It wasn’t great.

From nearly the moment I got to campus I hated it. The largest problem was that I did not fit with the school’s culture. Not at all.

Another problem was I hated how huge this school was. I came from a small high school. There were about 150 people in my graduating class. I hated how far it was from my dorm to some of my classes. I hated how some of my classes had hundreds of people. I hated how I felt basically anonymous in a huge crowd of students. I was miserable nearly the entire time that I was there. I was the most depressed I have ever been in my life. I was counting down the days until I got to leave.

I knew I had to transfer very quickly. There was no way I would last 4 years at this place. When I was trying to decide where I wanted to transfer to, I knew that I wanted the opposite experience of my first college. 

I decided to look at a liberal arts school that I had never really considered when I was still in high school. It was ranked too low and wasn’t prestigious. If you’re not from the state it’s located in, you’ve probably never heard of it. The acceptance rate for my school is 65%. The average ACT score is 20. But despite my reservations, I decided to transfer.

I don’t regret it at all.

I love going to school here. It has everything that I could want a college to offer me as a student. My school is really small – only about 1,200 students, which means you get to know everyone really well. At this point, basically everyone in my classes are people I have had numerous classes with before. I have taken multiple classes with fewer than ten students. The largest one I have ever taken had 30. Also, because it’s so small, everything on campus is close to everything else. You don’t need to take buses to get to classes. Heck, you don’t even need a bike. You can get to anywhere else on campus with plenty of time to spare just by walking.

Initially, when I saw how it was ranked, I was worried about the quality of the academics. As it turns out, that was not something I needed to worry about. I have learned so much here. My professors have all been really knowledgeable and passionate about helping students learn.

Going to a less-selective, obscure school has not stopped me from being successful. After graduation I was constantly getting hit up by recruiters from all sorts of companies, and I interviewed with quite a few places. None of them cared that I went to a less well-known school. It could not have made less of a difference to them. What they cared about was the skills I had and the things I had managed to do while in college.

I’ve had two different internships, one with a Fortune 500 company and another with one of the top firms in their field. Both of them wanted to hire me, but I turned them both down because I got another job offer I liked better.

I am here to tell you that you can be successful no matter where you go to college. What’s most important about your college is what you do while you are there, and it’s so much easier to accomplish a lot when you actually like where you go to school. Not only have I gotten stellar grades, but I have also made great connections both with my professors and my fellow students, gained professional experience through my internships, and I have gotten involved in organizations that I am passionate about and that help make my community better.

So what’s the point of this whole post?

My point is to not get too hung up on the rankings. Stop and think about where you would actually like to attend college. As you weigh your options, think about what it would be like to go to each school that accepted you. That’s something I never did when I was in high school. 

And keep an open mind. Four years ago I never would have expected myself to end up where I am. I had my whole college journey planned out, but then it got upended. That’s life. Don’t beat yourself up if everything doesn’t go according to your plans. You’re still going to do great things.

This post originally appeared in the subreddit ApplyingToCollege by the user w007dchuck. It has been lightly edited, confirmed, and used by permission and with gratitude by Challenge Success. 

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My school was considered “high achievement” and took pride in being ranked in the “top 10 high schools in California.” As students, it felt like we were constantly judged by how many AP classes we took and what our SAT scores were. It felt like school was meant to be a competition to get the best grades and be involved in the most impressive extracurriculars. It felt like getting into the biggest name college was the most important event in our lives. If we didn’t get it “right,” nothing after would ever be right.

As a parent and faculty educator at Challenge Success, I hear from teachers, students, and parents that the pressure to get into college has only ramped up over the past 30 years. One student told us, “Our grades are what make up our future, and if you don’t get good grades you won’t get into a good college, and you won’t get a good job, and will lead a miserable life.”

I feel such empathy for our kids these days. Our high schools so often mirror the values we promote in American society: that worthiness and belonging are attached to achievement. In essence, we’re asking our kids to compete for scarce grades, scarce leadership positions, and scarce admissions slots, all so they can feel worthy of love. And that is constantly reinforced by parents, peers, and school. 

The college admissions process is the climax of this. Our students feel their worthiness is judged by where they are accepted. I felt it as a high schooler, and so many of our kids feel it even more intensely today.

All of this, whether we want to admit it or not, is causing emotional harm. The message we collectively send our kids is that if they go to a highly selective college, we will value them more, and they will have a better shot at a happy life. 

Our research does not back that up. 

As we discuss in our white paper, A Fit Over Rankings, college selectivity is not a reliable predictor of student learning, future job satisfaction, overall well-being, or (with narrow exceptions) lifetime income. 

In essence, as we say in our workshop, it’s the kid, not the college they go to, that determines success. What I wish I could tell every aspiring college kid in America is: 

“Despite the prevalent messaging out there, your choice of college won’t determine your life. This is true, despite what you might hear from your peers, the media, parents, teachers, and even your own fears. College is an important step. But it’s not going to make you, and it’s not going to break you. Everything is going to be OK, no matter where you go. Wherever you go, you’re going to learn, get opportunities, and meet interesting people. When you become an adult and look back, you’ll see that how you used college was more important to your success, happiness, and life satisfaction than where you went to college.” 

Right now, for many high school juniors and seniors, college admissions feel like the most important thing in their life. It’s our job as the adults in our kids’ lives to let them know: “Your worthiness is not based on the college you go to. Or whether you go to college at all.”

And they won’t fully believe us. But that’s our job: to lovingly and consistently keep telling them that. 

These messages about achievement and narrow definitions of success as markers of personal worthiness make it harder for our kids to choose a college that is a good fit for them over a more prestigious school. 

Now, in my 40s, I spend very little time thinking about where I went to college.  Almost no one I meet asks where I went. I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience. As the adults in our children’s lives, our job is to provide the comfort and perspective that adulthood affords. It’s a long life and where you go to college will neither make you nor break you.

This is an opportunity to tell them to practice the things they will have to do as adults: make choices that are right for them, embrace dreams, AND accept disappointment. It’s a chance to practice not chasing the status and approval of others (including their parents). It’s a chance to find the things that engage them, challenge them, and motivate them to find the path that was meant for them, not the one meant for anyone else. 

We adults have to have the maturity to believe it too. We have to stop thinking that our children’s choice of college says something about our own success in raising them or about our status or worthiness as a family.  Just as important, we need to stop perpetuating the cycle of judging others’ worthiness by their achievements or external displays of success. As child trauma psychiatrist Dr. Archana Basu says, “We all are fundamentally not just touching children’s lives, but each other. We live within relationships and communities.” By becoming more aware of the biases and assumptions embedded in how we talk to our kids about college, we have more freedom to create what we and our communities truly want to be as a society. And that’s the real work, the internal change that transforms us, our kids, and our future.

Douglas Tsoi, J.D., is a Parent and Faculty Educator for Challenge Success. Douglas has had a variety of careers, being a lawyer, schoolteacher, and government sustainability officer. He also founded two schools for adult learners: Portland Underground Grad School and School of Financial Freedom. Douglas’s specialties include curriculum development, classroom engagement, and online learning. He’s passionate about helping people develop resilience and a love of learning throughout their lives.

The post What Students Might Not Believe about College Admissions appeared first on Challenge Success.

“What students do at college matters much more than where they go. The key is engagement, inside the classroom and out.”

Explore Denise’s suggestions for how students should approach choosing a college.

Read full article published on May 22, 2019 in the Wall Street Journal.

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• What are the three most important qualities to your COMMUNITY when looking for a college or university for your child?
• What are the three most important qualities to YOU when looking for a college or university for your child

From data collected between Fall 2019 and Winter 2020:

68% of parents said “Ranking in the US News & World Report” is one of the top three most important qualities to their community while only 33% said this is one of the top three most important qualities to them. 

55% of parents said “Whether a college is in the Ivy League” is one of the top three most important qualities to their community while only 16% said this is one of the top three most important qualities to them. 

So, what does this mean?

Many parents perceive that their community values extrinsic markers like rankings and elite brand names even if they do not. We urge families to deeply consider what matters to them and not allow external competitive pressures to limit the exploration of the ‘right fit’ college. Engage your children in open discussions about what they want out of their college experience and what criteria are important to them. Remember that success is rarely a straight line and embrace the squiggly paths that most students take on their road to self-discovery.

The post Honor Your Family’s Values | What Matters in College Admissions appeared first on Challenge Success.

At Challenge Success, a research-based education nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, we know from surveying over 150,000 high school students that the college admissions process can be one of the top sources of stress for young people. This final stretch can be a time of celebration or of disappointment and heartbreak when teens receive the news. And even after they hear the “yes” or “no” from the colleges, students and their families can experience stress as they try to determine which school to choose and what the implications of that choice may be for future success.

Instead of thinking only about the finish line, it may be more helpful for parents – and students – to think of the college admissions process as a time for exploration and self-discovery where teens can consider who they are and who they want to be. The process offers opportunities to navigate disappointment, joy, and tough choices, and to practice resilience and independence.   

Here are five practical tips to help families support their teens during this last leg of the college admissions process.

1. Make a plan for how your teen (and you) will receive the news from colleges. We recommend that teens open emails from colleges in private rather than finding out in class in the middle of the school day or having a parent live stream it on social media. If the news is not good, your teen may need some support and time to grieve, and they will likely be watching your reaction as well. As a parent, consider going to a separate room from your teen after hearing the news, so you can celebrate or grieve alone and have a few moments to regulate your emotions.

    

2. Be mindful of how you share your admissions news with others. Remember that your teen’s friends and classmates (and their families) may still be nervously awaiting answers from colleges. Be thoughtful about not oversharing on social media, and don’t ask other parents if their senior got into a certain school; wait for them to share their news when they are ready.

    

3. Avoid saying “just”. When you talk to or about your teen, be mindful about using the word “just” as in: “She is just going to community college” or “My son is just a B student so he only got into his safety school.” This can convey a comparison to a fixed ideal and imply that your teen doesn’t measure up. Remind your child that they are enough as they are and that they will have the opportunity to flourish wherever they go to college.

    

4. Invest in college readiness skills. Regardless of where they go, make sure your teen has all the basic life skills needed to be independent in college. Do they know how to cook at least three meals that don’t involve cereal? Can they do their own laundry? Do they know how to clean the bathroom? Can they balance a bank account? Can they ask for help if they are feeling down or struggling at school? These skills take time to develop and are as important, if not more, than academic readiness.

    

5. Remind teens that where they go matters less than what they do when they get there. We do not say this lightly. Research supports that engagement in college is more important than where a student goes. While picking a college can feel like a monumental decision, we encourage teens (and parents) to realize that this one choice is not going to make or break their chances for future success. To see more of this research and what engagement in college looks like, explore the Challenge Success white paper, A ‘Fit’ Over Rankings: Why College Engagement Matters More Than Rankings.

We know that the college admissions process is daunting and can cause kids and families to experience high levels of stress. Even if your teen experiences disappointments or difficulties along the way, we urge you to take a breath, remember what is truly important to your family, and celebrate whatever adventure lies ahead for your student. 

Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a Co-Founder of Challenge Success and a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where she specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. She is the author of, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids. Dr. Pope lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. She is a 3-time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award and was honored with the 2012 Education Professor of the Year “Educators’ Voice Award” from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. 

The post Support Your Teen During the Final Stretch of the College Admissions Process appeared first on Challenge Success.

I attended Mills High School, a high performing school in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area. Like most high performing schools in the area, there was a lot of pressure on students to achieve, with sinister effects on their mental health. My peers were constantly tired and upset, breaking under the weight of parental expectations. Luckily for us though, one of our counselors, noticing these feelings and trends, partnered with Challenge Success in order to help combat these issues. Armed with information from Challenge Success, our counselors challenged our notions of success and provided us with a perspective that was refreshing, necessary, and life-changing. At a time when we were beginning to form our identity and trade the play days of middle school in the hopes of future “success”, we were reminded that success must be defined by each one of us individually. Our counselors reminded us that academic success is just one portion of a successful life and that allowing oneself to be happy is just as important as achieving some external marker like grades or test scores. Challenge Success helped us push for bell schedule changes, homework-free holidays, and course schedulers that prevented overloading. It helped enable us students to work with our counselors to create real, positive change. 

Because of Challenge Success, I felt empowered to continue doing the things I loved, which made me who I am and has created lasting benefits for me long after high school. Instead of looking for and working at internships which were considered “more prestigious”, I instead continued to play sports year-round. I loved sports and people, and especially loved those things more than going to an office after school and making spreadsheets. And so I continued playing sports, which developed me into a leader and has been an asset during my college years, and I’m sure will continue to be for the rest of my life. Because of Challenge Success, Instead of developing my resume, I developed myself. 

The Challenge Success mentality isn’t just a way to have a better high school experience, it is a better way to live. I have continued to use it throughout my four years in college, and I’m sure I will continue to use it in the years to come. In today’s hyper-competitive, social media-filtered world, it’s so easy to feel anxious and get sucked into the rat race, no matter what age or stage of life we’re at. But if we lay the right foundations from a young age, we will continue to reap the benefits of a resilient, adaptable, and healthy mindset for the rest of our lives. With that said, here are a few lessons I’ve learned and kept along the way, that are inspired by the Challenge Success mentality: 

1. Who you become in high school matters a lot more than where you end up going for college: Studies show that in general individual characteristics are more important than the college one attends. From my own experience, I can attest to that. My friends who cheated and gamed the system to get into college struggled throughout college. My friends who studied well, enjoyed life, and were well-rounded are doing well, regardless of the college they went to. So do your best! There are few shortcuts in life, and they are mostly unsatisfying and unfulfilling. Your abilities to study, learn, and enjoy the process that you’re cultivating now will pay dividends for the rest of your lives.

    

2. What you do in college matters a lot more than where you go: Research and my personal experiences also support this. I’ve had friends who have gone to Ivy Leagues and who have not made very much of their opportunities. I’ve had friends who went to our local community college who are now working at some of the best firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. What matters so much more is what you do at college and what you make of the resources available to you. So don’t worry too much about doing things to get into the best college! What matters more is what you do once you are there.

    

3. Enjoy life, always: Back when I was in high school, I remember my friends and I would always encourage one another with remarks like “Keep going. We just need to work hard to get into a good college and then we’ll be set!”. Now that I’m in college, my friends and I have edited the adage, but the message is still mostly the same, “Keep going. We just need to work hard to get a good job and then we’ll be set!”. I’m sure that at work, my friends and I will simply edit the phrase again, sacrificing the current moment for future enjoyment that will continue to be postponed (promotions? graduate school?). If we wait for later to have fun, later will never come. There will always be a new reason to sacrifice and work hard. And while working hard and being disciplined are great things, they should not be taken to extremes. Life is long. Life is a journey. We must allow ourselves the opportunity to enjoy every part of it, while working hard and finding satisfaction in that. 

Shayan Lavasani was a Research Intern with Challenge Success and a member of his Challenge Success student club in high school. He is currently studying Public Policy Analysis with a concentration in Economic policy at Pomona College and hopes to work in education after graduating.

The post Reflections on Stress & Success from a Challenge Success Student Alum appeared first on Challenge Success.

Maureen Brown served as the executive director of Challenge Success for nearly eight years. She co-authored, Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids with Denise Pope and Sarah Miles. She has over 20 years of consulting experience in health care, financial services, and technology and currently serves as the Interim Center Fund President at Center for the Arts in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The post Ten Tips for Surviving the College Application Process appeared first on Challenge Success.

• Should my child take more honors level or advanced placement courses?
• Is my child participating in the right number of extracurricular activities?
• What kind of SAT or ACT prep should my child be doing? 
• How important are internships or summer work opportunities?  
• Is it a problem that they haven’t saved the rainforests or found a cure for cancer? 

While these are reasonable questions (well, some of them!), I invite parents to pause and reflect on a different type of college prep that may be more important than focusing on test scores, extracurriculars, and AP’s.

At Challenge Success, we encourage parents to think about the value of preparing students in four general areas, all of which are backed by research on what students need to be successful in college, career, and life in general:

As I present workshops to families across the country, I have found that a lot of parents focus almost exclusively on the Academic Skills quadrant. They might make sure that students know how to study, how to ask good questions, and how to keep their schoolwork organized. These are important skills for high school and college, but too often they are emphasized at the expense of other essential skills and experiences.

Let’s take a look at the foundational skills in the other three quadrants that correlate with success in college and beyond.

Life Skills

• Household Chores: Does your student know how to do laundry? Can they clean a bathroom? Cook a nutritional meal?
• Work: Do they know how to be a good employee? How to show up for a job on time and follow instructions from a supervisor?
• Financial Management: Do they know how to manage a bank account? Set and follow a budget?
• Getting Around: Can they navigate their way around town using a map or public transportation?
• Personal Care: Can they manage their sleep needs and take steps to stay healthy? Can they schedule and keep their own medical appointments?

Positive Coping Skills

• Support from Others: Does your student know how to ask for help when needed?
• Stress Reduction: Do they have effective strategies to deal with normal levels of stress and anxiety? Do they have a plan if they feel overwhelmed?
• Self-Care and Relaxation: Will they make time to do things they enjoy? Will they build in necessary playtime and downtime?
• Risk Awareness: Do they know how to avoid risky behaviors that are unhealthy for them? How to cope with unwanted peer pressure?
• Resilience: Do they know how to learn from and bounce back from mistakes?

Social & Emotional Skills

• Emotion Management: Can your student regulate and manage their emotions?
• Decision Making: Can they make appropriate and ethical choices?
• Empathy: Do they know how to feel and express empathy?
• Relationship Management: Can they build friendships with new classmates and roommates? Navigate difficult relationships?
• Team Building: Can they work well with others? Handle conflicts maturely?

These are the “adulting” skills that have helped to make this word a verb and not just a noun in today’s vernacular. As parents, we have the opportunity and, really, the responsibility to help young people develop and practice these skills now, so they can truly be prepared to lead balanced, healthy, and fulfilled lives when they eventually leave their childhood homes.

References

A Complete Definition of College and Career Readiness (2012), David T. Conley, Educational Policy Improvement Center

Improving College and Career Readiness by Incorporating Social and Emotional Learning (2013), College & Career Readiness & Success Center at American Institutes for Research. 

Overloaded & Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids (Chapter 8, 2015), Denise Pope, Maureen Brown, & Sarah Miles

Redefining College Readiness (2007), David T. Conley, Educational Policy Improvement Center

Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a Co-Founder of Challenge Success and a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where she specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service-learning.  She is the author of, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids. Dr. Pope lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. She is a 3-time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award and was honored with the 2012 Education Professor of the Year “Educators’ Voice Award” from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences.

The post A Different Kind of College Prep appeared first on Challenge Success.

2019 might well go down in history as the year college admissions jumped the shark. Over the last two decades, the hype and intensity surrounding university admissions in the United States has grown slowly, a cheating scandal in Atlanta here, an improper influence over the University of Illinois admissions process there. This year, the great scriptwriters in the sky turned up the drama with news stories surrounding the Varsity Blues Scandal, the multiple instances of poor parent behavior at a top private school in Washington, D.C., and several instances of standardized testing fraud, all within five months.

These high profile examples of deplorable behavior, all executed with the intent of gaming a coveted spot at a tiny cross-section of American colleges, underscore the perceived high stakes of college admissions and the dysfunctional side effects they introduce into our culture. Over my 20 years in selective admissions at both Purdue and Vanderbilt Universities, I observed the toxic achievement culture fueled by the daydreams of elite higher education. I also witnessed the lethargic response from the broader higher education admissions community, which in my view seemed to more or less shrug off the hysteria as regrettable, but ultimately good for business.

What we now know, of course, is that this collective indifference to the intensifying admissions hype cycles has created a vacuum in which our young people must sift through all the marketing and pressure to perform with few resources to consult, except for all their “friends” in the comparison echo chamber of social media. The cemented pattern for many achievement-oriented high schoolers is: school, practice, extracurriculars, homework, eat, sleep, repeat. It is not surprising then that a New York University study found that nearly half of high achieving high school students reported feeling a great deal of stress on a daily basis, what clinicians call chronic stress. A further 26% of students demonstrated symptoms consistent with clinically significant depression.

I see it and hear it now first-hand from the students I work with in my educational consulting practice. Inspired by the staff and faculty at Challenge Success, we built a program around evidence-based techniques to address the stress and pressure of the modern college search by re-writing the dominant cultural script about the college search. Our main message is this:  the college search is NOT about the college, it is about the search. It is about the student taking stock of himself or herself and starting down the path of adult-decision making, in all its rewards and messiness.  

This is not to say that stress, and sometimes overwhelming fear, is completely avoidable for the college seeking student. As with any major life change, a baseline of anxiety is to be expected. It is this vague dread that students describe as lurking in the vicinity of the college search that we want to explore.

So, let’s address the looming and often shapeless nature of college anxiety. Let’s be precise and nuanced in addressing the nature of admissions fear. 

In spite of overwhelming evidence that most students experience great success in the college search, there is still considerable anxiety and fear. Consider this: the average college admits approximately two thirds of its applicants, and only 20% of all colleges admit less than half of applicants. The vast bulk of students pursuing higher education today, are attending colleges and universities that admit large majorities of applicants. What’s more, a national survey found that 55% of first-time college students are attending their first-choice college. Why then, in an educational environment so full of diverse options, are young people so fearful of this next step they are facing? And how can we begin to recreate the negative environment that surrounds them?  

Let’s tackle the top three fears we normally hear from students:

1. “I won’t get into the college I want to attend.”

What if I told you a story about a boy with an unusually clear dream to bring his particular style of art into the world for everyone to see?  He was so obsessed with his craft, that he would fake illnesses so that he could stay home from school and work on his art. When it came time to apply to college, he put in his application to one of the top schools for the study of this particular art form. He was turned down, not once but three times. Despondent, he took up a job as a gofer at a local studio and enrolled in classes at a local state college. 

This would likely sum up the totality of this fear for most young people. But what if I told you that this young man was none other than Steven Allan Spielberg, the film icon, and eventual trustee of the college that thrice rejected him, the University of Southern California.

Warren Buffett was denied to Harvard Business School. I am going to just leave that right there for a second. To Harvard Business School. Warren Buffett. Barack Obama (denied to Swarthmore), Tina Fey (denied to Princeton), Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin (denied to M.I.T.), Tom Hanks (denied to M.I.T. and also Villanova for good measure) and hundreds more cultural and industrial luminaries were all turned away by various admissions committees. In many cases, being turned away from one path of ambition served as an invitation to a new direction. Tom Brokaw (who was denied admission to Harvard) has noted that “the initial stumble was critical in getting me launched.”

I get it. Socially, the college search is a highly visible process, with everyone seemingly in on the culturally acceptable two-part question that every senior in America gets asked:  “Where are you going to college and what do you want to major in?” (more on that later). I call these the family reunion questions. If you dare to answer the first part of that question, it feels as if you are putting yourself out there, because what if you don’t get in? Everyone will know and how awful would that be? In my dissertation research, we found that over 58% of high school juniors indicated that not getting into their top choice college was a major source of stress in their college search. 

The headwater of this fear is a dysfunctional belief I call the “true love college,” in which young people are advised to visit various college campuses and to listen closely to their hearts as inevitably one of them will whisper, like the cornfields to Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams. A lone sunbeam will illuminate their path as various woodland creatures gather around their feet and birds to their shoulder. And no, there will be no rain this day, but if it must, it rains Skittles.

It is my experience that buying into this myth is often troubling for young people. When kids fixate on one college, they lend their fate to that college, their future held in escrow by an admissions committee which is, I can confidently say, made up of people. Wonderful, hard-working, but most certainly, human people, just as full of flaws and mistakes as anyone else. Just ask the admissions committee who denied Warren Buffett. 

So how do we rewrite this dysfunctional script? With cheeseburgers, of course.

Colleges are like cheeseburgers. You can find them all over the place, and there’s a lot of core similarities to them, but the magic is in the diversity. The bun, the burger, the cheese, the toppings – oh so many toppings. There are regional varieties, variations to suit all kinds of tastes and needs from Gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian options; it’s amazing. And yes, there are those who scream loudly about some notion of a “classic cheeseburger,” or perhaps argue that a cheeseburger isn’t truly great unless it costs an absurd amount of money, but we know better. The beauty is in knowing what kind of cheeseburger you like and being unapologetic about that. And if a college won’t serve you their brand of cheeseburger, channel your inner Spielberg and Obama and go find a cheeseburger at another place that will appreciate you. It’s all delicious.

2. “All my friends have their majors picked out and I don’t have a clue.”

The second half of the “family reunion questions” is a doozy. “What do you want to major in,” or its cousin, which shows up when you have picked a major, “What do you want to do with that?” are seemingly innocent enough questions. But they do introduce a degree of stress into the mixture of anxieties that surround the college search. Again, going back to my dissertation research:  49% of high school juniors identified this stressor as a major source of anxiety as it related to their college search. While I certainly acknowledge that there is some benefit for a young person to be encouraged to articulate their future plans (as well as they know them at the time), I am concerned with the rigidity of the small box into which the young person must insert their answers.

The challenge is that we, the individuals usually asking, “what do you want to major in?” represent a generation of professionals steeped in a more linear view of career preparedness with a more pronounced division between majors and professions. The current generation does not see a career this way. Three-quarters of college graduates do not end up working in their major five years post-graduation. The notion of a career is more fluid than it has ever been with today’s worker changing jobs 12 times on average.

The rewrite of this dysfunctional belief: Instead of asking “What do I want to major in?” ask “What do I want to learn how to do?”  Do you want to learn how to start a business, write compelling research, advocate for a cause you truly believe in, fluently speak three languages, or even, how can you be successful while also enjoying your life?  These are the questions that are much more meaningful and lasting.

3. “I won’t pick the right college.”

This fear is a derivative of the aforementioned “true love college,” except this belief also rolls notions of future success into the stress burrito. “If I pick the wrong college, I won’t be able to get the job I want, and thus will live a life of crime and degradation, possibly in a van down by the river . . . yada, yada.”  This fear drives the college-seeking student and family to rankings magazines and material from the “best colleges” section of the bookstore, hoping that enrolling in a particular college will facilitate a better career and life. On campus tours, this shows up in the form of questions like, “What percent of graduates find employment, or grad school, or simply avoid jail time within 6 months?”  At the heart of this is the notion that one college can significantly prepare you better for a career than another, a concept that is thematic to most university admissions marketing that floods mailboxes (I should know, I did that for two decades). Marketing like this hinges on two important and interlocking variables: value and scarcity. 

The messaging is simple, if not flawed:  

1. College is a valuable and even essential gateway to financial security and upward social mobility, and,
2. Access to the best colleges is getting scarcer and scarcer

You see, if the marketing is to work, the resources needed to achieve this future success must be perceived as scarce. As a former university marketer, my job was to convince prospective students and families that paying my college’s tuition was worth it; it was the best and most unique cheeseburger in the world. Could they get just as good of a cheeseburger, errr education, perhaps with a different experience and toppings, just down the street for one-third of the price?  Yes. However, for my particular cheeseburgers to keep selling, there had to be a perceived scarcity in access to future success, or said another way, “Our college has something the other places don’t, and because of that, our students outperform those other places and get better jobs.”

The problem, of course, is that there is scant evidence that one 4-year college dramatically outperforms another 4-year college in career success and life satisfaction outcomes, when variables known to predict such outcomes are controlled. A famous example of this is the study by Stacy Berg Dale of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Princeton economist Alan Krueger in which they found that students who were admitted to highly selective and top-ranked universities, but who attended less selective colleges were just as successful and happy as those were attended the choosier schools. Said another way, it’s not about the college, it’s about the student. Or, as Challenge Success shared in their white paper on healthy college admissions, A “Fit” Over Rankings, what you do in college matters more than where you go.

The rewrite of this dysfunctional belief: I have studied the college search enough to know that what college you attend simply does not matter as much as we are all lead to believe it does. No amount of marketing can change this. You know what does matter? You, the student. Your character, integrity, love for yourself and those around you, and your sheer unwillingness to go away. No college can give you this nor take it away. 

So let’s resolve to journey to the center of the college anxiety that is around us and describe it in specific and nuanced terms. When we do, we will find out that it’s just fear being afraid of itself. The future is not something to fear and access to success is not a scarce resource. There are an abundance of options all around us. Keep that in mind the next time you bite into your favorite cheeseburger.

Thomas C. Golden, Ph.D., is the Founder and Principal of Golden Educational Consulting which seeks to inspire young people to discover what inspires them by teaching families how to prepare their kids for the challenges of the college search. Known simply as Dr. Thom to his clients and friends, he spent more than 20 years in selective admissions at some of the top universities in the world, leading recruitment and admissions evaluations at Purdue and Vanderbilt Universities. He can be reached at thom@doctorthom.com and at doctorthom.com 

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