A Letter of College Advice to a Beloved Niece
Dear Chrysanthemum,
I write to you, my dear niece, on a matter that is of much import. I hear that you are now beginning third grade. As you well know, that means college is but a moment away, and I have therefore decided to impart my wisdom on the college decision process unto you. I often stop and wonder why people make life so needlessly complex. Life is truly quite simple. Life is all about the name of your college.This, in itself, tells me all I need to know about a person. So, my dear, when the time comes to choose your college, make sure to look only at prestige and disregard all else. Why do students dilly dally when choosing a college? A quick glance at U.S. News & World Report’s meticulously crafted rankings will tell you all you need to know. I laugh when colleagues of mine must hire new employees and struggle to choose which candidate is most qualified. I tell them: just pull up the rankings, start with Princeton at number one, and work your way down; the candidate with the highest ranked university on their resume is the one for you. They tend to disagree; disturbingly, only 9% of surveyed business leaders rate the college a potential employee attended as being “very important” (Bruni, 2015). But, my dear, it is not all about the money; it is about being the best, and this is what prestige ensures. My logic works far beyond jobs or college decisions, my dear; therein lies its beauty. Whenever I approach a lonesome maiden on a night out, I immediately request that she present me with a degree. Those who scoff, and lo there are many, are likely to fall in the “University of Michigan” and below category, hardly worth my time. In fact, save but a few outliers, any institution with a name including “University of” can be immediately discarded; those are for the public school types. The same policy works when choosing friends, to the surprise of none of those who attended an elite college. Although my demands to see one’s proof of a prestigious education can make finding friends quite difficult and have left me with but two pals, sustaining my pride in the excellence that I represent is far more crucial than seeking out likable, funny, intelligent people for camaraderie. Additionally, although my two friends and I have nothing in common other than our prestigious alma maters, and although I detest them, as they do me, we all take solace in the fact that we hold only the best and brightest in our company. Tragically, some lesser beings have criticized the formula behind the rankings that guide my life choices. They ask, “how does the amount of money a school spends, or their alumni donations (both of which factor in to U.S. News & World Report’srankings) reflect their quality?” (Bruni, 2015). Former Yale Dean of Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel even suggested that college rankings “tend to ignore the very criteria that may be most important to an applicant, such as specific academic offerings, intellectual and social climate, ease of access to faculty, international opportunities and placement rates for careers or for graduate and professional school” (Bruni, 2015). Well, Jeffy Boy has made it quite clear why “former” is part of his title. He just doesn’t get it. The notion that those criteria would be important is absurd on its face. New York Timescontributor Frank Bruni criticized the formula as well, suggesting that the rankings’ dependence on the opinion of college administrators and high school counselors, who typically have minimal experience with the school, make the rankings a self-fulfilling prophecy in which “schools are rated highly because they’ve been rated highly before” (Bruni, 2015). I see no problem with this. The best are the best; why should it matter how we determine that? To question the rankings is to assert that our concept of prestige is somehow flawed, an idea truly as preposterous and nauseating as it seems. Beyond the rankings, friends and lovers, I illustrate the power of prestige in my own life. I have been working as an entry level accountant for nearly thirty years, ever since I graduated college. Though my intellectual abilities are, without question, of the highest ilk and on par with those of the ancient Greeks, I have often bounced from one employer to another. In coded, jealous language I have been given laughable descriptors, be it “arrogant”, “entitled”, “prone to weirdly sweating and panting when anyone mentions Harvard”, or “lacking in work ethic”. Some have even asserted that my daily singing of the “Ten Thousand Men of Harvard” is mildly excessive, a notion at which I cackle. Now, I must tell you, dear Chrysanthemum, I am often surprised by people’s assumptions that, due to my great pride in my alma mater, I was a hard working, successful student while at Harvard. This is far from the case. Upon arriving on campus, I immediately felt overwhelmed and underqualified, and for a moment even wished I had attended a school more geared towards my needs where I might have been more comfortable. Could you imagine if I had done that? The thought reminds me of a tragic story I once read about a boy named Peter Hart. Hart rose from his status as an ordinary student at a competitive high school to achieve a 3.95 GPA as a member of the University of Indiana’s honors college, and he later worked for the same consulting firm as a high school classmate of his who had attended Yale (Bruni, 2015). Poor boy. Hart claimed the school from which he earned his degree had no bearing on his competence compared to his fellow students, and that workplace experience was ultimately more relevant than anything he learned in any classroom (Bruni, 2015). Hart even went so far as to credit Indiana for his success, as he said, “I got to be the big fish in a small pond. I really felt like a competent person [at Indiana University]. It was confidence building” (Bruni, 2015). I could cry. The poor soul is masking his deep insecurity about the fact that he has to work in the same place as a noble scholar who attended Yale with talk of “competence” and “workplace experience”. Who cares? What’s most tragic is that Hart may have had potential; had he gone to an Ivy, he could’ve potentially carved out a life like mine. In my case, instead of foolishly taking the Hart route, I simply toned down my effort in order to protect my ego, finishing college with a sterling 2.7 GPA and huge amounts of debt owed to the college. Although I mean this literally, I am also greatly indebted to Harvard for the wonders it did for me. People often ask me to quantify this, which is, of course, an impossible task that only a state university ignoramus would request. The power of prestige lies not in one’s job success, or their financial earnings, or their fulfillment in work and life, as one will do equally well in all of those regardless of the college they attend (Stixrud, 2018). In fact, it is certainly not about the money; less than half of Forbes’s30 richest Americans attended one of U.S. News and World Report’stop 20 schools for their undergraduate degrees, and the same amount of that group attended the University of Arkansas as Yale (Kroll & Dolan, 2019). No, no. The beauty of Harvard is that I get to say that I went there. I get to see the impressed look on others’ faces when I stroll in with my Harvard sweatshirt on, before I open my mouth. I get to know that in my friendless, loveless, studio apartment, I am an embodiment of society’s elite. My heroes are not the world’s richest, smartest, happiest, or hardest working people. My heroes are the Lori Loughlins and Felicity Huffmans of the world, those who are willing to stand up for what’s right, no matter the cost. To understand that cheating, lying and jail time is a small price to pay to get a child into USC. Oh, Chrysanthemum, you should be so lucky to have someone do the same for you. So, my dear, when the time does come, remember my advice: prestige, prestige, prestige. Look at only the rankings for college, and for life. With that in mind, you will succeed. Sincerely, Randall H. Buckwilmingtonshireton XVIII References Bruni, F. (2015). Where you go is not who you'll be: An antidote to the college admissions mania. New York, NY: Grand Central. Kroll, L., & Dolan, K. A. (2019). The Forbes 400: The definitive ranking of the wealthiest Americans. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com Stixrud, W. (2018). It's time to tell your kids it doesn't matter where they go to college. TIME.Retrieved from https://time.com |