Am I wrong to regret attending college? (Yale)

Colleges & Universities Yale University
21

Very interesting thread.

Here are my thoughts: scattered.

I was a student who had high SAT and CAT tests when young, was put in honors classes (I didn’t want to be in them really, but learned to really love honors science), and did terribly in HS. I probably had a 2.4 or something, lots of Cs, A in gym and art, D in math and history, and skipped about 20% of my classes in my junior and senior years. I was forced to go to a Community College, where I got angry at how I blew my chances, and got straight As. This allowed me to transfer into a decent middle of the road university and I proceeded to get two 4 year degrees at once: Computer Science and English. My failures earlier helped me to realize that a lot of things were what I made of them. I decided to milk my university for 2 degrees for the price of one. All it cost me was extra work.

Second point: My BIL graduated from Yale, and never really did much with his career. It’s a bit sad, but it happens a lot. In my opinion, Yale and many IVY schools recruit great STUDENTS, not necessarily great leaders, or decision makers, or innovators. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of those types come out of Ivy league schools too, but Yale and others focus on kids with 4.x GPAs, high standardized tests. Virtually no real digging into emotional intelligence, social skills (one interview aside), resilience. Where I work, many of the Ivy guys struggle in their careers, despite being super intellectual, while there are others who went to decent schools who thrive, because they bring the entire package (emotional IQ, ability to have fun, leadership, ability to empathize with the non-academics, ability to handle a fight or corporate politics).

Having said the above, the reason why I disagree with your assessment of your degree is this: My BIL, despite his lack of clear success at many career stops, still gets TONS of calls. His resume still shines because people only really look at your last job, and your pedigree. So if you had bad job, bad job, bad job, decent job, great job, and a Yale degree on the back end, people will just assume you are brilliant. It’s a huge leg up, if you know how to leverage it.

I get the introverted thing, and I like your fire. Keep chugging and learn to leverage that tool which is an Ivy degree. In the end, that is all that is it, another tool, one of several.

22

When I was OP’s age a few decades ago, I had similar feelings but with a difference… Socially I was a fish out of water at Yale–from a rural area, etc. But I did love most of my classes. I did well academically but I was emotionally relieved on graduation day–I didn’t even bother to stay around. I came from a blue collar background and I had no illusions that working in the “real world” rather than going to college would advance me in my life. So I had a pragmatic view of Yale’s usefulness coupled with a personal appreciation for the opportunity to learn “non practical” subjects.

As time went on, I realized even more that the Yale degree was a door opener for jobs. You still needed the ability to work with others, handle corporate politics, get the job done, etc but I had people call me to recruit me just because of that college background and that has worked out well for me… I am more involved with alumni affairs now, and when I go back, I marvel how the place has improved socially. Co education is a big part of it as well as a more diverse student body, but the administration is also much more consciously focused on the emotional aspect than was true in the 70s and 80s. The young Yalies I know seem pretty happy, given the stresses of college life and young adulthood.

Also, on a personal note, I met my future wife at a large social event where nobody could be heard. She had heard that I went to Yale so she gave me a few seconds to introduce myself. She has mixed views of Yale (maybe of me too) but I count myself very fortunate that she gave me a chance. Just another random benefit.

23

Doncic42, I appreciate your point. In fact, I suspect one of the reasons my three kids did so well following graduation from Yale is that they were required to work full time during the summers while they were in college (in exchange for my husband and I paying their tuition). Strong, relevant work experience is extremely valuable no matter where one attends college. That being said, my friend is an Investment Banker and shared something interesting about what their Human Capitol department has discovered. In attempting to assess which Analyst new hires do best at their IB firm, they identified and evaluated a number of variables, and then determined if these variables were positively or negativity correlated with success in that position. What they found is that students with quantitative majors were positively correlated (did better than the baseline…no surprise) as did students from liberal arts schools (big surprise!). But the biggest surprise was that undergraduate Business majors were negatively correlated with success in this job (performed worse than the baseline!). They can’t know why but they surmise that students who study at liberal arts schools (like you) are generally more curious by nature and more eager to learn new things. I suspect your four years at Yale was likely more formational than you may currently realize. Again, I wish you the best!

24

@Doncic42 I hope lots of young people read this thread, but I doubt many will. This thread brings up many important things to learn from. If you are able to reframe your thinking just a little bit, there’s a good chance that you can move away from regret and toward a growth mindset. Being able to let go of regret, leave it behind, can be very liberating.

You got a golden ticket, you got to go to Yale. And while the experience fell short of your expectations, your fantasies, your dreams, you actually finished that four year degree. Congratulations. You persevered and now have a nice solid stone foundation to build your adult life on. Noone can take it away from you ever. It can’t be reposessed. For the rest of your life that foundation gives you the instant credibility that is one of the reasons many want the same golden ticket. You’ve learned the disappointing fact that “Yale isn’t everything.” But, you know that because you went to Yale. (Sort of like the people who say “money isn’t everything” are often people with a lot of money).

You also learned that a degree from Yale (or anywhere really) is no guarantee that you will have meaningful job skills or that you won’t have to struggle to build a set of marketable skills needed to build a career that you enjoy enough to be sustainable. That’s a big pill to swallow. It is a painful realization. But, you have that foundation and instant credibility and obviously a strong enough brain to take that to gradually build the skills toward a career. This is a lifelong process. It can be an uphill struggle at times, progress can seem slow at points then surge at others. Instant success is very rare. Life is messy, and wonderful all at the same time. It doesn’t hit dream or fantasy levels very often, but when it does it can be amazing.

Let go of regrets. The past is the past. The last five years have been hard. Okay. Keep moving forward, the next five don’t have to be. Don’t blame Yale, appreciate it for what it is, even with its faults.

25

Great post! Hopefully, at least a few students and parents will stop frantically running of the educational hamster wheel for a moment and consider your comments and experience.

I think many of your points can be generalized to the value of an undergraduate experience at any school. One can even extend that argument to the pre-college years. There is very little vocational training that occurs throughout our educational experience (excluding professional and some graduate schools). How does reading Shakespeare as a high school freshman prepare an individual for evaluating the debt structure of a target company?

The educational experience certainly has value in building a thoughtful, inquisitive, well-rounded person; but I think you are right to question - was that worth the toll in dollars, mental health and opportunity costs? Particularly at a prestigious university. I think that is central to the concerns about the rising costs of college, saddling young people with tremendous debt and then tossing them out into a world with a nice diploma to hang on their wall, but few, if any real job skills.

That being said, what other option(s) do you have? You can play the game, get your undergrad degree and recognize that the real vocational training happens after that. Or, you can take the high risk path of skipping college and going straight into the work force or entrepreneurship. Problem is, good luck finding jobs that will pay well or have a path to attaining good pay; and good luck securing loans for your business with little more than a high school degree. So, like it or not, college is still the best option.

Then, do you go the Ivy path, or a non-Ivy path? For business and technical degrees, the Ivy path is statistically going to pay off in higher earnings down the road. Only you can decide if the toll is (or was) worth it. And that is going to be an entirely individual judgement.

Hopefully, the thoughts you’ve shared are just for the benefit of those seeking information about the college experience, and not reflective of you having given up along the path of school and work. You have assets that many do not have, including a great education, a degree from a prestigious university and an incredible intellect that got you those things.

It also helps to remember that a job is not the destination in this process. It’s actually just another waypoint in a journey that will include subsequent jobs, maybe going back to graduate/professional school, maybe starting your own business, etc.

26

@doncic42

You make a very useful observation - that an Ivy League education is not ideal for everyone. Given your interests and goals, it sounds like you would have been better served at a business school and/or a university that integrates co-ops into its curriculum, like Northeastern or Drexel.

Two other relevant examples often come up on these boards, for which the most prestigious pick may not be optimal: For med school, students are often advised to select more economical and less competitive choices as a strong GPA and MCAT score is more critical than the name on the diploma. For prospective teachers, a regional public university is often a better career launchpad than a more prestigious school (not to mention often less expensive; an important consideration when entering a less lucrative profession.)

While you may have regrets, I doubt that your career would have been accelerated without a college degree. As others have said, the Yale name can be leveraged. Use it to your advantage. Best of luck as you move forward.

27

@Doncic42: Sorry things haven’t worked out as you had planned. After graduating from Yale in 2015, my son told us . . .

Yes, my son could have learned this lesson at any college, but our family doesn’t feel as though we wasted money on a Yale education.

Full Disclosure: Due to Yale’s generous financial aid, our son attended Yale for less than the cost of our flagship state college. Had our family paid the full sticker price we might have felt differently. FWIW: my son started off on the computer science track at Yale, but dropped out of compsci as he disliked the way they were teaching the subject. He graduated with a psychology degree and is now a product manager at a top-5 tech company. EVERYTHING he learned to get his job he learned on his own. So like you, he doesn’t give Yale credit for what he learned, nor did Yale prepare him to succeed in a given career. He did that all by himself . . . and I’m sure you can too!

28

If you don’t take the courses a college does offer that teach “employable skills” then you can hardly fault them for not providing you with those skills. I don’t think colleges are going to teach the nuances between different careers or the “basic truths” about how companies work. You can certainly learn some of things at college by using their resources, but some wisdom comes from experience. I learned a lot about how companies work while I was in college by purposely searching out different types of jobs. Organizational behavior courses were helpful in gaining a basic understanding, but they couldn’t match the insight provided by a first hand experience.

People who advocate going to college aren’t lacking in imagination or an understanding of what it takes to be successful in today’s marketplace. College isn’t for everyone, but everyone considering college should have a realistic idea of what a college education can provide. I wouldn’t regret the years you spent at college. It sounds like you learned a lot and you’re still learning. Those are both good things.

29

But maybe the Yale name on his resume helped…just…a little? Maybe college selection really is the branding exercise that all the HS students and parents here think it is, and what they actually learn is less important.

30

^^ @damon30: The Yale name on his resume definitely helped – - even being a psychology major looking for work at places like Google, Facebook, Apple, Spotify, Drop Box, and Instagram. However, to get to the third interview at those companies, he had to know enough coding, which he learned on his own and not through any course work taken at Yale. And yes, I couldn’t agree more with your statement

31

There’s no sense in harping on whether or not you should have gone to college. You did. You got a fantastic education. Now you need to figure out what to do with the rest of your life. You can’t change history, you can only influence your future.

32

When invited to take the Proust Questionnaire by The Boston Globe, then-candidate, now Massachusetts governor, Charlie Baker disclosed that his choice of college has been his “greatest regret.” The point for you in this example of notable candor may be that it offers perspective on the great depth of feeling, similar to that which you’ve expressed, associated with a college decision:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/15/charlie-baker-takes-proust-questionnaire/p2B2GsYFIUnYnVLsZCiX3I/amp.html

33

@Doncic42: Great thread ! Agree that in retrospect, Drexel or Northeastern might have been better fits for your college years as would most any undergraduate business program.

Five years out of college, it seems as though you are ready for an MBA program.

34

@Doncic42: Also, based on your comments above, I wonder if you suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) ?

35

As a fellow alum, I agree with a lot of what the OP has said. I loved the fact that Yale wasn’t pre-professional though and didn’t want it to be. I don’t think Yale is a good place for people with crippling perfectionism or self esteem issues, just as I don’t think peer schools would be suitable either. I would also advise people with predispositions for serious mental illnesses to go to a lower intensity school. Lack of sleep, stress and abundant alcohol are all triggers that can make people very unwell.

36

@Publisher yep, that’s what was suggested to me by the doc : )

My post reads too much like a screed. It wasn’t that bad. But we are talking about a $250K “product” and one for which people have almost religious devotion (not typically regarded as a “product”).

37

1st world problem. Keep calm. Move on. Take it on.

38

@Doncic42 In all honesty, you shouldn’t regret your decision. It may have been where you were at that period. Maybe you would have enjoyed being at another college more, but then again, maybe not. Perhaps Yale wasn’t a transformative experience that changed your life and opened new vistas and introduced you to new opportunities, or whatever their brochure claims. At the end you are older, hopefully wiser, and your BA certificate has “Yale” on it, which may come in handy some day.

I’m not saying that you should delude yourself into thinking “those were the best days of my life”. I don’t even think that you should recommend Yale to all and sundry. Your perspective is good and it is helpful to anybody who is thinking of Yale, but you should stop thinking that those were wasted years, during which you could have been accomplishing greater things somewhere else.

While you may be having difficulty landing the right job for yourself, that is hardly unique. How old are you, 26?. You’re still extremely young, and still trying to figure yourself out. While it’s true that you may have benefited from a few years doing something else before you started college, but again, maybe not. I went to the army at 18, college at 21, and I was only a bit younger than you when I entered the work force. You’ve had four years to try things out.

Remember, you’re 26, you have the experience in the corporate world, as well as all the things you did learn in Yale. You’re better off than somebody of your age who did not go to college or somebody who did not finish a four year BA. You’re better off than the majority of the population, in fact. So take all of benefits that four years of college and four years of working have given you and go forward.

Also - take care of yourself. I know that sometimes thing feel worse than they are (I suffer from depression, so I know all about that), and it’s OK that you feel that way. Just remember that it’s really not that bad.

39

Yale can’t be good for everyone. One of my sons attended, did well, and while acknowledging that Yale is imperfect, benefited tremendously from having attended. My other son would have been a train wreck at Yale, and attends elsewhere.

40

@Doncic42 : Would you consider going to UK for an one-year degree program? Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBY1qkJPOKE&index=80&t=0s&list=LLV2cA5C9PtyxnIgxJy7SlKA This girl has a humanities degree from UC Berkeley and worked a couple years. She went to UK for an one-year degree program (save a lot of money) and now she is in consulting. No degree is a waste. You can leverage it and add something on top to make it attractive.

This is good for 気分転換 (in Japanese, this means change of pace; change of mood; (mental) break etc.) In your case, change of career also.