Mean LSAT by UG College Forum

[RVP11]

UMiami is a 152, ouch.

One of many overpriced private schools.

[geoanthem]

UMiami is a 152, ouch.

One of many overpriced private schools.

Haha my whole family (except for me) went there (mom, dad, sister, and no my brother is starting next year). But I am not saying I dissagree with you. I was happy with my Emory degree.

[green]

BeastCoastHype, trying a bit too hard to out yourself as a TTT product, eh? No V10 for you.

I am proudly a TTT product. I turned down a handful of top 10 schools (3 ranked higher than Dook) for my free state school education, and I don't regret it for a minute. Undergrad is all the same basic stuff. It's not like a smart economics major from Dartmouth can explain the Laffer curve better than a smart economics major from the University of Georgia, or a political science major from Harvard has access to some sort of secret knowledge that no one else knows about. The same is true for law school which, for me at least, will be another free degree, this time at Michigan. T14 students aren't gaining any different knowledge than kids at Boston College or Loyola LA. The only reason I care this time around is that the job opportunities are actually demonstrably better for students at top schools. I'm much happier coming out of Michigan as a Darrow Scholar with zero TOTAL debt than spending close to $500,000 on a set of degrees that wouldn't take me any farther in life. I'm pretty sure I'll wind up in exactly the same place after law school as most of the kids who "invested" more money in their educations more than I did.

I've always seen the advantage of going to a high ranked school as having access to top professors in their fields and being surrounded by students who are, on average, smarter and likely to be more successful. I have a lot of really interesting friends who are going on to do pretty cool things all around the country, so I like having that kind of network.

[airefresco]

I've always seen the advantage of going to a high ranked school as having access to top professors in their fields and being surrounded by students who are, on average, smarter and likely to be more successful. I have a lot of really interesting friends who are going on to do pretty cool things all around the country, so I like having that kind of network.

On the other hand, a motivated student could certainly find a niche at a "lesser" school and have a core set of academically inclined friends. A student who so wishes can pretty easily find like-minded individuals at any school, I would argue.

[RVP11]

I've always seen the advantage of going to a high ranked school as having access to top professors in their fields and being surrounded by students who are, on average, smarter and likely to be more successful. I have a lot of really interesting friends who are going on to do pretty cool things all around the country, so I like having that kind of network.

On the other hand, a motivated student could certainly find a niche at a "lesser" school and have a core set of academically inclined friends. A student who so wishes can pretty easily find like-minded individuals at any school, I would argue.

I agree with Green here that the networking aspect is probably the best and longest lasting benefit of a top undergrad. There's something to be said for simply being surrounded by other very bright people every day for years at a time. This is a big reason I'm looking forward to law school.

I went to a non-prestigious public and had to try extremely hard to even find half a dozen friends who were as academically inclined and ambitious as I was. Not everyone at a top UG is a genius, but I'm sure it'd be a lot easier to associate with similar people there.

[Marko Ramius]

BeastCoastHype, trying a bit too hard to out yourself as a TTT product, eh? No V10 for you.

I am proudly a TTT product. I turned down a handful of top 10 schools (3 ranked higher than Dook) for my free state school education, and I don't regret it for a minute. Undergrad is all the same basic stuff. It's not like a smart economics major from Dartmouth can explain the Laffer curve better than a smart economics major from the University of Georgia, or a political science major from Harvard has access to some sort of secret knowledge that no one else knows about. The same is true for law school which, for me at least, will be another free degree, this time at Michigan. T14 students aren't gaining any different knowledge than kids at Boston College or Loyola LA. The only reason I care this time around is that the job opportunities are actually demonstrably better for students at top schools. I'm much happier coming out of Michigan as a Darrow Scholar with zero TOTAL debt than spending close to $500,000 on a set of degrees that wouldn't take me any farther in life. I'm pretty sure I'll wind up in exactly the same place after law school as most of the kids who "invested" more money in their educations more than I did.

The curricula may be similar, but you are misguided in your suggestion that better professors and intellectually-sharper peers do not affect the quality or quantity of knowledge a given student may acquire during his time of study. A student at a T14 has more initial knowledge-gaining potential than does a student attending an inferior school, if only by virtue of his being surrounded by some of the best scholars in the field and some of the most intellectually qualified students available. Don't discount the value of the discourse that presents itself at the nation's most elite universities. Further, to suggest that the value of a T14 education (and the opportunities that come with it) is something that arose merely by capriciousness is comical. It is as if you're suggesting that a kid wanting to be an elite baseball slugger wouldn't gain much benefit from studying an all-star's approach to batting vis-a-vis that of a career minor leaguer. He would end up swing a bat either way, right? So, then, for the purposes of instruction, Joe Dimaggio and Rico Washington are equally qualified...? Hardly so.

[Kohinoor]

Dartmouth is 164 not a 163.

--ImageRemoved--

right, but that's from 06-07, no? this list is from 2008.

Yeah, I took it in 2008 and Dartmouth had 163.

I took it in June 2008 and D had a 164. Perhaps its based on your graduation year?

[06132010]

.

[Lawyer2012]

BeastCoastHype, trying a bit too hard to out yourself as a TTT product, eh? No V10 for you.

I am proudly a TTT product. I turned down a handful of top 10 schools (3 ranked higher than Dook) for my free state school education, and I don't regret it for a minute. Undergrad is all the same basic stuff. It's not like a smart economics major from Dartmouth can explain the Laffer curve better than a smart economics major from the University of Georgia, or a political science major from Harvard has access to some sort of secret knowledge that no one else knows about. The same is true for law school which, for me at least, will be another free degree, this time at Michigan. T14 students aren't gaining any different knowledge than kids at Boston College or Loyola LA. The only reason I care this time around is that the job opportunities are actually demonstrably better for students at top schools. I'm much happier coming out of Michigan as a Darrow Scholar with zero TOTAL debt than spending close to $500,000 on a set of degrees that wouldn't take me any farther in life. I'm pretty sure I'll wind up in exactly the same place after law school as most of the kids who "invested" more money in their educations more than I did.

The curricula may be similar, but you are misguided in your suggestion that better professors and intellectually-sharper peers do not affect the quality or quantity of knowledge a given student may acquire during his time of study. A student at a T14 has more initial knowledge-gaining potential than does a student attending an inferior school, if only by virtue of his being surrounded by some of the best scholars in the field and some of the most intellectually qualified students available. Don't discount the value of the discourse that presents itself at the nation's most elite universities. Further, to suggest that the value of a T14 education (and the opportunities that come with it) is something that arose merely by capriciousness is comical. It is as if you're suggesting that a kid wanting to be an elite baseball slugger wouldn't gain much benefit from studying an all-star's approach to batting vis-a-vis that of a career minor leaguer. He would end up swing a bat either way, right? So, then, for the purposes of instruction, Joe Dimaggio and Rico Washington are equally qualified...? Hardly so.

As a graduate of a TTTT UG (believe me, the 4th T is warranted), I would have to say that a great deal of one's educational/intellectual progress has to do with one's own initiative. Of course, as you said, being surrounded by intelligence is helpful to that end. However, that does not preclude someone (me, for example) from making the most of their experiences and achieving the same level of knowledge as students at a more prestigious institution. If I had to do it all over again, I would have gone to a dirt cheap community college or a state school. When it comes down to it, you really teach yourself. Absent the correlation between school reputation and job prospects, I see no reason to pay for prestige other than the experience in and of itself.

[mallard]

Caltech didn't have enough people taking to have an average in the old thread, but somebody posted that 47% of takers were in the 95th percentile or above. I think theirs would probably be at least 165.

[06132010]

Caltech didn't have enough people taking to have an average in the old thread, but somebody posted that 47% of takers were in the 95th percentile or above. I think theirs would probably be at least 165.

Yeah it's probably the same as MIT's. Nerdz.

[06132010]

Dartmouth is 164 not a 163.

--ImageRemoved--

right, but that's from 06-07, no? this list is from 2008.

Yeah, I took it in 2008 and Dartmouth had 163.

I took it in June 2008 and D had a 164. Perhaps its based on your graduation year?

I'm about to bump it down to 162 for your egregious fail.

[los blancos]

I've always seen the advantage of going to a high ranked school as having access to top professors in their fields and being surrounded by students who are, on average, smarter and likely to be more successful. I have a lot of really interesting friends who are going on to do pretty cool things all around the country, so I like having that kind of network.

Having transferred from a decent but not special state school to a top UG, I can attest to this.

[Rotor]

Dartmouth is 164 not a 163.

--ImageRemoved--

right, but that's from 06-07, no? this list is from 2008.

Yeah, I took it in 2008 and Dartmouth had 163.

I took it in June 2008 and D had a 164. Perhaps its based on your graduation year?

Close. I can't find the document on lsac.org that explains it, but it's something like the scores of test-takers for three years prior to your graduation year.

That's why my school's average is listed as a 035, even though I didn't take until Oct 2008.

Yes I'm old.

[BeastCoastHype]

BeastCoastHype, trying a bit too hard to out yourself as a TTT product, eh? No V10 for you.

I am proudly a TTT product. I turned down a handful of top 10 schools (3 ranked higher than Dook) for my free state school education, and I don't regret it for a minute. Undergrad is all the same basic stuff. It's not like a smart economics major from Dartmouth can explain the Laffer curve better than a smart economics major from the University of Georgia, or a political science major from Harvard has access to some sort of secret knowledge that no one else knows about. The same is true for law school which, for me at least, will be another free degree, this time at Michigan. T14 students aren't gaining any different knowledge than kids at Boston College or Loyola LA. The only reason I care this time around is that the job opportunities are actually demonstrably better for students at top schools. I'm much happier coming out of Michigan as a Darrow Scholar with zero TOTAL debt than spending close to $500,000 on a set of degrees that wouldn't take me any farther in life. I'm pretty sure I'll wind up in exactly the same place after law school as most of the kids who "invested" more money in their educations more than I did.

I've always seen the advantage of going to a high ranked school as having access to top professors in their fields and being surrounded by students who are, on average, smarter and likely to be more successful. I have a lot of really interesting friends who are going on to do pretty cool things all around the country, so I like having that kind of network.

Fair point about the professors. I bet there is a difference in the quality and responsiveness of professors and administrators, that was one thing I hated about my undergrad. I think that your statement about your peers, however, hints at the fallacy that only kids at top schools can be extraordinary. People seem to have a way of inflating your true "on average" statement into "wow kids at my school are all such geniuses there can't possibly be any worthwhile people anywhere else." I think this is exacerbated especially on more insular campuses in small towns (Duke, Princeton, Swarthmore et al.) because it's just a community of the same kids reinforcing the idea that even their most mundane and mediocre "achievements" are well beyond what their peers at state schools are capable of. I've got friends from undergrad who got fullbright grants, are doing TFA etc. just like you do. Elite schools do not have a monopoly on brains or ambition.

Here is an article by a Yale professor on "Ivy Retardation." He basically explains all my qualms about this snobbish system, and why I am happy I rejected it:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-d ... education/

P.S. - I think Marko Ramius might especially benefit from reading this.

[imchuckbass58]

Fair point about the professors. I bet there is a difference in the quality and responsiveness of professors and administrators, that was one thing I hated about my undergrad. I think that your statement about your peers, however, hints at the fallacy that only kids at top schools can be extraordinary. People seem to have a way of inflating your true "on average" statement into "wow kids at my school are all such geniuses there can't possibly be any worthwhile people anywhere else." I think this is exacerbated especially on more insular campuses in small towns (Duke, Princeton, Swarthmore et al.) because it's just a community of the same kids reinforcing the idea that even their most mundane and mediocre "achievements" are well beyond what their peers at state schools are capable of. I've got friends from undergrad who got fullbright grants, are doing TFA etc. just like you do. Elite schools do not have a monopoly on brains or ambition.

Here is an article by a Yale professor on "Ivy Retardation." He basically explains all my qualms about this snobbish system, and why I am happy I rejected it:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-d ... education/

P.S. - I think Marko Ramius might especially benefit from reading this.

BeastCoast - I don't think the point was that no one from state schools can be extraordinary, or that every kid from an Ivy league school is smarter/better than every kid from a state school. More so, it's that there's such an amazing amount of people doing incredible things, to the point where extraordinary is the rule, not the exception.

Elite schools do not have have a monopoly on brains and ambition, but they have a big concentration of it. The sheer magnitude is staggering - in a class of 1300, we had 5 Rhodes Scholars, 31 Fulbright scholars, 120+ kids going to HYSCCN for law school, 150+ kids going to big 3 consulting firms or bulge bracket investment banks. Speechwriters for major politicians, UN workers in Afghanistan, journalists for Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc., etc. I'm not sure what the the relevant statistics are for med school, grad school, and other jobs, but I imagine they're similar.

These things might not be subjectively admirable (I-banking comes to mind), but the point is that almost all your friends will be doing things that are considered extremely impressive in their respective fields. Of my freshman year suite (6 guys), one is at Yale law, one is going to Columbia law, one is a chem PhD at Stanford, one trades oil for Goldman Sachs, one does arbitrage trading for JP Morgan, and one works in investment banking at Citi. In the room across the hall, there was Yale law, Harvard law, TFA, and a Fulbright.

I don't mean this as a dick-measuring contest, and I'm sorry if it comes off that way. There are undoubtedly people at "non-elite" schools doing similarly extraordinary things. But the point is at some of these elite schools, everyone is doing extraordinary things. The benefits of the network only increase over time. Regardless of what field you choose (business, law, medicine, academia, politics, etc), you will have well-placed friends. I'm not saying this is "fair" or "the way it should be", but that is how it is.

The Deresiewicz article is true, but simultaneously misleading. Does the kind of rat-race, overly-planned intellectual constipation he describes exist at these colleges? Sure, it does in spades. But there are also tons of people who are genuinely intelligent, thoughtful, intellectually curious people, regardless of whether they pursue conventional or unconventional paths (and there are plenty that do the latter). Deresiewicz can ramble all he wants about the "life of the mind" and "the German Romantic idea of bildung", but I think it's wrong to endorse that path as better than any other. In effect, he's not saying each of us should be unique and do what we want, but rather each of us should conform, but to the intellectual ideals that he prizes, rather than the practical ideals that many people justifiably want as well.

[BeastCoastHype]

Fair point about the professors. I bet there is a difference in the quality and responsiveness of professors and administrators, that was one thing I hated about my undergrad. I think that your statement about your peers, however, hints at the fallacy that only kids at top schools can be extraordinary. People seem to have a way of inflating your true "on average" statement into "wow kids at my school are all such geniuses there can't possibly be any worthwhile people anywhere else." I think this is exacerbated especially on more insular campuses in small towns (Duke, Princeton, Swarthmore et al.) because it's just a community of the same kids reinforcing the idea that even their most mundane and mediocre "achievements" are well beyond what their peers at state schools are capable of. I've got friends from undergrad who got fullbright grants, are doing TFA etc. just like you do. Elite schools do not have a monopoly on brains or ambition.

Here is an article by a Yale professor on "Ivy Retardation." He basically explains all my qualms about this snobbish system, and why I am happy I rejected it:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-d ... education/

P.S. - I think Marko Ramius might especially benefit from reading this.

BeastCoast - I don't think the point was that no one from state schools can be extraordinary, or that every kid from an Ivy league school is smarter/better than every kid from a state school. More so, it's that there's such an amazing amount of people doing incredible things, to the point where extraordinary is the rule, not the exception.

Elite schools do not have have a monopoly on brains and ambition, but they have a big concentration of it. The sheer magnitude is staggering - in a class of 1300, we had 5 Rhodes Scholars, 31 Fulbright scholars, 120+ kids going to HYSCCN for law school, 150+ kids going to big 3 consulting firms or bulge bracket investment banks. Speechwriters for major politicians, UN workers in Afghanistan, journalists for Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc., etc. I'm not sure what the the relevant statistics are for med school, grad school, and other jobs, but I imagine they're similar.

These things might not be subjectively admirable (I-banking comes to mind), but the point is that almost all your friends will be doing things that are considered extremely impressive in their respective fields. Of my freshman year suite (6 guys), one is at Yale law, one is going to Columbia law, one is a chem PhD at Stanford, one trades oil for Goldman Sachs, one does arbitrage trading for JP Morgan, and one works in investment banking at Citi. In the room across the hall, there was Yale law, Harvard law, TFA, and a Fulbright.

I don't mean this as a dick-measuring contest, and I'm sorry if it comes off that way. There are undoubtedly people at "non-elite" schools doing similarly extraordinary things. But the point is at some of these elite schools, everyone is doing extraordinary things. The benefits of the network only increase over time. Regardless of what field you choose (business, law, medicine, academia, politics, etc), you will have well-placed friends. I'm not saying this is "fair" or "the way it should be", but that is how it is.

I think we have a disconnect here. My point was never that alumni of prestigious universities aren't placed better on average, it was that attending a good school shouldn't entitle people to cop an attitude like they do more broadly on this site and in life. I think you may have misinterpreted what I was getting at, so I'll try again. My point is that there might be more Rhodes Scholars coming from Harvard than elsewhere, but that being at a school where that happens doesn't make someone intrinsically more valuable or important. The idea that the school you go to becomes intimately related to your worth as an individual, and that it's a big enough achievement in its own right to merit any sense of entitlement is what disgusts me. When you separate the things one achieves from the university one attends it's one thing, but to conflate mere attendance at a "top school" and achievement in and of itself is hollow and wrong. You and I are not special because of our proximity to legitimately accomplished people. It doesn't rub off, and I take issue with the attitude that attending these institutions connotes some greater value.

I'll grant you that some of the people you mentioned are doing impressive things, but others (banking) really are just symptomatic of a system that favors its own and perpetuates a somewhat useless cycle. Most people I know in the financial industry aren't really interesting or remarkable at all, and they got jobs because other alumni of their universities got those jobs before them. It's not a particularly impressive achievement. I also don't find these top law schools to be impressive either (shame on me, I know, we're all born and bred for success and achievement, we are the elite few, best and the brightest etc. etc. *vomit*). When you get down to it, we're a bunch of kids with high test scores and good grades. We're good at doing what we're told we should do and paying attention to detail. Most of us haven't done anything world changing, and most of us never will. I don't think that taking advantage of the upper middle class backgrounds I imagine most of us have and displaying a reasonably strong degree of logical facility on the LSAT actually distinguishes us to the degree that we might like to believe. In the end there's nothing that great about joining the swollen upper middle class with our BMWs and big firm jobs. It's not truly that special.

It's great to go to a good school because it opens doors, but it doesn't set you apart as a human being. My only point is that people shouldn't be so quick to forget this, and we shouldn't immediately make judgments about the intelligence of people at lower ranked schools. Elite schools have higher concentrations of people who will take powerful positions, but that's not necessarily to the exclusion of people from other places.

[Marko Ramius]

Fair point about the professors. I bet there is a difference in the quality and responsiveness of professors and administrators, that was one thing I hated about my undergrad. I think that your statement about your peers, however, hints at the fallacy that only kids at top schools can be extraordinary. People seem to have a way of inflating your true "on average" statement into "wow kids at my school are all such geniuses there can't possibly be any worthwhile people anywhere else." I think this is exacerbated especially on more insular campuses in small towns (Duke, Princeton, Swarthmore et al.) because it's just a community of the same kids reinforcing the idea that even their most mundane and mediocre "achievements" are well beyond what their peers at state schools are capable of. I've got friends from undergrad who got fullbright grants, are doing TFA etc. just like you do. Elite schools do not have a monopoly on brains or ambition.

Here is an article by a Yale professor on "Ivy Retardation." He basically explains all my qualms about this snobbish system, and why I am happy I rejected it:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-d ... education/

P.S. - I think Marko Ramius might especially benefit from reading this.

BeastCoast - I don't think the point was that no one from state schools can be extraordinary, or that every kid from an Ivy league school is smarter/better than every kid from a state school. More so, it's that there's such an amazing amount of people doing incredible things, to the point where extraordinary is the rule, not the exception.

Elite schools do not have have a monopoly on brains and ambition, but they have a big concentration of it. The sheer magnitude is staggering - in a class of 1300, we had 5 Rhodes Scholars, 31 Fulbright scholars, 120+ kids going to HYSCCN for law school, 150+ kids going to big 3 consulting firms or bulge bracket investment banks. Speechwriters for major politicians, UN workers in Afghanistan, journalists for Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc., etc. I'm not sure what the the relevant statistics are for med school, grad school, and other jobs, but I imagine they're similar.

These things might not be subjectively admirable (I-banking comes to mind), but the point is that almost all your friends will be doing things that are considered extremely impressive in their respective fields. Of my freshman year suite (6 guys), one is at Yale law, one is going to Columbia law, one is a chem PhD at Stanford, one trades oil for Goldman Sachs, one does arbitrage trading for JP Morgan, and one works in investment banking at Citi. In the room across the hall, there was Yale law, Harvard law, TFA, and a Fulbright.

I don't mean this as a dick-measuring contest, and I'm sorry if it comes off that way. There are undoubtedly people at "non-elite" schools doing similarly extraordinary things. But the point is at some of these elite schools, everyone is doing extraordinary things. The benefits of the network only increase over time. Regardless of what field you choose (business, law, medicine, academia, politics, etc), you will have well-placed friends. I'm not saying this is "fair" or "the way it should be", but that is how it is.

I think we have a disconnect here. My point was never that alumni of prestigious universities aren't placed better on average, it was that attending a good school shouldn't entitle people to cop an attitude like they do more broadly on this site and in life. I think you may have misinterpreted what I was getting at, so I'll try again. My point is that there might be more Rhodes Scholars coming from Harvard than elsewhere, but that being at a school where that happens doesn't make someone intrinsically more valuable or important. The idea that the school you go to becomes intimately related to your worth as an individual, and that it's a big enough achievement in its own right to merit any sense of entitlement is what disgusts me. When you separate the things one achieves from the university one attends it's one thing, but to conflate mere attendance at a "top school" and achievement in and of itself is hollow and wrong. You and I are not special because of our proximity to legitimately accomplished people. It doesn't rub off, and I take issue with the attitude that attending these institutions connotes some greater value.

Bold: You'd be hard pressed to find someone in this thread presenting such an argument.

Underlined: This is foolish. Insofar as you are using achievement to mean "a result gained by effort," attaining admission to a top school was--for most people at least--an achievement.

It seems to me that you either possess one monumental insecurity complex or you've had some terrible experiences with alumni of elite schools or a combination. Either way, your biases have led you to a tangential diatribe and nothing further.

By the way, you mocked me when I suggested that a poster correct a misguided statistic pertaining to my undergraduate institution. I find it wholly ironic that my actions insulted you to the point of necessitating a mockery-laden retort. After all, you purport to be immensely proud of where you come from. Wouldn't you defend your school in a similar fashion? My defense did not arise out of any sense of entitlement; it arose from a desire to correct a fallacy. Again, don't allow your biases to lead you astray.

[rva6]

anyone know U Richmond?

Richmond was 158 on my report (from Oct. 2005).

[green]

Fair point about the professors. I bet there is a difference in the quality and responsiveness of professors and administrators, that was one thing I hated about my undergrad. I think that your statement about your peers, however, hints at the fallacy that only kids at top schools can be extraordinary. People seem to have a way of inflating your true "on average" statement into "wow kids at my school are all such geniuses there can't possibly be any worthwhile people anywhere else." I think this is exacerbated especially on more insular campuses in small towns (Duke, Princeton, Swarthmore et al.) because it's just a community of the same kids reinforcing the idea that even their most mundane and mediocre "achievements" are well beyond what their peers at state schools are capable of. I've got friends from undergrad who got fullbright grants, are doing TFA etc. just like you do. Elite schools do not have a monopoly on brains or ambition.

Here is an article by a Yale professor on "Ivy Retardation." He basically explains all my qualms about this snobbish system, and why I am happy I rejected it:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-d ... education/

P.S. - I think Marko Ramius might especially benefit from reading this.

BeastCoast - I don't think the point was that no one from state schools can be extraordinary, or that every kid from an Ivy league school is smarter/better than every kid from a state school. More so, it's that there's such an amazing amount of people doing incredible things, to the point where extraordinary is the rule, not the exception.

Elite schools do not have have a monopoly on brains and ambition, but they have a big concentration of it. The sheer magnitude is staggering - in a class of 1300, we had 5 Rhodes Scholars, 31 Fulbright scholars, 120+ kids going to HYSCCN for law school, 150+ kids going to big 3 consulting firms or bulge bracket investment banks. Speechwriters for major politicians, UN workers in Afghanistan, journalists for Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc., etc. I'm not sure what the the relevant statistics are for med school, grad school, and other jobs, but I imagine they're similar.

These things might not be subjectively admirable (I-banking comes to mind), but the point is that almost all your friends will be doing things that are considered extremely impressive in their respective fields. Of my freshman year suite (6 guys), one is at Yale law, one is going to Columbia law, one is a chem PhD at Stanford, one trades oil for Goldman Sachs, one does arbitrage trading for JP Morgan, and one works in investment banking at Citi. In the room across the hall, there was Yale law, Harvard law, TFA, and a Fulbright.

I don't mean this as a dick-measuring contest, and I'm sorry if it comes off that way. There are undoubtedly people at "non-elite" schools doing similarly extraordinary things. But the point is at some of these elite schools, everyone is doing extraordinary things. The benefits of the network only increase over time. Regardless of what field you choose (business, law, medicine, academia, politics, etc), you will have well-placed friends. I'm not saying this is "fair" or "the way it should be", but that is how it is.

I think we have a disconnect here. My point was never that alumni of prestigious universities aren't placed better on average, it was that attending a good school shouldn't entitle people to cop an attitude like they do more broadly on this site and in life. I think you may have misinterpreted what I was getting at, so I'll try again. My point is that there might be more Rhodes Scholars coming from Harvard than elsewhere, but that being at a school where that happens doesn't make someone intrinsically more valuable or important. The idea that the school you go to becomes intimately related to your worth as an individual, and that it's a big enough achievement in its own right to merit any sense of entitlement is what disgusts me. When you separate the things one achieves from the university one attends it's one thing, but to conflate mere attendance at a "top school" and achievement in and of itself is hollow and wrong. You and I are not special because of our proximity to legitimately accomplished people. It doesn't rub off, and I take issue with the attitude that attending these institutions connotes some greater value.

I'll grant you that some of the people you mentioned are doing impressive things, but others (banking) really are just symptomatic of a system that favors its own and perpetuates a somewhat useless cycle. Most people I know in the financial industry aren't really interesting or remarkable at all, and they got jobs because other alumni of their universities got those jobs before them. It's not a particularly impressive achievement. I also don't find these top law schools to be impressive either (shame on me, I know, we're all born and bred for success and achievement, we are the elite few, best and the brightest etc. etc. *vomit*). When you get down to it, we're a bunch of kids with high test scores and good grades. We're good at doing what we're told we should do and paying attention to detail. Most of us haven't done anything world changing, and most of us never will. I don't think that taking advantage of the upper middle class backgrounds I imagine most of us have and displaying a reasonably strong degree of logical facility on the LSAT actually distinguishes us to the degree that we might like to believe. In the end there's nothing that great about joining the swollen upper middle class with our BMWs and big firm jobs. It's not truly that special.

It's great to go to a good school because it opens doors, but it doesn't set you apart as a human being. My only point is that people shouldn't be so quick to forget this, and we shouldn't immediately make judgments about the intelligence of people at lower ranked schools. Elite schools have higher concentrations of people who will take powerful positions, but that's not necessarily to the exclusion of people from other places.

Yeah, I definitely wasn't trying to conflate anyone's worth as a human being with the school they attend. If you read my original post, you'll see that I only said that, on average, a student from a top school is probably going to go on to a top job. That doesn't preclude anyone at other schools from doing so, it just means that there is a higher concentration of successful people at top schools. I think it would be hard to deny that. As JSUVA2012 said, he found people with similar ambitions at his school, but it was also harder to seek them out. I also wasn't saying that there aren't any idiots at these schools. There definitely are.

[Lawyer2012]

BeastCoast - I don't think the point was that no one from state schools can be extraordinary, or that every kid from an Ivy league school is smarter/better than every kid from a state school. More so, it's that there's such an amazing amount of people doing incredible things, to the point where extraordinary is the rule, not the exception.

Elite schools do not have have a monopoly on brains and ambition, but they have a big concentration of it. The sheer magnitude is staggering - in a class of 1300, we had 5 Rhodes Scholars, 31 Fulbright scholars, 120+ kids going to HYSCCN for law school, 150+ kids going to big 3 consulting firms or bulge bracket investment banks. Speechwriters for major politicians, UN workers in Afghanistan, journalists for Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc., etc. I'm not sure what the the relevant statistics are for med school, grad school, and other jobs, but I imagine they're similar.

These things might not be subjectively admirable (I-banking comes to mind), but the point is that almost all your friends will be doing things that are considered extremely impressive in their respective fields. Of my freshman year suite (6 guys), one is at Yale law, one is going to Columbia law, one is a chem PhD at Stanford, one trades oil for Goldman Sachs, one does arbitrage trading for JP Morgan, and one works in investment banking at Citi. In the room across the hall, there was Yale law, Harvard law, TFA, and a Fulbright.

I don't mean this as a dick-measuring contest, and I'm sorry if it comes off that way. There are undoubtedly people at "non-elite" schools doing similarly extraordinary things. But the point is at some of these elite schools, everyone is doing extraordinary things. The benefits of the network only increase over time. Regardless of what field you choose (business, law, medicine, academia, politics, etc), you will have well-placed friends. I'm not saying this is "fair" or "the way it should be", but that is how it is.

The Deresiewicz article is true, but simultaneously misleading. Does the kind of rat-race, overly-planned intellectual constipation he describes exist at these colleges? Sure, it does in spades. But there are also tons of people who are genuinely intelligent, thoughtful, intellectually curious people, regardless of whether they pursue conventional or unconventional paths (and there are plenty that do the latter). Deresiewicz can ramble all he wants about the "life of the mind" and "the German Romantic idea of bildung", but I think it's wrong to endorse that path as better than any other. In effect, he's not saying each of us should be unique and do what we want, but rather each of us should conform, but to the intellectual ideals that he prizes, rather than the practical ideals that many people justifiably want as well.

The extraordinary things that people do at elite schools is the result of being given extraordinary opportunities, which in turn is the result of the self-perpetuating snowball effect of prestige. I was lucky to have been able to do some "extraordinary" things in the company of Yalies and other Ivy leaguers. How? By working my way up and proving myself time and time again. Opportunities that are gift-wrapped for Harvard students do not require some sort of esoteric knowledge or skills that students from TTTs do not possess or cannot obtain. While the experiences that I had were great, they didn't make me any smarter or add 10 points to my LSAT score.

Call it smugness or call it self-confidence, but attending one of those elite institutions tends to develop that particular trait. As I sought to make my own opportunities, I learned that temporarily acting in such a manner will get you far in certain situations. People are perceptive, whether they are aware of it or not, of the self-confidence of others. They intuitively make assumptions based upon how one carries him/herself. It is easy to have this self-confidence when you are attending a prestigious institution, but it doesn't preclude others from developing it either. My point is that intelligence, as measured by a standardized test, is not the dominant factor when it comes to securing many of these opportunities. This is not to say that the people who attended elite institutions aren't, on average, smarter than TTT graduates; they are. However, opportunities are given by people with power to those whom they deem worthy, regardless of actual intelligence. Incredible achievements may belong to incredible people, but it is the opportunity that is the catalyst for those achievements.

[Marko Ramius]

Incredible achievements may belong to incredible people, but ambition and determination are the catalysts for those achievements, though achievement wouldn't be possible without a certain amount of opportunity.

Fixed.

[Esc]

BeastCoastHype and Lawyer2012 are right. Marko Ramius is wrong.

[Marko Ramius]

BeastCoastHype and Lawyer2012 are right. Marko Ramius is wrong.

Of course! Thank you, Mr. Arbiter.

[Lawyer2012]

Incredible achievements may belong to incredible people, but ambition and determination are the catalysts for those achievements, though achievement wouldn't be possible without a certain amount of opportunity.

Fixed.

+1 Ambition and determination, qualities that I alluded to, are important to gaining opportunity, especially for those without a prestigious degree. However, they become less important as the snowball effect of prestige works to make opportunities more readily available. Place an idiot in Yale (George W. Bush, for example), and his/her opportunities are exponentially greater than more intelligent people at "lesser" universities. Thus, opportunity-givers (whether they be well-placed connections or even societal perception) are primarily responsible for incredible achievements, regardless of how gifted individuals may be.

Imagine you were a partner at a law firm. Would you rather hire a Yale Law grad with a 3.5 GPA (I know that they don't give numerical grades, but just play along) or a Cooley Law grad with a 4.0? I admit that I would most likely choose the Yale grad, even though the Cooley grad may be a rare genius. Why? Prestige. It's instinctive. Those are the people that we, as a society, choose to give opportunities to. More often than not, they are the best and brightest. And yet, it is not their actual intellect that gets them where they way to go, but the perception of their intellect by the opportunity-givers who hold Yale in high regards.

Granted, the Cooley grad would be an idiot by default for staying at Cooley, but you get the point. Someone with a 180 LSAT who chose to go to Cooley would not have the same opportunities as a Yale Law grad, no matter their ambition or determination. People would make assumptions based on prestige. A self-selecting, self-perpetuating system is the driving force behind incredible achievements, not intellect or even a combination of ambition and determination.