ARE IVY DEGREES WORTH THE SACRIFICES

ending their kids to ivy league universities is the dream of every Asian American parent. Or so it seems. And there is no shortage of young AA willing to oblige. As of 2000, Asian Americans made up 12-19% of the undergrad enrollments of the top-20 ivies.
     No one questions the prestige associated with ivy degrees. In fact, sneer critics, that's the only thing bought with the extra money. And even that, they add, is wearing thin in a nation in which he cultural center of gravity has shifted to California.
     It's true that investments in high ivy tuitions often don't show up in career earnings when compared with graduates of public universities of comparable student body profiles. But the criticisms run deeper than return on investment. Some Asian Americans who have attended ivy league colleges have come away regretting their decisions for other reasons.
     Foremost is the sense that the ivies are structured for the benefit of legatees, the progeny of blueblooded alumni. Comprising upwards of 40% of some ivies, the legatees are often exempted from stringent admissions standards. The result is that AA students with excellent credentials are the workhorses preserving the institutions' high academic reputations, thereby giving a free ride to undeserving legatees.
     Another common complaint is that the deck is stacked socially against Asian males in a system designed to preserve the princely status quo of the scions of WASP families. A disproportionate number of attractive AA females are admitted by the ivies, some have observed, while far fewer attractive AA males are admitted. This subtle bias, suspect critics, is implemented in the screening interviews used by most ivies.
     Then there's the Eurocentric worldview imposed by the courses. Not to mention the lousy weather, bland food and having to put up with locals hostile toward Asians. Contrast all this against the majority-ease lifestyles enjoyed by the AA in, say, the UC campuses.
     The bragging rights an ivy education affords parents, conclude critics, are far outweighed by the psychic and emotional sacrifices exacted from their kids.
     Does an ivy education provide rewards commensurate with the sacrifices? Or is it a trap for AA with overzealous parents with old-world views?

(Updated )

As long as rich people continue to send their kids to Ivies, they are still worth going to.

Parent's often send their kids to school simply based on "prestige" and an opportunity for their kids to hobnob with other rich children. I can't deny that you could get better "education" for your money at other places however.
ka
   Monday, May 06, 2002 at 07:16:07 (PDT)
Asian Dominator,

Should we asian make a Howard or some other exclusive ethnic university? I don't think that is the direction for asians in American.

Look most of these university you can request not to study Greek or Roman liturature as classics and look for other replacement classes. It takes a bit of fighting, but it is possible. If you're in a specialized/honors program in these schools, then it is even more plausible. You just have to get the academic counselor on your side. And remember Universities are in general very liberal. The way I did it was to say, I'm not interested in Greek classic, I think I would be able to get more out of a first year graduate level asian studies course.

Look the fact is these brand name schools are helpful in the job market. Just make the most of it, and work the system to your advantage.
AC Dropout
   Monday, May 06, 2002 at 06:28:03 (PDT)
There's no question that anyone who gets into an Ivy and can afford it should go. It's not a matter of bathroom size or the state of repair of a building or another.

What is critical is the people you meet and the networks you build in this exceptional talent pool you become part of, the exposure to excellence, and the added status. Any guy will tell you that when a non-Ivy girl asks what school he attends and hears it, her eyes light up. The same happens with strangers, acquaintances, potential in-laws.

I can only believe that anyone who writes Ivys off either are alums who don't appreciate what they have or Ivy rejects who are in denial of the superior Ivy experiece.

gzus in NYC
   Sunday, May 05, 2002 at 14:18:01 (PDT)
Chris (Poet/Warrior),

Hey, hey, from Stanford to Oxford, there are no better places you could have ford-ed!!

I graduated with a Ph.D in English last year (OK, a D. Phil--we're the only ones in the UK who call it such). I was a Hilda-beast (down the bridge from Maud-len) but worked with a supervisor over at Exeter. Because I was mostly at the Bod, I hung out at the Blackwell's cafe, the Grand Cafe on High St. (rt. by Univ.), the History Faculty lounge, Shimla Pinks (on Turl) and Convocation Hse.

Would you believe that even tho' I had heard of Freud's, I never knew where it was until my last year there? (All I remember was something about a brawl between some Arthur Andersen employees and students when Andersen was recruiting, hee hee.)

Yes, there's Mayday, where undergrads try to jump off Magdalen br. In fact, in my first year, one Hilda-beast (not me) did it--naked, which was "covered" (pun intended) by the Sun and other tabloids). (Since then, they've sealed off the High St. on Mayday.)

The interesting thing was that even tho' I never failed to see more than a few drunk on Mayday morn, still dressed in tails and ballgowns, none of my undergraduate students seemed to participate in it even tho' they looked like the fun-loving types (especially as they were relatively unpressured 2nd years). I remember last year they were supposed to hand in their assignments that morning, thinking "I bet only half are going to turn in their assignments." In fact, all of them managed to turn them in on time!

Were you studying musicology there? I had a friend who was doing a D.Phil on 17th./18thc. opera.

Asian Dominator,

Agree with some of the remarks on the grade inflation at Ivies: I read somewhere that some 90% of Harvard grads graduate w/ Latin honors. (The 10% must feel like dorks...)

My modest proposal? I think they should adopt Oxbridge ways, give huge finals at the end of their final year, have the examinees identified by nothing but a candidate no., with each of their exams graded by two specialists in their field. But even then, despite the fact that only 5% to 25% get firsts (an A average), depending on their subject, you still get the old-timers griping about grade inflation: "In MY days, there were barely any firsts!"

True, conditions could be improved at the Ivies and Oxbridge. Sometimes the toilets in the celebrated Bodleian library didn't work so you had to go to another one of their branches to use their facilities. (Of course, British plumbing could hardly be said to be state-of-the-art!)Which meant going back up to the reading room, grabbing your coat, climbing back down the stairs, and then walking about a 100 yards to another branch, going down more stairs to use the dankest and smelliest john you could ever imagine. Not fun.

As for the Euro-centric program. It's not all useless to those of us who are ethnic minorities. As long as we live in the West, we do need to understand how Western thought works: we should have some basic understanding as to how Westerners have crafted their own mythologies of "us" vs. "them" and how they've legimitated themselves. (So we can beat them at their game, mwahahahah!) And of course, we know that having a knowledge of the rhetoric of civil rights from the 18th century onwards is helpful too: after all, were it not for an Anglo (both American and British) language of rights from the late eighteenth century, Martin Luther King and others who've felt as disenfranchised would have had an even more difficult task in the 1950s and '60s articulating their ideas. (This is not to deny King's originality in any way, but just to say that his rhetoric belongs to a (Protestant Dissenting) Lockean tradition.) But I do think that the Ivies--if not ALL--schools should begin teaching more non-Western literature and history AS WELL AS Western literature and history.

Sorry for the long-winded post!
Asian Dominatrix
   Sunday, May 05, 2002 at 13:09:02 (PDT)
Is an Ivy degree worth it? No. Buying an Ivy is like buying a Jaguar. The name has clout and the car might even look good, but underneath, it's busted all over. Take Columbia for example, a school with half of its offices either underground or squeezed into which ever open hole within its old, decrepit, sagging excuses for buildings. Some places look like whole extracted sections of the Bronx community college. This is in an age when lesser know institutions are figuring out how to please students by building new state-of-the-art facilities, handing out lap-tops as official policy, and at least ensuring that most of juniors and seniors can have a single for a room (a lotto prize at Columbia, where there is always a line waiting for the use of the coveted single-toilet men's bathroom in Hamilton or for a seat in the petite and cute little computer rooms). Services are horrible, with cursing nurses straight out of the Harlem School of Hardknox. The food satisfies the soul much in the same way as a rigid, repressed nun satisfies you during sex. In fact, Ivies are rather like a woman who doesn't have any sexual skills. It's way too pretty to have to do any of those nasty stuff in order to please. Or so it thinks.
...I can rant on and on about the Euro-centric core curriculum with its "Masterpieces of Western" this and that, the not-so-impressive academics, and the total cluelessness of the administration on the need to service the student.
Brown allowing all classes to be taken on a pass/fail basis and Harvard's easy As?...comon, what are we paying for? These are institutions that basically serve to give oral pleasure to WASPs and blue bloods. These kids' moms and dads are willing to pay for the price for joining the country club, but should we? It's time to be real.
Asian Dominator
   Saturday, May 04, 2002 at 23:29:41 (PDT)
Just wanted to say "Go Stanford Cardinal!" (We're the 'un-Ivy'.)

Also, to Asian Dominatrix--did I hear correctly that you're a graduate student in English Lit at Oxford? Which College? I did some undergrad work over there at Magdalen and St. Cats, and then as a graduate student I was a Fulbright Scholar in London (at the Royal College of Music). So do you hang out at Freud a lot? Last time I visited, all the Stanford exchange students liked to hang out a place on High Street called...Tosca? Something opera-related... I'll bet the weather must be starting to look good these days (but it's probably still chilly). And my memory's a bit foggy, but shouldn't this be the time of year when drunk and reckless undergrads go jump off of Magdalen Bridge for May Day? Isn't there a parade or something on High Street? Ahh, the memories.
Chris (Poet/Warrior)
fearless1976@yahoo.com    Saturday, May 04, 2002 at 01:13:19 (PDT)

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