Comment by egocodedinsol
9 years ago
Before this gets flagged to oblivion, I have one criticism and two defenses of the article.
As a criticism, this article doesn't address the sciences. The availability of research money is a major reason to go to an elite science institution. If you want to do science, the best thing is to do it, and that usually means email a lab and asking to work there. More labs with more money probably means better opportunities.[0]
In the first defense, consider whether there's anything in this article that might also apply outside of elite colleges.
For instance:
But it isn’t just a matter of class. My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me. We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright. I learned to give that little nod of understanding, that slightly sympathetic “Oh,” when people told me they went to a less prestigious college.
This resonates so much with what Daniel Ellsberg wrote to a young Henry Kissinger regarding levels of top-secret access:
Then, after you've started reading all this daily intelligence input ... you'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't....and that all those other people are fools. ... it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. [1]
Finally, this article absolutely nails many of the patterns I have observed while at elite universities. For instance:
(If I’d gone to Harvard, I would have learned to say “in Boston” when I was asked where I went to school—the Cambridge version of noblesse oblige.) reminds me of when an acquaintence mentioned he was going to law school 'In Palo Alto'.
Or, one night at a party when I overheard a friend (future Rhodes scholar) say 'You know you're at <institution> when you use the term statistical variance at a theatre party!' Never mind that they'd used it incorrectly, it was emblematic to say the least.
[0](Please don't take this comment the wrong way - there are best-in-field professors at less-than-elite universities, but not as consistently). [1]http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...
Yeah, I often say "in Massachusetts" when people ask where I go to school, when I'm back home. Everyone seems to think this is a mark of how snooty Harvardians are.
But often when I did just say "Harvard", it became a big deal. Not always, but often.
It can make social situations weird. I socialise with a lot of people who are in the trades. I've had more than a few conversations killed when the person I'm talking with finds out I go to Harvard. Suddenly (again sometimes, not always) the person feels embarrassed because they aren't an intellectual, or unrefined, or something, and the conversation gets awkward fast.
It can also make some people just overestimate or overcare for you. I used to volunteer for a political party. The local organiser was nice and treated me well, like he treated everybody, but once he found out I went to Harvard he decided to give me double the attention, plus the cushy assignments, I guess in hopes of retaining me-- when really I just wanted to do the door knocking and phone calling like everyone else.
I wish that the name of the place I go to school didn't have cultural cachet far beyond its worth and that I could always just say it. But it does, especially where I'm from, where not many people have been anywhere near an Ivy. So sometimes I decide to not risk triggering this weird overblown cultural image, because I just want to be myself and not "that guy who goes to HARVARD". Many of my friends feel similarly. I don't know how this desire counts as noblesse oblige.
The issue I have with the sciences is that most of those best-in-field professors are really best-in-field at research, not instruction, so if you want to get the best science instruction you don't necessarily go to their schools. I know that, for example, my wife received a better, more personalized education at her small women's liberal arts school than I received at my largish, elite-ish university where most of my courses were taught by TAs as I sat next to hundreds of clones of myself. My wife regularly had classes with 10-20 people (sometimes fewer), and professors who were there because they loved teaching.
Totally different type of education, but the ultimate outcomes were roughly equivalent. We both went on to grad school (at top state universities) and both have done very well in our careers -- me in tech, her in pharma.
My brother went to Yale and this does not seem consistent at all. Maybe the author had shitty friends.
I don't mean that people at elite institutions are mostly shitty, or even those who've said these things are shitty - I have great friends from my time in school. I hope I did not paint a picture of snobbish assholes who do nothing but sit around and talk about how great they were. I didn't want to be defensive and write a whole paragraph about how much I value the friends and discussions I had in school. I miss my college all the time, and I think there was something special there. It really was an extraordinary place, in large part because of those around me.
However, I did still see these patterns, in others, and in myself.