“Do I really need to go to an Ivy League school to be successful”, you might ask?
Bottom Line: No, you don’t. Unless you’re trying to look good to elites in the attempt to join them, don’t bother and save your money.
Also: Remember that the need for your education is the acquisition of marketable skills. One can acquire them far more cheaply elsewhere.
With the decades-long mantra of “just go to college” drilled into the heads of young people goes a corollary of sorts, “if possible, make sure it’s a really good university”. Let alone that the first mantra has all sorts of problems with it. Let us focus on the corollary for now. Most people see the Ivy League schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Cornell) as the be-all/end-all of college; the most prestigious of schools; a sign that you’re really on your way to “making it”. But do you really need to attend one to “make it”?
First of all, what makes for a prestigious school? Are the professors at these schools that much more brilliant than at, say, Big Ten or even SEC schools? Moreover, are the students that graduate from the Ivies that much smarter than those from state universities in Middle America? Most reasonable people in the real world (i.e., practical people) would think that this would be the valid measuring stick for such prestige.
Turns out that those who rank such schools do not use such a means of measuring for this apparently arbitrary prestige. It turns out that research is what leads to these high rankings in the first place, not the teaching of students.
That’s the dirty little secret of the Ivy League schools. Full professors realized long ago that research is where they get their prestige among fellow academics and can make the most money. Teaching gets in the way of all of that. Thus, full professors at a Harvard, for example, farm out most of the teaching to associate profs and to teaching assistants (who are graduate students themselves).
If a student ever does take a course from a full professor at an Ivy League School, it’s going to be within said professor’s narrow focus of research, not something more fundamental that will benefit the student better. Worse yet, students are often given a cafeteria-style course offering based on what the professors choose to teach instead of a structured curriculum that, again, will better benefit the students. The upshot is that students are offered courses like the history of motion pictures (all nice and sundry, to be sure), but have no options for learning about the history of Great Britain or even of America.
This is how young people these days graduate from the most “prestigious” colleges in the land without knowing anything about World War II or the Cold War. That’s a lot of money paid for a very sub-standard education.
Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University pointed out how former Clinton Secretary of Treasury Lawrence Summers tried to reform the curricula offered at Harvard, and the faculty essentially ousted him in revolt.
This is why I contend that I received a much better education at a Big Ten school (Purdue, specifically) than I could have received at Harvard. Yes, plenty of TA’s taught courses there, but so did many full professors. My Intro to Medieval Europe course, for example, was taught by a full-blown Carolingian scholar, for example. My economics course was taught by the most revered professor of farm management at the School of Management. Elsewhere in the History Department of the then-School (now College) of Liberal Arts, some of the most popular courses were taught by some of the most-published professors. One great example is Professor Randy Roberts: all the students loved his course on the history of WWII, and he has written a treasure trove of highly readable history books. It’s also worth noting that broad, fundamental courses – foundations upon which students could build more specialized knowledge in more advanced courses — were offered every semester.
Can Ivy League schools offer some value? Yes, if you go to grad school there (that is, in S.T.E.M., or in Finance/Accounting), but even then, one must still strictly follow the guidelines for even considering grad school.
So, if your education from an Ivy League school will be overrated at best, what’s the point? Good question. First of all, remember that your primary focus is to gain marketable skills, which these days, are not earned through liberal arts courses. Second, unless you’re trying to kiss up to a bunch of elites in the attempt to try to join them, attending an Ivy School is a waste of time and money. You’ll likely get a better education at a state school, and spend less money, too. Such is a far more efficient and effective way for all of us to learn and grow together.