First of all, the fact that politicians are notoriously known to have been educated from Ivy league school is the worst argument ever. Look at how 'broken' our political system is. This is a whole other story but is the primary influence for me writing this blog. Ivy league schools consist of two types of students: background rich (120k family income is rich, even though they are middle class b/c tuition) or very poor family (1). While I could not find any source of family income levels at Harvard (Big surprise), I believe most students come from rich and /or powerful parents and themselves have never done anything outstanding or have endured any hard times. For any Ivy leaguer reading this matching this criteria, your parents decision to buy you an American car and not a Mercedes Benz is not a hard time and a death of a family member or love one doesn't count (substantially more lower and middle class kids have suffered such lost than you). Don't even try and pull, well my parents were too busy to pay me any attention bull crap (I grew up in the lower-middle class, my parents never gave a crap what I did as long as I didn't cost them any money, and they NEVER came to any of my athletic events. I knew they loved me and that they were busy so I got on with my life.). The other type of student is from a poor family who probably went to an easy high school and had more opportunities to stand out because of lack of competition and media perception. While I know there are probably numerous exceptions to these stereotypes of mine, I believe I am hitting the nail in the coffin for ~ 80% of students.
Numbers don't lie, but statistics do. Harvard is known as the best college in the world and I strongly disagree. With all disrespect possible, having a 97% graduation rate is horrible(2). This citation is a poor study I believe but at least it is something. This is based on a 6 year graduation rate standard and I could not find a single primary publication by Harvard verifying this result or others. I saw once that is 4 year graduation rate is 97% but this can't be confirmed by me. If 97% of undergraduate students are graduating within 4 years than none of these students are being challenged or pushed to learn more. Harvard states that "We are certain that everyone admitted to Harvard has the ability to complete all academic requirements successfully (3)." I am going to go ahead and throw my yellow flag and call a penalty for bullshitting. I know numerous highly intelligent middle class students that had >1500 (out of 1600 from old system) on SAT, >3.9 GPA and a list of extracurricular activities that can't believe and were denied from Harvard and colleagues. I have known these people throughout college at GaTech. I have had the opportunity to talk to numerous of these individuals and have learned how they were raised and their attitude on education and learning. All of these people hate school and grew up studying for SAT at young age. While they excel in lower class courses, they struggle on upper more advanced courses and none seem to want to further pursue education. On the other hand, I know students who have far less admission 'criteria' and are in Harvard. Unless Harvard has some magical admission staff, there is no possible way they can determine someone with substantially lower admission standards has the 'ability to complete all academic requirements successfully' over someone with better admission standards. The only possibility of determining so is based on a personal statement or essay and that is ridiculous. All of this has led me to believe that Harvard and other Ivy league schools are the worst college choice for an undergraduate and the biggest waste of money. On the other hand, Harvard Graduate school is great and worth the money.
