Choosing the Best Program Over the Prestige of a "Best College"

 The patina of prestige does not always indicate the best, and such is the case when deciding where you want your child to go to college. Illusion of stature aside, your objective is a school that will set him or her up for lifelong success, not simply look good framed on a wall. The cultural cachet of the school won’t help spark your child’s intellectual curiosity or help develop your child into their best self. In fact, a Stanford study found that to find the best fit for your child you should ignore college rankings and look at deeper factors such as the quality of the departments associated with our child’s major and predilections, as well as the campus culture and the extracurricular offerings. 

Simply because a school ranked high on a list does not mean it will give your child the best education. Supporting this, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity found that Ivy-league professors don’t rate the highest. Whether because they are more focused on their graduate students or their own research, students at Ivy-league schools don’t appear to connect with their professors in the same way students at other institutions seem to do. This is crucial because a Gallop poll found that the most correlated factor to college graduates’ ability to find fulfilling employment was having felt emotionally supported at school, frequently in the form of bonding with a professor and finding a niche within the college’s culture. Moreover, it is not just those professors with whom your child develops a memorable relationship that is key. Even those professors who don’t become a mentor or friend are crucial to your child’s success. Research shows that students with present and effective professors outperform students who lack similarly talented professors. This sense of investment on the part of their teachers, coupled with school culture and the the quality of the department, makes for the perfect foundation for student excellence, fulfillment, and success. 

As much as they can appear to be easily-mentioned platitudes, an appropriate school culture and climate are vital for your child’s academic prosperity and happiness. A positive climate empowers your child to push themselves without fear of failure, to accept challenges from which they might otherwise shirk, and to try new things that can end up enriching their life. In contrast, a toxic culture can breed apathy, exclusivity, and complacency. What contributes to climate can include things such as the presence of Greek life, the level of school spirit and support for athletics, the diversity of the student body, available programs for studying abroad, and much more. The blend of these characteristics that best fits your child is wholly unique, but they are important enough that they merit careful consideration. 

It is easy to be beguiled by a school’s notoriety, but with admissions rates at these institutions in the single digits and entrance nearly impossible even for tip of the spear students, attempted applications to them based solely on their assumed merit can be a humbling and heartbreaking experience for a 17 year old. With this in mind, whether Ivys stay or go from your child’s final list, try and blindly weigh each school on a myriad of key factors which dovetail with your child’s specific aspirations and dreams. Cliche or not, it is not so much where you go to school but what you do, accomplish, and feel when there.