At family gatherings, my family is always asking me what colleges I plan on attending. I always rattle off places like Columbia, Stanford, and UCLA because they've been my dream colleges for years, but recently I've been a little discouraged that I will even get into 'lesser known' colleges, let alone big-name Ivy leagues.
What I really wanted to focus on was the idea of it being bad for students to go to smaller colleges after high school. Some of us do it without realizing, we look down on graduates who chose to go to LBCC instead of USC or we judge people who majored in something strange at an amazing school (*cough cough* Underwater basket weaving). With us getting closer and closer to having to deal with college applications, is it all worth the stress? Is it really so bad to go to the least popular UC instead of going to UCLA or USC?
Of course, I want to attend UCLA because I feel that that is the school where I can best utilize my talents, but if the admissions board doesn't believe that I'm right for them, should I really be so disappointed that I have to go somewhere else?
What are the benefits of going to a bigger college as opposed to going to a smaller one? Is anyone going to really care that you graduated from UCLA? I'm just curious if everyone really wants to get into big colleges or if they've just been programmed to believe that was the only option for them. Debate in the comments! I'm really interested in everyone's input on this and I've been wanting to ask friends, but I feel like they would have semi-biased opinions because they're all super smart and in the top 10. :^)
Sincerely, Makayla Mosley
Ps. It's 12 am as I'm writing this and I just got a copy of my transcript from my counselor and I'm having a nervous breakdown because of my rank and GPA lmao someone hit me up before I have a stroke.
I know this was posted like a week ago, but I felt like this was a good question to respond to (+ I'm procrastinating on weekend homework and utilizing the blog feels like a productive alternative to doing schoolwork).
ReplyDeletePersonally, as I've progressed through high school, I've found the idea of attending a prestigious school less and less important. Growing up, I was surrounded by people who went to big-name schools (e.g. UCLA, UC Berkeley, Yale [!!]), and instances such as these were what convinced me that, not only was getting into a "good" college essential, but that not getting into a school as renowned as one of these would make me a complete and utter disappointment.
That's an irrational thing to think, though.
It's kind of come to the point that I acknowledge quality of education at a facility matters more than the name it possesses. I'm positive that all the prestigious schools have great professors and services--heck, that's the reason they're rated so highly--but that's not to say other facilities can't provide services of similar quality. Aside from that, I feel like one of the only benefits of attending a "big" school would be the name attached to the degree you earn.
I guess ideologically I'd say it doesn't really matter where you go to college, and besides, you can always transfer. I've even considered just going to community college and transferring to a university after fulfilling general education requirements at a local institution. Would help me save money, I suppose.
That said, I get the pressure you might feel to get into a prestigious school; I still feel it constantly (which sucks). Sometimes it feels like the only reason I care what school I get into is because I'll be comparing myself to my peers, those who got into better schools. I guess it's a fear of inferiority? But I know it won't particularly matter what they think once we've all graduated, so that helps a tad. Ish. Kind of.
P.S. You're super smart too, Makayla, I hope you know that ~~
HAHAHA, I love this. Ya'll are all deep and having this cool self realization moment, and I totally get it because I'm in the same boat. I just love how logical your reasoning is because though I've come to the same conclusion with the same reasons, I feel like you guys have at least retained a healthy amount of stress whereas I... have not.
ReplyDeleteMy mentality has declined so drastically from that point of realization at the beginning of the year that it's a bit scary. To be completely honest, I'm always being told that I'm smart, but in all reality, I cannot retain any information to save my life. Like, so many people think that me getting a 4 on the APHuG test freshman year is because I have some kind of innate knowledge fountain, but for real, it's all pure luck (shh, don't tell the people who think I'm actually smart). I have no clue what I'm doing in basically all of my classes, but somehow when I pretend that I do, it works out. It's so bad, but at this point, my mentality is basically, "screw it, I've been fine this far, so I might as well stop trying and I'll still be fine in the future." I think I need someone to fix my mentality, please. Where is that stress from caring? Because it's terrible that I no longer care about like... anything at all. Welp. But hey, if you wanna be stress free, just stop caring!
(Jk, jk, don't take my advice AT ALL)