The Harvard Mystique

So the Dean of Admissions for Harvard is currently answering questions on the education page of the NYT. It's fascinating to see the list of over 900 questions (so far). At least 50% of them are from parents and are either about the perfect child who got 2300 on the SATs, feeds orphans, is captain of the hockey team and was the MUN rep to some international convention, while maintaining a 4.0 and getting 5s on 5-6 AP exams, but somehow was rejected by Harvard, or else the letters are about the genius 4-year-old who is currently enrolled in French, tap dance, and pre-calculus and who the parents feel is a shoe-in for the Harvard class of 2023. The other letters tend to deal with the fairness of legacies, affirmative action and giving spaces in an American university to foreign students.

What interests me is the perceived attitude that Harvard is somehow a magical place, and that not going to school there will somehow destroy the lives of these children. It is particularly intersecting because many of the parents and students at my school feel the same way. Among the Korean families particularly, there is an idea that there are only 5-6 universities that matter, and that failure to attend one of them will result in lifelong shame and poverty. The rumor is that there is actually a written list that all of the parents have. Harvard is at the top of the list, of course, followed by Yale, Georgetown, Berkeley, University of Chicago, and one or two others. No small liberal arts schools are on the list, so a top ranked school like Amherst or Hamilton is not considered acceptable. Even the free ride to Colgate one of our students received was looked down upon because it wasn't from one of the schools on the list.

I argue with students about this all the time, but it seems to be a losing battle. They are looking for a name university, because they feel that having Harvard or Yale on the resume with somehow help them in the future. I point out that one of the teachers at our school has a degree from Harvard, and I have a degree from a not terribly prestigious Catholic university in Chicago, but we both teach in the same school, and get paid from the same pay scale.

Certainly, going to an Ivy gives you the advantage of meeting movers and shakers, but studies have shown that unless you start out in those social circles, you are probably not likely to move into them, and that once the demographics are adjusted to remove social advantages that students have had coming in, Ivy graduates are no more likely to be successful financially than Big 10 graduates. Similar studies have been done about happiness.

The people I know who went to Harvard are not particularly successful financially, not struggling certainly, but not crazy wealthy either. In fact, the people I know who have done the best financially went to University of Illinois. As for happiness, some of the people I know who seem most pleased with their lives had completely nontraditional educational careers, either not going to college at all, or else taking many years and many detours to get where they are.

I'm not putting down the Ivies; they are terrific schools for a certain kind of student. And I am sure that the level of discussion in classes is significantly more elevated than at many schools. But there are many schools that this can be said of. There are great professors everywhere; in fact, one of the best I ever studied with was at Harper Junior College in Palatine, Illinois.

It's the commoditization of education that upsets me. None of the parents in the NYT article, and none of my students, seem to want to go to Harvard because they want a great education. They all want a Harvard diploma for the status it confers and for the perceived financial advantages.

Education is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The perfect school for one student might feel confining to another. It would be nice if kids, and their parents, spent more time worrying about getting the best possible education, rather than the best possible name on their resumes.