Don't Let Your Alma Mater Become Your Identity

<p>I hope aspiring applicants, current students and even recent alumni will accept some heartfelt advice from a CC reader who is alarmed by some of what he reads on these message boards.</p>

<p>There are some posters here who seem to be leaving messages all day and night extolling the virtues of their colleges to the exclusion and detriment of all others. Now, I’m all for school spirit. One might excuse this as merely an annoying example of taking something to an illogical extreme.</p>

<p>But let’s look a bit more deeply at what motivates these posters. I submit the larger issue is that some alumni are obsessed with where they went to college because having attended a very prestigious university is the most significant thing they have ever done in their lives. And I think that is very sad. </p>

<p>There’s something a little depressing about fully grown adults in their fifties and sixties spending so much time trying to convince seventeen-year-old high school students where to go to college. And I’ll bet the main reason they do this is that their sense of identity and self-image is so wrapped up in being associated with prestige of their alma maters. </p>

<p>(This despite the fact that, when these individuals were admitted to college, the process was much less selective and therefore less of a badge of honor. For example, the most competitive admit rates in the 1950s, at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, were still in the neighborhood of 50%. It was not until the late 1960s that the swelling ranks of the baby-boomer generation began to drive the admit rates down toward today’s highly competitive rates.)</p>

<p>My message to my peers on CC is as follows: Don’t let having attended a selective college – any selective college – lull you into thinking that you’ve achieved anything yet. Age 22 is awfully early to start resting on your laurels. Graduation day should be the beginning of your life, not the high point. That’s why they call it “commencement.” In particular, don’t be caught forty years from today thinking that having attended a big name university is the most important achievement you have to show for your life.</p>

<p>So get into the college which fits you best. Go and make friends and memories that will last a lifetime. But then forget about where you went to school and get started working on the more important task of creating a fulfilling life – a life independent of your alma mater.</p>

<p>Gimme a B! Gimme a Y! Gimme an E! Gimme an R... ahh never mind.</p>

<p>Great post, DWizard. Truly enlightening advice to us all as we enter this frantic admissions season.</p>

<p><em>waits expectantly</em></p>

<p>you'll be waiting for a long time :p</p>