The cost of an Ivy League undergrad degree next year….

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic]So let’s start at the beginning.

First if you want to have a successful kid, best to mate with a very intelligent very well adjusted person.

In fact if you screw up at this stage it might all be over anyway.

Some lawyers say the trial is pretty much already decided in jury selection…before the case even begins. Same principle may apply to success for your issue.[/quote]

I’ve seen cases in which two really dumb parents have a really intelligent kid.
And I’ve seen cases in which you have two STEM parents that ends up having a kid that is completely opposite. Anyway 99% of you don’t need to worry because for the amount of work/effort you put in + whatever financial background you had from your family, chances are you did pretty well without being overly stressed about it.

Me, on the other hand, nothing ever came easy. And it was always frustrating that I always felt that I had to do twice as much work to get half as much accomplished that other people had it much easier than me, whether they were smarter, or if they had more resources at their disposal, or maybe they just had a personality that allowed them to get through just ok, because they could smooze much better than me and talk their way through things. If I could have avoided all that, and done just as well as peers, I would have avoided all that. Unfortunately, I never got those breaks. Hopefully, my kid doesn’t have to go through the same thing.

[scaredyclassic]

2. Breastfeed

[scaredyclassic]

3. Stimulate the little guy.

[scaredyclassic]

4. Teach them how to control themselves

[scaredyclassic]

5. Get the little bastid into Harvard Yale or stanford, or just cut em loose and try another embryo.

[NotCranky]

Highest gifted score at my kids school was the son of two uneducated immigrants who live in a converted garage in exchange for work. I think it was the Raven test. He got 99 or 100.
Another son of mine has a classmate, one of the brightest and best cared for of his peers, who has two very “have it together” Ivy parents. Her brother is autistic in a way that is going to severely limit his achievements, though he is a very nice boy. I think cases like these , across a spectrum of course, are really common.

[NotCranky]

Just an aside:
Many people with very high IQ’s are very unable to change their erroneous zones of logic on important topics. It sort of cripples them because they know they have delved into sophisticated arguments/topics well beyond what the ordinary person has. It makes it impossible to stop being fixated on wrong thinking, when a person of lower intellect can often improve in leaps in bounds.

Intelligence ain’t everything, it sometimes means that some people are just better at fooling themselves than others.

[scaredyclassic]

Those 2 immigrants both probably have good brains and recognized it in each other.

[scaredyclassic]

Idler

Link to the idler academy. I think they are accepting apps. Accordion studies. Gardening. Other impt. Stuff.

[CA renter]

[quote=flu]
99.5% of the population aren’t Bill Gates or Larry Ellison who don’t need college because (1) they are exceptionally brilliant AND (2) because their parents had money and were well connected.

As much as we would all like to think our kids are brilliant or exceptional, most likely they are average to above average at best and no where close Gates/Ellison. For the remainder of the 99.5% of us, it’s hard to argue that not going to college opens more doors/opportunities than those that do.

Often times, folks like to take the most success cases and extrapolate that as it is more common than the norm. For every Bill Gates/Ellison that didn’t “need” college there are several thousands that arguably could have done much better with better education. IF that wasn’t the case, this country wouldn’t have so many folks struggling financially working at a dead end minimum wage job indefinitely or the majority of people in this country stating that the american dream is dead. If you look at a lot of these cases, you can’t help but ask if these folks would have been better off with some better education, because many of them barely graduated from high school. What we do know is with their limited education and limited skill set, they remained stuck at their predicament.

Even IF you were able to succeed without higher education decades ago, that was then. This is now. This world will increasingly get more competitive. The world is a lot smaller, with more people hungry competing for the same resources. It’s estimated than in Asia, top rank universities are pumping out 1 million highly educated STEM degree graduates EVERY YEAR, not including them ones from Eastern Europe, Russia,etc. These are people who are going to be more educated and more knowledgeable over the next decade. Call it evolution or call it modern day version of darwinism.

So, yes, you will need to help your kid(s) out as much as you can by opening as many doors as you possibly can, without breaking your wallet.

This is especially the case if your kid(s) don’t have the personality to compete or driven to complete something no matter how difficult something may be nor understand that moving forward things aren’t going to be easily “given” to them on the global scale, as it might have been more readily “given” to their parents or grandparents, when there was much less competition. My kid is one of with a personality that unless something drastically changes, my has zero competitive bone in their body, so things are going to be tough for my kid, unless somehow we can even the score a bit.

Two part plan is

(1) helping open doors for your kid(s) to survive on their own in their endeavors, whatever it maybe
and
(2) as a backup plan, setting up a trust fund for your kid(s) and teaching them how to manage their money well so they can live off of it case whatever reason things from plan #1 goes south, which these days is an increasing possibility.

#1 is under attack by global competition and #2 is under attack by those that haven’t planned for their kids future and now wants to wealth redistribute it back to make up for deficiencies, some of which was self-inflicted by being facetious and giving up opportunities that were available when times were good, simply because “(someone) didn’t like it”.

Folks that want to gamble with those odds and think their kids are going to be in that exceptionally 0.5% brilliant category also have the money to back up their kid’s dreams and forgo college because they think “they don’t need it”…Go for it. Good luck.

No politician from any party is ever going to “fix” this, because it’s not a problem that probably can be “fixed”

FWIW: founder of GoPro graduated from UCSD. While also brilliant, part of his success can be attributed to his dad’s help: his dad is/was an investment banker. Bill Gates parents were close friends with Warren Buffett. This is not to detract these brilliant people’s accomplishments, because even with that much help, majority of folks from (wealthier) background still wouldn’t have obtain the successes of Gates/Ellison etc. But let’s face it. With that sort of financial support from their parents, it’s kinda hard for them to screw up, short of a being a drug addict.[/quote]

Agree that college can usually open up more doors for your average student. Just pointing out that the elite universities cherry pick the students who are already most likely to succeed. Even state colleges filter out those who are least likely to succeed; though their standards are less stringent than the Ivies, they still require certain GPAs and SAT scores in most cases.

So, do colleges create better, more successful people, or do they simply certify those who are already smarter, more driven, and more likely to succeed?

FWIW, “globalization” has existed for most of human history. And societies consisting of a few wealthy people/families who are served by the remainder of the population who lives in relative poverty has also been the norm throughout history, with a few notable exceptions. We (the masses of working people) are not getting poorer because of increased competition, we’re getting poorer because wealth and power are being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands as the benefits of increased productivity get “redistributed” from the workers to the owners of capital.

[fun4vnay2]

Very Aptly said CAR.

I see that with time, the class disparity is gonna increase a lot. Just look at the stats for the last 25 years.

Regarding Ivy League, I wonder if the Ivy League starts taking students with low GPA etc etc and see how successful their students are.

Personally, I don’t think the Ivy league makes students successful since most of these students are pre disposed to be successful anyway as they have strong work ethic evident from their high school grades/work. It’s a cycle which feeds itself.

[joec]

[quote=flu]Speaking of which

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/09/technology/google-people-laszlo-bock/index.html

“Google doesn’t care where you went to college”

When the company was small, Google cared a lot about getting kids from Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. But Bock said it was the “wrong” hiring strategy. Experience has taught him there are exceptional kids at many other places, from state schools in California to New York.

“What we find is the best people from places like that are just as good if not better as anybody you can get from any Ivy League school,” said Bock, who just authored a book titled “Work Rules!” and stopped by CNNMoney to share his smarts.

Every year, 2 million people apply to get a job at Google (GOOG). Bock himself has seen some 25,000 résumés.

So what else does Google not care about:

Grades: Google’s data shows that grades predict performance for the first two years of a career, but do not matter after that.

Brainteasers: Gone are interview questions such as: Why are manhole covers round? or How many golf balls can fit in a school bus? “Our research tells us those questions are a waste of time,” Bock said. “They’re a really coachable skill. The more you practice, you get better at it.”

A shoe: “Somebody sent me a shoe once with a résumé tucked inside because they wanted to get their foot in the door.” That one didn’t work.

Or a robot: Especially when it arrived broken, with exposed wires and a “press here” button. Call in the bomb squad.

My take on this is simply. Google has grown up. Once a small company heavily dependent on “the best” techies, it no longer needs “the best”… Good enough is fine now, because a few select individuals now tell the rest of the employees what to do. “The best” is also subjective.[/quote]

I think a lot of viewpoints are based on your own experiences…As someone who has interviewed multiple times at GOOG and never getting in (and eating lunch with Sergey too!), during the PRE-IPO days, your views tend to be biased to your own past. Back when I interviewed there, your degree mattered a lot and when you are someone who feels they start hitting the glass ceilings in your career, then that’s when you think “something” is keeping you out from the top jobs and leadership contacts. I saw it a lot in companies and even though I had no real trouble finding work back then, it still kept you out from a lot of the “hot” startups.

Some people here are ok with “decent” and “ok” jobs, but if you want to achieve the most you can (and want that for your kids so they have more choice in life), then like flu has said, the Ivy’s are probably more likely to help you than to hurt you.

You can end up with the same success as the next guy, but at least you can say the Ivy wasn’t something which held you back…

In terms of doing good for the world, I also know of some family who are very high level at a lot of the aid organizations (Red Cross, etc…) and if you come from a private or top school, you may want to do good, but you can be the ones setting the policy and traveling to all the far off places in the world to help…So yeah, an ivy or top private school helps more in that field too.

As I’ve mentioned before and repeated here, when you go to some of these schools, the admissions folks already weeded out the non-achievers so you’re mostly going to school with the top future leaders and execs of the world. Yes, some joe schmo can start a business and be a millionaire or multi-millionaire from a state school, but the odds are against you.

As it was also mentioned, a lot of the college drop outs or the GoPro guy came from wealthy means. I personally think if GoPro guy was accepted at an Ivy, he may have went, but he did like to surf and not much surfing back east I don’t think.

Also, I read (on the wiki page) that the last 4 presidents ALL went to an Ivy at some point in their educational career.

If you want your kid to be prez someday, going to an Ivy isn’t going to hurt them again.

Ultimately, there is an expensive cost and everyone will decide on their own if it’s worth it for their kids…but as someone who felt “limited” for whatever reason (maybe it wasn’t even the school, course, my parents suck in terms of guidance and help too)…so some of us are probably meant to be mediocre and that’s it. We can only try to help and hope our kids will do better than us.

[nla]

Well said @joec!

[scaredyclassic]

I guess “better” all depends where you’re coming from. The last thing I’d wish on my kids is some “top” law school and a status seeking law career.

When I think of a better life for my kids, I think of them having their head in a certain place.

Like for instance on our family trip, I was starting to lose it at the end of our trip in in the taxi ride when the driver got a little lost. All my kids were perfectly calm after a long trip. My oldest talked me down and through my little meltdown.

“Just go limp, pa. It’s ok”.

Hope he can be there to help me die…he was awesome…got me right off the ledge…

[Coronita]

[quote]
As I’ve mentioned before and repeated here, when you go to some of these schools, the admissions folks already weeded out the non-achievers so you’re mostly going to school with the top future leaders and execs of the world. Yes, some joe schmo can start a business and be a millionaire or multi-millionaire from a state school, but the odds are against you.
[/quote]

You would be surprised about this. (flame suit on). In my observation, there were a few different ways to get into an Ivy League school.

1. By hard work academically, with some extracurricular things. Even, if you wanted to be the nerdiest science geek imaginable.
2. By some athletic achievement. Even though eventually, weren’t going to pursue an athletic career, once you got it, you had mobility to pursue a degree even though academically you probably wouldn’t have gotten in.

3. By having money and from a family with connections. You couldn’t be horrible academically, but you could get away with being average. Chances are, you would have been waitlisted for admissions. But surely, you would have gotten in during the waitlist period.

4. You met the criteria to fit some quota number. Several of my engineering classmates fit that category, and a lot of them nearly flunked out and/or transferred out of their engineering degree after 2 years. Those that ended with a C- from an Ivy League school with little connections (family or friend) had a real tough time finding a job post grad, partly due to the economy at that time, but partly since at that that time some employers couldn’t literally recruit students below a grade threshold, no matter what school they came from.

That said, having volunteered with the admissions board as a student member, we knew the concept of “weeding out” was very subjective. I, for instance, was wait-listed for admissions for just about every Ivy I applied for. And when when I was finally accepted, I thought it would be extremely difficult academically. But I graduated top 5% of my class, and had no problem finding an internship during my first 3 years, and had no problem finding a job any engineering company that I applied for as a backup (wall street firms was a different story). Meanwhile a significant portion of my graduating class (the ones that did survive, many didn’t) didn’t find something meanful and went on to post grad work because there was no better option (that was the day that Sun Microsystems/Netscape/Yahoo was considered hot, Qualcomm was considered a scrapy telco company, and Motorola was still #1).

So sorry, I don’t buy the concept of Ivy League’s “weeding out process”…Especially, if you’re asian+male, you’ll probably realize, well at least until recently, you’re already at a slight disadvantage, especially if you are trying to pursue something STEM related. And only recently, is it somewhat changing if you are asian+male, but mainly if you’re from overseas, probably with parents with money that can pay for full tuition or more, kinda like what the UC system is doing these days. For me, personally, I think I was a rule breaker, some punk kid at the time that the school (almost) wrote off.

If you(your kid can get in), great. If they can’t, it’s not the end of the world.

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