Ivy League schools are often seen as the golden ticket to a happy and successful life. However, many who aspire to attend these top prestigious universities are oblivious to the pressing issues that surround them. Rates of suicide, sexual assault, and prescription drug abuse amongst the Ivy Leagues are through the roof, but they won’t tell you that at the Harvard open house. I thought that being a high school student was detrimental to my mental health for a long time until I heard of the abundance of pressures placed on Ivy League students. In an article called “The Myth of the Ivy League,” Eileen Torrez writes about “incessant competition” and feeling like she was “juggling bowling balls” during her Ivy education. These universities …show more content…
Students will take them while cramming for a test to help them focus. 46% of students don’t even consider it cheating to take study drugs. It is a lot like taking steroids, which is definitely considered cheating in a professional sports league. Even the athletes in Ivy League schools are using study drugs to play better and focus more. Why are the students taking the drugs instead of just studying normally and training normally? It all comes back to the stress placed upon them by the Ivy. If you work hard and study, you should feel as though it was enough. Students shouldn’t feel the need to result to study drugs in order to succeed. In an article by New Republic, there is mention of a survey conducted in which the results were unsettling. Most students think that prescription stimulants are “safe, socially acceptable, and stigma free.” This trend amongst Ivy Leaguers is going right over doctors’ heads and they should be more careful when prescribing this medication. 56% of the 815 doctors who “specialize in ADHD” have suspicions of their patients handing out their medication to other people who do not have ADHD. Not only can it be considered cheating to take study drugs, but it is illegal to give your medication to other people. It is the “unlawful distribution of a controlled substance” and maybe students would …show more content…
Yale had 28% of students reporting “nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation in 2015 when the national average is 23%. Sexual assault is a huge problem amongst the Ivy Leagues. Not only do they have these disgusting acts being committed on their campus, but they are not adequately meeting the needs of survivors at all. Why is it such an issue in the Ivy League? Shouldn’t they be focusing on their studies instead of committing crimes? An article called “Does the Ivy League have a sexual assault problem?” answers it’s own question. Yes, it does. They contribute most of these heinous actions to this sense of “Ivy League entitlement” and “institutional self-protection.” Ivy League Fraternity brothers often have this idea that the girls they have invited are lucky to be at their parties. These people think that because they have this high status at an elite school, they can just do whatever they want and get away with it… mostly because they do get away with it. Schools do not want to have a reputation of having a lot of sexual assault cases, so they will protect themselves by not protecting the victim. They don’t take it seriously because if they did, they’d realize what a mess this has become and how they are going to have to find a way to deal with it. The fact that they just ignore the needs of the survivors and don’t do anything about it just
Also, the colleges that attempt to cover up the crime should be penalized by not our justice system but the media so the world can be better informed about the college they either go to or send their child to. First I summarized "Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?" written by A. Ayres Boswell and Joan Z. Space. The. Then I used information from my criminology class to better define violent crime. Lastly, I explained how rape on campus is not a cultural component.
In the article “Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League” by William Deresiewicz, Deresiewicz explains the flaws within the coveted ivy league system. He begins by explaining his experience in the ivy league acceptance process and how the applications are read and judged by the acceptance panel, some applicants have too many educational qualifications and too few extracurricular activities, others have too many extracurricular activities but low GPA’s and class rankings, and others must be judged based on contributions to the college by their parents. He then transitions into how college students have over achieved but have no purpose or drive, they do things to get into college but don’t know why they want to go or what they
In the article “Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League” by William Deresiewicz, the author speaks about how Ivy League are not a school for only the most intelligent students, but the Ivy League is more of a modern day segregated community for students that are born into wealth, or simply just for the rich.
For many college students, college is their first big step into adulthood. Students now need to worry about money, roommates, serious relationships, pursuing their passions, future and present jobs, and above all homework, class, and studying. This is the situation that most college students are thrown into. We simply don't need one more thing to worry about. I believe this is why in 2008, an AP survey found that eighty percent of students say they are stressed daily, thirteen percent have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or depression, and nine percent have considered suicide.(Cite 1) This makes colleges that are actively pursuing lowering students grades such as Princeton seem maleficent. Harrell brushes this off in his article as he says that lower grades will increase competition and then makes the incredulously pompous statement: if you wanted to breeze through college you should have gone to Harvard. Harrell says that at Princeton their goal is to “Teach, not to entertain... [to] maximize academics, not leisure.”(CITE0) This mindset is not healthy. A student at a university that puts an emphasis on lowering everyones grades and increasing difficulty fosters a culture that overemphasizes gades. In other words, a college with this attitude would have a campus where instead of pursuing things like health, community, or lieser, students would mostly be inside worring and
Attending college is not only a chance for students to further their education, but it also allows them to experience the lessons life has to offer. One of the hardest lessons to learn is how unfair life can be. Students who work diligently to achieve academic success in the classroom may quickly realize their academic efforts do not “pay off” as much as the student-athlete who possesses the ability to kick a football fifty yards. There is an evident failure in the educational system when the student-athlete’s performance and how they contribute to a winning season, is more valuable to the university, than the academic student who strives to graduate with honors. Students who focus their efforts on an academic based education are not rewarded with the same benefits, resources, and perks as their student-athlete counterparts.
Prescription stimulant misuse can be defined as taking more of the medication than prescribed, or as taking the medication without a prescription. There have been many arguments on the reasons why there has been an increasing amount of college students who misuse prescription stimulants. Some psychologists argue that the misuse of prescription stimulants amongst college students is caused by stress brought upon by final exams and hard curriculum. However, other psychologists argue that the misuse of prescription stimulants is becoming more common amongst American college students for other reasons such as: differences amongst brain activity in college students, and misconceptions about the true risks of misusing prescription stimulants amongst
When it comes to sexual assault on college campuses there is also the question of what can colleges do to decrease the amount of sexual assaults. Bradford Richardson and Jon A Shields wondered the same thing, so they conducted an ...
Students who attended these institutions of higher education were typically born into a wealthy family, where the individuals already had made a name for themselves. They survived college, as disruptive students, because college was not a necessity for them to succeed in life. Referring to Harvard College, in his family’s newspaper, the New England Curant, in 1677, Benjamin Franklin wrote that it had become a “rich man’s school, a place that wealthy parents sent their sons to, where, for want of a suitable genius, they learn little more than to carry themselves handsomely, and enter a room genteely” (Lucas, p. 109). Prior to the American Revolution, higher education did not impact the majority of the people first hand. It is estimated that no more than one in every thousand colonists attended any college present before 1776 (Lucas, p. 109). This supports the idea that college was only available to those individuals who had enough money to attend college simply for the ability to move up the social ladder.
According to Kathleen Hirsch, the author of “Fraternities of Fear: Gang Rape, Male Bonding, and the Silencing of Women” 1 in every 4 women attending college will be the victim of sexual assault at some point during her academic career. Or in another study reported in the “The sexual Victimization of College Women” there are 35.3 incidents of sexual assault in a group of 1,000 women in a time span of 6.91 months (Statistics). Obviously sexual assault is a huge problem that should be taken very seriously. Some colleges have wonderful programs put in place that provides great services to help those students who have been have been sexually assaulted and programs that help education and prevent sexual assault.
Education has always been a current issue due to the fact that it is seen as an economic cure-all. However, the perception of college is ill-conceived and there are multiple debates on how to improve it. College universities believe that having open admissions will increase the amount of matriculations, but the fact is the amount of students being enrolled into a four-year university has no relationship to the amount of students with academic aspirations. W.J. Reeves, an English professor at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York, gives a few examples of how open admissions has changed education methods and student abilities. Reeves wrote this opinion piece to convince everyone, especially parents, that schools are in need of reform
In "Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture" Ayres Boswell and Joan Z. Spade analyze the social perspective of the gendered relations in male fraternities that add to the high rate of violence against women on many college campuses. They list a host of factors that distinguish higher-risk from lower-risk atmospheres discussing the rates of rape in colleges and state how "1 out of 4 college women say they were raped or experienced an attempted rape" (217). Additionally, "1 out of 12 college men say they forced a woman to have sexual intercourse against her will" (Boswell, Spade 217). In other words Boswell and Spade indicated that the rates were high when it came down to women getting raped in colleges by men who also attended those colleges. In addition, Boswell and Spade specify in how most people are aware of rape but know very little about rape culture (Boswell, Spade 217).
Abuse of drugs has not however been limited to the professional athletic world. According to research conducted by Dr. Philip Veliz, Dr. Carol Boyd, and Dr. Sean Esteban McCabe, there has been a connection discovered between the abuse of ADHD medication and male athletes in high school. Beyond sports, there has been a recent development that is becoming a cause for concern in high school and college classrooms. More and more students have admitted to abusing the drug Adderall. They have turned to it in the hope of improving focus, helping their memory during study sessions, and increase performance on exams. This is an issue that is demanding a solution.
College life is a journey taken by many high school graduate in effort to explore a higher form of education, and most importantly build a new life outside the boundaries of their families to sustain a long path of toward successful career and to some, building a new family of their own. In the United State we are blessed with an education system that is never available worldwide. Laws are placed to allow every students regardless of ethnicity, gender or class a chance to pursue education in among the most prestigious universities in the world such as Ivy League school as well as many large public universities with many programs. This vast number of education institutions available of every type of students create this big diversity leading the U.S. to be the frontrunner of education in the world.
Brown II, M. C., & Ricard, R. B. (2007). The honorable past and uncertain future of the nation’s HBCUs. Thought & Action, 117.
This could lead to hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and obsessions. (Amphetamine) Examples of amphetamines include adderall, benzidrine, and dexedrine. Students often abuse prescriptions for adderall as a study tool. I’ve known students at my previous school in Miami take adderall during every exam when they weren’t even prescribed it, which is a perfect example of amphetamine abuse. I’ve even heard of students becoming addicted to such drugs.