In this article, “This is What an Ivy League Education Will Get You”, Jake Flanagin discusses a controversial topic about Ivy Leagues and whether they are worth the stress and work that goes into college applications. He starts off with a quote from William Deresiewicz, who also wrote about this topic, which says he chose an Ivy League himself and regretted not thinking about the reasons behind that choice. The author then continues his article by talking about Deresiewicz and saying how only after his college experience did he find out about the “toxic effect” students get from the combination of pressure and stress that an Ivy League has on you. One of the interesting comments Deresiewicz makes is when he presents the statistic of how many incoming freshmen in an Ivy League were from a high social class and how that percentage has increased by a huge amount over the years. Thus, one of his final points is that those institutions not only require a high academic experience, but also look for students who come from high-income families.
Flanagin then quoted another Ivy League graduate, Yishai Schwartz, who had also commented on Deresiewicz’s article and highlighted the part where the author had mentioned that it’s not so much about meritocracy, but also about other values. Schwartz is also quoted from his article when he discusses that some students worry more about their college experience appearing in their resume while others focus on taking advantage of the education an Ivy League offers. He also discusses in his own article that maybe the stress and time spent on applying to Ivy Leagues is worth it instead of focusing on just your career path and entering a less known school because your GPA wasn’t high enough. Flanagin then quotes four other Ivy League graduates and their opinion about those types of schools and how parents should stop sending their children to Ivy’s because it is not necessarily worth the stress.
In terms of Flanagin’s article, the author only presented other author’s opinions rather than his own. The whole article is made up of quotes from Ivy graduates who have become anti-Ivy because they believe it is not necessarily worth it. However, how do you measure that? If everyone is different and each person prefers a different type of education style, how do you measure what school is worth it and which are not? At the end of the day, an Ivy school might work for some teenagers while it won’t necessarily fit the life style of others. Regarding the beginning, when they discuss the “toxic effect” that, again, doesn’t apply to everyone and it is a very big term to use as a generalization.
Overall, I don’t think his claims are completely significant because there aren’t really that many claims given the amount of quotes he included instead of his own opinion. In other words, there are more individual claims from each graduate mentioned rather than Jake Flanagin’s opinion. Regarding validity, the most justified true claim would be Deresiewicz’s first quote where he includes statistics because there is numerical evidence that shows progress and changes in the Ivy world. However, all of the other opinions are merely opinions and not necessarily correct. Since all of those graduates had the same point of view, one could consider that as coherent given that the more people who agree with each other, the more believable the opinion becomes, like shared knowledge. I don’t think you could judge this based on consistency with the past since college and education statistics changes all the time especially when it comes to controversial topics such as this one. Lastly, this claim can’t really be seen as correct or incorrect because it is something very subjective given each student’s preferences, GPA’s, as well as what each person can afford. However, the more people lean to one opinion, the more credibility that opinion receives. On the other hand, the effect an Ivy has on each student both in the application process or the impact, is not completely measurable.
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I think you broke down the article very well, explaining each part of it. I think you should have focused a little more on how you know the claim is/isn't valid and include a more clear claim (make it specific). You wrote more about what the article says than you did about evaluating the claim. Other than that I think you make a really good point. My friend's father went to Harvard and he would completely disagree of Flanagin's opinion, however, another firend of mine who attended Harvard has the exact same opinion. I think that, as you said, it is very subjective and hard to know whether the claim is valid or not. Maybe if you included more your opinion and the 3 s's, that would have been another way to analyze it. Also, consider the falsifiability test here; maybe the reason why it is so hard to analyze it is because the author made it in such way that it "works" every time. My approach, after reading the article was that Ivy League's are worth it for the students who will focus on their studies there but it is in general (according to the author) not as worth it for a great part of the students. I think your argument makes sense and I agree with your point. :)
ReplyDeleteFernanda, I liked the several observations you made when evaluating the author's claims. In order to do this, you would need to understand the article's premises and you mention that the author has failed to do this because he only quoted other sources and jumped into a conclusion. He deduces that an Ivy League school is not worth the stress and time during college applications. However, it would be more efficient if he followed the process of inductive reasoning by analyzing the data and creating premises instead of jumping into a conclusion. The strongest way of knowing that I feel he used was emotion. This can be clearly seen because the author, which he frequently quoted went to an Ivy League and has personal biases. Moreover, I enjoyed your comment on shared knowledge and common perspective that all of the sources had. On the other hand, you claim that the first quote was the most justified because of statistics. However, does statistics always bring validity and meaning taken out of context and how reliable can they actual be? I overall liked your analysis of the author's conclusion.
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