Ivy league?

Answered

My personal take on the Ivy League is that not only does it take a lot of hard work to curate an application narrative to beat out the other 95% of applicants (4.96% is the avg. acceptance rate across all 8 Ivy league colleges which range from 3.19%-6.91%), but once you get there, most freshman have a difficult time getting up to speed and navigating through the competitive academic environment and balancing that with self care and fitting in socially (both emotionally, mentally and financially).

Honestly, I don't know anyone who got into an Ivy or attends one who had "bragging rights" as a driving force impetus while they were grinding through 4 years of high school. And mind you some kids have been on an Ivy bound path since pre-school. I don't conflate privilege and entitlement with bragging rights because for people who are generational legacies at Ivys or are very successful, Ivys are just a right of passage, like handing a baton off in a relay race to the next generation.

One thing that is not talked about in detail in any book or blog or vlog is that there still is an invisible class system at Ivys, just as there are at top boarding schools. There are students who are on scholarship and low income and there are generational legacies that continue to fund the schools year after year. It's a symbiotic relationship. So if you are cut from a public school cloth, you may find yourself excluded from certain social activities like private parties, venues and secret societies. Yale has 41 private secret social societies alone like St.Elmos and Skull & Bones. While a scholarship student might be grinding day and night to keep up their GPA and funding, the more privileged students are in no such rush to graduate since they can be there as long as they want. They might even employ people to take notes for them in class and hire tutors to help them study in order to manage their work/social life balance. Most people show up in hoodies, denim and sneaker but the uber-rich kids have $500 slides or $1500 sneakers, Collab Gucci parkas and Supreme sweatpants. Your apple watch is a trinket compared to their A.P. Royal Oak timepieces. After Freshman year, some of these kids live off campus in 7 and 8 figure condos.

If you are primarily interested in quality college education, there are literally 500 excellent colleges to choose from. The cost of admission at Ivys', it's not the only thing you pay for but the maintenance fees to keep up with your peers if that is something you care about. It's something important to think about. I was watching a tiktok about the cost of ownership of a Bugatti. I was $3.6 million for the car, but $385,000 for regular scheduled maintenance (a set of tires cost $42,000). So when you see the $85,000 per year cost of attendance, that's just the base price. Its doesn't include your clothing, personal effects, entertainment, trips, vacations, services.

Ivys are certainly the gold standard for elite colleges but these days there are other schools that offer nearly the same education without all the other baggage if you need a more practical alternative.