Top Schools & Ivy League - What's the diff?

[tfg345i4u5lw]

What's the difference between them??? It depends on your perception.

If you don't know anyone who is from those schools and you are unhappy about your situation, you might see them as stuck-up preppy college kids who never had a real problem. If you actually know them and/or you aren't projecting anger towards strangers, you might appreciate them for their intelligence.

 

[tfg345i4u5lw]

Ivy League schools have students who are connected to old money: Harvard, Yale. Top schools are good places to learn how to work for those people who graduate from Harvard and Yale: MIT, Purdue, etc.

Not true. I know people from MIT and people from Harvard. My friend from MIT didn't have a single family member to graduate from college. My friend from Harvard was so poor he would eat other peoples left overs at school everyday.

 

[the]

Not true. I know people from MIT and people from Harvard. My friend from MIT didn't have a single family member to graduate from college. My friend from Harvard was so poor he would eat other peoples left overs at school everyday.

Your one example has changed my mind.

 

[tfg345i4u5lw]

Your one example has changed my mind.

Two examples... but whatever.

People only have negative judgements towards Ivy League kids because they probably aren't personalized with them. Personalize yourself with any genre of person and you lose the silly judgements.

 

[Radiantshadow]

I went to a fairly apt university. But i've always wondered about the top schools or the ivy league? What's the diff? How is the experience different? How is the level of satisfaction different coming from these educational environments? How is the classroom experience different? How is college life different?

Anyone?

I studied cognitive neuroscience at Brown University for a time before dropping out due to failing health. I can only speak for the people I met, obviously, but here are my experiences.

Most of my peers and professors were not elitist jerks; in fact, they were a pretty humble and persistent bunch. Ivy League schools receive the funding they do in part because of their academic rigor (which tends to produce excellent professionals), and there's really no time to spend stroking your ego if you want to keep your head above the water. Most of profs and students were quite happy to sit down and open up about their work, interests, and personalities with anyone curious enough to ask. Soundboarding was also quite frequent among both students and faculty in and outside of the classroom. There were a couple, of course, who touted either their IQs or their research expertise, but they were actively irritating and I believe their behavior is more a reflection of themselves than the institution in which they reside.

Others have already touched on the high quality of resources, illusion of wealth, and such, so I won't go there. What I do feel is worth contributing is the often neglected issue of mental health distress and disorder among the student population in Ivy League schools. Among the typical concerns of college students - like how to fit in, speaking across cultural and academic lines, trying to figure yourself out, and building/maintaining social relations - is the additional pressure to excel academically because of the prestigious culture surrounding Ivy schools. I personally know seventeen peers who have some combination of depressive, anxious, self-harming, or panic behavior as a direct result of the expectation that going to an Ivy means you have to be personally and professionally perfect. This is especially a problem among some Asian/Asian-American students, covered by Stanford here, who build a lot of their personal identity around cultural pressures to succeed at everything and end up either burning themselves out, developing depression, or, tragically, committing suicide. The overall perfection expectation itself is absurd, but it deeply troubles a lot of students (and faculty, presumably, who have their own set of concerns) who, like the rest of the people in the world, are mostly just trying to orient themselves in the world. The institutions demand a lot from their students and stress is seen as par for the course; consequently, little attention is given to help coping/recovery when healthy, productive stresses gives way to unhealthy and impairing stresses that complicate students' health and performance. No matter how intelligent or driven someone is, they are still human and possess vulnerabilities.

 

[Jalla]

I went to an Ivy League law school some years ago. As it happens, I did my last semester at a good but not "top" law school. So I actually have some basis for comparison. My experience was that the Ivy League school pushed students harder, somewhat with academics but even more so with networking and extracurriculars. However, the quality of instruction was a lot worse, the students were more competitive, and there was definitely more of a "sink or swim" attitude at the big school. There seemed to be an assumption going in that you were likely to be well-connected and from a family full of lawyers, so you would already know what to do for success. Also the professors had much, much bigger egos at the Ivy League school than at the less prestigious school, even though from what I can tell a lot of them were not all that good at either research or teaching, just very, very lucky to be there.

If you want to make connections and get a jump-start a fancy career, then definitely go Ivy League if you can. But if you are looking for a positive learning experience, you probably want to look elsewhere, unless status for the sake of status is your thing.