The college admissions scandal—involving schools such as Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and USC—has received much attention from the media. However, nobody has looked into the soul of the matter, to uncover how going to a school based on its prestige alone can derail a student’s life. It may take a student off the path to self-discovery and building healthy self-esteem required to lead a fulfilling and productive life.
One of the more famous students in the college scandal, who had been admitted to her parents’ dream college, confessed that she really had only gone to party. You know you are at the wrong university or institute of higher education when you find yourself partying to the point where your studies are just a side note in your life; if you are paralyzed by depression and can’t get your work done; or, if you feel disconnected and isolated.
The difficulty in this is that all of these scenarios can be explained away through psychological reasons: the student is lacking in motivation without parental support, does not organize his or her time well, or is taking a while to adjust to being independent. While those may be valid in some cases, in my experience both as a student and as a lecturer at the university, the problem is often more one of driving a square peg into a round hole. There is a mismatch between the student and the school.
Sometimes, it is not the parents’ doing, as in the legal cases now on the national stage. Not all parents force their children to go to a university that has a prestige factor that correlates with their own idea of where they belong in society, or where they aspire to be. The student may think that a university letter of acceptance is a kind of “prize” that validates all of his efforts, confirms his intelligence, and opens up a door to the elite life he envisions for himself.
First, I am going to explain why not to choose a university based on prestige alone. Then, I am going to give a few examples of the exceptional situations when choosing a university based on prestige is okay. Finally, I am going to describe the process by which a student ultimately finds the education or experience that she needs to pursue a career that is truly fulfilling—without wasting years on the wrong path or settling for a career that pays the bills, but leaves her empty inside.
The Ivory Tower May Be Your Prison
Lauren graduated at the top of her class from a private school in the United States. She was accepted at Yale, Princeton, Williams, and a number of other famous schools. She decided to go to Yale based on the prestige and because they had a lively choral and “a capella” scene. She also dreamed of being a doctor, like her aunt. She had already spent several summers working for her aunt, learning about her medical specialty, and really loving it. She started at Yale with a pre-med focus. However, the sciences at Yale are extremely competitive, and the grade curve brought her marks down. At the end of her sophomore year, she had a C-average in her pre-med classes. That would not be good enough to get into a decent medical school, she thought. Demoralized, she dropped out of pre-med and pursued her major in the humanities. In the end, she went to law school, and became a lawyer for five years. Prestige continued to determine all her choices: she chose her career path—corporate law, her law school, and her law firm, all based on the social caché they carried. However, she hated the law and was extremely unhappy at her highbrow firm. Once she had children, she dropped her career altogether.
Isabella also got into a number of Ivy League schools, but opted to go to Yale. Originally from Colombia, she spent a lot of time as a teenager playing volleyball on the beach. She loved it, and it gave her energy for other things, such as studying. At Yale, the first division team was too good for her to compete on, so she gave up playing. She also had never experienced a northeastern winter or interacted much with New Englanders. Neither agreed with her personality and disposition.
She endured several semesters of serious depression, and had to leave at the end of her sophomore year to take time off. Although she graduated and did well in her classes, her undergraduate experience was an uphill battle. She left New Haven feeling she was never centered or stable enough to take advantage of what the university had to offer. She was always playing catch-up with late papers and did not go deep into research for her classes. Isabella was too stressed and unhappy to get involved in extracurricular activities. Instead of using her time at university to develop her interests, she graduated without any real conviction about what she wanted to do. She chose a career she was indifferent to and only worked at it for a few years. Like Lauren she abandoned her career path.
Lily was a student from a large Chinese city who had always wanted to go to a UC. Before she arrived on the UC Davis campus, she had given little thought to a major \ or where she wanted to be. At this large public university in the agricultural heartland of California, she found herself lost and unsupported. She didn’t like the small-town feel of Davis. She stopped going to class altogether. I lost touch with her, so I don’t know what ultimately happened. I do know she spent a great deal of time with a psychiatrist, who treated her for a supposed depression.
In all three of these cases, there was a mismatch between the school and the student. Either it was in the wrong part of the world, too big or too small, too competitive, or did not offer the support needed. Lauren wanted to be a doctor. When she arrived in New Haven, she knew what her passion was. Yale was a good place for her to explore her interest in singing, but didn’t help her fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor. Had she gone to a school with less of a cutthroat pre-med program, she could have been a physician today. If she had not made all her decisions based on prestige, she would have pursued medicine by going to a medical school that was not famous. Isabella would have been happier in a southern school with a more agreeable climate where she could play volleyball outside most of the year. Things as simple as more sun and athletic opportunities and friendlier students would have provided the environment for her to thrive, rather than just survive. Lily did not take into account any of her needs. She underestimated the culture shock. She would have benefited from a more intimate college where a student would not get lost, most likely in an urban or international setting.
Just by being depressed and disconnected at a prestigious school, think of the people that Isabella and Lily never met and the opportunities they never pursued. They were never contented and confident enough to allow themselves to relax and go deep into their passion. By being fixated on the status of the school she attended, the career path she pursued, and the company she worked for, Lauren never became a doctor.
When is Prestige a Good Thing?
For some, choosing the prestigious school might be the right choice. I know a man who did not get into any of the schools he wanted to attend, but was accepted at Stanford. Both his parents had gone there and donated generously, so he was accepted as a “legacy” applicant. He was going to pursue a public career, and the kinds of elite social connections he could make at Stanford would make a big difference in achieving his ambitions. Given the limited choices he had for college and the nature of his chosen career, Stanford was a good option. Another example is a student who wants to purse academia as a professor or university administrator. Academics are extremely label conscious, and in order to get into a prestigious graduate school, coming from an elite undergraduate program is often important. A little known fact is that the top universities in this country usually offer full financial aid to students of parents whose income is below a fairly high threshold. So, if you were choosing between free tuition at Princeton and paying full fare at George Washington University, then Princeton would most likely be a better choice—at least financially. Finally, there are those pursuing jobs in investment banking or finance for whom a degree from a top university can prove highly advantageous.
For a select number of careers, prestige may be the necessary key to open a vocational door. The same key is simply not required for a majority of careers. That is a fact!
The Road Less Taken
In many cases, a choice based on the prestige of a university is simply not a good idea. It might result in a career path not taken, an arduous and unpleasant climb, social isolation, self-doubt, and opportunities missed. It may actually limit opportunities, rather than opening doors. Worse, a student can come away from the experience believing that he is not really passionate about anything, so why not just take the road more traveled and follow the money? That path seldom leads to happiness.
I also know some real life examples of people who, early on, were considered failures by their families. Karen never did well in school. She graduated high school with a C+ average and was the type of person who always complained about being bored. She did not know what she was good at or even what she enjoyed. However, because her parents both went to an elite university, she was accepted under the lower admissions standards of a “legacy” applicant at Rice University in Houston. Rather than matriculate, she disappointed her parents still further by enrolling at a community college near home. She took classes in business and didn’t like them. She quit school and became a bartender. She took pleasure in the conversations that she had with her customers at the pub. Then her mother got early-onset Alzheimer’s, and Karen decided to help take care of her mother. She discovered a calling in health care, and went back to community college. Now she had a focus. In the end, she became a nurse, working three twelve-hour shifts each week. She continued bartending as well on the other days, and she is one of the happiest people I know.
When Leila was a senior in high school, she already knew she wanted to become a doctor. Everybody around her thought she was not academic enough to achieve the grades it took to be accepted into medical school. Although she was offered a place at Barnard, she instead chose an obscure school that also had a very good record for getting students into medical school. Nevertheless, she didn’t get into any American medical schools. So, she decided to attend a reputable medical school abroad. She surprised everybody and became a neurologist and now has a practice in New York. She chose her own path and reached her desired goal, regardless of her family’s opinion.
Be Open…Cast a Wide Net
Higher education should be a gate to doing what you want to do. It shouldn’t be about impressing others. Ultimately, even if you get that degree from a top-20 university, if it erodes your self-worth or makes you unhappy, you will be missing invaluable life opportunities. You may also not end up doing what fulfills you. Rather than allow yourself to be derailed, consider all kinds of options and cast the net wide: small liberal arts colleges, technical schools, art schools, and even a community college. A prestigious school can indeed open some doors for you. However, if you are unhappy and unfocused the whole time, more than likely, it will close more doors than it opens. You deserve to find the perfect “key” to the rest of your life.
Jeffrey Weiner holds an undergraduate degree from Yale University, a Masters from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from UC Berkeley. He has taught literature at UC Berkeley and UC Davis. He currently is president of ExecuTutor, a company specializing in preparing students to identify their university of choice and successfully navigate the admissions process. For more information, contact Jeffrey directly at www.execututor.com.