I am so exasperated by the popular myth that an elite college will bring you joy and give you the education you must have to succeed in life, that I’d like to share some thoughts by a few excellent writers of our day to help dispel this myth.

I love this sentence from a recent Washington Post article : “With sinking admission rates, high-stakes testing, rising tuition costs, unmanageable debt and an unhealthy fixation on the handful of most selective schools, we are debilitating the next generation of learners.  The message we inadvertently send: A prestige acceptance is better than a joyful childhood.”

Honestly, the college listed on your diploma is NOT what will give you career success nor will it make you happy.  In fact, there is more data to show that many kids who do “win the prestigious college acceptance lottery” arrive at these golden gates their freshman year exhausted, disillusioned, burned out and left without authenticity and joy.

As far as helping one’s career, maybe the college displayed on your diploma will get you in the door at your very first interview, but after that, nobody really cares!  Career success is all about previous employment and accomplishments, networking, and great references.  Most successful business people went to non-prestige colleges.  They got there by creativity, hard work, thinking outside the box, being able to relate and communicate well to others, and sometimes it’s simply about being in the right place at the right time! 

The CEO’s of the top 10 (as of mid-2014) hail as undergrads not from Harvard and Yale but from the University of Arkansas; the University of Texas; the University of California, Davis; the University of Nebraska; Auburn; Texas A&M, the General Motors Institute (now Kettering University); the University of Kansas; and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Only GE’s Jeffrey Immelt collected a four-year Ivy degree—from Dartmouth. – Fortune Magazine

Speaking on behalf of most moms I know, I believe that ultimately we truly want our kids to learn to be their authentic and best selves, to be involved in a community, and to desire connection with others.  Also, to feel secure, to seek learning for the sake of knowledge and truth, to be inspired and take risks with their curiosity, to have grit with their failures, to have joy and anticipation about their future, to feel empowered about moving forward into the great unknown.

PLEASE WATCH THIS from the CBS This Morning show!!  It's 4 minutes and well worth your time.  Julie Lythcott-Haims (former Dean of Stanford University) explains my college admissions philosophy exactly.  

Another clip worth listening to is this 10 minute podcast by Frank Bruni based on his NYTimes bestselling book Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be
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Here is a great blog called “Lies, Lies and OMG more Lies”  written by Richard Clark at Georgia Tech Admissions.  He highlights the fact that you don’t have to go to X prestige university to have a successful career.  He is hilarious and poignant at the same time and definitely worth the read!

A famous paper on the economic value of having attended an elite colleges is revisited here and is worth a read:  Revisiting The Value of Elite Colleges

Here is another great article by my favorite blogger, Lynn O’Shaughnessy, called Stunned at College Rejection which highlights the competitive craziness of the highly selective colleges:  

And another article by The Atlantic on The Absurdity of College Admissions

Finally, the below is a video clip from my last newsletter in case you missed it. 
From my last newsletter and in case you did not watch this, please watch it now.  A Zeigeist Minds Lecture by Malcolm Gladwell, discussing a theme in his book David and Goliath, on what he calls Elite Institutional Cognitive Disorder (EICD). https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/151c80f0c0a2cb9d?projector=1. (19 minutes)
 
There is so much data out there that laments the fact that the race for college prestige is killing our kid’s joy and bringing fatigue, depression and discouragement!  Some are so terrified that they won’t get in to a prestigious college that they are losing some of their childhood, as they strive to check off the boxes they believe will maximize their chances to “get in”.  Much of my job is calming fears, dispelling myths, and re-educating all involved about the college admissions process as well as providing data that dispels fears about a student’s future prospects if they don’t end up at a name brand school.

I hope that this little newsletter will help further educate my readers about the pitfalls of this process.  I anticipate that reading some of these articles will set you on a trajectory with the sanity and perspective that I wish for you as your family faces their own college admissions journey.  The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way.  I have helped many families move away from this dead end approach to become aware of all the good choices out there.   If you want my help, please don’t hesitate to contact me!