HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO GET INTO A BIG NAME COLLEGE THESE DAYS?

USC is harder to get into now then in the 80s/90s. I think that is due more to media influence then academic standards. Kids want to go to NY or LA for the excitement of it.

Loughlin's daughter must have had terrible high school records since I think if she had a half way descent record the school would have taken her simply because her father is so incredibly rich.

The problem nowadays is that kids don't accept what their likelihood of getting in is. It used to be you would apply to the schools where your grades and SAT scores placed you. Then maybe one school above your level as a dream and one below as a safety. That's what I did and my high school peers did. Now everyone things well maybe I'll get into Harvard! So they apply so the acceptance rates of these schools are now so low (which they like.)

Plus there wasn't the availaibility of huge student loans as much. So there were kids in my high school who had better grades than me but just went to state schools because it was the only ooption since there parents couldn't pay.

Kushner didn't go to jail because he didn't break any laws. Huffman paid a proctor to alter her daughter's test scores. Loughlin bribed a coach to say her daughter was an athlete. Kushner donated money but that is allowed.

I have a nephew and a niece who went to expensive private schools (I'm talking $20K/yr) and ended up at no-name small unknown colleges. (Seattle University??). Why do parents pay so much for a prep school education, only to send their kids to an average school?

I guess it could be true r1, and he just wanted to live in a hip place. However his parents are my age and should know that a top college would help their kid get better job prospects.

^^OP^^Forgot to add.

Also, I worry about families and kids getting into so much debt. Especially since college loans are non pardoned.

It’s hard to keep blinders on and not get sucked into the hype. Hopefully by the time they get there, my kids will be able to pinpoint their area of PRACTICAL interest and we’ll find them a nice state school. We live in NYC and there are some good city/state schools for certain concentrations. I think a decent state school and no debt is a better start than a degree from an elite with a quarter mil in debt.

And knowing your kid is key, too. If they’re a total nerd who doesn’t connect, there’s no use putting them somewhere they can’t “network” and leverage their “connections”. I have one very social kid who I’m willing to put in a more prestigious school because that kid can work a room.

Looking at all the successful people I know, it really boils down to personality, not the school. I know a MD at Goldman who went to such a nothing school I can’t even remember the name. But he’s a super personable guy who was in the right place at the right time and he works hard and smart. A resume with “Harvard” on it will always get a second look, but that’s not everything.

There population keeps growing, through immigration and breeding, and a higher percentage of the population wants to go to college. A couple of generations ago a person could make a good living in without a college degree and work their way up into some "professional" jobs, now HR won't even look at your resume if they don't see a college degree, and it's off to Walmart or McDonalds' for anyone without one. So there are more humans of college age, a greater proportion of them are applying to college than in previous generations, the descendants of immigrants are damn well going to college if their parents and grandparents didn't, and they're competing for places with students from overseas.

And the number of "elite" schools hasn't grown, and the size of their student bodies hasn't grown much, and there's a larger and larger number of applicants. So in addition to all the other factors, there are just more people applying to the elite schools, and it's gotten that much harder to get in.

The quest to get your kid into a big name school is the Holy Grail of the upper middle class. It's wildly competitive and your success as a parent/student is judged by your success (University of Michigan - big win!) (University of MD at Baltimore campus - loser!) - though to be fair, UMBC is good school. State schools that used to take all comers (OSU, University of MD) now are tough to get into. In my decidedly lower middle class corner of the world, people send their kids to community college because they just can't afford it otherwise.

Start rowing.

Part of the problem is that there is still a great deal of benefit to a Harvard/Stanford/Princeton degree. It's the clubbiness. For instance, Blackwater, the biggest hedge fund in the world, only takes interns from Harvard or Yale. Several companies in Silicon Valley only take Stanford grads. There are places only Princeton or Columbia grads can apply to. Sick, but real. People pay millions of dollars to get their kids into those schools, not just for the prestige, but for the opportunities. The varsity blues scandal only touched the surface of what really goes on. Ask Jared Kushner. And this means, with all these places taken by the rich, it's harder for everyone else to be accepted.

Sorry, but what is the varsity blues scandal?

R8, if you’re on a particularly narrow track in a particularly small percentage of the population, it matters.

If people open their minds to the possibility that a good life exists outside of a few corporations, it’s very freeing. I have a friend from HS who has a hugely successful business doing lighting. For any sort of stage, event, whatever. He has a really nice life. He doesn’t give a shit about prestige and can tell you where to find the best ramen and his wife is his best friend. I know so many people who are living well and being generally happy, doing random stuff that has nothing to do with their college major and alma mater. Mostly they’re people who built their businesses around their interests and talents.

If you want to be a partner at a white-shoe law firm, your path to success is a tightrope. If you want to make a good living (maybe you’re not a bazillionaire) and enjoy it a little, the path is wider.

r6 So it's a prestige thing for upper middle class parents, not the kid necessarily? That's so weird. I'm thinking the job market is too tight for kids with a college degree.

You can't even get an admin job without a college degree these days, unlike years ago. So many more people who in the past would've joined the workforce right after high school and worked their way up to a manager position now have to go to college, because working your way up without a degree (or even getting hired) is no longer an option.

I mean, having to spend a half a million to get your crotch fruit into USC?? Lolol. That’s absurd. ANYONE can get into USC. It’s a private rich kid school like NYU with extraordinarily lenient admission policies that requires zero talent or intelligence. Just donate, you dipshits. Now, spending half a million to get your kid into Stanford or an Ivy, okay, but USC? That’s just pathetic.

You're not supposed to go for a "big name" college. You're supposed to go for a college or university where you can get the best education in whatever it is you want to study, and they want proof that you can do the work once you get in. A prestigious university can handle a rich kid whose parents bribed their way in, like a George W. Bush or Donald Trump, every now and then, but a solid stream of them would turn the place into a young adult day care that's unable to do what it's there to do, which is to educate the best and the brightest to go out into the world and do the work that needs to be done. The whole reason why grants and scholarships (or what Republicans call "free money") exist is to admit people who don't have money or connections but who show potential to really be able to take advantage of a good education.

How stupid did Lori McLaughlin's daughters have to be that it took a half million dollars to bribe USC to take them? What a joke!!! It's not like either one of them would have wanted to get real job, use the degree, and actually work for a living anyway. What the hell are these people thinking?

I don't live in LA, but I've always heard that USC is a joke. It's a school for spoiled rich kids, or at least that's the reputation I've always heard. Lori's daughters must be borderline retarded if bribes had to be used to get them in there.

I am curious about this too. I went to an Ivy League school about 20 years ago, and I don't think my kids will be going the same route (just not that bright or motivated), but I am out of the loop and wonder if they have any shot at all of getting into a decent school. Oh well, time will tell.

P.S. I am not famous or rich, my parents did not pay anyone to get me into college. I am a middle class nobody, I was very smart and worked very hard. I had amazing test scores and won some prestigious national awards. NB: was very smart in past tense.

There must be some college attending gaylings on DL to tell us the scoop

I was a closet case in high school. Friendless in the marching band. I went to Columbia for undergrad and Harvard for medical school. I work for a very prestigious company and am a VP. I think I’m pretty mediocre but my degrees lead people to believe thT I am smarter than I really am. So glad my isolation in high school and focus on grades paid off!

R2 The best prep schools are in the 40-50k neighborhood, Andover is $55k a year. Going there you’ve got a very good chance of getting into Harvard. 20k is basic Catholic school territory, that will guarantee to you basically nothing.

[quote]It’s a private rich kid school like NYU with extraordinarily lenient admission policies that requires zero talent or intelligence.

Not anymore—USC has an acceptance rate of around 17%. Even the so-called safety schools are difficult to almost impossible to get into these days.

^ Forgot to mention that a big part of that, besides the general uptick in kids applying to schools beyond their reach, is the "Tufts effect"—a lot of the safety schools have drastically lowered their acceptance rates over the years just because they don't want to be known as a fallback for students trying to get into the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, etc.

R4 I know an attorney who advises parents with kids who have high scores to send them to a relatively in expensive state school for a year or two to get the bullshit core courses out of the way (ebglish, psych 1 etc) then when it’s time to take the important classes, the ones inside their major, then transfer into the expensive top school.

We're still very open to accepting bribes to admit students

Customer demand remains very strong in response to recent events. Shrewd parents are taking advantage of our temporary deep-discount sale prices to secure spots,

We expect this sale to bring a record number of fast-tracked enrollments to our Trojan family this fall. Keeping our overall acceptance rate artificially low will also restore prestige, maximize demand and raise our revenues from these bribes, um, incentives, in future academic years.

Fight on!

r23 That was the whole idea--to get a college diploma as inexpensively as you could. Nowadays, everyone is throwing as much money as they can. Why? It's not possible for all of them to land a six figure job. Even these nonsense online schools are charging an arm and leg.

R19 Are you not practicing or do you work for some pharmaceutical or biotech company? I went to Columbia undergrad too and feel very mediocre as well! I think it's because the people around us are so superior that it skews our perception of what average intelligence is. People do treat me differently when (if) they learn that I went to an Ivy League undergrad. They (wrongly) think I can do anything. I don't tell people though unless absolutely necessary.

I also know many people, who aren't that intelligent, whose parents bought their way into Columbia or who got in solely because of who their parents are, family connections, social status, etc. Another reason why I feel like a fraud when people are impressed by my academic pedigree.

I live in NY, where we have an outstanding public university system (SUNY). I question the judgment of anyone in NY who incurs debt to go to a private university.

Seattle U is an urban Jesuit institution -- you'll get a good education there, and get to enjoy the fun found in Seattle, but it is not well known outside of that city. Within Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, it is respected, and the school many many public servants attended.

Maybe...Fordham level.

If you go to most college admissions page, they have posted the grade average and test scores that a high school student will probably need to get in.

One thing making it harder for some people: International students! Universities love those big, big, big rates for international students, who either have rich parents or their governments pay for it. The tuition amounts universities come up with for int'l students are insane, but someone or some entity pays 'em.

When I worked in the United Arab Emirates, I met a young Emirati artist who had a BFA from Yale; all of it to include room and board was paid for by the government. We got talking because she recognized my Amoeba Music T-shirt thanks to her sis going to med school in that part of town, at UCSF. Those two degrees, to say nothing of the undergrad before the med school, must have cost a staggering amount of money.

A colleague in China had a friend who got accepted into their government's program for overseas education. I wanna say he went to the Univ. of Washington. The whole package was worth about $250,000.

Colleges are more selective in Georgia because of the Hope scholarship.

UGA used to be a mediocre school that was easy to get into.

Suddenly, tuition was free and students who would have gone Ivy, Duke or Stanford went to UGA.

I took my niece to high school orientation and they told us you needed a 3.8 GPA to get into UGA. That floored me.

I had a GPA slightly better than that and went to a MUCH better school.

^ Same for the University of Florida and UT Austin.

Just ask your local barista if that expensive college degree opened any doors.

College is a joke these days. As an employer, I am more impressed with someone who worked his way through community college, and then went on to get a Bachelors or Masters degree than I am with someone who went to an unremarkable, middle of the road school (Muhlenberg, Marist, American to name a few), graduated with debt and isn't better educated than any of his peers.

I really do think parents are pushing their kids into these situations for bragging rights.

[quote]I took my niece to high school orientation and they told us you needed a 3.8 GPA to get into UGA. That floored me.

but there is grade inflation nowadays so a 3.8 isn't as good as it was. I think the Valedictorian of my high school only had about that. Now everyone does.

Secondary education= social status, now.

To a parent, whatever school their child ends up at is a reflection of their success in life- and possibly a tool to move up socially by social contacts made by their kid.

College, for middle and upper class Americans, is about the parents not the kids. The kids aren't making decisions.

We've all gone very Georgian England in this regard in the last couple of decades.

Was it aways like this? You watch the old movies and when Jimmy Stewart decides to go to Harvard all it takes is a raccoon coat, a ukulele, and a train ticket. What did our Grandfathers and Great Grandfathers go through?

Most of my current direct reports are Ivey leaguers. They’re no better or worse than candidates from state schools.

Recently, I was surprised to hear of a Harvard grad who became a chiropractor...

r2 I'm going to guess that it was more important for their kids to get a well rounded education starting at the beginning. Where you go to college may get you in a few doors but it doesn't define you.

My Alma mater, Queens College, took me with a C average back in the early 90s. Now they are turning out Roses Scholars and are very selective with admissions.

Blows my mind

If I had kids I’d be sending them to trade schools and giving them “education money” to open their own businesses. Too bad my generation got duped into endless tertiary education with little benefit.

Same here, r41. I know carpenters and mechanics who make six figures. If I had kids, I would definitely encourage them to go to a trade school. They could make a very nice living.

Very hard, OP

The upper middle classes, the top 15%-20% have made a cottage industry out of college admissions and the number of "good" schools has grown exponentially.

Schools like USC, NYU, University of Miami, Boston University that were once party schools or commuter schools are now very hard to get into. Schools like Vanderbilt, Duke, Wash U and Northwestern are as tough to get into in 2019 as Dartmouth or Princeton in 1989.

AP classes, SAT tutors, college admissions advisors ... and then $70K/year for private school.

It's not so much the education as the connections, the ability to remain in the world they grew up in.

Because Mom or Dad get them an internship with a friend or business connection and pay for them to live in NY or SF or DC for the summer. That then turns into a job (these are not the basement dwelling underemployed Millennials DL's Eldergays fear) and an apartment in the aforementioned cities subsidized by the parents and/or grandparents.

Rinse and repeat on the next generation.

It seems everybody under 30 (or even 35) in NYC is being rent-subsidized by their parents.

It’s easy if your mom was on a bad nineties sitcom.

It depends on your major. USC has an excellent film school, and even back in the 90s they weren't taking C students unless they we're athletes.

Also if you plan on working in southern California, USC alumni really look out for their own.

I graduated from one of those places a couple years back. Reputation has always been good, but the acceptance rate has dropped drastically over the last few decades since more people are applying. People think that this is partly because admins reduced the ivory castle rigor of the undergrad division over the years and made it more accessible, and they don't like it.

Admins proposed adding a business major last year, and a lot of current students (not to mention others) were really unhappy about it.

It's easier to get into a prestigious university for graduate school. I had mediocre grades in high school and went to a respected but not well known college. I got into a masters program at UC Berkeley with a B+ average at that college.

However, my Cal masters hasn't helped me in life. I'm a socially awkward nerd who struggles to hold down jobs and has very little going on in life. My parents still brag to their friends about my degree (in my early 30s) because there isn't much to say about what I'm currently doing. I maintain that in most professions it doesn't really matter in the long run where you went to school.

What were considered "second tier" schools thirty years ago are now accepting only 25% of applicants, so it's harder than ever unless you're a legacy, gifted athlete or a wheelchair-bound, half-black, half-Chippewa lesbian from North Dakota.

USC is not like NYU at the graduate and professional level.

NYU law grad (top ten school) USC Law ( second tier at best)

My Nephew went to U of M graduated with an engineering degree and got his masters from U of M. My niece went in a 5-year program and came out with her masters. They went to a small high school, got good grades, some extracurricular but nothing outstanding. More than likely these kids were coddled, were passed through high school and the parents just thought they could pay their way into colleges. I don't get Laughlin though, her daughter was making a lot of money as an influencer. I guess they were embarrassed by her.

Yes, it's difficult--my kid has above a 3.9 unweighted, rigorous curriculum and SATs in the top 1 percent--also a couple of national awards. Kid did get into a top 10 school, but not the Ivies (applied to three of them). But we also make enough money for that top-10 school to think we don't need financial aid, so the kid is probably going to a lower-ranked state school--still good, but not top 10 good, but I don't have a spare $300,000 sitting around to be used for prestige.