Today’s topic is a little controversial. I’m going to be blunt and straight-forward as is my style, and if you’re offended, feel free to email me and tell me why.
Ivy League schools are expensive. Colleges like Harvard and Stanford cost easily $40,000 a year in books, tuition, housing, incidentals.
You multiply that over four years and you’re looking at close to $200,000 just to go to college.
Compare that to a public school like the University of Michigan. A whole four years at U. Mich would probably cost you somewhere around $50,000.
That’s a $150,000 difference! You could easily buy a house with that money. You could buy three brand-new BMWs. My parents knew this when they sent me, trust me.
So why do thousands and thousands of high school students year after year sweat and devote their entire lives to get into Ivy League schools?
Even if Ivy League schools cost half a million dollars to go, they would still be more than worth the monetary cost to go.
Not only will those invested dollars provide a higher monetary return over time, they’ll also provide a higher personal return over time.
Here are the reasons why:
You have an incomparable network of people who will be incredibly successful. They’ll be your friends, your peers, and your colleagues from all over the world. Eventually they’ll be your business partners, your running mates, your doctors, and your lawyers.
Now imagine if you went to UC Santa Cruz.
How many friends do you think will be doctors? How many will be lawyers? How many do you think will be running Fortune 500 companies?
The answer is not many. The value of that network only increases exponentially over time.
The second benefit is job opportunities on campus.
Think about what the top companies in the world, business companies like GE, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Procter & Gamble.
Where do you think these companies get the vast majority of their new hires, their latest job candidates?
It’s certainly not from the University of Florida.
The best and most prestigious companies in the world the year after year want to recruit students from schools like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Yale, and Princeton and not from the University of Texas at Dallas.
These job opportunities not only offer higher salaries and better benefits and more prestige, but they open the doors to future career opportunities that otherwise would be out of reach.
To be completely honest, you can go to a school like Boston University and still end up working at GE or Procter & Gamble, but it’s much harder because the opportunities are far fewer.
Even if you do get a great opportunity most likely it won’t be the same type of job and you certainly won’t have the same selectivity about where you work and the types of responsibilities that you have.
Finally on the point of career opportunities it’s simply far more prestigious to have a school like Yale or Cornell on your resume than it is to have a school like the University of Washington.
When you apply for jobs one of the first things that recruiters and resume readers look for is your educational background.
It’s no surprise to anybody that if you have Harvard on your resume, companies will take your candidacy a lot more seriously and you’ll probably be getting jobs at higher salaries than someone who went to a state school.
Now let’s move on to the actual experience that you have at an Ivy League school.
First, your peers, your fellow students, are just much smarter. This means that you’ll learn a lot more from them such as personal interests as well as academic interests. You’ll find people who are the best chess players in the world, the smartest chemistry students, the most knowledgeable high school students about current affairs.
Not only will they inspire you to expand your personal and academic horizons, they will show you the bar which you need to meet and exceed in order to be successful in life.
Think about your average public high school. In high school I wasn’t very motivated to work hard in part because it was so easy.
Classes weren’t hard, students didn’t work hard, and I just didn’t feel motivated…but it’s completely different at Ivy League schools. You’ll be much more excited to learn just for learning’s sake, and realize what you have to do to succeed.
Now let’s talk about the quality of resources at Ivy League colleges.
They simply have much more money per student.
This means far better professors at your disposal. Not only will you get a world-class education from some of the top professors in their fields whether that’s physics or medieval history, whether that’s contemporary art or computer graphics, you’ll have people who excel at what they do, teaching you exactly what they know.
Beyond that the schools themselves, schools like Yale or Cornell simply have more resources to devote to their students.
This is great for you because it means you have a lot more support in the form of career advice, study advice, exploration of personal and academic interests.
There are a lot more resources for you to do research on topics you care about. At Stanford I was fortunate enough to get a few research grants to travel to and study all sorts of interesting issues in Europe and the Middle East.
Ivy League schools aren’t for everybody. Some people find them extremely stressful because depending on the school, you may have a very competitive environment.
I certainly didn’t feel that way at Stanford, but you do hear that some schools are competitive.
It also depends on your major. For instance if you’re a premed major you can expect there to be a lot more competition for the best grades. Everyone wants to go to medical schools like John Hopkins, UCSF, and Stanford Medical School so they’re all fighting to be the best.
Ivy League universities can sometimes be overwhelming if you don’t deal well with stress.
Ultimately, there is actually nothing wrong with striving for the best. Ivy League schools, at least for high school students, are the epitome of excellence. If you have the opportunity to go to one, I would highly recommended you do so.
If you are very unhappy – I knew some unhappy student at Stanford who ended up transferring to public schools. If you’re really unhappy you can always transfer.
But at least you gave it a shot.
Applying to top colleges? Learn how average students can get into Harvard.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear MR.John Chang,
Having read through your website about becoming a successful Ivy league admit even though a person is an average joe, i couldnt help notice that your advice is for high school students looking for under graduate admisssions. I, on the other hand have already completed my undergraduate program here in India and am looking forward for applying to a good business school for my M.B.A.
Hence, I would like to know if your book would also be helpful for international students, like me, who have already completed their undergraduate program and would like to apply for a post graduate/ masters program in one of these prestigious institutions.
Looking forward for your feedback.
Thanks and Regards,
Ashraf Khan
[Reply]
John,
I agree with your analysis completely. I went to a state school for undergrad., and Stanford for graduate school. The Stanford name has exponentially increased my job security and career potential. However, I am years behind an undergrad. at one of these premier private schools, which could have landed me in a higher level position at an early age. I am still playing catch-up.
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Dude,
Stanford is NOT an ivy league school. Why is it that every website commenting on the status of the ivies throws Stanford into the mix?!
Stanford is a wonderful school, but it is NOT an ivy. There are EIGHT (count them) ivy league shools: Darmouth, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Yale, and UPENN. All of the ivy league schools are in the northeast region of the United States. Stanford is on the west coast.
So what have we learned today? When crafting an introduction to your article you want to avoid generalizations that will suggest incorrect information, esspecially when you are trying to sell a book which provides people with supposedly useful information.
Stanford is NOT an ivy!
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PoliticalBarbie Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Perhaps you should work on not being so grammatically incorrect; I believe it’s Dartmouth, not Darmouth.
So what have we learned today?! Dartmouth has a T.
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Marie Reply:
September 2nd, 2010 at 11:59 am
YOU’RE SO FUNNY. are you bitter cuz you didnt get accepted? >:)) its DARTMOUTH smarty pants >:))
[Reply]
Sorry to burst your bubble, but like the above poster has said, Stanford is NOT an Ivy League. Undeniably, it is a very good school, just not an Ivy.
I would like to point out that one can’t rely everything on his or her educational background when it comes to crafting a resume. Let me just say that aside from education, personality and experience also plays a key a role. The brightest minds on the Earth don’t always have the best communication skills. Who do you think an employer would hire: an Ivy League grad who lacks social skills with little job experience or a University of Florida grad who knows how to present and has worked as an intern?
[Reply]
I think the primary thing is that people are thinking about their futures beyond High School. Getting job training or a college degree from an accredited University will almost always take one much further than sole reliance upon a High School diploma.
I also want to say that while Stanford is not Ivy League many people put it into the same category as the Ivy League. The Ivy League has become synonymous with prestigious, well known schools the same way Hollywood has become synonymous with celebrity culture and the film industry although not all celebrities live in Hollywood nor or all films made there. Ivy League has more than one meaning; there is it’s literal definition and it’s much broader definition encompassing a variety of prestigious Universities.
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sorry buddy but stanford is not ivy league. there are eight all in the northeast part of the united states. you should make sure when you write an informational essay that all your facts are right because you become less and less credible with each fact(even if small) you mess up on.
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You only present one side of the argument. You fail to discuss the myriad ways $150,000 could be spent to enhance the post-graduate career of someone that performs well at a public school. The number of possibilities are pretty vast, if one puts your mind to it.
For some people, attending an Ivy makes all the difference. For others, it simply gets them their first job.
Finally, there are the people that attend a public college and an elite graduate school. Once you graduate from an elite professional school, your undergraduate degree won’t matter much.
Trust me, there are plenty of people who receive an elite undergraduate degree and then have perfectly ordinary careers. The people who have extra-ordinary careers tend to have ambition, drive, intelligence and good social skills. These people do not all have degrees from Ivy League
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I found this article completely ridiculous. Ivy League schools are great, but life isn’t entirely about education. I can personally say that if I went to an ivy league school, I would hate spending four years in a competitive atmosphere. I want my college experience to be spent making new friends, learning to live on my own, and learning to enrich my education. Ivy League may be competitive, but it’s not personally something I feel the need to strive toward. I’d be much happier at Ohio State in a comfortable, happy atmosphere. Not to say you can’t be happy other places, but Ohio could make me just as happy.
You mentioned GE. To be honest, GE doesn’t care much about where you went to school. My dad went to Wright State University and he ended up being one of the leading businessmen in the GE corp. He works hard, and it pays off. Ivy League does not prove he is worthy.
Life is about more than competing.
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