With college application season in full swing, seniors are applying to schools all over the country. But what many of us fail to realize, is that almost any college can provide a good education that will break your bank. Unfortunately, so many of us are focused on that one school: Harvard, Yale, Berkley, and if we don’t end up there, then life is over. Might as well learn to flip burgers because any future in higher education is over. Okay, maybe that’s a little exaggerated, but you get the picture.
We put too much weight on a college’s reputation. The truth is, you’ll get a very similar education at UIC or U of I as you would at a more prestigious institution. I’m not saying you should burn your Ivy League acceptance letters, but if you don’t get in, don’t sweat it. It might turn out that your Ivy League dream wouldn’t have been the right fit, and even if it you would have loved it, you’ll probably still love another school almost as much.
In a sense, a school is just a stepping stone on the path of life. I know it seems like without the perfect college, life is over. Don’t forget, even after college you still have grad school (another hundred grand or two) and then real life. In the course of it all, college will just be a short chapter in your existence, so don’t sweat the small stuff, or you’ll end up missing the bigger picture.
We’ve been told our whole lives that life is a competition. That for every A on the transcript you send in, there will be a kid with five more. For every AP you take, there will be someone who has taken more. We’ve even come to the point where we worry that our schools aren’t giving us the same opportunities. Colleges assure worried parents that they view transcripts in line with the opportunities a school provides. Step back and take a look at this attitude. Competition is fun, but when competition invades every aspect of our existence to the point that we are willing to sacrifice sleep and friends in order to take another AP or manage to earn another A, it becomes not so fun anymore. If the cost of perfection is happiness, why are you trying to be perfect?
