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[AlohaDawg]

dang. this whole discussion has been one of those "I know it isn't steak. computers are telling my brain that it is thick and juicy. But do you know what? Ignorance is bliss" type things. I am aware that in the end, which college you go to does not effect your life that heavily (unless you do something like kill yourself, develop a drug habit, meet your future spouse, father a child out of wedlock, etc.). At the same time, I am hell of excited about going to a good school. I feel essentially vindicated. I realize that this is a silly thing, but it is such a cool place.

I am trying to hard not to brag at school. But it's difficult, because no one at my school has heard of it. So when I say "Washington U in St Louis", they say "oh, that's nice" and smile. i want to rant about it, say how hard it is to get in, and generally be a jerk about it. This is completely against my character. So I have not done it. But... damn. I can't even let myself casually drop comments into conversation ("oh yeah, a bunch of kids were deciding between Duke and Wash U..."). probably for the better.

two perfect "school spirit" type shirts:

"Emory University was my Safety School" (apparently Emory is trying to start up a "rivalry", and the Wash U student body finds this hilarious.)
"(Front): Washington University. (Back): It's in St Louis, damnit!"

but really, I realize that I would be just as happy and (hopefully) successful if I had attended a "lesser" school. Especially because I live in North Carolina, and UNC is wonderful. As is NC State, etc.

You can't live the future where it doesn't matter what school you went to NOW, so for now, be happy and humble at your good fortune. If you can.
Because you know, today might be your last day on Earth so there's no good reason to be a crap dude. So I'm glad you not being one.

Good going. I got accepted there and had to go to Ohio State for financial reasons. I had a great time and got a quality education, and I have only once or twice in my life wondered what would be different now.

[Hobot]

I am trying to hard not to brag at school. But it's difficult, because no one at my school has heard of it. So when I say "Washington U in St Louis", they say "oh, that's nice" and smile. i want to rant about it, say how hard it is to get in, and generally be a jerk about it. This is completely against my character. So I have not done it. But... damn. I can't even let myself casually drop comments into conversation ("oh yeah, a bunch of kids were deciding between Duke and Wash U..."). probably for the better.

As you know, I am from Virginia.  I had the same problem.  Conversations with peers and adults from the area went (and still go) as follows:

Them: "So, where are you going to school next year?"
Me: "I'm going to Smith College." [pause] "In Massachusetts."
Them: [pause] "Oh!" [nervous smile, shifty eyes]
Me: "It's one of the former Seven Sisters."
Them: "Uh-huh."
[crickets]

[V-Adore]

I got about three different reactions when I told people I was going to Williams:

1) "Where?"
2) "Oh, with your test scores, I thought you'd go to a good school."
3) "William and Mary? Congratulations!" (The best version of this was when it was dropped into conversation by an acquaintance that "I didn't know you and Stacy were both planning on William and Mary..." Stacy went to Washington and Lee.)

The other thing I've observed is that, for undergraduate, you announce your choice with pride, as if you've won a wonderful prize. For graduate school, you announce it with relief, because oh God it's finally over and you got in somewhere. I am attempting to get excited about OSU, but man, so tired.

[wombat]

"I didn't know you and Stacy were both planning on William and Mary..." Stacy went to Washington and Lee.

Hee, very nice.

The first college I went to was Boston University.  It is completely hopeless to expect people in New York City to distinguish Boston University and Boston College.  Maybe people anywhere, but this is the only case I can speak to.

[AlohaDawg]

The other thing I've observed is that, for undergraduate, you announce your choice with pride, as if you've won a wonderful prize. For graduate school, you announce it with relief, because oh God it's finally over and you got in somewhere. I am attempting to get excited about OSU, but man, so tired.

Which OSU?

[AugustWest]

Douchebag.

~Paul

IRONY!

I've got to weigh in now.  I think it is important where you go to school.  Does it make you smarter, more worthy or a better person if you go to a better school?  Nope.  But let's face it -- not all schools are equal.  Some schools have better engineering programs, or english programs or anthropology or whatever.  Some schools are all-around mediocre.

Let me tell you about my college history.  I came out of highschool an academic hotshot.  I was a valedictorian (OK, 1st of 12, but 1st just the same...) and a National Merit Scholar.  I went to Wash. U. for 5 semesters.  While I was there I slacked off far more than I should have.  I ended up transferring to the University of Kentucky, where I finished my BA.

There was a huge difference between the two schools.  At Wash U, I took a class with a Nobel prize winner.  I studied creative writing with a National Book Award winner.  My friends from Wash U. are now work at SETI and Time magazine.  The people I was around were smart, creative, driven and funny -- much like this place.  It was a community I was thrilled to be a part of.  I would not be the man I am today if I hadn't experienced Wash U. or someplace like it.

UK wasn't like that.  It was OK, and the education I got there was not lacking, but uninspired.  With a single exception, I can't recall much favorable about any of my classes.  I made some dear friends at UK, a couple of whom I've lost track of and deeply miss.  But in general, the experience was more like an extension of high-school than anything else.

In the long run will it matter to your career where you go to college?  Maybe not.  But it will affect you are and what you become.  I know that the conventional wisdom these days is that college is just a way to buy a better job, that it's just career training.  But I learned important stuff in college that has no direct connection to what I do for a living.  And I think I learned more and better stuff because I was intellectually challenged by better faculty and rigorously selected students.

I don't think it makes me better or smarter because I went to a good school for a while.  If anything, it taught me humility by exposing me to so many better students.  I think I was lucky to have that educational experience and I'll always regret not taking full advantage of it at the time.  But if you're saying there's no value in going to a better school, well that's just wrong.

[theinevitable]

oh man
yeah, this is some kind of retribution thing for my dad, because he got into Wash U and couldn't afford to go.

I keep getting "Wow, congrats on Washington and Lee!" This is, of course, not mentioning the "wow, all the way to the west coast!" type comments.
One kid said people kept asking him how he felt about George Washington doing well in March Madness.


also: augustwest, thank you for saying that. Because I was thinking that, and didn't want to get "oh come on, you don't know what you're talking about, etc."

[wombat]

I don't mean to rain on anyone's excellent college experiences. But it's terrible to hear that people seem to think their whole lives depend on what acceptance letters they get when they are 17.  It doesn't matter that much. If you're the kind of person who's going to get something out of college, you're going to find a way to get it. If you don't get it at the first place you end up, you can pick up and go somewhere else, like I did  (it's supposedly easier to get into most schools as a transfer than as a freshman, by the way). Or you'll find it where you are even if it wasn't your dream school - there are good faculty at lots of places you wouldn't expect just because it's hard to get a professor job these days.  Harvard (or insert your favorite example here) produces way, way, way more PhDs than they can hire as faculty, right?

And conversely if you're the kind of person who isn't going to take advantage of what's around you, it doesn't matter where you end up.  You can waste four years at Harvard or Yale just as easily, if more expensively, as anyplace else.

[V-Adore]

Which OSU?

Ohio State. I keep forgetting there are multiple ones.

And... yeah, I have to copy August about overall school environment. I think going into college with the idea that it's job training and thus any education that prepares you to work is a good one leads to you losing a lot of opportunities. (The biggest college flame-out I've seen so far was a friend of mine who went in with the expectation that she would grind pre-med in four years and be out; as anticipated by everyone besides her, she hated pre-med, and she ended up dropping out because she couldn't think of anything else appropriately vocational to do. Never mind that she loved French and would have made a fantastic French language or lit major -- the fact that it wasn't immediately employable in a highly lucrative field meant that she couldn't even consider it.) Going to a small liberal-arts school has made all the difference to me in terms of educational development (small classes are both more welcoming and more rigorous, since you can't hide) and graduate school preparation (since it's much easier to do undergraduate research at a school our size than at a huge school with tons of demand and tons of graduate students). Then we get into the intangible elements of the school community -- what kind of students the school tends to attract, what kind of social groups they form, and other facts about the spirit of the place not made clear from admissions materials.

I think the take-home message of all of this is that, while almost all schools will give you at least adequate training in your field, and all but the most borderline of those will offer you opportunities for excellence and joy, you still have to evaluate how well the programs and community seem to fit you. While there's something to be said for adapting to whatever you face, you need to make sure you're attending a college that adapting to won't be a pain for.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Going to a small liberal-arts school has made all the difference to me in terms of educational development (small classes are both more welcoming and more rigorous, since you can't hide) and graduate school preparation (since it's much easier to do undergraduate research at a school our size than at a huge school with tons of demand and tons of graduate students). Then we get into the intangible elements of the school community -- what kind of students the school tends to attract, what kind of social groups they form, and other facts about the spirit of the place not made clear from admissions materials.

Amen to that.  My college was smaller than my high school.  I enjoyed the "Big giraffe in a small pond" aspect.  I was president of my fraternity, music director at the college radio station, and lead singer for one of the better-liked campus bands.  If I had gone to Penn State, I would have been lucky to do one of those things.  I learned a great deal more about leadership and original thought than I would have at a big state school (where I could have gone for just about free).

[AugustWest]

I don't mean to rain on anyone's excellent college experiences. But it's terrible to hear that people seem to think their whole lives depend on what acceptance letters they get when they are 17.  It doesn't matter that much. If you're the kind of person who's going to get something out of college, you're going to find a way to get it. If you don't get it at the first place you end up, you can pick up and go somewhere else, like I did  (it's supposedly easier to get into most schools as a transfer than as a freshman, by the way). Or you'll find it where you are even if it wasn't your dream school - there are good faculty at lots of places you wouldn't expect just because it's hard to get a professor job these days.  Harvard (or insert your favorite example here) produces way, way, way more PhDs than they can hire as faculty, right?

And conversely if you're the kind of person who isn't going to take advantage of what's around you, it doesn't matter where you end up.  You can waste four years at Harvard or Yale just as easily, if more expensively, as anyplace else.

I don't disagree with anything you've said.  You can get a good education anywhere, if you want to bad enough.  However, I don't think that means that you shouldn't take advantage of the opportunities that you are presented with.  If you can go to a better school (and can pay for it) there are certain advantages.

But the whole "Unless I get into X school, my college career is worthless" mentality is just stupid.

[wombat]

Now, now, people, can we just agree that there are many possible paths to success in life and leave it at that?  I am sure that, way back in the dim past when I was appointed as undergraduate advisor, the first thing they told me was that 'shank you and leave you in a ditch' was a bad line of argument to get into with a student, no matter how great and frequent the temptation. 

[misterqueue]

I just want to go on record saying I hate this entire thread.

Just hate it to hell.

[theinevitable]

I can see what V is saying, though. Some people are so focused on their chosen career that they blow off everything else. This could lead to some missed chances-- maybe I am right and I do hate calculus, but maybe I'm wrong, and calculus is awesome! You can't use something you don't know. There's something to be said for following your passion-- but looking at college as only a means to a career with a high salary is a mistake.

On the other hand, I am amazed by the people who keep asking if I'm going to be a music major. Do I seem to be destined to live a life of destitution and disappointment? I plan on taking music classes in college, but my major will hopefully be something useful.

[pmcd9]

On the other hand, I am amazed by the people who keep asking if I'm going to be a music major. Do I seem to be destined to live a life of destitution and disappointment? I plan on taking music classes in college, but my major will hopefully be something useful.

Please don't do that.  My biggest scholastic regret is that I didn't stand up to my Dad when he insisted I get a "useful degree" and not be a music major.  "Music is a nice hobby, but you can't make any money at it."  In retrospect this attitude was particularly odd because his sister was a very successful musician.  Anyway, I studied business and failed miserably.  Things would have been so much different had I pursued music, something I love.  I may not have found a practical application for a music degree, but flunking out of business school sure as hell didn't do me any good.  It took me 20 years to realize i'm not a dummy.

I'm not a dummy.  *weeps*

I just want to go on record saying I hate this entire thread.

Just hate it to hell.

I agree, this thread sucks ass.

~Paul