The Ivy-Industrial Complex Part II: The Lifestyle Brand known as the Ivy League

Note: This article is the second part of a series of essays by the author to be published in the following weeks. Click here for the first part.

In a recent The Atlantic article, a therapist tries to comfort a high school student who is grieving over not receiving admission to their dream school of Brown University. Unfortunately, this experience is not an uncommon one, especially now that the top 25 universities hold an annual competition for the lowest admission statistics. Every year, college admission percentages become lower and lower (even if the numbers are somewhat inflated), and colleges enjoy bragging about these metrics, using their single-digit acceptance rate as proof of the worth of their institution. A cycle forms of low admission statistics persuading applicants of the excellence of their institutions, which then drives up application numbers, and subsequently, the acceptance percentages drop lower. Because of the competitive atmosphere brought about by the U.S. News and World Report, this cycle perpetuates itself, creating lower and lower statistics and a higher and higher amount left behind students.

The college application experience has become a rite of passage for Americans who wish to officially join the professional-managerial class. For their entire life, they have prepped for this moment. Learning their colors before kindergarten, reading Harry Potter in 1^st grade, being told they could do their multiplication tables fast in 3^rd grade, getting into the advanced classes in middle school and high school, going to academic summer camps like Duke TIP or John Hopkins’ CTY, participating in extracurriculars like Model United Nations or Youth and Government, all of these experience are geared towards one moment: College Application. 

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Personally, this path was exactly the one I followed. I went to Duke TIP and was president of my high school’s YAG chapter. At first, I tried to resist the lure of the Ivies. I thought I could settle for a lesser-known or an off-the-beaten-path school, but the prestige of Ivies eventually swayed me. The fall of my senior year, I came to visit Dartmouth and was overwhelmed by the presentation I saw. At Dartmouth, it seemed that I could have my cake and eat it too. I could sit under a tree and read a book for four years, and then afterward, I would suddenly be part of the elite, gaining near-infinite connections and becoming a more worthy person in the process. Continuing on the predetermined trajectory of my life, I applied early decision to Dartmouth and ecstatically received my acceptance that December. 

However, when I got to Dartmouth this fall, my eyes were opened. To say the least, I was surprised and disappointed. I assumed that the rat race of high school, with its test prep and AP classes, would have ended, but it had simply transformed. Instead of what college you wanted to attend, it was now what consulting firm or medical school you desired. I was shocked when students were still comparing their SAT and ACT scores; we ALL got in here; they DO NOT matter anymore. Although it took a little while, I did settle in at Dartmouth, and I can, fortunately, say that I did make the right decision. 

But my problem was that I assumed that the narrative of college acceptance, which begins in preschool and continues on up, would end once we were at the destination of college. We had reached the pinnacle of an Ivy League school, with all its glitz and glamour, but this narrative is hardwired into many students, meaning that escaping or departing from it is not possible. This narrative perpetuates itself like an ideology, with internship, jobs, and grad schools just a continuation of the belief system. My failure was believing that this was just some pathway to higher education, but in fact, this is more than a pathway, this is the pathway for the aspiring American.

This narrative is so ingrained in current student’s consciousness that it is indistinguishable from who they are. During the college admission experience, for the first time in many of these student’s lives, they can experience real, academic rejection. A college rejection is unthinkable for those who believe the narrative because it means that one has failed and was an imposter the entire time. The narrative is so ingrained that if one fails to gain admission to these colleges, one feels that their entire life was another’s. You reading Harry Potter in kindergarten was not special, you were not actually good at multiplication tables, and you did not deserve to be in those accelerated classes. Unfortunately for too many, college rejection makes one feel that they have been an impostor, having occupied a fake life and another’s pathway.  

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The most striking aspect of The Atlantic article is the way the student phrased their experience: “I feel like my identity was rooted in receiving an Ivy League education, and suddenly I feel lost and discombobulated.” For many high school students now, aspiring to be in the Ivy League is an essential part of who they are. While others find importance in a sport or a fandom or music or any of the other long list of options, these select students are defined by their Ivy aspirations. The commodification of identity is a topic for a different and much longer piece, but the same phenomenon that hooks people in with Marvel movies or K-pop bands is also what drives people toward wanting to be an “Ivy Leaguer.”

For most other commodified identities, there are no prerequisites. Anyone can watch a Marvel movie, and anyone can go watch a football game, but this is not the same for the Ivy League; in fact, it is the exact opposite. A large part of the Ivy League brand is that it is exclusive and elite, and not everyone is invited in through these hallowed gates. Striving to have acceptance rates in the single digits creates a system where admission is an outlier, not a norm, but this ugly truth runs counter to the narrative that schools want to produce. 

For every student who was allowed to enter into the Ivy League, there are ten students who were rejected. In fall, a fellow Dartmouth student told me that he was the only kid from his high school that got into an Ivy League school. He said that there was another student who was so confident in his chances of admission, that the only schools this student applied to were two Ivies. Subsequently, that same student was now enrolled in a local community college. This story is unfortunate, but most students can share similar stories of acquaintances whose lives have taken drastic turns due to college rejection. No teenager should be forced to face a psychological break from college rejection, and the Ivy-Industrial Complex and its brand, which touts education as the new frontier with new limitless opportunity for everyone, have perpetuated a system that tricks many American teenagers into a false sense of hope and identity and then only rewards a select few of them. 

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“The Ivy League” is a meaningless phrase today. It is simply a brand, just like Coke or Pepsi or Gucci or Dolce Gabbana, and like all other brands, overtime, it has been stretched and devalued. Originally, it was a simple signifier for elite northeastern colleges, and then it was formalized into an Athletic Conference. Meant to originally ensure a happy coexistence between football and academics for the nation’s elite, the conference and its name have transformed into an entirely different beast. 

While there is already quite a mystique that forms when the nation’s elite organize, the members have done nothing to dull this trend. And while some members might march and scream about how they hate their own privilege and status, the great secret of the Ivy League is that everyone loves it. Everyone loves their own mythos and mystical heritage. Each member loves to tout their own F. Scott Fitzgeralds and Robert Frosts, almost as if these writers are the national poets of each school. Princeton will forever be This Side of Paradise, and Dartmouth desperately wants to be Whoville. All 8 colleges even have their own foundation myths. Ebenezer Wheelock wanted to civilize the natives, and Harvard wanted to institutionalize the Puritans. And now, why is everyone all of the sudden a housing system? Because to most Americans, Hogwarts is the new ideal educational institution, and if Hogwarts is the new ideal, we need to adapt to it. And while each college might stray off and construct new, trendy buildings, the architecture schemes of each university are purposeful and impactful. Who doesn’t wish to live amongst beauty? Many might think that all of this heritage is incidental, part of a past era, but this perpetual building and transforming is all part of the mythos of the Ivy League brand. 

Everyone who is a part of the Ivy Class loves all of this, and while they might feign concern about privilege and systematic oppression, they really do believe in their own superiority because of where they intended college. Everyone criticizes their own school on this and that, but at the end of the day, the average Ivy Leaguer has more loyalty to their school than to their own country. A prebaked identity comes with each admission to these institutions, and that is the great selling point of each university, that is why the rejected student feels like their identity is being ripped out of them, because it is. 

The Ivy League is not a collection of American universities. No, it is a collection of Ivy Universities. Above everyone else is where they want to sit, and while there might be some vain international, universalistic impulse behind this, the Ivy League transcends all. The Ivy League likes to believe that it is the embodiment of the American Dream, that it is where the “huddled masses” can become “free”, and that those with true merit will rise, but this dream is an illusion. Ivy League institutions are fundamentally anti-democrat. They will always belittle the underclass for being racist and bigoted, but still wish to pretend to be revolutionaries. The very authority that the Ivy-Industrial Complex channels is from an elitism, and they will forever use this power to obfuscate its source with endless calls for diversity and inclusion initiatives. Education becomes propaganda, and propaganda becomes education. This endless, perpetuating cycle is what secures and ensures the existence of the Ivy Brand. 

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But why are so many young students attracted to build an identity around a hypocritical institution like the Ivy League? Is education really that attractive to the youth? Are students really desperately competing to strengthen themselves through participating in the long tradition of Western knowledge? Of course, the answer is no to all of these questions. The internet has effectively made knowledge free to everyone, and if students’ sole aim was to gain knowledge, they would simply digest Khan Academy (an institution that Dartmouth now finds admirable) or Wikipedia pages for free, instead of paying the exuberant rates they do now. But this is the great switcheroo of the Ivy-Industrial Complex. In the twentieth-first century, when knowledge has been liberated from the halls of academia, the ivory tower has subsequently divorced knowledge from education. The new great promise of the Ivy League is not to gain a full education, to tap into one’s own cultural heritage, to become a fuller, freer person through the strengthening of one’s own knowledge, to “remind oneself of human excellence, of human greatness” as Leo Strauss once said about education. No, the new promise of the Ivy-Industrial Complex is to simply strengthen one’s social status. 

Once upon a time, the dream of education was to free oneself through a commitment to a rigorous academic approach. One would admit one’s own foolishness and become a better, more whole human through participating in an ancient tradition of knowledge, but no more. The new dream of the Ivy education is to free oneself from one’s own heritage. Their members might tout Marx’s writing on the abolition of class, but truly, this new education is about elevating oneself to a higher class. An Ivy League education is now only equivalent to a first-class ticket to the upper class. Simply by gaining admittance to these institutions, one shoots to the top of the social stack. The Ivy League is not selling an education, it is selling a class. 

Above all, the Ivy-Industrial Complex offers young students an elite, premade identity, and when so many young people are both obsessed with their own identity yet floating around meaningless in the world, this deal is irresistible to most American teenagers. Seizing on the great confusion of the young, the twenty-first-century Ivy-Industrial Complex has flourished as a brand. Endowments have skyrocketed, acceptance rates have plummeted, and administration jobs have ballooned. The Ivy League Brand has become a lifestyle for the elite youth.