ORLANDO, Fla. – The recent college admissions scandal headlines have shown us that some parents will do anything to get their child into a top school. But are selective colleges better for students than the run-of-the-mill schools?
Yale … Harvard … and Princeton. They’re the big names in higher education, but does where your child goes to college really matter?
Experts at Stanford conducted an extensive review and found attending a selective school did not predict better learning. A 2014 Gallup study of more than 30,000 graduates also found no correlation between college selectivity and future job satisfaction or well-being.
So what does affect college success?
Being active in extracurricular activities, participating in an internship, working on big projects, having engaging professors and finding a helpful mentor are some factors that help students thrive in college and in life. Proving it might not be where they go but what they do while at school that matters.
Surveys have found that more than 80% of students at high-achieving schools say they’ve cheated in one way or another. Among the CEOs of the top 20 fortune 500 companies, only Jeff Bezos went to an ivy league school. Walt Disney went to metropolitan junior college, James Singeal of Costco went to San Diego City College and is now worth near two billion dollars and even Steve Jobs went to a community college called De Anza College and he didn’t graduate.