chaosakita

My school is a very affluent area and is considered one of the best schools in the state, if not the best non-magnet public school. However, I noticed a really interesting trend among this years top 10 students: they all went to rather non-prestigious schools.

Two of the students went to Rice and Pomona, and another two (one of them being the Valedictorian with this huge prestigious scholarship) went to Vanderbilt (which is really close to our city). As for the rest, one went to the honors program at the University of Kentucky (a wonderful artist and writer), two were attending different slightly selective colleges, another two were going to the University of Georgia together, and one last person (who was amazing at both math and Spanish) was attending our flagship state university. I suppose all of the schools the latter six went to were all good academic institutions, but I definitely think you could find better schools.

The question is, why? The only reasonable answer I can think of is because of financial reasons, which is still strange, as we live in one of the richest counties in the nation. Did the economic downturn have something to do with it?

I think that all of these people could have gone to prestigious colleges if they wanted to. In fact, I think that most of the top 10 from our rival school with a similar socioeconomic background did all go to those prestigious colleges.

In the end, I guess it's not my place to judge where people decide to go to college for themselves, but I still think it might of been better for them (at a financial cost) if they had chosen to go to "better" schools.