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The Spectator • December 22, 2021
Spectator University From Alumni to Teachers: Are Ivies Worth It? By AFRA MAHMUD, FRANCESCA NEMATI, SASHA SOCOLOW, DEXTER WELLS, and KELLY YIP For many Stuyvesant students, attending an Ivy League college is vital to their academic careers and future success. These schools are known for their academic quality, selectivity, renowned facilities, and, of course, extensive legacies and reputations. However, is going to such an elite school worth it, and does it truly define one’s future? The Spectator conducted interviews with various teachers and alumni, who shared their own experiences and reflections. Evelyn Mao (‘15)
Eve Wening (‘20)
Zoe Buff / The Spectator
Jeffrey Wan (‘15), physics teacher When applying to college, Jeffrey Wan (’15) was in the auspicious position of having a good sense of what his plans were after college; he wanted to teach high school physics in New York City. At the end of his senior year, Wan was enrolled at Stony Brook University when a revelation struck him: “Why would I pay for room and board at Stony Brook and also be outside of the city when my goal [was] to teach in the city and also not spend a lot of money?” Wan subsequently consulted Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services Casey Pedrick— who worked in the college office at the time—and decided to take advantage of walk-in admissions at City College. “I went up there the day after with my transcript and my report card, some stuff from Stuy: my report card, my SAT scores, all that, some stuff from the College Board. I brought it up there, and I think they just took me in,” he recalled. At City College, Wan appreciated the benefits of going to school in the city that he had sought out. “Being in city schools gives you ins with the city schools,” he said. He also did field work within the Department of Education. “[It] is just being in a classroom under some teacher who knows more [...] and kind of absorbing by osmosis the teacher knowledge,” he said. This firsthand experience gave Wan greater insight into planning and delivering lessons and also set him up for an eventual job at Stuyvesant. He not only worked with teachers but also conducted his own student teaching. “You’re dropped into a class, and you serve as a student-teacher. You actually teach more than during fieldwork,” Wan explained. Wan’s college experience was perhaps most remarkably characterized by the lucidity he gained and how well his plan worked out. He was able to get a job teaching physics—at the high school he had graduated from, no less—right out of the gate. His regrets from college are, impressively, few and far between. While he admits that he probably should have shown up to his freshman year calculus class more often (“Some days I chose to sleep,” he said), much seems to have worked out just as he hoped. Additionally, and certainly to the benefit of his students, Wan has a unique familiarity with what it is like to be a student at Stuyvesant. “I’m familiar with the people here. I’m familiar with how things are here […] I said, ‘Sure, let’s head over. Let’s see what I can do.’” Wan earnestly recommends that students stressed about applying to college give serious consideration to what they want to do academically, or at least to what they like. He explained that students should not let their parents steer every aspect of their college course, illustrating the perils of doing so: “You change majors your second or third year into college. Then you’ve wasted time. You’ve wasted money.” “Even if you don’t know what you want to do, make sure you are doing something that lines up with what you enjoy. If you don’t like math and physics, maybe don’t be an engineer. If you don’t like math and science and biology, organic chemistry, maybe don’t go into pre-med. You have to be able to stomach what you are doing.”
Courtesy of Eve Wening
Evelyn Mao (’15) studied biology at SUNY Stony Brook and after graduating in 2019, earned a second bachelor’s degree in nursing from Hunter College in 2021. Overall, Mao had a decent experience at Stony Brook but noticed that her quiet nature held her back from enjoying her first few years. However, she enjoyed her second-degree program more. “Everyone already has a career or family, so we all have a focus,” Mao noted. Having recently graduated, Mao plans to become a registered nurse next year. “I was considering all kinds of healthcare professions, but nursing was the best choice for me,” she said. Factors such as the length of the program, affordability, and the ability to direct patient care played important roles in her decision. Mao’s most rewarding college experience, studying abroad in Madagascar, is part of the reason she decided to follow this path. After researching indigenous butterflies for three months, she realized the reality of research was not for her. “It was too much networking or writing and too little hands-on time,” she says. Her participation in the program led her to her current career avenue: nursing. Not only was studying abroad valuable to her academics, but it also helped Mao connect with those who had similar interests. “I got to meet a bunch of peers [who] have a clear direction in life, mostly conservation-related research,” she said. Despite finding her career path, Mao has regrets about her college application process. She applied for her dream schools, many of which were highly ranked, and Stony Brook as a “safety” school. She believes that if she had applied to schools that were more feasible, she would have had more college options, but she now realizes that her life would not necessarily be better if she went to a private school that was ranked higher. Mao described her difficulties with Stony Brook’s curriculum: “If I’d known that I wouldn’t stick with research, I’d have gone to another school […] Their curriculum is not compatible with most other schools […] I had to jump through many hoops for course equivalency.” This incompatibility presented a challenge for Mao when applying to professional schools. Foundational classes are hard and can be detrimental to one’s GPA, but Mao appreciates the rigor in terms of education. Mao’s largest piece of advice for students applying to colleges is not to become hyper-fixated on the prestige of a school, but to seek out options that are best for your interests. “Really focus on your end goal instead of the ranking of the school. If you want to go to medical school, pick a school that will save some money and be friendly to your GPA. If you want to do research in a certain field, look for a school that is supportive of undergraduate research and has good programs in that field,” she said. In Mao’s opinion, if you pursue your interests, you can enjoy college life at any school. However, many of us still don’t know exactly what we want to do, and in this situation, she advises opting for a large school that offers many opportunities in multiple fields. Mao graduated but still changed her career path––as she shows, it’s always okay to take another trajectory: “If it doesn’t work out, there’s always the chance to try again or switch to something else. But it is most important to keep trying.” Overall, she hopes everyone can look outside the box and know that it actually gets better. “To me, you can enjoy college life at any school if you get to do things you want to do. As long as you reach your goal in the end, it really doesn’t matter if you went to the best school or got straight A’s every step along the way.”
Eve Wening (’20) is currently a second-year attending Dartmouth College. Though she has not yet declared a major, she plans on pursuing computer science or a modified major that incorporates elements of the computer science classes she has been taking. Wening admits to not liking Dartmouth during her first year, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but she has felt more at home in recent months. “This fall has been totally different. I like it a lot more. It’s been really fun, very relaxed. I feel like I’ve been growing very quickly,” she said. She has enjoyed taking advantage of Dartmouth’s unique outdoor opportunities, such as mountain biking and backpacking. “Dartmouth fully paid for me to go backpacking in the Guadalupe Mountains, and it was the best week of my life,” she shared. “There are so many trips that you can go on, and they’ll help pay for [them].” Though she has come to find her place at Dartmouth, Wening still has some regrets, especially in the way she chose her school. Though she applied to Dartmouth Early Decision, which made the application process smoother for her, it left her with some misgivings. “I regret EDing because I felt locked in. You change so much from November to May, and I felt like I wanted more opportunities,” she said. Looking back, Wening wishes that she had given herself more options and reflected more on what she was looking for in college. “I ED-ed to an Ivy, and I got in. That’s what a lot of people want the most. That’s the goal. But as soon as I got into Dartmouth, I thought, ‘I am such an idiot,’” she confessed. “This entire time I’ve been at Stuy, I thought I could think for myself and I didn’t fall into the ‘Stuy-thinking’ [patterns]. I hadn’t thought about the culture of this school, who I am, what kind of people I want to be around.” Though Wening has come to enjoy certain aspects of Dartmouth and found people she feels welcome amongst, it took longer than she had expected. Wening noticed the lack of diversity she has seen at Dartmouth. “Dartmouth is full of really ambitious people, but they’re also really privileged. A lot of them had really secure, solid lives, and I feel like if I had gone to a school where people were a little bit more relaxed about academics and less wanting to do finance and economics, that might have been a better fit for me,” she said. As someone who attends an Ivy League school, Wening is not enchanted by the band of elite universities. “The things that we get from Stuyvesant, being with kids who are really ambitious, working really hard, caring about grades, everyone feels really similarly, this is a pretty serious monoculture in that everyone really wants the same thing. That’s not the real world. But that is the Ivy League,” she said. “If you get through this place and then you fall in love with a school that isn’t in the Ivy League, definitely go to that school. And if you fall in love with a school that is in the Ivy League and then you don’t get into that school, feel really good about your other options because those are places that are probably going to be more intellectually, culturally diverse than the Ivy League, and that will benefit you greatly.”
