<p>An intriguing but complex question for me. The short answer is no, and here’s the long answer: I went to a Seven Sisters school, where smart girls were supposed to go in the days before coeducation. I applied to other places, but not with much conviction, because I had a feeling I wouldn’t end up at any of them. My college choice wasn’t so much a choice as an expectation–though one I willingly embraced. I do not think my women’s college did a good job in those pre-feminism days of building courage, self-confidence, and ambition in average students like me (I believe that most of the exceptional students came to college equipped with the self-worth that I needed some help developing). So my college experience left me feeling defeated, and it took a moderately successful career trajectory in the six to seven years after college to make me feel like a complete, competent person. </p>
<p>Like DougBetsy, though, my life from ages 17 to 21 was fraught with emotional angst–along with some health issues–that had little to do with my college experience but affected it. And unfortunately, unlike DougBetsy, my college sweetheart was the wrong person to marry–a mistake I later corrected! But the angst and the misguided marriage might have happened anywhere. </p>
<p>However, I have wonderful, lifelong friends from college who are like sisters. The social atmosphere felt like another family. I have a well-rounded liberal education that supports my genetic predisposition to be intellectually curious. Thinking of New England in the fall makes me yearn for Mountain Day. I wish I could go there now. But my alma mater didn’t shape my life. My career, my friends, and my life with my second husband and our son have done that.</p>
<p>That’s why I don’t automatically jump on the prestige bandwagon, though I admit to feeling a little twinge when I sent my son off to a big midwestern state university a year ago. But his experience so far has all the positive aspects of my college experience, with little or no angst and (I hope) no faulty personal choices.</p>