Yale Shmale
Lakehead University has this great new advertising campaign to try to attract young students to its rather small school in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The ad has made the news with some controversy, although personally I think that it's not only a great ad campaign, but it's also true. Ivy League schools do not necessarily produce smarter graduates than smaller universities. Admission to Ivy League schools isn't necessarily determined by one's intellectual potential either--at least not when daddy's trust fund is a source of the donations that allow the big schools to stay big. And when daddy is a governor or president, as Dubya's daddy was, is it really that surprising when someone not quite up to par makes it through with a diploma in hand anyway? Ditto for Dubya's drinking daughters. So why is the ad controversial? What's wrong with a little truth in adversting for once?
Pantagruelle published so as not to perish @ 22:14
10 marginalia
10 Marginalia:
I think it's a pretty funny ad, and not one that I find offensive or innappropriate. I definitely agree that the Ivies (full disclosure: I went to one) do not necessarily turn out smarter grads than smaller schools--and I'd be the first to tell you about all the ways in which the big schools are *worse* for many students than smaller, no-name ones.
That being said, it's really not true these days that a big trust fund or having a parent who's an alumnus will get you in. Are there a *few* people roaming the campus like this? Yes. But they're very few, and they're made fun of by the other students. The Ivies are actually a pretty rigorous meritocracy (this was NOT true in the 1960s, when Dubya was there), which means that there are a sizable number of students from poorer backgrounds--I had several friends who were first-generation college students, including my roommate, who grew up in a trailer in a tiny Maine town with her single mother, who worked at a fish plant.
Most high school students who get into a school like Yale are really, really smart. The PROBLEM is that a number of them are nuts--they've been groomed for success for years by their parents, and don't take failure well. They can be grade-grubbers, already angling for a top law or medical school from their first semester freshman year. The other problem is that there are surely equally smart students out there who bombed in high school, but who have a lot of potential; the likelihood is that they wouldn't get in, while a crazy, strung-out 18-year-old from Manhattan who'd been prepping for the SAT since age 9, would.
That's the problem with a meritocracy: you can't test for potential. And when "merit" = test scores and high school grades, the system has some serious built-in flaws.
Hi Flavia,
Thanks for your comments. Admittedly, I'm an Ivy too (or at least the Canadian version of one, be that as it may), but definitely not of the trust-fund variety either, and a lot closer to the fish plant than I'd care to think about. I guess I'm a bit ambivalent about the Ivies since I see a lot of those grade-grubbing, primed to succeed since age 9 types in the undergrad classes I taught, and the trust fund kids driving big cars, decked out in all the latest gear, and living in bigger apartments than me, and I'm just awe-struck by it all. On the other hand, I would have given anything to have had that kind of undergrad experience myself, although I know that I benefited in other ways from my small undergrad school, and in the long run it hasn't hindered the rest of my career (so far at least!). I don't think the Ivies I've taught were all smarter than the small-school people from my undergrad, but I do think that they were exposed to more and pushed harder, and that is benefitial to those who go on to grad school, since grad school inevitably has to be a big school too.
Hey, not all Ivies are alike . . . don't diss them all. ;-)
And getting in isn't the issue, it's being able to afford it. I didn't get in to Yale, and I desperately wanted to go. I had two high school friends who did get in, and they both went to the local State institution because it was cheaper.
That said, I'm very impressed with my non-Ivy students here in the South, but their parents are paying just as much (if not more) for their education.
Yep, I got into a better school for my undergrad too but had to go to a smaller one for financial reasons. I regret that I couldn't got to my first choice because of the money issue, but I'm glad with how things turned out in the end.
And, yeah, you're right about the cost these days. I'm so glad I went through undergrad 10 years ago. It was bad enough then; I don't know how people afford it now!
All that said, I'm still all in favour of dissing George W.!!!
Oh, and the Ivies were created as a sports league anyway. There are plenty of great institutions with 15% acceptence rates (like the Ivies) that aren't "Ivy League," and even some (at least one) Ivy League school that don't always come off as particularly Ivy-league in the preppiest sense.
Of course this would be the one I went to as an undergrad. And this bitchy woman I met once tried to tell me it wasn't an Ivy League school, at least not like Princeton. I kept saying "Yes it is it is in the Ivy League," and she kept saying "But it's not *Ivy League* per se." WTF?
From this experience I had to confront the peculiar fact that my school being *in* the Ivy league actually mattered to me in some way, but only because it felt like the only one that didn't fit and therefore deserved to be included most.
One of the things that I find funny about this ad (although I'm all in favor of mocking Bush at every opportunity!) is that, actually, Bush is on record as pretty much hating Yale. . . in part because it went and got all meritocratic in the late 1960s and 70s, and the sons of the ruling elite were no longer guaranteed a place to hang out and play drinking games with each other. I think I read somewhere that he hadn't set foot on campus in decades--and I think also that he hadn't donated much if any money?--until he did so grudgingly after his one daughter got accepted.
And Muse: I can't believe what a bitch that woman was! The appropriate response can only be to outsnob: "Really, what colleges are Ivy League, these days? Princeton hasn't been the same since Scott Fitzgerald was there."
Awesome website.
I just discovered it, how sad. All those great posts I most probably missed.
I also just wanted to point out how great it is to find some very intelligent anglophones that are openly "souverainistes".
Keep up the good work, pantagruelle, and drop me a line or two if you have time... they say I could also identify myself as a poet.
Je te souhaite une très agréable journée!
Merci, Redsaber! C'est ben gentil!
I am hampered by not having Ivy League credentials. Employers and professional schools kiss the butts of the never had a job Ivy graduates whose summers consisted of European travel or riding around with friends in their Jeeps.
I had to WORK while at a STATE university. I had to attend an INFERIOR state dental school, also while working. My father would NOT fill out an FAF because it cost $15. TRUST FUNDS ARE GOD to the admissions officers. Nice to have tuition PAID by someone else and NEVER work a day in your life.
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