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The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

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Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#11
post #9
post #6

The problem begins when students are encouraged to forget this truth, when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense, when “better at X” becomes simply “better.” Interesting... I found the opposite. I went to Oxford University (as elite as it gets), with a head big as a balloon, and clearly thinking myself better than everyone. Four years in the presence of people whose intellect crushed me like a…

Oxford taught me that I'm a better computer scientist than I am a mathematician (or at least, that I'm better at algorithms than at algebraic number theory), but it didn't teach me humility. I realized that intelligence has nothing to do with being a better person when I came up against the apparent contradiction that all of the fascinating people I enjoyed talking to were far less intelligent than myself. :-)

Different paths, same destination :-)

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#13
post #9
post #6

The problem begins when students are encouraged to forget this truth, when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense, when “better at X” becomes simply “better.” Interesting... I found the opposite. I went to Oxford University (as elite as it gets), with a head big as a balloon, and clearly thinking myself better than everyone. Four years in the presence of people whose intellect crushed me like a…

Oxford taught me that I'm a better computer scientist than I am a mathematician (or at least, that I'm better at algorithms than at algebraic number theory), but it didn't teach me humility. I realized that intelligence has nothing to do with being a better person when I came up against the apparent contradiction that all of the fascinating people I enjoyed talking to were far less intelligent than myself. :-)

This wouldn't seem like a contradiction if we had better definition of intelligence. For example, it wouldn't seem like a contradiction to say you enjoy talking with fascinating people who were all worse than you at math and logic.

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#14
post #8
post #5

That was surprisingly good. Although, I think it paints with too fine a brush sometimes (narrowing its conclusions to the Ivy Leagues). For example, I've definitely noticed a loss of solitude and way too much over specialization too early. A lot of the people I know in Ivy League schools began competing and winning in contests in their chosen field by middle school. I understand that a University would rather admit a…

USAMO problems... Take a look Ok, it's wildly unfair for a Putnam fellow to be looking at these, but since you asked... I think I can see how to solve problem 6, but I'd have to take a few minutes to make sure that my solution works. The other 5 problems took me about 30 seconds each. Hell, I've personally seen a few high school science fair projects that are essentially graduate level work involving genetic engineer…

wow ... that just makes me feel bad about myself.

Even so, that's very impressive. After looking through, I only see likely solutions to 3 of the 6, and I would still have a fair amount of work to even verify those 3.

goes and mopes in the corner

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#15
post #10
post #2

"An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed." How awful! Those miserable Ivy League kids and all that they miss out on. I never knew they had it so rough. We really should do something for those poor kids goin…

The entire article reads like satire. He can't talk to a plumber, the poor chap. Maybe he should publish a few thousand words in some "venerable but lively quarterly magazine".

[deleted]

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#16
post #8
post #5

That was surprisingly good. Although, I think it paints with too fine a brush sometimes (narrowing its conclusions to the Ivy Leagues). For example, I've definitely noticed a loss of solitude and way too much over specialization too early. A lot of the people I know in Ivy League schools began competing and winning in contests in their chosen field by middle school. I understand that a University would rather admit a…

USAMO problems... Take a look Ok, it's wildly unfair for a Putnam fellow to be looking at these, but since you asked... I think I can see how to solve problem 6, but I'd have to take a few minutes to make sure that my solution works. The other 5 problems took me about 30 seconds each. Hell, I've personally seen a few high school science fair projects that are essentially graduate level work involving genetic engineer…

[deleted]

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#17
post #10
post #2

"An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed." How awful! Those miserable Ivy League kids and all that they miss out on. I never knew they had it so rough. We really should do something for those poor kids goin…

The entire article reads like satire. He can't talk to a plumber, the poor chap. Maybe he should publish a few thousand words in some "venerable but lively quarterly magazine".

[deleted]

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#18
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 didn't go to an ivy league school, but is this generally accepted as true? Is this other people's experience, or is the author's opinion more of an outlier?

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#19
"Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out."

That is so true. At Amherst, practically the only way to not get an Amherst degree is to finish your 4 years and not complete a major. (Guess how I found that out... ;-)) Steal an ambulance, drive it around the freshman quad, and crash it into a tree, and you get a 1-year suspension. Embezzle $13,000 from the school newspaper and you get a 4-year suspension. Both of those are real incidents, and their perpetrators are either Amherst alums or back at school now.

Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

#20
post #18

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 didn't go to an ivy league school, but is this generally accepted as true? Is this other people's experience, or is the author's opinion more of an outlier?

It's true but incomplete, in the way that so many written articles on the web are.

If you explicitly went up to an Ivy League or top liberal arts student with the above quote, most of them would be disgusted. It's not like people walk around campus all day talking about how everyone else is inferior to them. Someone like that would probably be considered an antisocial boor.

But the point about not having anything to talk about with people who didn't go to an Ivy or other top college is true. One of the selling points of Ivies & top liberal arts colleges is that they "teach you how to think"; well, if they teach you how to think, how do you relate to other people that think differently? There's a shared depth of experience that going to a top college gives you, like the close relationships with professors, chance to talk to well-known public speakers, hanging out on a lush green quad in the middle of a city, or being able to break lots of rules without the administration caring. People who went to state schools, community colleges, or no college at all often didn't have that experience, so what's there to talk about?

This is ameliorated somewhat depending on what you choose to do after college. I went into computers, where many of the best programmers went to no-name colleges or dropped out of high school, so a.) I can always talk tech with other people in the computer field and b.) I found out pretty soon that where you went to school isn't a good proxy for ability. Some of my friends are bakers or teachers or secretaries, and they're sitting firmly in the real world. But the financial system and top law schools are populated with huge proportions of alums from top colleges, so the "Amherst bubble" (which includes Harvard & Yale & Columbia & Brown & Dartmouth & Swarthmore & Williams too, except they undoubtedly call it by their own school name) extends over it too.

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