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1.
Tuition fee ranking "slaughter list"? Dragon born dragon, phoenix born phoenix? Asian school bullies everywhere? East Coast dominated by whites?
These stereotypes about prestigious schools such as the Ivy League have long occupied people's minds.
They may make some sense, but they are not enough to tell the whole story.
Excessive stereotypes can also affect people's judgments, resulting in irrational decision-making.
Therefore, it is necessary to start from some stereotypes and misunderstandings and make some explanations for famous schools such as the Ivy League.
Through combing through some industry reviews, we mainly found the following conflicts of opinion. Of course, this is not the whole of the conflict, but at least the most dramatic ones.
Let's take a look.
2.
The issue of Ivy League tuition has always been the most concerned issue for everyone.
At prestigious schools like Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, tuition fees are naturally very expensive. In various online rankings of schools that resemble "the middle class is ruined," Ivy League schools often "slaughter the list."
In the case of Columbia University in New York City, for example, tuition fees have exceeded $60,000, and if you include other types of expenses, a total of $80,000 is spent; At Duke University, the "Harvard of the South" in North Carolina, the tuition fee is also 60,000 or 70,000 US dollars, and it is not unusual to spend 80,000 or 90,000 US dollars a year on students.
Of course, there are many famous schools with higher tuition fees. This level of cost is actually difficult for many families in developing countries to accept, and even in developed countries themselves, many families will complain.
However, American society and schools are actually very aware of this reality and the hidden dangers of "class replication" behind it. Therefore, elite schools have set up a large number of scholarship programs to help students complete their studies.
These schools often offer a very large number of awards and grants at the same time. According to university statistics, at least half of the students in Columbia University's faculty can receive an average of about $50,000 in awards. At the same time, through mechanism arrangements such as part-time work on campus, the burden on students can be further reduced.
In addition, the threshold of awards and subsidies is sometimes linked to family income, and low income can receive relevant reductions, and middle and high incomes will not be rejected by scholarship programs. Of course, this aspect requires specific analysis of specific problems.
Data show that Ivy League schools and other elite schools are not stingy about the award of scholarships, and 40%, 50% or even more students have received scholarships of varying amounts.
Among them, many scholarships come from alumni who have achieved success, and there is a recognized logic behind this: as long as you can, the school will find a way to cultivate you, and when you become famous in society, you will have the obligation to give back and help more similar you.
Of course, this obligation is implicit, but the culture and conventions surrounding it are quite powerful and almost self-evident.
However, there is no need to over-glorify famous schools such as the Ivy League. Although higher education in the United States is leading the world, there are also many problems, such as a huge burden of student loans, the difficulty of unifying the teaching system, etc., and there are many studies in this regard.
3.
Another fascinating topic about famous schools such as the Ivy League can be paraphrased: dragons give birth to dragons, phoenixes give birth to phoenixes, and the son of a mouse will punch holes.
In other words, "class inheritance." In the impression of many people, the children of the rich always seem to graduate from famous universities, and the American colleges and universities are filled with "rich second generations" from all over the world, which also amplifies this stereotype.
But in fact, some data (incomplete statistics) in recent years show that nearly one in five freshmen at elite schools have parents who have never attended college.
Taking Columbia's admission data in a certain year as an example, of the 1456 new students admitted to Columbia University and enrolled in it, up to 17% of them were first-generation college students in their families.
In fact, whether you like it or not, the parents' education level and wealth level can often affect the child's academic performance, which is an objective resource advantage, not only in the United States, but also in many countries. Therefore, nearly one-fifth of the parents of freshmen like Columbia university have never gone to college, which is a counterexample of "class genetics".
Among them, the Ivy League University' commitment to the diversification policy of avoiding "class inheritance" under the leadership of the university has played a certain role. Through the fine-tuning of some assessment methods, some cold children can also get some extra tilt.
Of course, none of this is absolute. If you look at it from an absolute number, the phenomenon of "class inheritance" objectively exists, but this is not a problem of the Ivy League or the United States, which is a common problem in human society from ancient times to the present.
4.
Another sensitive issue of concern to the outside world is the ethnicity of ivy league schools. For example, some people think that American elite schools are full of Asian school bullies. For example, some people think that the white elite families on the East Coast are the masters of the Ivy.
These views seem to have some truth, but they may not reflect the whole picture. In fact, because of the long-standing diversity policy, the source of students at elite American schools is very diverse, often including students from 50 states in the United States, and it is not unusual for a school to have international students from 70 or 80 countries.
In addition, the number of Asian academic bullies is indeed very large. Walking on Ivy League campuses, the proportion of Asian faces generally appearing is significantly higher than the proportion of society. But the problem is that Asian descent is a very big concept, if you continue to subdivide, take China, India, South Korea, Singapore and other sources apart, the proportion of students in some schools in a specific country may not be as good as Canada and the United Kingdom.
But the problem is that students like Canadian and British sources are scattered in American society, and their appearance is not obvious, so many people will have the feeling of Asian learning dominance.
Of course, as a whole, the proportion of Ivy League Asian students is indeed very high, and in various data evaluations, they are close to white students, far exceeding other ethnic groups.
As for the claim that the East Coast white elite dominated the Ivy, it was more of a historical description. First, the advantages of white families on the East Coast of the United States are no longer as far ahead as they were before World War II; Second, because of the pluralism policy, some white faces may be a drag because they are not "diverse" enough; Finally, from the data, the proportion of white people is much lower than that of the 19th century.
Of course, in terms of absolute numbers, the Ivy League still has the largest number of white students. But given the demographics of the United States, this is probably not unusual. But the claim that white families on the East Coast dominate is not apparent, at least in surveys.
Talk to CFW
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