Advice for High School Graduates

College Search & Selection
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<p>From Gail Collins, columnist for the New York Times. </p>

<p>Advice</a> for High School Graduates - The Conversation Blog - NYTimes.com</p>

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But do you think you could assure the graduates that there’s good education to be had in a multitude of places, many far from the Ivy League? I’m really disturbed by having a Supreme Court made up entirely of people who went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Columbia. (O.K., John Paul Stevens went to Northwestern. This was so long ago that it’s possible he did it on the advice of Abraham Lincoln.)</p>

<p>Judging people by the college they went to is almost as bad as judging them by their family tree. It’s the dictatorship of the U.S. News & World Report ranking list.</p>

<p>It is true that the fancier your alma mater, the more famous people you will know when you’re 45. You, however, will not necessarily be one of those famous people yourself. You could very easily wind up being the deputy assistant to a person who graduated 40th in her class at Wichita Tech.</p>

<p>This obsession with picking the right college is the way people who could have gotten a scholarship to a state school find themselves graduating from Nifty University with $100,000 in student loans. Tell the students that the only two things certain as they move out into the world are that the future is unknowable and the loan payments unavoidable.

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<p>I’m not entirely convinced that it’s Ivy league schools that makes people “successful”. Consider the kind of students who get into Ivy league schools - they’re either ultra-rich or entitled OR they’re bright, hard working, determined, and lucky. You have bright, hard working, determined, lucky students at many schools. But if they’re concentrated at a small set of schools, especially at schools great at providing opportunity and a great education, then you’re going to see a disproportionate number of “successful” people from those schools.</p>