<p>It doesn’t take much thought to prove this claim is preposterous. After all (without doing any research to refine the numbers) the number of graduates from the top 20 have to comprise much less than 5% of the total graduating population. So, then, every year 95+% of college graduates’ lives are screwed? By what possible standard? Get real.</p>
<p>It is true to some extent …</p>
<p>Nah :P.</p>
<p>Ridiculous. Do the math, and add up how many people actually attend one of the Top 20. Now think about that number compared to the U.S. population.</p>
<p>Or, simpler yet, think about successful, happy people you know who DIDN’T attend a Top 20, but whose lives aren’t “screwed.”</p>
<p>Millions of people attend college elsewhere and do just fine. And contrary to what some will have you believe, it’s not that all of these people couldn’t have cut it at the Top 20. Some of them could have got in had they tried, or in fact they did get in. However, they but made other choices.</p>
<p>I"m curious, what would be your definition of “screwed”? The vast majority of people I know live good lives. For example, the guys who do construction. They live in homes they customized themselves. They work hard, but if they have to leave a site to see their kid’s soccer game, and that’s important to them, they do that. They can be home for dinner every night. I can’t think of any of them that went to a top 20 school. Some didn’t go to college at all. </p>
<p>Interestingly enough, for those people whose lives are “screwed”, it has nothing to do with where they went to school. Life can be cruel. Achoholism, life debilitating accidents, cancer, all sorts of things can pop out of nowhere. </p>
<p>And the multimillionaire CEO of my husband’s employer has only a BS degree from Cal State Hayward.</p>
<p>Hmmm…Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and Warren Buffett dropped out of Wharton, graduated from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, then was rejected by Harvard for graduate school and had to settle on Columbia. </p>
<p>I guess the best path for success is to get accepted by a top 20 school and then drop out.</p>
<p>Isn’t the “best” school for someone the school where they will thrive? Every person has different needs in life and to reduce your definition of “success” to whether you got into somone’s arbitrary list of what is best is ridiculous! Living in the wilds of Seattle, the “Ivies” and most of the schools on that list might well be located on Mars. I’ve known a couple of students who have gone to one of these schools and hundreds who didn’t. The one’s who did not seem to be employed just fine and are successful too. Contrary to what some might think, the world does NOT revolve around HYP et al.</p>
<p>“had to settle on Columbia.”</p>
<p>Oh, poor Warren Buffet!</p>
<p>“Screwed”? My dad dropped out of college his freshman year and my mom graduated with a degree in accounting from a community college.</p>
<p>Aside from the “Money =/= happiness” argument, my parents own a successful business and make comparable money to most typical grads from prestigious schools.</p>
<p>No quality of education can compensate for real intelligence and ingenuity.</p>
<p>^ Well said!</p>
<p>I worry for our country.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yes. Define “screwed.” The definition of success is going to vary from person to person. Some may say that making millions would be success. Some say 80K is good enough. It just depends on your perspective.</p>
<p>Wow, I had no idea this was true! I can’t believe that even though I’m in medical school and going to be a doctor, my life is totally worthless because I went to undergrad at a school which regularly shifts in the rankings from high 70’s to low 90’s from year to year. My whole life sucks! I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know where I’m going. I should jerk the wheel into a bridge abutment the next time I’m driving down the highway.</p>
<p>Bigredmed failed to mention that he lives in a van, down by the river.</p>
<p>I love how the op heard this from an “anonymous person.” </p>
<p>Was it your mom? :)</p>
<p>Since you are Chinese, I hope your parents didn’t make that ridiciulous thread title statement to scare you.</p>
<p>
Drop out of med school and work at McDonald’s. It’s going to be impossible to get a job as a doctor coming from a top 70 medical school. You might as well give up before you waste any more money on your tuition.</p>
<p>It’s true - it’s a nice van but I subsist on a steady diet of government cheese.</p>
<p>As I have said, quote comes from an anonymous person whom I met randomly in a coffee shop. So I donno exactly what he meant by “screwed” either. But from the way he talked to me, I guess it meant working at McDonalds/starbucks, being an employee and not an employer, have hard time and even feel embarassed when facing questions like “where did you go to school.” It turned out that that guy went to Berkeley and he had a bad life. He believed that people from Berkeley suffer from US NEWS. He said there was a time he was forced to live on the street because he went bankrupt. He said he wanted to commit suicide because he had such a bad life, all of which he attributed to the sucking school he went.</p>
<p>Clearly that 1 rank is enough to render you homeless.</p>
<p>There are homeless Harvard grads wandering around Cambridge. It sounds like the anonymous person you met was just an idiot who did it to himself.</p>