BU VS. BC VS. Northeastern

Lergnom
Sat, 16 May 2009 11:57:40 +0000

So we’ve reached the end of another admissions cycle.

It’s humorous in a sad way that people focus so much on itty bitty personally perceived differences in prestige and rankings, especially when they don’t understand (and haven’t even read) the methodologies of rankings. These issues show up most when it matters the least, as in BU versus BC or Yale versus Princeton.

I also post on the Yale board and the UMass board and I post on the law school board. What’s sad is we see the same defensiveness from Yale students who feel they must absolutely defend Yale, a school that needs no defense because it is so solidly at the top. It’s ridiculous to read Yale students - and usually prospective Yale students - saying, “Well, Yale gives more attention to undergrad than Harvard” when they don’t go to both schools, maybe haven’t gone to any, maybe aren’t even going to get in, when they’re repeating garbage that’s passed around from year to year that has no basis in fact.

And then when I hear kids always recommending, even pushing their schools, I can’t help but think, “What a fantastic case study in groupthink; we see the need to persuade others because that validates our own choices.” They don’t understand this is the same process by which people spread misinformation that denigrates black or Arab or Jewish Americans. If you believe something because you’re told it, if you then repeat that, ask yourself whether it’s true, why it’s true, what stake the person who told it to you has in it being true, and what your stake is in believing it. You want to believe your engineering school is the best choice for every single kid who asks … because you need to believe not because it’s true. This year in particular I’ve read the silliest things - not necessarily on the BU board - with kids, often again not even students in college, recommending specific colleges absolutely, out of this twisted need to believe and thus misplaced loyalty, even when the college doesn’t even offer the program. Just because it’s Yale doesn’t mean it’s the best in every single thing and the fact that UConn has terrific basketball teams doesn’t make it a top tier school.

It continually blows my mind that every year we get disgruntled transfer kids who need to vent their disappointment, as though kids don’t leave every school - including Yale, btw - and as though kids don’t transfer into BU (and nearly every school). Your personal experience is your personal experience and, guess what, that you blew your choice of school is not the school’s fault. You should be looking in the mirror to ask yourself why you made this choice because blame isn’t the way to learn from experience.

Perhaps the problem is that most of the posters who can’t handle critical thinking are young males and that may reflect testosterone and late maturity. (Like when I’m at the gym and they have a special TV that nearly always shows young people doing “extreme” sports and every single one is a guy.) Young men, it seems, also have trouble understanding that their experiences are not yours and they have a need to make you take their perspective seriously. As a former young man and the father (not mother) of girls, I see girls as constantly evaluating how they feel in context with a much more common awareness of the limits of their own perceptions.