“Where are you going to school again, Carson?” asked my classmate.
“ASU,” I responded. She laughed. She thought it was a joke. The decision I made would be unthinkable to many of my peers at the affluent high school I attended, where college is all but a guarantee. I scored a perfect 36 on the ACT, and my only B in high school came in my freshman biology course. Yet, here I am at ASU, what has long been perceived by many as little more than a party school. For me, however, other options never made sense. As an aspiring sports journalist, this specific program has always been my most important criteria, and no other school could offer the combination of resources and opportunities provided at ASU. I visited Northwestern and USC, schools that might meet outsiders’ “prestige” requirement, but I found their environments unappealing and their opportunities in my specific field to be inferior. I visited the most prestigious sports broadcasting school, Syracuse, but found I would have almost no real experience there until I was an upperclassman. I never applied to Northwestern, withdrew my application from USC and passed up on Syracuse after committing to ASU immediately upon being accepted. I found my people and I found my program, and I didn’t see why the name attached to it should matter. Yet nothing defines college decision more than prestige. I watched as peer after peer of mine simply chose to attend the “best” school that accepted them, prioritizing the five minutes of admiration they’d get from their peers over choosing the school that would truly fit and prepare them best for life ahead. I heard about my aunt and uncle telling my cousin he could go to any of the “top 25 colleges in the country”, determined by some arbitrary list, two of which he attended—transferring from Johns Hopkins to Northwestern—both of which he despised. He has succeeded in spite of the “elite college experience”. College is a highly individual experience; each student has different needs and aspirations, and to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. The notion that some abstract, subjective, highly manipulatable concept of “prestige” should dictate our college choices is absurd. School prestige has not been shown to correlate to greater success or fulfillment, and it is often the better “fit” that creates more a more fulfilling collegiate experience and subsequent career. It is time to chip away at the unfounded ideas that pollute America’s collegiate culture, time to devalue prestige and acknowledge that fit is the most important factor in the college decision process. Any examination of the rankings systems that establish a school’s prestigious status will show the methodology to be almost laughably flawed. New York Times contributor Frank Bruni places a particular emphasis on the absurdity of these systems, beginning with U.S News & World Report, the ultimate source on college for those who have never been. The U.S News & World Report bases their rankings on standardized test scores of admitted students, acceptance rates, the opinion of these schools by college administrators and high school counselors, graduation rates, the amount of money the school spends annually and the alumni donations they receive (Bruni, 2015). This criteria is fundamentally illogical. As former Yale Dean of Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel puts it, “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). The first assumption their system rests on is that exclusivity somehow equals quality, a notion that is illogical and promotes manipulation of statistics, as many higher ranked schools will defer lower scoring students to the spring semester so they will not be evaluated in the rankings (Bruni, 2015). The dependence on the opinion of fellow educators also makes the rankings a self-fulfilling prophecy, as a majority of the people who evaluate the schools have minimal experience with them and simply go off of their existing reputations, a large part of which is created by the very rankings they are helping form (Bruni, 2015). Do you see the problem there? An uninformed population is continuing to fuel their own misinformation, yet their word is taken as the gospel. As Bruni (2015) puts it, “Schools are rated highly because they’ve been rated highly before.” According to Stanford’s Krysten Crawford (2018), graduation rates are not really indicative of the quality of a school either, as graduation is highly dependent on the individual and is more reflective of one’s own traits than the resources of their institution. The final criteria, the amount of money the school spends and their alumni contributions, are perhaps the least logical of all. The rankings place no value on where schools allocate their money, so wealthy schools are incentivized to constantly pour money into facilities, not students, in order to ensure a high ranking, which ensures even more money down the road (Bruni, 2015). It almost seems unnecessary to denounce alumni contributions as a horrendous metric for evaluating the quality of institution, and its use shows yet another instance in which big money is all that fuels the rankings the public holds so near and dear to their hearts. The community of higher learning is almost universally opposed to the rankings, along with almost anyone who has closely examined their methodology—yet they prevail (Bruni, 2015). Educators make their fear of this influence evident, as Adam Weinberg, President of Denison University, once said, “I think US News & World Report will go down as one of the most destructive things that ever happened to higher education” (Bruni, 2015). These rankings are not a predictor of quality or success; they neglect many of a school’s most important attributes and, as Brenzel puts it, “take a far less thorough and scientific approach than Consumer Reports does when testing vacuums” (Bruni, 2015). Even if they were accurate, the college one attends is not an accurate predictor of success, either. Perhaps Bob Morse, the man in charge of the US News & World Report rankings, said it best himself; “It’s not where you went to school, it’s how hard you work” (Bruni, 2015). The misconceptions go beyond the rankings and directly into the role prestige plays in success in the workforce. In a 2018 article for TIME, neuropsychologist William Stixrud cited a study done by Pew Research Center that indicated “you’ll do equally well in terms of income, job satisfaction and life satisfaction whether you go to an elite private college or a less selective state university.” This is a groundbreaking statistic for many young Americans who bank on the name of the college they attend as the key to their success, or perhaps as a reflection of their failure. This is reflected in evidence from the workplace, as only 9% of surveyed business leaders rated the college a potential employee attended as being “very important”, while 85% rated field knowledge as very important (Bruni, 2015). However, almost one third of Americans expected their alma mater to be rated as very important, illustrating the huge gap between perception and reality (Bruni, 2015). There is some truth to the fact that the name of a college may lead to an opportunity for recruitment, as some specific financial or legal firms will initially seek out students from a specific university as to make for a quicker search process (Bruni, 2015). Perhaps, a student that is accepted into a prestigious college based on legacy and not merit will therefore have more opportunities early in their career, but college cannot serve as a coverup for long. The longer one is out of college, the less relevant it becomes, and by age thirty candidates have given employers a significant body of actual work to draw from (Bruni, 2015). Again and again, employers emphasize that how you use college matters far more than where you go. Stanford’s Denise Pope, USA Today’s Lindy Schneider, Stixrud, Bruni and the experts Bruni quoted all agree that, without question, engagement and hard work in college are far more accurate predictors of success than the school one attends. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman stated, “The world only cares about - and pays off on - what you can do with what you know, and it doesn’t care how you learned it” (Bruni, 2015). As it seems to be relatively well understood in these informed communities that college prestige is irrelevant, Stixrud (2018) wrote, “I’ve asked various school administrators why they don’t just tell kids the truth about college — that where you go makes very little difference later in life. They’ll shrug and say, ‘Even if we did, no one would believe it.’” So, this detrimental idea that infiltrates the lives and injures the minds of many hard working students lives on simply because it already exists. Interestingly, certain less discussed statistics are far better predictors of one’s success in the workforce than their college, as they reflect the hard working, goal driven and aspirational traits that truly matter. These include one’s college GPA and time spent studying, regardless of where they attended school, and, interestingly enough, the average SAT score of a college that rejected them, which is twice as accurate at predicting future earnings than the average SAT score of the school one actually attended (Bruni, 2015; Jaschik, 2018). Going even further, certain students actually benefit from avoiding elite colleges. Peter Hart, for example, rose in the ranks from an ordinary student at a competitive high school to a thriving student with a 3.95 GPA in the honors college at the University of Indiana, which he followed up by working for the same consulting firm as a high school classmate of his who had attended Yale, before eventually attending Harvard business school (Bruni, 2015). Hart claimed the school from which he earned his degree had no bearing on his competence compared to his fellow students, and workplace experience was ultimately more relevant than anything he learned in any classroom (Bruni, 2015). And to what does he attribute this success? At least in part, the school he attended. “I got to be the big fish in a small pond,” Hart said. “I really felt like a competent person [at Indiana University]. It was confidence building” (Bruni, 2015). Attending a state university also limits the college debt students take on. As Schneider (2018) writes, “Your college loan debt will determine where you live, what jobs you take, and what decisions you make. If you have an exorbitant monthly loan repayment it will delay your being able to buy a house, start your own business, and make it impossible for you to travel the world before you settle into a job routine.” A Wall Street Journal study also established that state schools more consistently provide eager workers to the workforce with specific, relevant training (Bruni, 2015). Beyond all of this, college is also meant to be more than just a job factory; it is meant to be an educationally and emotionally enriching time of life. Former Yale professor William Deresiewicz (2014) argues college’s most important role is to teach students “how to think” and to offer them “the precious chance to think and reflect before life engulfs them.” This has long been considered one of college’s most valuable resources: the journey to self discovery, the debate, the discussion; yet it is considered far less in college decisions today. The shift in mentality is staggering. In 1971, 73% of college freshman said it was very important to “develop a meaningful philosophy in life”, while just 37% said it was very important to be “very well-off financially” (Deresiewicz, 2014). In 2011, those numbers sat at 47% and 80%, respectively (Deresiewicz, 2014). In a culture that fuels the idea that prestige means jobs and jobs mean success, strong students might fail to consider a liberal arts education, which is founded on the principles of public good, debate and engagement, and might meet many of their needs better than any alternative (Deresiewicz, 2014). Our obsession with status has seriously infringed on our desire to truly learn and develop a sense of self, which is a scary realization for a generation that seems to be diving further and further in the wrong direction. I have seen the power of recognition that acceptance into a prestigious college grants a student. Walking my high school halls towards the end of senior year, it seemed as if many students had worked as hard as they could for the momentary recognition they earned from wearing a certain sweatshirt or from a celebratory Instagram post. The college admissions scandal of this year reflected the absurd lengths many are willing to go to be acknowledged. This, from my perspective, remains the driving factor in many student’s college decisions: the desire for acceptance and admiration from their peers. Going to Yale or Harvard certainly grants that; but does it matter? Schneider (2018) claimed, “Your future is not dependent upon your bragging rights.” This is the essence of my ideology on this matter. If it does not affect your job success, contentment, or overall well-being, why does it matter? Feeling noticed is certainly nice, but another great way to do that is to stand out at a school that isn’t filled with students that have likely overachieved you where you may feel like you’re constantly playing catch up. At the end of the day, we are all incredibly egocentric; people don’t really care where you went to college because they’re busy thinking about themselves. So, don’t base your life decisions off of a momentary glance. I’m still aware of the looks I get when I answer “ASU”; the pauses before the polite, “Nice, lots of pretty girls there.” Sometimes, I wish for a moment I could say the name of some Ivy. Almost immediately, I am reminded of why that makes no sense; in my first semester at ASU I have found my way onto three radio shows, started two podcasts and am a beat reporter for the men’s basketball team. ASU has delivered the exact opportunities on which I based my college decision; why would I ever regret that? The momentary Ivy desire is a completely illogical response driven by an illogical culture that has entirely miscalculated the meaning of higher education in this country. It is time to acknowledge that the name of your college does not matter; it is the experiences, opportunities, environment and, at the end of the day, you. To future college students: stop looking at faulty rankings, stop looking down on your peers because they go to a school that they, not other people, like, and just do what’s best for you and let others do the same. Prestigious colleges are by no means evil, but to pretend they are the only good or that they are a superior entity does a tremendous disservice to us all. 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. Crawford, K. (2018). The first step to choosing the 'right' college? Ignore the rankings, says Stanford researcher. Stanford Graduate School of Education. Retrieved from https://ed.stanford.edu Deresiewicz, W. (2014). Excellent sheep: The miseducation of the American elite and the way to a meaningful life. New York, NY: Free Press. Jaschik, S. (2018). Stanford study says rankings do not point students to the best college fit. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com Schneider, L. (2018). Tangled up in ivy: Attending an Ivy League school comes with bragging rights and promising career choices - but what if you don't get in? USA Today Magazine, 147(2880), 66-69. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier. 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 |