Lately, I’ve been wondering how competitive everyone has become when it comes to school. They all try so hard on their SATs/ACTs and people are just so damn picky when it comes to college. Everyone wants to get to reach school as if that is going to have an impact on them later on in their life. Why are people like this? Does it even matter what college an individual gets into? It is what they get out of it right? College is college, you go and learn regardless of where you go it should not matter.
I feel this “obsession with prestige” is a problem mainly because one is reliant on others for affirmation. That shouldn’t be why one chooses a college. Now, are the prestigious schools excellent? Yes. But people should be interested in the excellence far more than the prestige. That said, lots of schools are excellent and they don’t make all the top lists.
Part of the challenge is many students and their parents are looking for a certain environment and experience that tends to be prevalent at the smaller, more “prestigious” schools. More and more kids apply setting application records each year, but the capacity for students stays pretty much the same (year over year- perhaps with quite modest gains). So each year, more people apply affording the school the opportunity to become more selective. A lot of this happened with the onset of the common app. Although it is a great thing in terms of making it far easier to apply to multiple schools, it has contributed to the bottleneck.
Title of the thread isn’t correct. Everyone isn’t obsessed with prestige. Even on this site its not true. Step away and into the real world (a place where if you spend enough time here you may forget even exists) and its even less true.
@saillakeerie It’s true enough that people want to maximize prestige.
@Dustyfeathers Some people want to maximize prestige. But most do not. They are looking at other factors. I know that is blasphemy to many here though.
Prestige may be acceptable should it follow as a result of sincere interest and effort, but I’d personally say that I’m suspicious of its pursuit under other circumstances.
Main factor is tuition!
The absurd cost of college drives most families required to be full pay at ‘meets full need’ schools to carefully look at amenities, opportunities and major specific programs. $70K/year is a ton of after tax dollars. Lower tier schools are not less expensive without merit aid.
Talented students receiving large financial aid packages can get more opportunities than at their state flagship. Only a minority of states make investments to reach the quality of UM, UVA, UCB…
“I feel this “obsession with prestige” is a problem mainly because one is reliant on others for affirmation. That shouldn’t be why one chooses a college. Now, are the prestigious schools excellent? Yes. But people should be interested in the excellence far more than the prestige.”
Well said. I would add that while the prestigious schools may be an excellent choice for some students, any particular prestigious school is definitely NOT an excellent choice for every student, or even an acceptable choice for most students. As examples we see some posts from students who want to go to MIT with an unweighted 3.0 or less in high school, not noticing that “going to MIT” also implies taking very difficult classes which are way more work and more stressful than the classes where the student got B’s in high school. We have also seen posts on CC where students went to a highly ranked university but once there discovered that it was hard, or that it was a bad fit.
To a large extent a ranking is just a number. A student’s experience in university is a lot more complex than that. Using rankings is a very bad substitute for thinking about what it is actually like to be a student in university and thinking about what features are going to make for a good fit for each individual student.
Also, I think that some students think that going to a highly ranked university will impress other people. Of course going to a highly ranked school is not by itself going to make a person popular with other students (as any of us who went to a highly ranked school can attest).
I do agree with other posts that here on CC we see a somewhat distorted view of opinions and desires. There are a lot of high school students who don’t bother with CC, don’t get obsessed with rankings, and are just looking for a good school where they will be comfortable and which their parents can afford.
@KLSD is correct that the driver here is tuition and the overall cost of attendance. This fact is not always understood by high school students, especially if their families are generally well-off. But the total cost of attendance can be $75,000 per year which is probably more than most families even make annually after taxes. Of course there are less expensive alternatives. But the fact that less expensive alternatives exist creates a certain amount of anxiety for those so-called “donut hole” families that will have to pay full price. If they are going to have to pay full price at an Ivy or other elite school, naturally they hope to get the best product they can. Thus, your parents hope you do well on your standardized tests to gain access to the best possible schools.
Next, in order to make college more affordable, many parents hope their kids will do well on standardized tests so as to receive scholarship offers. Access to these scholarships will be based in part on standardized test scores. In the past, state flagship schools gave an excellent education at a fair price. More recently, students need higher and higher test scores simply to get into their own state schools, the cost of attendance for which has increased greatly over the years and thus many now have to do better on the SAT/ACT just to gain access to their flagship and then may even hold out hope to get a merit scholarship to make the cost of that state school more affordable. Other families are looking to private schools that give good FA or merit scholarships.
Despite all this, the OP makes an excellent point in that a great education can be found without all the stress and that later in life nearly everyone will be satisfied with where they went to school.
There is nothing wrong with striving for the most prestigious schools as long as you are also keeping fit into consideration. There are potential benefits that come with them after all. Where most students get it wrong though is that they think they have failed if they don’t get into a very prestigious school and that their lives are over. This is far from the truth.
If one has a choice - meaning can be admitted and can afford a highly ranked school, I can’t imagine that access to other top students, top professors, best facilities and resources is a bad goal. Prestige is a different goal IMHO.
Of course a great education can be achieved at many schools, but its also clear that the higher ranked schools have higher graduation rates. So, if the first goal is to get to the finish line then seeking admission to the most highly ranked school one can be admitted to and afford would make sense as graduation rate is one of the ranking criteria. Attached is the link to the colleges with the highest 4-year graduation rate https://premium.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate
One of the other ranking criteria is outcome, so once again not a bad reason to use rankings as a guide IMHO.
Are there any presitgious schools that are “bad” schools? If not, then perhaps you can reframe it as a search for excellence, or a search for the top program in their field, or a search for a school with a long and storied history. Depending on how you reframe it, the question becomes less judgemental.
Speaking for my DD, while she may not end up attending one of the more prestigious schools in the country, she certainly wanted to apply to a few of them. Why? Because of their reputations as academic powerhouses. Because she wants to see payoff for the 4 years of REALLY hard work she put into HS. Because they pick from the best and the brightest - and she wants to be among them.
Everyone’s search is personal to them, their families, and their circumstances. I think it would be ok to stop judging the choices that other people make in their college searches and simply focus on your own priorities. Win-win.
"Does it even matter what college an individual gets into? "
For advanced students in certain majors, where they attend college can have a significant impact on job opportunities and salary. In other majors it is much less important.
Also the difficulty of courses can vary a lot by school. They are not all teaching the same level of material.
@CValle, agree with changing the question as otherwise it becomes tangled in one’s individual circumstances. Our DD’s went through the admission process last Fall; they too worked their tails off in HS to prepare themselves for admission into the best possible school that met their criteria.
Yes they ended up in a great place, but was it HYPS - nope as they had no interest in those schools. But it also wasn’t Amherst, Bowdoin, Swarthmore or Williams as their grades weren’t perfect, their scores weren’t perfect, their EC’s weren’t perfect, they didn’t have the hooks, and they are females from the NE - that said, they are really proud of themselves as they strove for excellence and achieved it in the next leg of life.