Why you Shouldn’t Fall in Love with a School
By Melissa Lin and Ilinca Hagiu
It’s hard not to think about the future and wonder, “What will I do for a living? What will I study in college?” and of course, everyone’s favorite, “Which college will I go to?” Especially in high school, when visiting various schools, it is easy to be set on a certain college. But we’re here to tell you it’s not a good idea to be falling in love with that college just yet.
News alert: Your interests are going to change. Deciding on a specific school too early probably will not reflect your interests later on.
Junior Nell Corley shares her experience with this, “The summer before my sophomore year, I went to visit my grandparents in South Carolina. When I was a kid, I was really into art… and at the time I was really into movies, but I liked writing a lot, and I thought, ‘maybe I could write movies…’ and go into film making. So, my grandpa took me to visit Savannah College of Art and Design, so we drove over to Georgia and looked at it and I thought it was the coolest school in the entire world. It was very artistic, very interesting, very unique, and it had a lot of campuses in Hong Kong and France and… it was just amazing. So, I decided that I had to go there. Eventually, I think I grew up a little, and I realized that maybe this isn’t what I want to do and then I felt guilty for telling everyone, ‘Oh, my dream school is SCAD,’ because I changed my mind about where I wanted to go and then I felt strange about having chosen a different path. It made me feel bad, and so now I feel like I should still apply there even though it’s not really my field of interest…” She finishes by saying, “You just have to find a balance between how excited you get for a school because you could realize you want to do something else, or you could always not get into the school. It really depends… so I think it’s dangerous to be so dead-set on something because you never know how it’s gonna work out.”
Senior Liddy Boland agreed with many of Nell’s points while sharing her own experience, “Early in high school, I was really interested in going to Georgetown. I’m really interested in politics, and I had imagined Georgetown as the perfect political atmosphere, and it was right in the heart of D.C., and I had thought it was going to be perfect.” Even so, she also had a change of heart, “…even though I ultimately realized it wasn’t the right school for me, I kind of held on to it in ways that were counterproductive. Because Georgetown has extra requirements, like taking three subject tests, which I spent a lot of time studying for… but I did that because I thought I had to go to Georgetown. And then I went on campus, and I realized that ultimately, I didn’t like the school very much.” Taking this into account, we asked Liddy what characteristics of a school are more important than others that people may not realize when they originally look at a school. She said, “I think when someone looks at a school, they should be able to see themselves as a part of the community, and they should really be able to picture themselves there, being an active member. I think oftentimes people will look solely at academics or numbers, and while that’s definitely important, I think what’s more important, since you’re spending the next four years of your life there, is to really find a place that you can call your home.”
After hearing the perspectives of two different students, we also interviewed Nancy Iff. We asked her what she thought it meant to “fall in love” with a school. She responded, “I think that’s when you visit, and you get a really good feeling about the college you’re visiting, but I think that you can fall in love with a lot of different schools for a lot of different reasons, and I think that once you happen to be at school, you can find things at it that you will love regardless of which school it happens to be.” When asked whether deciding early is a good idea, she said, “I think it is dangerous to fall in love with a school too early on in the process. You might then fixate on that one location or one school for one specific reason, maybe a visit that you did when you were a sophomore or even a freshman, and that doesn’t give you the truest notion of the school and all its intricacies and what could be great about it and what could possibly be not so great about it.” In response to this, we asked what the time might be to start making concrete decisions. She replied with, “I think that you should withhold all your judgments until you are deciding which is the place that’s right for you, and I think at that point, going there, doing an overnight visit if that’s possible, is the best way to learn about it, and talking to a lot of the kids who are going to that school.” She also spoke about the aspects of a school she believes kids should take with a grain of salt, such as, “… any ratings, how that school shows up in something like U.S. news and world reports isn’t a great indication. I think you should really go and try to focus on what your interests are and then talk to people who do that thing at that school. Go and talk to faculty members who are in that department or people who are majoring in that… the college offices here can connect you with people, teachers can connect you with people that they’ve worked with before… or you can find out about a school based on their experience there.”
Lastly, we asked her about some characteristics you should look for in a school. Her response was, “I think you should look for a place where you feel like you’ll be able to find a community, whether that’s demographics or interest groups… if you’re really interested in theater, look for a school with a great theater program. If you’re really interested in a sport, try to find out whether that sport is available. If you happen to have a particular hobby, see if there are outlets at that place where you can do that thing that you love so that you’re not simply focused on only academics when you get to college.”
Overall, the general consensus is that it is dangerous to fall in love with a school too early on. Doing so narrows your perspective and makes it difficult to have a wide variety of choices later on. Instead, it is better to wait a bit longer for your interests to settle and find a suitable community and a wide range of opportunities.
