<p>Where someone goes to college depends on the person, duh, right? But still, you have to realize that there are many students that want to go to top college to learn, not just earn a prestigious degree and name (I am one of these). I've been rejected at Stanford and MIT this year, but I didn't want to go because of the prestige (granted, that is a plus :)), instead, I wanted to go because I knew I would learn from the very best in the field of engineering and that I would be with students with similar mindsets to me. Not a prestige wh0re and I'm not an "Ivy or bust" kind of person either so I have little worries about rejection. </p>
<p>If offered the opportunity to attend a top school, why not take that opportunity? In a way, I do agree with an above poster who stated that this article is written to make people who were rejected feel better. Had those people been accepted, they wouldn't worry about having to attend a less prestigious university. </p>
<p>Of course, students who attend top tier universties aren't guaranteed success and those who don't aren't guaranteed "non-sucess" I'm going to say (these terms are very relative). But, a degree from a top tier university will go a long ways in helping succeed, both because of the brand-name and because of the education and experiences a student will have at the school.</p>
<p>Well i think there are a lot more factors to consider even if you were admitted into a top school... stuff like money and time and whether the professors of a top school will pay enough attention to you for them to write good recommendation letters in future and/or help you with your senior thesis.</p>
<p>Hey! I've been struggling with my decision. I applied to 14 schools and have gotten into all that have replied to me so far(11) and I have no idea where to start in terms of choosing the school that is right for me. I have gotten into...Pitt, Boston Univ, Wesleyan, McGill, Union College, Univ of Rochester, Univ of Michigan, Suny Binghamton, Suny Geneseo, GWUniv, and Muhlenberg College. I'm just waiting on Cornell, Vanderbilt and Emory Univ. Though I love Rochester's flexibility (prob my first choice right now) The prestige of Wesleyan is tough to overlook. Anyone have any ideas?</p>
<p>I honestly think where you go does matter, but not just in prestige, and not primarily in prestige. I think fit really, really matters. I do not think that I could do my best in a large university--I find myself, socially at least, swallowed up by my high-school, and I much preferred my smaller, more intimate middle school. So I chose to apply to LACs, but found LACs with good science programs, and I eliminated one of those LACs simply because the atmosphere felt wrong--too much emphasis on drinking and sex and being weird for the sake of being weird. I don't think I could do as well at a university, so I believe that in that sense where I go does matter. Is there one perfect school? No. Could I do well if I went to the school on my list with the least prestige? Yes. But that's because I made sure that my colleges were good fits for me before applying, and that they would complement how I learn and what I want to do. I might be able to succeed in huge state U and other people may do better at huge state U than small LAC, but not me. </p>
<p>(I'll probably end up in Pomona, or maybe Colorado College or Whitman, btw.)</p>
<p>It only doesn't matter if your comparing similarly ranked schools. There will definitely be a difference between a Harvard graduate and a U Massachusetts graduate.</p>
<p>I really liked the sports example in the article because it is absolutely true: play time matters and the disparity between starters and bench-warmers ever widens throughout the season. However, I disagree that this idea is completely transferrable to academics. Sure, the very top students in an academic program may get some extra perks, but I don't believe that they are selected based solely on past records. Students who get to know their profs, do undergraduate research, become leaders in a student organizations, and generally become known in their departments do so because they have more outgoing personalities and seek out those opportunities. It does not take brains to be enthusiastic. In sports, no amount of enthusiasm will make up for a lack of talent.</p>
<p>I realize this is just one family's experience but here goes- Father no college degree - employer major utility promoted to General Manager over Princeton graduate. Son - State college graduate promoted to highest position at his employer over UPenn graduate. Son- works for major computer firm (3 letters everyone knows who they are) he is a graduate of Pace- his subordinates include Harvard grad, Michigan grad and UNC grad. His most successful subordinate graduated from an open enrollment State college. There are so many other stories similar to these that I believe where you went to college is a very minor factor in how successful you are later in life. Landing in the right job, making the proper strategic career moves and having some luck (sometimes of your own making) has much more to do with your career success.</p>
<p>I think once one isolates a few schools which one could find a good fit, getting into any one of them implies having a pretty nice college experience, and it's a matter of what one does. I was fortunate enough to have this happen to me -- is everyone? I can't say for sure. "Fit" is important, for sure, but "fit" isn't just about environment -- it's about offerings, caliber of faculty, etc. Unfortunately, prestige can be very much tied to "fit" in this sense, indirectly. I.e., lots of the most prestigious schools end up having some of the best offerings + faculty.</p>
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I really liked the sports example in the article because it is absolutely true: play time matters and the disparity between starters and bench-warmers ever widens throughout the season. However, I disagree that this idea is completely transferrable to academics.
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<p>I also disagree that it applies at all to academics. Unless things have changed a lot since I was in college, I had absolutely no idea who the top or bottom students were on campus. Students generally did not share their GPAs with peers, and the only time mine was (sort of) made public was when I received the "cum laude" designation on graduation day.</p>
<p>Special relationships/opportunities with professors were forged on a class-by-class basis. In other words, if you earned an A+ in a class, you might be asked to be a grader or TA the next semester. But you could have received Cs in all your other classes at the same time and still be offered the opportunity.</p>
<p>I really like this thread--great breath of fresh air. It's particularly important for the students to be reading this. Particularly in upper middle class/privileged regions, the prssure for getting the right designer label college is pretty fierce. I think there's no denying that getting into Harvard, for the right sort of student, can give you a leg-up. But as several people have said, you can DEFINITELY achieve in a regular state university. I went to Michigan State in the Honors college--was able to take graduate courses as an undergraduate, learned so much. My ex husband, also at MSU, won a very prestigious Churchill Scholarship, similar to the Rhodes. From there he went to MIT for graduate school and worked with a Nobel Laureate. I myself went to a very prestigious MFA program in writing, after about 10 years of life experience/jobs. What's often forgotten in this discussion is post-undergraduate. So many jobs demand advanced degrees, and/or you have a leg-up with the advanced degrees. A top student at an average school such as MSU, with top letters of recommendations, is MUCH MUCH better leveraged to get into a top grad school than an average student with so-so recommendations at Harvard. The main thing is to take advantage of the opportunities you have. This brings us back to many people's points: It's REALLY important to get into a college that is the right fit for you SO THAT you are then in the best position possible to be at the top. It's hard to achieve if you're desperately unhappy because you hate your college or feel unconnected with everyone else.</p>
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A top student at an average school such as MSU, with top letters of recommendations, is MUCH MUCH better leveraged to get into a top grad school than an average student with so-so recommendations at Harvard.
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This may be true, but that's a pretty biased comparison. Even an average student at Harvard may have fantastic letters and internships/research experience -- there are enough fabulous Harvard professors to go around, and a student doesn't need to be at the top of his class to work productively with them.</p>
<p>As long as we're discussing anecdotes, I chose MIT over Ohio State's honors program. I don't think I would have been the best student at OSU, and I was an average student at MIT. But at MIT, I got to work with some of the top professors in my field, and I was happy and worked hard, and in the end, I got into all of the top graduate programs in my field with ease, even though I graduated with an average GPA. I think MIT was the best choice for me, not because of prestige, but because I thrived in the smaller, more intense, more supportive environment.</p>
<p>I don't think everyone should make that choice, but it's disingenuous to compare the best students at a big state school to the worst students at a top school. In all likelihood, the worst students at a top school wouldn't have been the best at a state school, and the best students from the state school shouldn't fool themselves -- they're competing with the best students from top schools.</p>
<p>For what it's worth, we ended up living in a region which is not in new England and is not exactly a major metropolis. And while our neighbors have heard of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, most would NOT be familiar with: Bard, Bowdoin and schools of this caliber. Most would actually be most impressed by the state flagship university. I have one child who wants to be a teacher and eventually end up in educational administration, and I'm pretty sure that if she wants to teach in our local metropolitan area, a local school with high local name recognition would open many more doors than Grinnell, Oberlin or a similar school -- which most of our locals are actually not very likely to have heard of. And if by chance they've heard it mentioned, it's extremely doubtful that it would convey anything to them that would cause them to be impressed. </p>
<p>The thing is, I actually WANT my kids to come back to our local area to live and raise their families, and most of the people in our area would be more impressed by a dentist or a doctor with a degree from a local school, or a teacher. I even find myself wondering if you could seriously get elected to the school board, the city council or even become the mayor with a degree that no one locally is familiar with.</p>
<p>I have not read this thread but want to say that it is a mistake to conclude, based on the fact that the National Survey of Student Engagement variability is greater within colleges than between colleges, that it doesn't matter where you go to college . Transplant the students at Harvard to Podunk and I think you would have some unhappy students. You would have to randomly assign students to colleges to see if the college makes a difference in student satisfaction and engagement. That isn't going to happen. Students generally wind up where they belong, either as freshmen or transfer students. There is usually a mutual attraction and selection between college and student. </p>
<p>Dave, did the NSSE people conclude that the choice of college doesn't matter? If so, then the purported NSSE experts don't understand higher education very well.</p>
<p>I only read the first page of comments, so forgive me if this is redundant, but I reject the premise that "it doesn't matter where you go to college."
Yes, where you go to college pales in comparison to what you do in college, but at the same time, more prestigious schools are more prestigious for a reason. I'm not talking about the value between a number 1 ranked school and a number 10 ranked school since they're effectively interchangeable in most academic regards, but the difference between top 10 and #50 (the range around which, using USNWR rankings, solid state schools like Pitt and Penn State are located), is very manifest. This, I would say, is due to the difference in the opportunities presented to students in terms of research opportunities, internships, average quality of professors (though I realize every school does have its respective share of truly outstanding faculty), etc.<br>
An ambitious student at a second tier school can very well have just as successful, if not more successful, life compared to an equally ambitious student at a top tier school, but the latter would likely have come across this success slightly easier, due to being in an atmosphere more conducive to success, due to both the aforementioned opportunities and the elevated atmosphere of ambition, since the average student at a top tier school must have made significantly more effort to achieve admission to that school than the average student at a second tier school (I say average since I understand that there are outliers of students who go to subpar schools for financial reasons or the like).</p>
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Even an average student at Harvard may have fantastic letters and internships/research experience -- there are enough fabulous Harvard professors to go around, and a student doesn't need to be at the top of his class to work productively with them.
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<p>Very true. If one compares the admissions results for this year's extremely competitive math Ph.D. program mania between two students I know -- one my friend, a senior at UC Berkeley, and another, a senior from a much lesser known school, it will become clear exactly how advantageous famous faculty can be. Note -- the friend of mine had a 4.0 GPA with a nice, rigorous schedule. The other guy had roughly a 3.8-9. The other guy had significantly more research experience, and 4 years of quite solid undergrad work. But he said from the outset that his letters of recommendations would not compare to my friend's (who, note, only had 2 years at Berkeley, and started off very far behind in math). Now my friend's coming back to the Berkeley Ph.D. program, and the other guy wasn't so lucky. </p>
<p>So, going to Harvard for the "prestige" can mean going to Harvard for its faculty + stellar academics. And that in and of itself is a hugely reasonable goal, and can heavily impact one's future. I don't think there's much dancing around this.</p>
<p>I haven't read the thread, only the article so I might be repeating others.</p>
<p>I fully agree. In regards to real world success, college choice is far down on the list of advantageous characteristics. Rather, it's really one's innate intelligence and one's willingness to use that intelligence in a productive manner that generally separates the haves from the have-nots. </p>
<p>I believe I saw a study from some years back that followed students who were accepted to Ivies, but rather decided, for whatever reason, to attend a state school. They found, unsurprisingly, that the difference between Ivy grads and these people was very slim (the very small difference probably resulting from family connections I presume). So if you want to make money and get a good job, here's my advice: be smart, hard-working, and honest.</p>
<p>But for some people college isn't simply a means to procure a high-paying job. Rather, it's a badge of honor, an intellectual challenge of one's ability. For these people, the Ivy rejection might sting much harder b/c that academic rigor, and more importantly the satisfaction some derive from succeeding in such rigor, is just as important as going through the gateway to money. For these people, an Ivy rejection isn't trivial. Further, many often view the prestige of a school as a personal justification of one's own ability. Believe me, this is prevalent at Ivies and even amongst mainstream society ("Oh wow he did his undergrad at Princeton and law school at Yale!") </p>