<p>In reading various threads on CC, it is easy to see the harmful influence that "prestige" exerts on a student's college selection process. The result is that students will sometimes opt for the prestigious college over the better fit, even for institutions of similar quality and with comparable student profiles. And sometimes there is even a secondary effect where, after a student has matriculated to a "prestigious" institution, he/she remains even if he/she knows that another, less prestigious, college would be a better individual choice. </p>
<p>So take a get out jail free card as you're passing GO on your way to making your college selection. Choose a college because you like it, because you think you will learn a lot there (and I don't mean just in the classroom), that you will intellectually and emotionally and maybe physically develop and mature there, that you will make great friends there, that you will have an interesting variety of experiences there, etc. These experiences will differ from college to college and it is up to you to determine the best match for you. But please make that college choice for the right reasons, ie, for your needs and not for someone else's perceptions.</p>
<p>“harmful” influence? I’ll say you do have a flair for the dramatic and, at other times, understatement… Hawkette, everyone has an opinion…just because some people may recommend (heaven forfend!) Cornell or Columbia over your favorites doesn’t mean the advice is harmful…</p>
<p>What? Hawkette’s assertion is perfectly valid… What’s with the insults? This is something that it sounds like a lot of people think needs to be restated, and despite what’s happened between y’all in past threads, I think this thread should stand alone and be uninfluenced by interpersonal biases.</p>
<p>Prestige doesn’t necessarily lead to the best human experience, and with my background, since I went through a number-one program and am still trying desperately to shed the harm and bitterness that it left me with, I’ll holler 'til my lungs are sore that prestige isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, in the hopes that other people won’t make the same mistake that I did and pick a more prestigious program over one that makes them happy.</p>
<p>Go for the best academic experience that you can get. Prestige and strength-of-program factor into the “best” part, sure, but please don’t work under the assumption that whether you can be <em>happy</em> at a place isn’t a LARGE part of that equation. </p>
<p>The best academic experience you can get is one where you’re happy, where you’ll get a good education, and where you’ll be left with good opportunities. I’m pretty sure this is what Hawkette’s talking about, and I think it’s a great point.</p>
<p>Hawkette may be referring to some recent specific threads where students are pondering whether they should go for the Top 10 over the Top 20 for no other reason than the minimal difference in the USNews rank–and some perceived difference in ‘prestige’ attaching to the undergraduate degree. In some of these cases, the difference in price is many tens of thousands of dollars over 4 years.</p>
<p>I think Hawkette’s point is entirely valid. My own son was faced with the same kind of decision as many of these high achievers, and wisely–in my opinion–chose what was for him the best combination of program, price and campus life, without considering some pretty minimal differences in ‘rank’. It is one thing to walk away from a huge merit award to a top 20 school because you really don’t like the school or think it has a good program in your major, but I’m reading posts from students who are walking away because they think the prestige is slightly less. What do 17/18 year old kids know about prestige in various parts of the country, in various fields? Probably not enough to make a decision on that basis, especially when the price difference is as much as $160,000 or more.</p>
<p>aibarr,
Thanks for your comments. As for what I meant, the important point is that you decide what is right for you and then act upon that belief and not based on what someone else thinks is right for you. I happen to favor colleges that have the best blends of great academics, great social life and great athletic life. I place a premium on what happens out of the classroom as I think that that is often so much more important in what determines a successful undergraduate experience. But I recognize and accept that others will have a different interpretation and different priorities (eg, your explicit focus on academics and area of study) and that is absolutely fine. What is required, however, is that when the time comes to choose that “best” school, I am asking students to choose that school based on what is best for them and not based on how much prestige is associated with that college.</p>
<p>I’ve grown pretty sick of CC. It was controlling my decision more than I should let it.</p>
<p>As of now, I very well may turn down a full ride to Stanford in favor of Berkeley (where I’ll be taking out loans if I don’t get the scholarships I’m vying for). I don’t think I’d regret it.</p>
<p>Yeah, i’ve seen people post their two colleges, and people with inevitably recommend the one with the lower admissions rate and/or higher ranking. those rankings are bogus!</p>
<p>Being able to fit and not being miserable is one thing, but I don’t understand why EC’s at colleges are coming into play so much. I honestly don’t think most people are going to have such a large amount of free time that they couldn’t fill it at almost any good college.</p>
<p>Fetou,
Imagine you are interviewing for a job in your senior year of college. Your interviewer reads your resume, notes your GPA (let’s say it’s somewhere 3.5 or above) and your area of study and then the questions start. What happens is that you go through a litany of questions related to your studies, but the reality is that the undergraduate academic training is not going to vary greatly among schools of similar ranking levels. And the interviewer knows this while also understanding that certain colleges and certain programs might have a slightly higher or lower reputation which could act as a tip in the first-job hiring process. </p>
<p>But this difference in institutional reputation is not what will drive the hiring decision; it is you, your abilities, your experiences, your ability to connect with that interviewer that will drive. Plenty of students graduate from elite colleges and think they have it made because they went to ABC elite. Wrong! The institution’s strength is really in getting you to that interview. After the first five minutes, it is then up to you.</p>
<p>So, this is why I harp on the non-academic side of the college experience. You may be a good or even great student, but as an employer, I see plenty of candidates like you. Great GPAs are a dime a dozen. But great and interesting people are not. It is those students that have consequential, non-academic experiences that are frequently the great differentiators in the hiring process and which provide the greatest clues, even attestations, that you are truly the best candidate for a position. </p>
<p>As for your comment about free time, I hope you know that all work and no play makes Jack/Jill a very dull boy/girl. Part of college is learning how to manage your time and hopefully emerging from your undergraduate years as something more than an automaton who goes from dorm to classroom to library to dining hall to dorm. Your ability to work effectively with others and to think critically and creatively, sometimes in non-academic settings, is often a key requirement for a work environment that you want to join. Non-academic activities will often reveal far more about you as a job candidate than what you did in the classroom. </p>
<p>Sorry if this reads like a lecture, but I feel strongly that modest differences in prestige are given far too much weight in college decisions and that students need to spend more time thinking about what else they will experience at college, what they might learn from their peers, what non-academic opportunities exist at the school (including fun things), etc. </p>
<p>I hope that you would agree that you are defined by so much more than your academic record. I hope also that you will realize that your college experience will be impacted and shaped by so much more than your classroom experience.</p>
<p>Prestige is based on real quality factors that exist over a long period of time. Prestige is a good indicator of quality. Prestige is like the US News Peer Assessment rating which is correlated almost entirely with measures of quality.</p>
<p>Don’t discount the meaning of prestige. It indicates quality.</p>
<p>No, Collegehelp, “fit” has to do with the culture of a place and how it works with the kid. You can take two colleges and be miserable at one because of the school’s culture. That aspect is very important. I look at my son’s classmates and know that they would die at a place like Amherst, and will be very happy at U. of Central Florida. It goes with their culture.</p>
<p>collegehelp,
For starters, Peer Assessment scoring is NOT a measurement of quality. It is an opinion survey of people we don’t know, using metrics we don’t know, and about colleges that even some of the respondents admit they don’t know. </p>
<p>Let’s put your PA comparison to the test. In terms of prestige, consider a college like Dartmouth and a college like Cornell. Cornell has a higher PA score (4.6 to 4.3). Does Cornell have higher prestige? Should a student always pick Cornell even if he/she finds the culture of Dartmouth to be more appealing? Or make the same comparison, but change the schools to Cornell and Yale (4.6 to 4.9). Do you reach the same conclusions? Should all students automatically select Yale because it has more prestige than Cornell? </p>
<p>Quality is not the same as reputation. A college can have a better reputation and be of the same or lower quality (and especially as applied to a single individual’s circumstances). I think that there are many colleges that offer an educational quality similar to what you’d find at Cornell, but I don’t think that many of these colleges have the Ivy imprimateur to which Cornell owes a large part of its fame and its attraction. Take away the Ivy branding and you have…Tufts or the University of Rochester or Carnegie Mellon. These are all excellent colleges, but none have the brand power of the Ivy League and thus they have lower reputations and less prestige than a Cornell. </p>
<p>Yet, despite that prestige advantage, could Tufts/U Rochester/CMU/etc be a better potential choice for some students, depending on what he/she was looking for in a college experience? IMO, absolutely. But in your view, Cornell would always be the superior choice and I would strongly disagree with that conclusion.</p>