By Jackie Jones

Almost from the moment of birth, parents look for anything that will give their children an edge in life.

Baby Einstein toys. Color-coded mobiles above the crib. Teaching their toddlers to read. Finding the right preschool. Moving into the best school district. Getting into the best magnet program. Taking advanced placement classes. Going to Saturday enrichment courses. Hiring tutors. The list goes on and on, and it is all designed to gain acceptance into the best possible college—hopefully on a full-ride scholarship.

Our first black president and first lady are Ivy League graduates, and many parents wonder whether Barack Obama’s election proves that any black child can grow go up to be president. Or is that just any black child who attends Harvard?

A friend said while attending the American Association of Medical Colleges conference in Boston recently, he read an article which grouped the most prestigious colleges and universities.

According to the piece, the Ivy League and “Ivy League Wannabes”—Johns Hopkins, Stanford, MIT—ranked first. Wellesley, Haverford, Tufts, University of Virginia, Spelman College (although not necessarily on everyone’s list), Duke and Washington University were in the next tier, followed by state schools, historically black colleges and universities(HBCUs) and, finally, every university not previously named.

When he looked at another report that showed where minority Harvard medical students admitted to the class of 2012 attended undergraduate school, there were no HBCUs on the list. Most came from Stanford, Washington University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Duke, Brown, MIT, Yale and Columbia.

“So, as you can see, Harvard medical school admissions is somewhat incestuous,” he said.

But does that mean the Ivy League actually provides a better education than any other group of schools? Or is there something extra, some intangible that makes the Ivy degree more valuable?

“I definitely believe that having gone to Harvard, and then Yale for my doctorate helped me in terms of my intellectual confidence, and certainly helped me in terms of my academic credibility (i.e., helped me get an initial job),” Jerry Gafio Watts, a professor in the PhD program in the English Department at City University of New York, said in an e-mail interview.

“Ivy League degrees do help people get ‘in the door,’ so-to-speak, but after one moves beyond the initial tier, it seems to me that one’s mobility will be determined by performance,” Watts said.

Kathleen Miles, Esq., a lawyer in the Washington, D.C. office of Kutak Rock, LLP, in Washington, D.C., said her undergraduate degree from Harvard helped her navigate a broader world much sooner than she might have had she opted for a different school.

“It was more beneficial in terms of class than race,” said Miles, who had exposure to well-educated people while growing up in Madison, N.J. “But to be in that setting and to have the benefit of training in kind of an upper-middle class world, going to cocktail parties and drinking sherry, learning to make small talk, the kind of thing you would do in that environment, learning how to dress, access to the network with people of all kinds, also how to make your way in a really complex environment without kind of losing your way,” was the great takeaway.

Miles attended Harvard for her undergraduate education and earned her law degree from the University of Virginia. She is a member of the New York and District of Columbia Bars and spent 10 years before joining Kutak Rock as Associate General Counsel for Fannie Mae.

High profile schools helped, but not just because of their ranking, Miles said.

“I don’t think the issue is an elite education. You can get an elite education in a number of places and you can get a good education in a number of places,” Miles said.

“There are drawbacks being in an institution that is part of a university where you don’t really have one-on-ones with the professor. The benefit wasn’t really that at all. When you’re doing the cost/benefit analysis…one has to distinguish between the short-term and long-term good, amortizing the cost of education versus the benefits.”

What the Ivy League degree gives you, Miles said, is access to better graduate schools and jobs, particularly in the context of the world economy. The name Harvard is known throughout the world.

“It’s a brand,” Miles said. The perception is “even if you got there as an affirmative action baby you still must have something on the ball.”

In fact, two studies have shown that minority students have the greatest level of success, determined by graduation rates, by attending the most competitive institution that will admit them.

The 2009 book Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities, refutes arguments that students who were admitted under affirmative action policies are at an unfair disadvantage against presumably better qualified students. Another new book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life, showed that graduation rates for black and working-class students exceed national averages and that there was evidence of significant interactions between students of various racial and ethnic groups.

“The book notes that this is a question with important legal ramifications because colleges have justified affirmative action by pointing to the educational value of educating students in heterogeneous groups,” according to Diverse Issues in Higher Education.

Social capital is likely one of the biggest predictors of future success.

“My son made an interesting observation where he went to school (University of Pennsylvania). African-Americans students who only hung with other African-American students came to the realization in junior year or so that they should widen their circle of friends. However, by junior year, close friendships have already been made and the chance to gain ‘social capital’ has been lost,” said Jeffrey Mazique, a civilian doctor at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and a graduate of Brown University and Howard University Medical School.

Broadcaster James Brown, a star basketball player at DeMatha High School in the Washington, D.C. area, stunned sports fans when he opted for Harvard over a school known for basketball.

It was what the Harvard brand could do for him that helped make the decision, he said.

“I continue to hear people say, ‘What did you expect?’” when they learn that a successful person was a Harvard graduate.

“They are ascribing more credit (to the school). It’s the power of the brand,” Brown said. Former Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander “told me it would serve the purpose of opening a number of doors and have people look at you.”

That said, Brown and the others noted, the Ivy League isn’t for everyone.

A number of friends and acquaintances who graduated from HBCUs, for example, “have fared very well because there was a sense of being grounded and having been in a more nurturing environment with a real good sense of self, of self-esteem and self-confidence,” Brown said.

“In academia, Ivy League degrees are quite common and are easily overvalued,” CUNY’s Watts said. “Having gone to Harvard and Yale eliminates any awe when reading job applications from faculty who obtained their degrees from schools of that variety. Instead, I think that I am more able to hire someone whose degree is from a less prestigious institution but who is doing good work.”

Miles, Brown and National Public Radio host Michel Martin, all Harvard graduates, said they did not or would not push their children to attend an Ivy League school because they believe they learned enough through their experiences to help their children navigate a wider world without the brand name degree.

“Going to Harvard made it much easier to get access to certain experiences. My first internship, that led to my first job, was directly related to people I met at Harvard working at The Crimson, the undergraduate newspaper,” Martin said. “It’s how I figured out not only what to do but how to do it. Of course, after that, you actually have to do it,” said Martin, the mother of two young children.

“Would I encourage my own children to go Ivy? Only if they want to,” Martin said. “But they don’t have to. Because I did. Because I know how to push those levers. I know how to figure out what’s what. My older girls, by the way, are both HBCU (graduates), like my husband, and they are doing very well.”

Brown said he couldn’t persuade his daughter to consider Harvard, but “I at least did my best to instill in her the lessons I learned, how to work in a corporate environment, having navigated that in four years.”

“I can better understand the kind of kid who would get eaten alive at Harvard,” Miles said. “A lot of the benefit I got there is something for someone who doesn’t need to be coddled, who doesn’t need nurturing to be successful there.

“It’s not for everyone, even if you could do the work,” said Miles, who said she doubts her middle-school-age daughter will aspire to the Ivy League. “You need to decide what does your child need and would they benefit in the same kind of way.”

Beyond the race issue, one also has to consider gender, class, geography and, sometimes, immigration status.

“It’s going to be different for a kid of Nigerian professors who teach at the University of Iowa who have been here, versus a Brooklyn kid with immigrant parents, versus someone who has parents who grew up in the south. I do know that going to Harvard ( and before that, St. Paul’s School, a boarding school in New Hampshire, which is how I got to Harvard) made it abundantly clear that white people ( especially rich white folks) were no smarter or happier than I, ” Martin said.

“They might have had more exposure to things. They might have more polish. They might have a cushion, which made it easier to be relaxed. But it took the mystery away. It made me realize that white people are just people and they do not have magical powers. I don’t know that I would have figured it out so soon. Now, that has not always helped me. I have been accused of not being as deferential as I could be to important people. That could be for any number of reasons, but I think it’s because I am not easily impressed. I am impressed with moral courage and great artistic ability…”

For those who end up in the brand-name schools, Mazique has some advice. “If you go to an Ivy League, study as if you life depends on it. Expand your horizons and move outside your comfort zone and interact with all races and classes.”

Jackie Jones is a freelance writer as well as a career and fitness coach for those who want to get their lives in shape. Her website is www.jonescoaching.net.