why ivy league grads aren't all pretentious douchebags.docx

7/27/2019 Why Ivy League Grads Aren't All Pretentious Douchebags.docx

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Why Ivy League Grads Aren't AllPretentious DouchebagsA response to "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" by William

Deresiewicz

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/

http://www.willa.me/2012/07/why-ivy-league-grads-arent-all.html

Juan Farfan said...

As a recent Princeton grad, I'm going to go out on a limb and contradict

the prevalent view amongst most of my friends who are reading this...I

don't intend for my argument to in any way diss Willa, since I know her

from our eating club and I know she's a great person, but I also think shemisunderstood the point being made in Deresiewicz's article.

Princeton and the other Ivy League schools do breed a sense of entitlement.

Sure, as Willa mentions, at a place such as Princeton one is surrounded by

people that are better than you at practically everything. However,

although one may think of that as a humbling experience, it only teaches

you to be humble with respect to certain people. People who are successful,

well-bred, motivated, intelligent, etc.;these are the types of people that

live in the Orange Bubble. The Ivy League schools may have a lot of

diversity in terms of race, nationality, and even class, but they do not

contain the average person who may not work as hard or is not as naturally

gifted. So when we go to Princeton we learn certain behaviors and

interactions that only prepare us to communicate and work well with people

like ourselves. Since these sorts of people also tend to be clustered in

certain industries, we inadvertantly gravitate towards those careers after

graduation. Therefore, we perpetuate a lifestyle and community that

increasingly isolates us from the rest of society. In general, I find that

most of us believe that we deserve this as recompense for our years of

hard work, but what we don't even realize is that wehave segregated ourselves to the point that we don't

know how to communicate with people outside our

social circles or connect with their daily

greivances.
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I am not so sure that this sort of institutional sense of entitlement is

paricularly intentional or simply a product of the Ivy League. The truth

is that it exists at all levels of society. Ivy League students feel

superior to people who went to state schools, state school students feel

superior to those at community colleges, and people at community colleges

tend to feel superior to those individuals who never even finished high

school. Most people tend to judge one another at every possible level if

it can make them feel good about themselves. The Ivy League and education

is just one level in this chain, but it also extends to practically every

facet of life. There is a sort of inherent superiority complex associated

to our priveldged standing in society that makes us think of ourselves as

better than most others.

Do I feel a sense of entitlement from having attended Princeton?

I try not to, but I would be lying if I were to say that I did not.

Likewise, I think it would serve well many of my peers if they took the

moment to realize that they are not as humble as they claim to be. We are

entitled and most of us live in a world quite unlike the rest of humanity,

but we should remember that that doesn't make us better than anyone else.

If we see a homeless person begging on the street, we are no different

than they are and we should afford that individual the same respect and

dignity that we might to our boss at work. I know that I don't usually

live up to that ,and I'm pretty sure none of the people I went to school

with do either. So let's stop pretending that we don't feel some

entitlement, because we all do.

pastwatcher said...

I relate to this comic and enjoyed it, but you're missing a huge

point. Elitism isn't just about thinking you individually are

smart; it's about thinking people like you are the best kind of

people. Ivy educations tend to trade egomania for academic
http://pastwatcher.livejournal.com/http://pastwatcher.livejournal.com/


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snobbishness, in precisely the way you aptly described.

If you want to write to a broad audience and explain why

Princeton didn't make you elitist, you have to show that you

value the life experiences of people who didn't go to Princeton

or wherever. It's not enough to say "I didn't say Princeton was

the only place to learn humility!" It's not enough to explain

your own experiences; you must demonstrate some understanding of

others' perspectives. I learned this lesson the hard way, and

now it pisses me off to see people congratulating each other for

elitist thinking. I don't mean to sound harsh.

We do get a lot of benefit by meeting

people from other countries and

backgrounds, but you can meet morediverse people in New York City. You

shouldn't only want to talk to your

plumber when they show up to fix your

house; you should realize that they have

a whole life outside of plumbing. You

should want to talk to random people you

meet at the bus stop. To people youalways pass by when you're in a hurry.

You should think, when you see someone on

the street, about whether you're even

able to imagine their lives outside of

your interactions with them--or whether

you only care to see if they might rob

you. You should truly value the lessonslearned from people outside of yourfamily and your Ivy friends.

I still struggle with this stuff, because it's definitely

awkward when people find out I went to Harvard. But not half so


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awkward now as it was before I got over myself; in fact, I

probably sound harsh because you sound like a past version of

myself. Please, either admit that you need to learn how academic

privilege works, or demonstrate that you already have.

M said...

Fellow Ivy grad here.

Deresiewicz's argument is that elite institutions help

perpetuate a false sense of superiority/entitlement and make it

harder for students to relate to others who aren't like them. In

some ways, I think this is true, but not for the reasons

Deresiewicz states. If anything, I think Deresiewicz's thesis is

correct when you actually take into account the spirit of

Willa's comic.

Many people who get into the Ivy League come from EXTREMELY

supportive families. Note that I don't necessarily mean "rich."One thing that seems to hold true for a vast majority of

students is that they had parents who were there for them in

some way, even if they were poor. Many of my peers had college-

educated parents as their lifelong sources of wisdom. If you

don't have that father you can talk math with -- or that mother

who's willing to pick you up/drop you off for after-school

activities -- or someone who's willing to cover your 11th grade

lab fees -- or that family-driven sense of academic motivation -

- it's very difficult to get ahead.

As a result, Ivy admits generally don't know what it's like to

*lack* that support. Elite institutions give privilege to those

who are already privileged in some profound way, and this is

where I think the "false sense of entitlement" comes from.Too

many people think that everything they've
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earned is a result of their own blood,

sweat, and tears without truly

acknowledging how much of an impact their

starting conditions had on their success.Furthermore, support fosters ambition,

which makes it easy to think something is

wrong with those who live lives that

don't require much ambition to achieve.

Ivies do nothing at all to allude to this, and I think that is

what Deresiewicz was trying to critique. Deresiewicz isn't

saying that the schools *cause* these problems. They just

amplify pre-existing ones caused by one's upbringing and

reinforce social notions that need debunking instead.

Kevin Driscoll said...

I didn't go to an Ivy, but I did go to a 'brand name

institution.' Fortunately, my personal experience contradicts

almost every aspect of Deresiewicz's article. I don't have stats

or surveys, so my own experience is about all I can go on.

Deresiewicz claims that going to Duke alienated me from talking

to people who are dissimilar to me. On the contrary, I already

had trouble talking to "everyday" people before college. Since

middle school, I've preferred to talk about politics, religion,

philosophy, and law. There aren't many people who share my

interests. Universities provide many of us a place to discuss

our shared interests. Life will provide us with ways of relating


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to people with dissimilar interests. After all, if we share no

common interests, then the only thing left we have to discuss

are the basic aspects of being human. Since most college

students haven't really lived yet or dealt with the challenges

of everyday life, why would we expect them to relate to people

who have? This criticism seems like a farce to me. There will

always be people who have experiences entirely different form

mine. It will always be difficult for us to strike up a casual

conversation. What needs to happen first is for us to educate

the other on our experiences, so we have some common ground.

This is an area where elite universities excel! Even if its true

that only privileged people go to the IL, you still learn to

educate others about your life experience and have them educate

you. Rich people aren't all the same *shocker*. I have a much

greater command of sharing my perspective and reflecting on

others' because I had the opportunity to meet people from so

many different places. The real elitism is in assuming that your

plumber doesn't want to hear about Kant, or Obama, or the

awesome book your just read. Educate them about your perspective,

listen to theirs, and then you can have a conversation, not

before.

Deresiewicz apparently is accustomed to hearing students claim

that they are better than everyone else. I just don't understand

this at all. My friends at elite schools are better at finance,law, science, etc than most random people you would pull off the

street. They deserve the jobs they have because they acquired

the relevant skills. Even if they got those skills through luck

or privilege, the fact is that they have them right now. There

is a kernel of truth to this criticism that is intimately tied

into the liberal mindset. The idea of requiring people to wear

seatbelts because it's 'for their own good' does presuppose that

you know better than they do what is best for them, but it isn't

a conceit that is peculiar to elite universities. Plenty of

everyday people on the street and think that the governmentneeds to pass laws to protect citizens from themselves. It is

still, then, a further leap to claim that this mindset implies a

generic feeling of superiority. No IL students are clamoring to

take away the human rights of everyone else. They might not

acknowledge the fact that everyone deserves to decide for

him/herself what to do, but that's a broader issue. Even if they


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argue that they know better what's best for others, they still

acknowledge others' inherent worth by trying to help them. If IL

students felt generically superior, then they just wouldn't care

at all what happens to everyone else.

kevpsmith said...

Nice comic, Willa. Beautifully argumentative.

However, I'm noticing that most people are focusing on the

argument of whether going to an elite college makes you elitist.

Deresiewicz does open his article by drawing you into that

debate, I think he makes a subtler point (two, actually). By the

end, he's saying something more along the lines of "Because

elite colleges train their students to be part of an elite class,

they also tend to nurture elitist thinking" and "It is not

necessary to be part of an elite class to live a fulfilling

life."

So he's not saying that all Ivy League grads are pretentious

douchebags. He's not saying that Princeton tried to make him a

douche. He's saying that because Princeton trained him to be

conventionally successful, he lost sight of the lives of those

who weren't educated as he was. He's lamenting his observation

that because Ivy League schools put their students on the track

to elite jobs and roles, their students often don't explore

opportunities off that track, which more often that not leads to

their not making friends with, conversing with, empathizing with,

caring about, and understanding people off that track as well.

So yes, I'd like to agree that I don't think all Ivy League

students are elitist, and that some are genuinely humble people
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who can connect with everyday folk. But as an Ivy League student

myself, I will say that I agree with Deresiewicz's point that

"the disadvantage of an elite education is that its given us

the elite we have, and the elite were going to have." Though

the Ivy League doesn't teach us to lookdown on plumbers, or even cause us to

lose the ability to converse with and

genuinely connect with them, it doesfoster the mindset that to become a

plumber, a cashier, or even a teacher at

a public elementary/middle/high school is

somehow a waste of our education, aneducation that was supposed to put us on

the path to becoming professionals like

doctors and lawyers, wealthy

businesspeople and entrepreneurs, and

leaders in the fields we end up in. And

because that undervalues the lives of

plumbers, cashiers, and schoolteachers,

isn't that a form of elitism?

137c342a-ccbc-11e1-9f9f-000bcdcb471e said...

I'm an ivy league grad and I have two, in some ways

contradictory things to say:

1. I completely agree that structural inequality not only exists

but is at the foundation of contemporary American society.
https://openid.aol.com/opaque/137c342a-ccbc-11e1-9f9f-000bcdcb471ehttps://openid.aol.com/opaque/137c342a-ccbc-11e1-9f9f-000bcdcb471e


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What's more, I didn't fully realize this until I got to an ivy

league school and noted that a large percentage of my fellow

classmates were not only white but also from affluent families.

Many of them had attended elite boarding schools and were the

children of parents who had also graduated from ivy league

institutions. That being said, I don't think the answer is to

attack the ivy league but rather to address the larger problem

of structural inequality THROUGHOUT American society. I find it

incredibly frustrating that ivy league students and graduates

are becoming the scapegoats for the racial and class inequality

that essentially every well-to-do white American (and in the

case of racial inequality, white Americans of every economic

background) helps maintain and perpetuate. The reason this

frustrates me is due to the second point I would like to make:

2. Growing up in a predominantly white, affluent town, I never

really felt socially accepted by my peers. Sure, I had a small

group of friends, but all of them were what you would call

'nerds'. I didn't get my first kiss until I was nearly a senior

in high school and I spent a fair chunk of my life lonely and,

at times, miserable. One of the reasons I wasn't accepted was

because I was much more interested in reading books, thinking

about philosophical questions, and discussing current events

than I was in discussing who was dating who or reading the

latest gossip magazines. Mind you, I'm not saying one group of

interests is better than the other, but while I was growing up Iwas consistently told by my peers that my interests were 'lame'.

I was, in other words, 'not cool.'Perhaps partly as a result, I

set my sights on getting into a good school. This meant working

almost every hour of everyday, Saturdays and Sundays included,

on homework. One of my friends, also from a wealthy, white

family (and the child of two very successful families) would

spend her weekends hanging with friends, going to movies,

etcetera. I sacrificed all of that to get into my dream school

(she ended up going to a good state school).

Fast forward to college and I suddenly was surrounded by peoplewith similar interests. I cannot explain what a relief it was to

finally feel not only accepted but also appreciated by my peers.

If I wanted to talk about the current state of the european

economy with someone, it was suddenly 'cool.'

In conclusion, I 100% believe that my white privilege played a

huge role in getting me into an ivy league school. I do not


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agree, however, with the conclusion that all ivy league grads

are elitist. As I have shown, I spent most of my life rejected

by the 'elites' in my town, high school, etc and I made many

sacrifices that my peers chose not to to get into an ivy league.

Now that I have finally begun to accept who I am and am finally

feeling valued by those around me I am being told my new-found

self-confidence is pretentious? I think we as Americans are

losing sight of the real problems here. We should be working on

the structural inequalities that restrict who has the

opportunity to attend a good school, which is not a problem

solely caused by ivy league schools or by ivy league graduates.

Although I'm furious that my classmates who came from wealthy,

white families and excluded me from social events because I

wasn't 'cool' enough are now turning around and calling ME

elitist and pretentious, I also know there are millions of

people out there who really were unfairly denied access to a

quality education.

Kantian said...

I enjoyed Willa's comic as I think her views were nicely

expressed.

By this point in the comments section all who came before me

have addressed most of the pitfalls in Willa's comic. However,

most people forgot the part of Deresiewicz's (Mr. D hereafter)

article which was most poignant to me and a part that was also

left out by Willa. My personal experience has validated much of

Mr. D's point about how there is a specific paradigm in which

students -- all students -- are asked to conform to. He couldn't

be more accurate about the students who "game the system" to

make it into an Ivy League school. I will be attending a large


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public university in a few months so forgive me for my bias, but

the students I saw who were selected by the elite universities

were the students who worked very very hard to make sure their

GPAs were top notch and their SATs scores at the 99th percentile.

Intellectual curiosity was a foreign subject to many of them. Mr.

D. directly refers to these kids in his piece and I give him

much credit. I acknowledge that the structure we have in the US

likely fills state universities with the same type of students

who are just not as inherently gifted as their Yale counterparts.

Yet, counter-intuitively, the more intellectually curious end up

in state universities because they didn't care to take 15 AP

courses and be a "leader" in 3 clubs they didn't like.

He doesn't deride an Ivy League education for the same reasons

that are popular. He is in fact making a deeper claim about the

culture of academics in the United States where academics is

merely a means to a career -- not a cultivated mind. The Ivy

League students above me have already substantiated Mr D's

claims and have done so word for word at that. The Ivy League

culture is to fit into the system as much as possible and

achieve highly within it. It excludes trivial things like

passion, intellectual curiosity, charity and virtue. If Ivy

League is a factory for the consumption of Wall Street HR

departments, what does it say about the individuals who go to

such institutions?

It likely says that social status derived from wealth is the

great parameter on which even the "best" and "brightest" minds

judge themselves by. It seems to me that the best among us would

be less concerned with such things and more concerned with hard

virtues. So I arrive at my subjective conclusion that elite

universities don't actually acquire the best and brightest (not

by my definition of best and brightest anyway).

So you see, being elitist is not entirely bad if you ARE indeedsuperior to other people. I would encourage Dr. Martin Luther

King and Mother Teresa to feel superior to Hitler. Although this

illustrates an extreme example, the basic concept holds true.

Altruism, charity and benefit to society ought to be the

yardsticks -- not intelligence, education, occupation and

wealth.


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Critics, please understand that I'm not talking about ALL Ivy

League students/graduates. I am not actually even talking about

just the Ivy League. The problems that society in general faces

are magnified in elite universities. Without doubt, they are

designated as elite because of what society at large values most.

This pitiable condition won't be changed unless we change our

implicit values.

I'm sorry, it seemed Willa and the rest of you ignored this

point that Mr. D made.

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