How to Choose a College

My niece is a junior in high school. Discussions with her parents over Thanksgiving about her education plans brought back a memory about the time the head guidance counselor at my old high school asked me to speak to college-bound juniors about preparing for higher ed. I was either still in college or fresh out.

One girl asked, “How do you decide which college to go to?” I think it was the first time I had formulated my opinions about college in an organized manner, and I haven’t forgotten my answer. Here’s what I said.

“Well, there’s an orthodox method that goes like this. You decide what you’re interested in -- what you want to pursue as a career -- and then you go to the guidance center and study the school catalogs [this was before the Internet existed, for the average person] and find out which schools have a strong program in that field. Then you apply to them.

“Now, there are several things that strike me as wrong with this approach. First, when you’re 18, you don’t typically have a very clear idea about what you want to do. Odds are you will change your mind, maybe many times.

“I went off to college thinking I wanted to be an astronomer, because I loved cosmology. It only took a couple of months to find out it was too much math and physics for me to handle.

“Second, I’ve never read or heard just which criteria are used to establish a school has a strong program in a particular field. Is it because it has world-famous scholars in that specialty, who do a lot of research and publish books on the subject? That may not do you much good if they’re crappy teachers.

“Is it because the school places a higher percentage of its graduates in that field after they finish their schooling? That it has a big endowment for that major, and lots of buildings and equipment? Nobody’s really said.

“My observation has been that it doesn’t matter that much where you go to school, because your education largely consists of the small group of people you spend the most of your time with: a circle of peers, and the one, two -- if you’re lucky, three or four -- instructors who really keep alive that joy and excitement of learning.

“When you find such a teacher, take as many classes from that person as you can -- even if he or she isn’t in your major. All education really comes down to is honing your ability to think and learning how to find things; if you’re lucky, you might become a decent writer, as well.

“But that small group of people you spend most of your time with will be your true education; not the University of Oregon, not Stanford, not how big or small the school is. There are people wasting their education at Ivy League schools because they are still in headlong flight from home, fighting personal demons; and other kids getting an excellent education at a state college because of the choices they make.”

As I recall, that was the gist of it. Strictly speaking, I didn’t really answer the question. Perhaps what I might have added was, since the above is the case, don’t worry too much about where you end up going. Make your decision based on who gives you a great financial aid package, what part of the country you’d like to live in, whether you’re a city person or a country person, and how far away from your family you’re comfortable living (or need to be).

Who you are and who you become, and the choices you make, will determine the quality of your education much more than whatever school you end up attending.

If you bother to learn how to think critically, how to find things, and perhaps how to write, then that’s all you need to get on in life. The people you spend most of your time with in college will “educate” you in the sense that they will help you become the person you ought to be (or hinder you from achieving that goal).

And all that comes down to you, not the brand name of your school.