<p>"The key to success in college and beyond has more to do with what students do with their time during college than where they choose to attend." The debate rages on. Interesting comments follow the article.</p>
<p>What</a> You Do vs. Where You Go - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com</p>
<p>As much as what you do in college is important. When someone introduces him/herself as a “Harvard graduate” (or any prestigious university for that matter), it automatically makes employers as well as other people assume that said person is intelligent and hard-working.</p>
<p>There’s a reason everybody wants to go to top universities, it’s not just for fun; it’s an enormous advantage. Regardless of what your GPA is there, the name of the degree alone will take you places.</p>
<p><em>citation needed</em></p>
<p>For many majors and careers…no…it doesn’t matter…unless you choose some school that has a bad rep for a particular major.</p>
<p>H does a lot of hiring in the manufacturing/engineering area, often says that they rarely hire graduates from the “top usual suspects” & indeed does laugh about the stigma attached to such schools as MIT, etc. It’s a shame that so many applicants think their life is over with if they didn’t get into their first choice, top notch, highly ranked school.</p>
<p>One day he came home from work and asked me “Ever hear of Harvey Mudd?” “OMG,” I said, “Hire him.” “He is a she & you are stereotyping” he tells me! :eek:</p>
<p>True story: When DH was graduate student in history at Harvard (GSAS), he served as a non-resident tutor at Leverett House, one of the Harvard undergraduate houses, where he taught Sophomore History Tutorial. Well, one of his students wanted to team up with another student to found a brewery. But apparently it costs a whole heck of a lot to buy brewery equipment (duhhh). So, DH’s student and his classmate went to a cookout at DH’s student’s family home. (Sorry for awkward syntax–too busy to fix.) Anyway, many rich / powerful people were at this cookout. The two students worked the crowd and ended up with enough money to buy the brewery equipment and start the brewery. (May I mention brand names? It’s Harpoon Brewery, still located in Massachusetts.) </p>
<p>I’m sure the same scenario could unfold elsewhere, though – wherever you have enterprising students with very well-connected parents! It seems to happen a lot at Harvard, though. :D</p>
<p>That said, I myself am a huge advocate of, “What you do matters more than where you go.” And anyway, we’re not well-connected at all, so, even if our kids went to Harvard, they would not be able to start a brewery. 
I guarantee!</p>
<p>@SLUMOM – that’s a very funny story, LOL!</p>
<p>DS is very interested in Western Carolina University, which does not have the greatest academic reputation (to put it mildly). It does have a decent honors college, though. Plus, it has a spectacular setting. And DS is very interested in Appalachian culture and outdoorsy stuff, so it seems like a fit.</p>
<p>I worry about the academic rep, though. But…as they say, it’s what you make of it. Supposedly, the history department (DS’s proposed major) is quite strong.</p>
<p>Appalachian culture? You can major in redneck?</p>
<p>Forgive me for asking, but what does one intend to do with a degree in Appalachian culture? It sounds like a made-up major for football players.</p>
<p>LOL!!! OK, that was funny. 
</p>
<p>I wasn’t clear. DS plans to major in history (and then go on to law school…that’s the plan right now, anyway). </p>
<p>But he likes Appalachian culture, folklore, and music, and there’s plenty of all three at Western Carolina, which is located near Pisgah National Forest in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.</p>
<p>Actually, both Appalachian State and Western Carolina do have programs in Appalachian Studies…but no, DS is not planning to major in that area. What would one do with such a major? Beats me. Play the mandolin, maybe. :)</p>
<p>UNCA is a great school and better than WCU, in case you didnt know. And UNCA is a liberal arts college and small. If he has the scores, go there.</p>
<p>For kids who are dual citizens, it is important that the name and reputation of the college is one that is at least recognizable by grad programs and employers in both countries.</p>
<p>Thanks, ghostbuster! He has already applied to UNCA…in fact, it’s his top-choice school. </p>
<p>Here are his stats:</p>
<p>SAT 2100 (may try to raise that in January)
Subject SATs: Math II - 790; Physics - 700 (waaah, he was getting 800 on the practice tests!)
(He will be taking Latin SAT this Saturday.)
GPA – well, we home-school, so what does that even mean? We’ve given him all As, but we’re biased.
Rigor of home-school program (taught by DH): off the chart, if you ask me. E.g., DS is currently reading the Aeneid in Latin and the Anabasis of Xenophon in Greek. (In fact, one reason he’s considering UNCA is that it has a solid classics program, although that won’t be his major.) </p>
<p>We think he has a good shot at getting into UNCA – and we hope he gets merit aid!</p>
<p>Thanks again…</p>
<p>Diane</p>
<p>Yes it does matter where you go - but perhaps not for the reasons you may think.</p>
<p>You can find good teaching at most colleges, though faculty are limited in the pace at which they can teach by the abilities of their students and the likelihood that their students will arrive in class having read the material and prepared to discuss it. But the impact of motivated, driven, accomplished peers is huge. It’s probably the greatest undergraduate asset of a selective college. Students may or may not respond to the expectations of faculty and administrators, but they never want to let their peers down or appear in a negative light in front of them. If they go to a place at which intellectual thought and accomplishment are revered, then they’ll respond to that and aspire to earn the respect of their friends accordingly. If they attend a college at which party animals who just get by academically are celebrated, then they’re less likely to develop goals and aspirations that reflect intellectual depth and accomplishment. </p>
<p>(Citation for noimagination : Pascarella and Terenzini, “How College Affects Students”)</p>
<p>It matters where you go only if you make use of the opportunities. A lazy student will do the same at any college because the benefits of a good college won’t matter. A good student that uses resources will get more out of a good college simply because there are more resources.</p>
<p>If you work in a medium to large size company, I bet you would be hard pressed to even name the colleges most of your coworkers attended. 5 years after you graduate, your success in the business world is determined more by what you accomplish on the job rather then where you went to college.</p>
<p>As for the original question, I believe the most important reason why it matters where you go is the network. In many aspects of life, it’s not what you know but who you know. At a top school, you will be surrounded by people of which a very high percentage will be ultra successful in life. Most of the friends you make will be future business owners, top execs, people of influence, etc. At a “lesser” school, this may not be as prevalent. Successful people come from all schools, but generally the better the school, the higher the percentage.</p>
<p>@time2: At that medium to large size company, if you check the schools of the top people there, you would probably find most went to excellent colleges.</p>
<p>@Time 2 – that is exactly right. I work in a humongous company, and I don’t have clue one where most people here went to college.</p>
<p>“if you check the schools of the top people there, you would probably find most went to excellent colleges”</p>
<p>Not necessarily. ;-)</p>
<p>Yes and no. After getting my BA at a good college and studying for my PhD at an Ivy, I think there’s three good reasons for the Ivies:</p>
<p>1) Prestige. Like nosike says, from personal experience you’re taken different when you tell people you go to Columbia. I look young and a lot of people mistake me for an undergrad when I announce that I’m in school, so when I tell them I go to Columbia even though they assume it’s a BA program they’re impressed. (They’re <em>really</em> impressed when I tell them it’s a PhD). People associate certain qualities with that prestige - that you are smart, polished, charismatic, professional, etc. It really doesn’t matter; unless you do things to torpedo that image, that’s the positive stereotype people are going to have of you. It’s a good stereotype to have when you are applying for jobs.</p>
<p>2) Resources. Top schools have big money. Therefore they have the best student centers, libraries, gym facilities, connections in the city, research pools, etc. Just from my standpoint as a grad student, more resources means things like 20 libraries at one university (whereas at my alma mater, three colleges shared one library), easy and quick access to volumes at other Ivies and schools within the city, connections with Princeton and NYU for grad student conferences and resources, that sort. The apartments are nicer. The gym is nicer. The student center is nicer. These are little things that matter when they add up. It takes away from the early December depression when you have a nice place to study. Butler Library (Columbia’s main library) is like a dream come true compared to my old dinky library. Not to mention that I can go to the librarian and ask her to buy a book for the library and within two weeks she’ll call me and tell me that the book is in and I can borrow it. You can’t do that everywhere! Resources! </p>
<p>3) Networking. There are top companies here EVERY WEEK to recruit YOU. They want to talk to you, pick your brain and they want to hire you. I’m not saying that the name dictates success, but it does make people take a closer look when it’s on your record. Personal experience. My advisor is a noted methodologist in my field and when I go to conferences and people ask me who I work with and where, I get a nicely raised eyebrow from this. This makes them trust my skills more as a graduate student and so when I start saying I want to do this postdoc or this internship, they’re all too happy to make accommodations and tell me to email or call them any time.</p>
<p>BUT. Here’s my take: some of this stuff is NICE but not NECESSARY. I went to a top 100 LAC. The name is well-recognized with employers and so it’s not like I looked like a lightweight with just my BA, especially in the city I come from (everyone knew what it was in the South; up here, I get a few more “huhs” but a lot of "Oh, yes"es). I was able to get by and do good enough research to get INTO Columbia at my small LAC; we also had top Wall Street consulting and banking firms and top law schools recruting down there, too. I have friends in med school at Penn and Harvard and WUSTL; friends who work at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, McKinsey and Bain; friends who are doing graduate programs at Yale and Stanford and whatever.</p>
<p>People thinking you are smart from the bat is a NICE extra, but proving you are intelligent by the other accomplishments you list has the same effect. You get? I will also say that the teaching quality here is much more variable than it was at my LAC, but I think that’s primarily because most of the professors are primarily researchers here, whereas at the LAC they were primarily teachers.</p>
<p>So my conclusion is - what you do matters far more than where you go. But, sometimes where you go can influence what you dare to do - or what you are able to do, or what you have access to do. And when people say that your peers’ motivation will impact you, take it very seriously. It is true. But the flip is, don’t let the U.S. News rankings try to tell you where the ambitious kids are, because it’s not that simple; it just depends on the culture. I think the kids here are more slavishly driven and ambitious to achieve high - but high meaning your standard doctor/lawyer/engineer combinations. No disrespect to Columbia undergrads; they are extremely intelligent - moreso than my undergraduate peers, IMO. But I also think my undergraduate peers have a higher dedication to being community and local leaders and a higher sense of creativity about the kinds of jobs and work that one can do than students here, and perhaps different ideas of what it means to have a meaningful job and what being a leader means.</p>