Why Are We So Infatuated With Ivy League Colleges?

If you follow certain stories, you’d think all of America happens on an Ivy League campus. Every scandal, which would barely make the local news at other colleges, ends up gracing the front pages of major magazines and newspapers.

Every busted cheater and contentious protest spawns teams of camera crews, swelling the incidents into a supernova that draws the eyes of the world.

And it speaks to an odd question: Why are we so infatuated with Ivy League institutions? It’s admittedly a newer trend I encountered in adulthood. This entire power-student mindset was always alien to me. I’m even embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know The University of Chicago was an elite school until my 20s. I’d thought it was just a college for a city, like San Diego City College.

I know much better now. It’s hard not to.

Yet it does feel odd now at age 40, as the spouse of a professor at The University of South Florida, where so many interesting things, research, student activities, are abounding under the radar.

All of the media oxygen, collective concerns, and academic hegemony, is established and given to a handful of elite institutions. So what gives? What’s with all the shine?

The origins of Ivy League popularity

Part of our infatuation is because America’s most powerful institutions are often led and staffed by alumni of these establishments. For example, Harvard is the most common alma mater of congress members, as well as those in the senate.

But even that is misleading — because when you step back and examine the data, only 53 of the 553 congress members went to an Ivy League school. Many more went to regular state colleges, and also attended non-elite law schools.

There’s also the media’s complicity in this. Countless films depict protagonists as tortured geniuses and forlorn lovers on the grounds of Ivy League campuses. It’s only natural that their prestige has drawn even more attention from students and families.

Yet there is a statistical problem which plays a key role in these continuing headlines.

Understanding the numbers

And over the past few decades, the US population has grown quite quickly. Demand has skyrocketed for these institutions — but they have kept their number of admissions relatively stable. Harvard has stayed steady at around 2000 admissions (give or take) each year. Others, like Yale and Brown, have grown their student bodies by 15–20% since the 1980s, which isn’t much given the application numbers of increased by multiples.

This has resulted in a dramatic drop in admission rates. For example, Cornell was admitting 18% of students in 2015, and only 11% as of 2023. Columbia fell from 10.5% in 2012 to 5% in 2023.

Which causes each institution’s aura of eliteness to expand, and their badges of prestige to become even more coveted.

What’s often forgotten is that these universities have become extraordinarily expensive, so much so that even some wealthier families are struggling to pay the bill. For example, Harvard has a base tuition of $56,550, but estimates you’ll spend closer to $82,866 per year when you add in housing and other costs. That’s more than $330,000 in student loan debt.

And sadly, this leaves many lower income students with a huge burden to carry, as many don’t receive full rides. Tangent to this, roughly two thirds of Ivy League students are from high income homes, which is somewhat unsurprising, but problematic, as it highlights how money confers advantages to some students and not others. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised these institutions get so much media coverage. The inequality is real.

One of the most concerning aspects of all the madness and attention around Ivy League institutions, is that so much of the focus is on admissions. Slews of lawsuits against the university for its admissions process, media coverage of who gets in and who doesn’t, all seem to imply that the act of being accepted to college is the stamp of success.

What bothers me is that this doesn’t send a great message in a nation where only 49% of students are graduating college within four years. We’ve created a system where just about anyone can get into a college somewhere, but we haven’t given nearly the attention to graduation that society needs to see.

It’s also unfortunate that we’ve created this binary in some corners that attending an Ivy League is the only path to success. Some of this blame goes on overbearing parents, who are either being unreasonable, or living vicariously through their child.

In America, many Ivy League students are the children of immigrant families who came from countries where education was the only way out of poverty, and where test-taking carries enormous importance and pedigree. In 2019, Slate ran a survey and found that the handful of students who were accepted to all eight Ivy League universities, were all the children of immigrants. Much of this parental pressure is well-intended and based in love, with parents wanting the best for their children. Many have anxieties about kids achieving a middle class or better life.

Sadly, there’s an entire multi-billion dollars cottage industry in the college admissions process that exploits these exact anxieties to great effect, and with eye-watering revenue.

Some blame goes to the media, for glamorizing the lives of billionaires, and releasing endless stats about how many billionaires and executives went to Ivy League schools.

And lastly, the remaining blame goes to us, for buying into this narrative.

Why we should take the focus off these institutions

Here’s the thing: there are so many paths to success, if that’s your goal.

In my years in finance which, more than most industries, is obsessed with elite colleges, I still met many smart and highly successful professionals — VPs, COOs, and CEOs — who attended relatively “normal” state colleges. Some even attended fairly uncompetitive institutions. One that I worked with wasn’t even a college dropout. He skipped college entirely, with not a single credit completed — not that this is advisable.

What I’ve found was that, by and large, where you went to college ceases to matter on your first day of work. From that point forward, you are defined by your ability to do your job well. Your professionalism, competency, team-work, industriousness, empathy, and communication, will all define how high you fly. Even today, the only time I think about these Ivy League universities are when news stories and movies choose to bring them up.

Going to Harvard is great for your resume. It will open doors. But going to Purdue instead of an Ivy League university isn’t going to ruin your life.

I encourage any young person reading this to work hard and do well in school. But remember to enjoy life too. You don’t want to look back on your high school years and think of it as this pressure cooked, miserable experience where you missed out on so much.

Sean Kernan·Yahoo Creator

I’m a former financial analyst turned writer out of Tampa, Florida. I write story-driven content to help us live better and maximize our potential.

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