Does the school matter?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>in this sunday's NY Times (NJ section), there is an article about college admissions. it mentions that studies have shown that in terms of success in life the school plays a minor role. good students do well regarless of whether they get into their 1st choice or 5th choice. food for thought...</p>

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<p>In the October 10, 2005 issue of THE NEW YORKER magazine there was an article titled "Getting In: The Social Logic of Ivy League Admissions" by Malcom Gladwell. The article said essentially the same thing; successful people will be successful no matter where they go to college. I'm not sure if this article was reprinted in THE NEW YORK TIMES or not, but for those who are interested it is available to read online from THE NEW YORKER website at <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/051010crat_atlarge"&gt;http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/051010crat_atlarge&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p>

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<p>These same articles are written all the time. They have some valid points to make, but their attempts to quantify this stuff is totally flawed.</p>

<p>College is 4 years of your life. It isn't just about the end result and "success in life" (do they measure that by some income-based metric)? I wanted to go to a top college where I would be surrounded by the smartest students from all over the country and that would offer me world-class resources and the opportunity to learn from the brightest professors in the world. I think my Columbia experience gave me that, but how could you possibly quantify that in a study?</p>

<p>Had I gone to a "lesser" college, I might have been able to procure the same job / career path that I currently have. I might make the same amount of money over the course of my lifetime. These studies attempt to quantify such things, and fail miserably at doing so. And their studies totally ignore the important intangibles. Yes, successful people come out of "bad" colleges (or are high school drop outs) and there are people who go to Columbia but become failures in life. But I have yet to see a convincing argument that, on the whole, school makes no difference.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the link, K2006! Very interesting read. I liked this conclusion:</p>

<p>"The endless battle over admissions in the United States proceeds on the assumption that some great moral principle is at stake in the matter of whom schools like Harvard choose to let in — that those who are denied admission by the whims of the admissions office have somehow been harmed. If you are sick and a hospital shuts its doors to you, you are harmed. But a selective school is not a hospital, and those it turns away are not sick. Élite schools, like any luxury brand, are an aesthetic experience — an exquisitely constructed fantasy of what it means to belong to an élite — and they have always been mindful of what must be done to maintain that experience."</p>

<p>Columbia2002, you're right, of course, that the college experience itself is very important. But who's to say that you'll enjoy your college years any less if you go to your 2nd or 3rd choice? For example, some may actually be happier if they are top students in their 3rd choice than average in their 1st choice.</p>

<p>So how many seconds left to Dec. 8? lol</p>

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<p>Why would a school be one's first choice if he/she thinks that he would have an equal or better experience at some other school? That doesn't make any sense to me. There's got to be a reason to prefer that first choice over other schools. I think what happens is that people resolve themselves to wherever they end up and make the best of that particular situation. You'll never know what it is like to have an experience that is foreclosed to you, and you go on with life and forget about it rather than dwelling on it.</p>

<p>And I don't think there's any basis for stating that someone who gets rejected by a top school couldn't have been a top student at that school.</p>

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Good advice!</p>