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Joined: Jul 2010
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People form social networks in college and sometimes find spouses there, as Princeton graduate Susan Patton recently wrote about. Part of the reason to send my children to an elite college, if they get in, is to meet future members of the elite and children of the current elite. For actual learning there is EPGY  . Susan Patton. I am sure her sons were thrilled with what she wrote. Yes, intellectual peers make good friends and spouses. You don't have to go to Princeton to find them.
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People form social networks in college and sometimes find spouses there, as Princeton graduate Susan Patton recently wrote about. Part of the reason to send my children to an elite college, if they get in, is to meet future members of the elite and children of the current elite. For actual learning there is EPGY . Susan Patton. I am sure her sons were thrilled with what she wrote. Yes, intellectual peers make good friends and spouses. You don't have to go to Princeton to find them. His point is that if you want to find intellectual peers (friends/spouses) who are economically and socially relevant, you should go to Princeton or another elite college.
Last edited by JonLaw; 05/17/13 05:22 AM.
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It seems there are different worlds that semi-coexist. In one world the word elite has meaning and trophies and social competition are all relevant. In the other world it is more about ideology and life and friend choices are made around factors like enjoyment, happiness, and the greater good.
What I don't understand is if one group believes in rubbing elbows, why is it the other goup that wears jackets with patches on the elbows?
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Joined: Feb 2011
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People form social networks in college and sometimes find spouses there, as Princeton graduate Susan Patton recently wrote about. Part of the reason to send my children to an elite college, if they get in, is to meet future members of the elite and children of the current elite. For actual learning there is EPGY . Susan Patton. I am sure her sons were thrilled with what she wrote. Yes, intellectual peers make good friends and spouses. You don't have to go to Princeton to find them. No, just graduate programs, as a general rule.  I have chosen irrelevancy, I suspect. Not only that, I've done so rather willfully. Well, that may just be a personal thing related to my personality, though; I tend to do most things fairly willfully. As a life philosophy, "Ohhhh yeah?? You're not the boss of me" has few things to recommend it, however.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Being serious for a moment, our considerations as we look into colleges for/with our DD are: a) cost b) academic reputation in preferred programs (tied for number one spot) c) breadth of instructional focus (we want something broad because of DD's particular intellectual interests) d) small size-- ideally under 5K students total e) NON-competitive and collaborative environment-- this is critical because of DD's kneejerk reaction to that kind of environment-- she actively recoils and responds VERY negatively to people she perceives to be self-promotional, glory-chasing, insufferably arrogant gits. You know, to use the technical term. f) NO graduate program-- or at most, an MS program. I want the focus of faculty to be on my kid-- not on the people teaching my kid. In other words, we're actually looking for a college which is LIKE Reed, but not filled with students who feel the need to "out-compete" one another. If we found the right regional public university program, we'd definitely do that. Touring one this weekend, in fact. My own alma mater-- which (at least in my own program) routinely sends 70-80% of its admittedly small number of graduates into tier 1 and elite graduate programs and medical schools. This in spite of being a no-name, inexpensive liberal arts college with a large focus on performance art and teaching. The STEM programs there have a reputation for turning out majors who have good common sense, are highly competent in the subject, and possess a can-do attitude in the lab. It's also not a set of programs where one can fall through the cracks easily-- the faculty really know the undergrads. Of course, many of our criteria mean that we can't use the filters on college search sites, because what we think is important isn't readily measured. Of course. When would we do something the easy way?? 
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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His point is that if you want to find intellectual peers (friends/spouses) who are economically and socially relevant, you should go to Princeton or another elite college. For a particular definition of "relevant."
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Ooo-- that's another zinger, isn't it?
Social relevance.
Like Moral Turpitude*-- yay! But even better. I wonder, is economically relevant roughly equal to economic significance?
*Please note-- I have cream this morning, and therefore, also coffee.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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e) NON-competitive and collaborative environment-- this is critical because of DD's kneejerk reaction to that kind of environment-- she actively recoils and responds VERY negatively to people she perceives to be self-promotional, glory-chasing, insufferably arrogant gits. You know, to use the technical term. I was a science major at Harvard. The environment was collaborative, with students discussing problem sets and not trying to show off in class (which would be pointless, since grades did not depend on class participation). But the element of competition, though latent, was there, and I think it's unavoidable. There aren't many tenure track professorships at research universities and staff positions at national labs. The world does not need many mediocre research scientists. Therefore only academic superstars should try to get PhDs. An advantage of going to a Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford etc. is that you get to compare your abilities to those of the best students in the country. Finding out that you are only mediocre in that crowd is painful but can save you half a dozen years of your life trying to get a PhD unless you have blinders on. Ahem.
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e) NON-competitive and collaborative environment-- this is critical because of DD's kneejerk reaction to that kind of environment-- she actively recoils and responds VERY negatively to people she perceives to be self-promotional, glory-chasing, insufferably arrogant gits. You know, to use the technical term. I was a science major at Harvard. The environment was collaborative, with students discussing problem sets and not trying to show off in class (which would be pointless, since grades did not depend on class participation). But the element of competition, though latent, was there, and I think it's unavoidable. There aren't many tenure track professorships at research universities and staff positions at national labs. The world does not need many mediocre research scientists. Therefore only academic superstars should try to get PhDs. An advantage of going to a Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford etc. is that you get to compare your abilities to those of the best students in the country. Finding out that you are only mediocre in that crowd is painful but can save you half a dozen years of your life trying to get a PhD unless you have blinders on. Ahem. You cannot be serious. I would like to put you in a room with my SIL who has her PhD in genetics and is teaching high school science (happily) now. She doesn't consider the years obtaining her PhD wasted because she isn't on tenure track at a major university.
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