, they're going to some intercity dump, some generic "pretty good but not great" suburban public high school in some place like Indianapolis, or in large parts of the country, to crappy rural dumps like my high school), you are often immediately going to start off with a tangible GPA deficit in college compared to your peers. Those superior grades in the first few years (or even more) are obviously a huge boon and advantage to average GPA over the four years, and to getting in to the professional or graduate schools of your choice. For an even starker, straight up example, I was literally the only kid in my class who left the state to go to college - all of the other kids were in-state, and by far the great majority went to public state schools. Meanwhile, I took a look at the alumni email list for my wife's school year and it was stunning, A at Harvard, B at Stanford, C at Princeton, D at Yale, etc. Seriously, the kid who got into Brown was basically a disappointment and shame upon this school. None of this touches on the basic value of learning these things (higher math, languages) while you are in those magical teenage years where the mind is simply more supple and able to absorb these things completely. As anyone will tell you with languages in particular, for example, it is much harder (and some say even impossible) to learn them with a fluency and lack of accent in your late teens and twenties, compared to those magically early-mid-teen years. Now to end my rant with some realism (and to forestall an obvious point/question): yes, I realize that my school may have been particularly horrible, and I also realize there are plenty of private schools that are not particularly special (religious schools, for example, where the curriculum isn't any better, but the school achieves some religious need of the parents/child). But I'm more than willing to stick to my thesis as one that is generally applicable, even if not in each specific case. As to the why save for college part? Well, one reason, as was partially mentioned earlier by a couple of people, is if you are high income but not so high an income as to be able to (without pain) cash flow the tuition payments out each year. When you are in your forties or fifties and your kids are off to college, I think a lot of parents just want as a psychological matter (let alone financial) to be focused on getting to retirement in one piece. Dumping 1/3 of your $200,000k pre-tax (so roughly $130-140k after tax perhaps) salary into tuition, room, and board for a couple of kids doesn't help with that. Yes, if you have the money saved the college is going to take it. But from my experience with a lower class (or at least blue collar) family, the schools basically think that every cent the parents make that doesn't go to shelter, food, or clothes is available to pay the college. If I am at an income level where I know the college is going to expect me to cash flow it each year (or take out loans), I think I would prefer having the money ready to go in advance by having saved for 8-10 years prior, rather than the alternative. SlyFrog fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Dec 20, 2010 |
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Dec 20, 2010 00:47
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SlyFrog that's a pretty great anecdote and basically what I was attempting to communicate.
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Dec 20, 2010 01:20
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Phil Moscowitz posted:So what does a typical 18 year old do to survive? https://www.teenpussyabuse.com or the like I imagine. [NSFW, if it's a real link]
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Dec 20, 2010 01:30
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My public high school was different - if you went to UCONN, you were considered dumb. To the extent you weren't smart enough to get into Harvard, you were pushed towards expensive liberal arts colleges. All my friends went to schools like Univ. of Richmond, Lehigh, Muhlenberg, Wittenberg, Dennison, Gettysburg, Loyola, Lafayette, Kenyon... or schools like Wake Forest or Tulane. Just a lot of money wasted for not a whole lot of prestige in return but there was so much pressure to NOT go to the state schools and to go to the "best school" you got into. The return on my friend's expensive liberal arts degrees have really not been stellar. My cousin went to Deerfield and got rejected from Princeton and I still remember her crying, depressed, not wanting to go back to school, she'd told all her friends she was going to Princeton, she was the only one who didn't get in, it was the worst day of her life, blah blah. You would never have known she was already in at Brown from her craziness. It was just a completely different world. In a case of completely canceling out all your earned prestige with your bad law school decisions, one of my cousins went from Exeter to Harvard to Golden Gate School of Law and is now unemployed.
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Dec 20, 2010 01:56
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HooKars posted:My public high school was different - if you went to UCONN, you were considered dumb. To the extent you weren't smart enough to get into Harvard, you were pushed towards expensive liberal arts colleges. All my friends went to schools like Univ. of Richmond, Lehigh, Muhlenberg, Wittenberg, Dennison, Gettysburg, Loyola, Lafayette, Kenyon... or schools like Wake Forest or Tulane. Just a lot of money wasted for not a whole lot of prestige in return but there was so much pressure to NOT go to the state schools and to go to the "best school" you got into. The return on my friend's expensive liberal arts degrees have really not been stellar. Yeah this is what I was talking about in terms of the Suffolk paradigm, where people go to lovely private schools to avoid the state schools. Which is a pretty terrible decision. But I think most people are closer to the SlyFrog end of the spectrum, if not quite where he is.
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Dec 20, 2010 01:58
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Petey posted:SlyFrog that's a pretty great anecdote and basically what I was attempting to communicate. What I'd like to add to Slyfrog's story is merely the reinforcement of a point he made - the gap created by the divide in high school educational backgrounds is made worse by the fact that at elite undergraduate universities a lot of kids are going pedal to the floor all year long. I was a SlyFrog; my high school was a "high-flying" public magnet but even with that only six kids from my graduating class went to U of M and that was the best school anyone got into. When I got there I was very, very behind the curve. I was lucky because U of M doesn't have a tradition of insane study, but now that I'm a law student at Columbia there are days when I go to the library and there are kids there at 2:30 in the am who are wrapping up an entire evening from studying. At the top levels you can't outwork the crazies, and some of those crazies got elite preparatory educations. "Catching up" is not always a possibility even if you have masterful work ethic. If I'd gone to Columbia as an undergraduate I'm not sure I could have made it.
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Dec 20, 2010 02:38
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Everything Feces Starship says is true. In other news, I realized I missed an element on my environmental law final...
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Dec 20, 2010 03:27
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I'm posting from Butler right now. The work ethic at Columbia is insane and it's somehow sucked me in. I never used to be this way.
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Dec 20, 2010 03:34
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Holland Oats posted:I'm posting from Butler right now. The work ethic at Columbia is insane and it's somehow sucked me in. I never used to be this way. It's only the 1Ls
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Dec 20, 2010 03:48
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Holland Oats posted:I'm posting from Butler right now. The work ethic at Columbia is insane and it's somehow sucked me in. I never used to be this way. The first friday after school started in September, Butler was half full at 10 pm. Seconding that this place is insane and infectious.
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Dec 20, 2010 04:06
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SlyFrog posted:When you are in your forties or fifties and your kids are off to college, I think a lot of parents just want as a psychological matter (let alone financial) to be focused on getting to retirement in one piece. Dumping 1/3 of your $200,000k pre-tax (so roughly $130-140k after tax perhaps) salary into tuition, room, and board for a couple of kids doesn't help with that. Any child I raise will be guaranteed a free college education at the university of their choice, whatever the end result of cost to myself, as was the case with my parents' education and my own education. If you value education and believe in helping your children succeed, both for their benefit and so they can then support you in your old age, then it makes perfect sense. It's one thing if you make 40k/year, but anyone with 200k/year salary is fooling themselves if they think it's a burden. The financial and psychological freedom of being debt-free is enormous. Now, private high school education? I went to a fine public school that had plenty of Ivy Leaguers, it all depends on the quality of public education available. I have generally found that private high school education is more about family prestige and impressing family friends than tangible benefits.
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Dec 20, 2010 04:24
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MaximumBob posted:Of course if even if you go to one of the best schools in the country (
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Dec 20, 2010 04:27
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I'm in the process of listening to my first Bar Bri lecture of the study season. I seriously can't believe I have to do this all over again. And I have to fit it into my crazy work schedule somehow.
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Dec 20, 2010 04:41
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HooKars posted:I'm in the process of listening to my first Bar Bri lecture of the study season. I seriously can't believe I have to do this all over again. And I have to fit it into my crazy work schedule somehow. If you can think of a better way to prove that you're qualified to have the job that you've been working at for all these months I'd like to hear it
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Dec 20, 2010 04:45
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SlyFrog posted:Education post Also the guidance counselors sucked, but as you know that's true most anywhere.
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Dec 20, 2010 04:56
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HooKars posted:I'm in the process of listening to my first Bar Bri lecture of the study season. I seriously can't believe I have to do this all over again. And I have to fit it into my crazy work schedule somehow.
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Dec 20, 2010 05:07
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