The College You Attend Doesn’t Matter
This month, anxious high school students will be receiving letters of admission and rejection to colleges and universities they applied to back in September, October, and December. In one fell swoop, dreams and hopes will be molded and shattered, and as a collective humanity, we’ll wonder why we subject a majority of teenagers who have had very little responsibility in their lives to choosing (or assuming they choose) what they want to do with the rest of their life.
Broaching this subject is not new. Since before I attended college (2006), people have been wondering if going to a particular college matters. In some ways it does; after all, the majority of America’s Presidents have attended Ivy League institutions over the past half century. For software engineers as well, attending an impacted school increases one’s chances to being recruited by the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Uber.
How about for the rest of us?
Not really.
They’ve done studies on this sort of thing. In 1999, one study was done and it was concluded that the difference in earnings (if money is what matters to you) was very little. A similar study just 12 years later concluded just about the same.
So that begs the question? Why do people care so much?
I venture to guess that the answer to this question comes down to access, an argument that carries less and less weight each coming year. Traditionally, an Ivy League or elite university education afforded you the ability to network with people of high stature and find yourself in unique circles. Secret societies, long a staple of both conspiracy theories at these elite universities often times held clues to who would become a future CEO or President of the United States, as was seen when incumbent George W. Bush took on John Kerry in the 2004 election.
Times however, have changed. With the availability of technologies like Twitter, people of all age now have access to conversations that were unheard of before. Additionally, the ability to create content has brought about the potential to create content seen all over the world. Justin Bieber for one was discovered on YouTube — so in some ways, there is no reason why a job you’re recruited for couldn’t come off of Periscope. As vaunted social media professional Gary Vaynerchuk says, one piece of content can change your life.
So what should the college-bound student focus on?
Having been out of school for a few years, I feel like I can finally answer this question. It’s simple and your career center will tell you the same: Your personal brand.
There is absolutely no excuse anymore for college students to ignore the potential new technologies that can change their academic and professional careers. While the notion of blogging or even using YouTube were nascent during my college years (I started in 2006, a year after YouTube went online), being able to use these platforms for good is a no-brainer. At the end of the day, employers want to see hustle, drive, motivation, and intent for using new technologies, and how these technologies drive interest in a particular subject, exemplify leadership, and create the potential to add value to a business’ bottom line.
At that point, where you go to school becomes pretty irrelevant.
This was originally posted on Albert’s List. Read more posts like this at www.albertslist.org/blog.
