School X vs. School Y

Applying to College
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<p>Harvard vs. Yale, UCLA vs. Berkeley, Berkeley vs. Stanford, MIT vs. Caltech, Brown vs. Dartmouth, UCLA vs. USC…</p>

<p>Anyone who’s been on this site for at least a few months has seen them all. The question is slightly different, but the concern is always the same.</p>

<p>“Which one will get me into grad school, make me rich and popular with the opposite sex, good looking, and make me a happy person?”</p>

<p>The answer? NONE OF THEM. No single university will get you into grad school. If you go to USC instead of Berkeley, you will not die destitute and alone. Nor will you preclude yourself from getting into a good grad school or getting that awesome job after school. Nor will you be any less of a great person.</p>

<p>This time of year is always hard on people because they’re being told in an indirect way whether or not their hard work in high school has paid off. However, it is important that all of you not lose sight of what really matters: The school that you graduate from is not going to be the ultimate arbiter of your future, no matter what anyone on this site or anywhere else says to you. Don’t let the fuss of the admission season make you forget that you’re all awesome students and that you’re all going to awesome schools. Don’t let USNews or Shanghai or THES decide for you the school that will make you happiest. </p>

<p>Go to where YOU want to go to college. In the end, the best judge of what YOU want is YOU.</p>

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<p>And Amen to that!</p>

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<p>Truer word was never spoken! A lot of people on CC get accepted to great schools. “Great” does not have to mean HPY, and all of those other schools you listed up there. Every college in the “top colleges” section is very good. And the best thing: there are many, many more! It’s possible that prestige is something important for those, who are not too sure of themselves. It’s a solid foundation, a rock, a given on your resume. For what it’s worth, work to be your OWN rock. Yes, we are defined through the eyes of society and yes, l’enfer, c’est les autres, but it does not have to be like that. Trust yourself to make the right decision!
And while I’m at it - Smith or Bryn Mawr?
I’m kidding. Partly. This will be hard.</p>

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<p>A great post with a great answer.</p>

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<p>Truer words were never spoken. Now if you could have every CCer not buy the US news College “swimsuit” edition, then this message would be heard even louder.</p>

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<p>What’s a swimsuit edition?</p>

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<p>I believe it’s the ranking edition. It’s really quite silly…based on a lot of criteria which really, in my opinion, does not make a college truly great.<br>
I also think that there is more than one college that can be a great fit for any given kid. Fit, not prestige, is the most important criteria.
At the end of the day, it’s not the college…it’s the educational experience…does your college make you want to go on and learn more? I’m hearing from so many college kids these days that they’ve just had it…colleges are piling on so much work (200 pages of reading per class per night) and making education just so burdensome, that they can’t wait to get out. That’s not my idea of a great college. In my day, I got to choose my classes and professors. The homework was not insignificant, but still allowed me to do other things. I didn’t burn out and was fine with going straight to grad school. I think we’re on a great, giant educational treadmill that is not asking enough questions about HOW we OUGHT to educate our kids.<br>
USC v UCLA? Really, at the end of the day, it TRULY doesn’t matter. It’s what you do with your education that matters.</p>

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<p>Oh c’mon UCLAri, whether or not you’ll ever admit it you know that school X is better than school Y. You just like school Y more for some reason.</p>

<p><em>sticks out tongue</em></p>

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<p>Bingo! I’m not even going to bother answering this question anymore - I’ll just point people to UCLAri’s post instead</p>

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<p>swiss_mj: Bryn Mawr all the way. Oh yeah. :wink: (No bias on my part, nope, no way. <em>bg</em>)</p>

<p>But no seriously, all those schools ARE amazing (Smith is just as good as Bryn Mawr, and I mean that ;)) and in the end, it’s the person who will make a difference. Besides, a school that was unknown 10 years ago can now be slowly climbing its way up in rank… so who knows what the future will hold? If you pick your school for the right reasons, you really can never lose. :)</p>

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<p>^^that’s definitely true. My degree has only increased in value since I earned it. How can you tell when you’ll end up in a situation like that? </p>

<p>Also, considering the ridiculous stats posted by so many here, I would venture to say that the majority of the people who are on CC are in that top 10% or so of people who will find a way to suceed wherever they land.</p>

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<p>you’re entirely right… the school is what you make of it</p>

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<p>Joycelene: I totally agree! Heck, I agree with all of you. :)</p>

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<p>This was a good topic!
I guess I shall not let that stuff worry me…just going to choose what feels right when the time comes. :)</p>

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<p>“But… but… but… I got a 2273 on my SATs and I’ve been doing open-heart surgery since I was seven years old! And I’m the editor of my high school newspaper! And several other high school newspapers in the area! If I’m not a ‘pre-med major’ at CalTech, everyone will think I’m a loser!”</p>

<p>It’s always refreshing to see some sanity here at CC. Thanks for the original post, and thanks for all your agreement!</p>

<p>Chris D’Orso
Assistant Director of Admissions
Stony Brook University</p>

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<p>surely you jest</p>

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<p>I perfer School Z, actually.</p>

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<p>a bit too much rationalisation here I think.</p>

<p>if the transitive condition holds in the OP’s statement, a person can be equally successful if he goes to usc instead of furd. but wouldn’t you agree that the brand name of the school does help you out? and that for some people we needs a little push, the difference in prestige between furd and usc makes a difference? we must also remember that some employers, especially ones in the financial sector, only takes ivy league and other ‘top school’ grads.</p>

<p>the OP has some good points, but the post might be misleading since it implies that a college is only “what you make of it.” at some schools, you might not be able to “make of it” no matter how hard you try.</p>

<p>in general, this mentality is more prevalent among people at lower-tier schools (no offense to sbuadmissions or anyone else here), perhaps that might mean something.</p>

<p>I would like to point out one more thing while I’m at it… we sometimes see posts saying “my cousin got into harvard but she chose to go to [random state u] because of [financial reason or something] and now she is very successful. ergo, where you go to college doesn’t matter.” and then we see maybe two pages of posts agreeing with that poster. what’s wrong here? people who got into top schools might be different from people who can only get into [random state u].</p>

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<p>I agree that differences in selectivity preclude some applicants’ ability to make the comparison between X and Y with any meaning. That is, many posters ask whether X or Y is better before being accepted to both. If college is only “what you make of it”, surely you don’t suggest that what one makes of a random state college can be equal to or greater than to what that same person is able to make of a top school. If that statement were true, then the applicant in question is unable to make anything of the opportunities offered at the top school that aren’t offered at weaker schools, and would probably not be admitted to that top school anyway.</p>

<p>Also, “Which one will get me into grad school, make me rich and popular with the opposite sex, good looking, and make me a happy person?” is not the right question.</p>

<p>“Which one will get me into A BETTER grad school, make me richER and MORE popular with the opposite sex, MORE good looking, and make me a MORE happy person?” is less incorrect of a question.</p>

<p>That said, how happy a school will make you is entirely subjective and is thus a bad question. Barry Swartz wrote that even if these comparisons between schools mattered, we can’t know the outcome until after the fact. Maybe some people are happy at Bob Jones.</p>

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<p>lostincode,</p>

<p>I didn’t go to a lower-tier school, nor was UCLA the only top-tier school I considered, if that means anything. </p>

<p>You also should notice that I didn’t suggest anywhere in my post that one should go to Cal State Bakersfield instead of Harvard. What I’m trying to demonstrate is the fact that the differences between schools like Caltech and MIT or Harvard and Yale are so minor that one should not really worry about the “prestige” at that level.</p>

<p>As for the rest of your points…</p>

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<p>I never said otherwise. Yes, Stanford’s brand name can help you out. But like I said, it’s not likely to be the ultimate, or even most important, factor in much of anything. </p>

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<p>The OP has name…but anyway… I never said that college is “what you make of it.” I said that the ultimate factor in deciding which school will suit your needs is the individual. Not everyone is going to thrive in the high-stakes environment of Berkeley. Heck, not everyone is going to like the liberalism of Brown. Even if Brown has a better name than say Rice, if Rice offers you an environment that you’ll develop more fully in, then you should attend Rice.</p>

<p>What’s funny on this site is that if “GhostOfWalton” signed on and told some of the posters here how he was a University of Missouri grad, he’d be instantly panned as not worth considering. Of course, once it was brought forth that he was the ghost of Sam Walton, everyone would be crawling all over him.</p>

<p>You can’t bottle success in a school. And yes, not everyone is Sam Walton, but the point is that successful people will be successful anywhere. These kids are not going to fail at life if they choose Berkeley over Stanford.</p>

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<p>Should one’s life be completely geared toward getting that job? How about studying abroad, learning a language, finding a potential spouse, or actually learning something while at school? Careers happen. Considering how often people change career goals in their four years of college (or even grad school!), should that be one’s only, or even primary, concern?</p>

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<p>This is always the issue with collinearity that we face with these arguments. Is it the person or the school? Or are they intertwined in such a way that they’re the same thing?</p>