Looking back to when I was in high school, there are a multitude of things I wish I knew to help me make the most educated decision on where to go to college.
More specifically, I wish I knew how my college choice would affect my career. This is a tough decision for a high school senior to make, and I hope this guide helps.
For context, I grew up in Fremont, CA, smack in the middle of Silicon Valley. Fremont high schools are well-known for the academic pressure imposed on students that has lead to depression, anxiety, and even suicide. Though AHS is not at that extreme, it was quite close. Students were in constant competition to achieve both a high GPA and standardized test score to put themselves in the position to be accepted to some of the world's most prestigious universities.
Then, when college decision time came, I literally watched my peers make their choice based on online rankings. I vividly remember people saying, "I think I'm going to go to UCSB over UCSD, its higher ranked now." Students would even judge each other based on the prestige of the university they got into. I was a personal victim of that after accepting my admission to Cal Poly SLO.
I give you this context to display one of the most common mistakes that seniors make and introduce the misconceptions where this mistake comes from. Let's get into it.
Misconception #1
"If I go to a more prestigious school, I will be more successful in my career." "If I don't go to a prestigious school, I won't be successful in my career."
In high school, success is usually only based in academics (high GPA and test scores). That immediately changes when you get to college. Standards of success transition from being about your grades to being about your career (which has little to do with your grades).
However, since high schoolers are so used to associating success with good academic performance (thus getting accepted to a prestigious university), they often think that the prestige of their university will lead them to career success since good grades led them to the university.
Career success can be defined by many things like how much money you earn, if you work at name-brand companies (i.e. Google, Facebook), or being a leader at your company. No matter what this means to you, the prestige/ranking of a school has nothing to do with how successful you can be in your career.
In this survey study conducted by Gallup, business leaders were asked how important a candidate's university is in the hiring process. Only 9% of respondents said it is very important, while 54% said it is not very important. Clearly, university prestige is a low priority for people evaluating job applicants.
To drive this point home even further, this report from ICIMS shows that university prestige is the second-least important trait of an entry-level job applicant. When selecting criteria of an applicant that are more important than a candidate's major (commonly regarded as the least important), only 20% of recruiters selected university prestige
In a recent Kittleman Research study, researchers documented where Fortune 500 CEOs obtained their undergraduate degree from. The University of Wisconsin had the most alumni as CEOs. By this measure, the University of Wisconsin is the most prestigious school and should be the highest ranked, right?
As you can see, the prestige of the university you attend means almost nothing in your career. No university name is going to make you better than any other candidate for the same job. Don't make the mistake of thinking if you go to a highly ranked university that you will be successful in your career. Chances are that when you break into your dream company, there are people across the business that came from Harvard who are doing the exact same thing and making the same salary as graduates from the CSU system.
So what's the value of a prestigious university?
From what we just discussed, it may sound like the prestige of your school does not matter at all, which is partially true. At the core, most universities are quite similar in terms of what you do in the classroom. What you learn in Microeconomics at Cal Poly SLO really can't be that much different than Microeconomics at Harvard. The core concepts don't change. What can change is how it's learned and applied.
More importantly, the real differences between universities lie in things that are offered outside of the classroom. Prestigious universities typically have much more to offer on this front than less prestigious schools. However, as a high schooler, these differences are hard to comprehend since they are mainly related to your professional career, which you've likely had little exposure to thus far. Let me try to explain them to you.
The first difference is easy access to a variety of career paths and companies. Prestigious universities have talent pipelines for almost any career path or company you can think of, regardless of how easy or hard it is to pursue. There are opportunities for some amazing jobs across a variety of industries, including non-profits, engineering, investment banking, and venture capital. Some companies (i.e. Google, Facebook, Mckinsey, Goldman Sachs) exclusively recruit out of prestigious universities. Thus, at less prestigious universities, you won't have direct access to those career paths and companies. It will take a lot more heavy lifting on your end to pursue those career paths, but it's still very possible. I know this to be true from my personal experience of pursuing management consulting from Cal Poly.
This is not to say less prestigious schools don't have great career options because they definitely do. More prestigious schools just have easier access to more career paths, and these paths that are more difficult to pursue.
The second difference is tied together with the first, and that is the difference in the availability of resources. By resources, I mean the types of on-campus clubs/organizations and general learning opportunities. For example, prestigious universities often attract high achieving professors/lecturers that are considered the best in their fields. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and first outside investor in Facebook, was a lecturer at Stanford.
Imagine being able to learn about the modern technology industry directly from one of its pioneers. Additionally, prestigious universities usually have many more student organizations that range across a wider scope of topics than less prestigious schools. Cal Poly SLO has one student consulting firm, Mustang Consulting. UC Berkeley has more than 20 student consulting firms. Schools like Berkeley will usually also have clubs focused on more "narrow" topics like sports analytics, machine learning, or private equity. Less prestigious schools will have clubs that have more of a general focus that these narrow topics fall under. Examples of these include finance, software engineering, and data science. Thus, by attending a university with a broader selection of clubs you'll be able to get much more hands-on experiences with more specific career paths.
So now you might be wondering why prestigious universities have these perks over other schools. This leads us into the third difference: the strength of the university's alumni network. This is what really makes a prestigious university "prestigious".
These universities typically have highly successful alumni, and their success is often tied to their alma mater, which then creates the "prestige" of a university. Many of these alumni end up giving back to the university in a variety of ways, ultimately paving the way for certain career paths and increasing the availability of resources for students.
The strength of an alumni network is determined by both their engagement and success. Alumni engagement will play a huge part in your future career because alumni are the people who will be most willing to interact with you and give you an opportunity at their company. A highly engaged alumni network gives you more access to more people that will help your career. Engagement goes hand-in-hand with alumni success.
A more successful alumni network means that there are people who were once in your shoes that have now found success in their careers and accomplished the things that you are looking to accomplish. They can teach you important lessons from their careers to put you on the route to success and minimize your mistakes on the way. Additionally, as I alluded to earlier, they have the ability to significantly help in your job search with their strong influence and personal networks they built through their success.
Highlighting these differences isn't meant to discourage you if you didn't get into a top university. What I'm trying to emphasize is that more prestigious universities do these things better.
Misconception #2
"I had a high GPA/test scores in high school and I got into this prestigious university, so I think I'm pretty smart and successful. Thus, I will continue to be smart and successful in college and my career."
"My GPA and test scores weren't that high and now I'm not going to that good of a school. I wasn't that smart and successful in high school, so I don't think I'll be smart or successful in college and my career."
Let's clarify what being "smart" even means. As we discussed earlier, high schoolers think it means someone with a high GPA and test scores. However, what this really means is someone that was able to abide by the system effectively. Your K-12 education has an extreme amount of structure around it. That structure remains nearly the exact same no matter at what grade level. You go to class, go to extracurriculars, do homework/study, take tests, and repeat. The measurements of how well you go through this process are a GPA and test scores. Thus, since high schoolers are only exposed to this structure, they think high GPA and test scores = "smart" = "successful."
Throughout this structured system, there are always definitive correct answers. You are trained to understand that there is always one right answer to each question, each of which you could know if you study hard enough. Don't get me wrong, I completely respect people with high GPAs and test scores. It's really hard to pull that off and takes some degree of intelligence. However, in your life after K-12 education, there is less structure and more ambiguity is introduced. You'll have to answer questions like "what career path will make me happy?", "what should I do to build my resume?", etc. There is definitely no answer key for those questions.
Let's take this a step further. Think about how your computer/laptop was invented. Was there a textbook and answer key for Steve Jobs (founder of Apple and one of the earliest pioneers of the technology industry) to use when he built the first Macintosh? No. He literally created a system from scratch that had never been built before. There was no textbook called "How to build the Macintosh."
What I'm trying to help you understand is that the high school system you were in doesn't prioritize other qualities you need to properly deal with ambiguity and be successful in college and in your career. It prioritizes using textbooks with definitions and answer keys to help you choose whether the answer is A, B, C, or D, while all the important problems you'll have to solve after high school sometimes don't even have a question.
What you did to be "smart" and "successful" in high school is very different from what it takes to be successful in college/your career. It is a whole new ball game where you have to write the rules, play the game, and manage the game all at once. I'm not trying to say that being successful in high school and being successful in your career are not at all correlated. I'm trying to show you that high school and your career are vastly different things that require different sets of skills. The success you may have had in high school may have led you to get into a great university, but just because you're there doesn't mean you'll be successful in your career. This transition is difficult, and nobody is ever truly ready for it. The only thing you can do is remain humble, open-minded, and willing to learn.
What I recommend you do in your decision making
Take university prestige out of the equation. Here are some things I think you should do to aid your thought process:
- Evaluate colleges based on what opportunities (clubs, etc.) there are for you to learn and develop outside of the classroom. What opportunities are most appealing to you?
- Reach out to or cold message people in your accepted major at your school. Ask for some time to chat about their experience so far. These people can be family friends, alumni from your high school, etc.
- Understand what companies recruit out of each of your college options. Which batch sounds best to you?
- If you're safely and legally able to, go out to campus and mindlessly explore. Do you feel comfortable there?
- Find out about how engaged alumni are with current students
- Think about where the university is located. Having a school near a metropolitan city (i.e. Boston, San Francisco, New York, Seattle) means that there are a lot of great companies there. That will give you a lot more in-person networking opportunities.
Some of those areas I just listed are often tied to prestigious universities, so by these criteria, you may very well end up picking a more prestigious university over a less prestigious one. The important thing is that you understand what the university has to offer and don't just pick based on reputation and ranking. Think about what each school has to offer for you in your career, how you think you can utilize those things to be successful, and then make your decision.
At the end of the day, your choice isn't going to make or break your potential success. How successful you'll be in your career is completely up to you, regardless of what's readily available (or not available) to you.