I thought I would just throw in the fact the Wade is a professor at a college in Iowa. Read his blog sometime. fascinating.

If you have a dream of a profession go to the best school for that profession. I wanted (and became) a golf professional. The best school in the eyes of the PGA was Ferris State University. That is where I went. Definately not the best all around school (although we did place 17th on Oui's best party school list) but in the eyes of the PGA world, it was like coming out of Harvard.

The school has to fit the individual. You can succeed from any school as they all have the minimal standards. It is the critical thinking that you attain while at college that gives you the greatest chance to succeed.

School only gets you in the door in your chosen field. Whether you attain CEO or similar is completely about what you do AFTER you are hired. If you have the drive to be the very best (character found in most CEO's) then you have attained the neccesary grades in high school to choose whatever school you want to go to. Price will not be an issue.

Harvard has never turned down a student because of financial issues. that is what they do with the 1.2 billion dollar endowement fund they have.

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Some good advice here.

I don't have a whole lot of sensible stuff to say, as I don't know a whole lot about your educational system, but the most important has already been said. Aim for what you want to do. Work to reach that. It's so much easier when you have a target and you like what you're doing.

Must have gotten a hell of a scholarship.. starting 2009 tuition costs at USC are 35,000  plus housing for a 14 to 18 credit load.

Congrats.

I graduated from UW-Green Bay and took graduate courses at UW-L.. couldn't afford UW-Madison for basically the same education.

But honestly, my favorite classes were electives I took in the Wisconsin technical school system.. hands on.. small classes and professors that actually looked at the small picture of the education process with a kind eye.

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Employers do not give two shits where you got your degree. All they care about is the piece of paper with those magical two letters on it.

The idea of prestige helping you in your career is sold to you by clever marketers for the colleges and has little or no bearing on reality, unless you're shooting for the presidency of the AMA or something equally obscure. For that matter, employers couldn't care less about your grades either, unless you're fresh out of college and did absolutely NOTHING but take classes (no extracurriculars, volunteer work, etc.). And if that's what you are, chances are you're going to struggle to get a job no matter how good your grades were.

There are very few jobs that require reasonably good grades, and they all involve post-baccalaureate schooling: lawyers, physicians, etc. Even most graduate schools don't require excellent grades; my German professor got into his doctoral program with a sub-3.0 GPA. And even with the professions that require good grades, your overall portfolio is more important than your raw GPA: med schools turn down 4.0's everyday, while letting in people with low three points who have volunteer/work experience, world involvement (military service), etc.

I say these things as the former owner of a resume business who helped plenty of people with atrocious grades get good-paying professional jobs. You'd be shocked how low the GPAs of teachers are.

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I always loved the quote, "The A-students teach the B-students how to work for the C-students"

Now always true in every case.. But in my experience with people, jobs/careers, and business owners, it's pretty dog-gone close.

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That's a great point, Formo.

I read an interesting study a few years ago that revealed that Columbia graduates have lower-than-average salaries. The explanation provided was that the type of students who go to Columbia (uber-intelligent, exceptional GPAs, etc.) are the kind of peoplefor whom academic success has always come easily. Because they have never had to struggle to attain success, they are terrified of failure and thus excessively risk averse and unwilling to make mistakes. By contrast, an amazing proportion of the top 100 richest people in this country never graduated college.

Success in the real world has far, far more to do with drive, determination and motivation -- the willing to make mistakes and learn from them -- than the high-profile name on that fancy piece of paper.

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hmph 

With all due respect, these are self-reported figures from anonymous internet users and thus unverifiable. Furthermore, they suffer from sample bias in that only the successful people are likely to respond to these surveys. Your Harvard philosophy graduate who now drives a taxi in New York City isn't likely to bother with a survey like this.

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There are no guarantees in life. It is not automatic that a student that obtained a degree from xx university will achieve greater financial success than one that graduated from yy university. It surprises me that as a whole it's lower on average but it does not surprise me that it occurs. I also wouldn't put too much stock into the fact that the top 100 richest people did not graduate from college because of those 100, what percentage did not graduate and yet are not rich? I would wager that the proportion of affluent people from reputable universities is higher than those that did not attend university.

However, I don't buy the notion that the choice of university does not matter. I could have gone to TAFE here in Western Australia. I chose not to, and instead went to a reputable (debatable, but that's another topic for another time!) university. Why did I do this? Because I know if I went to TAFE, where entry requirements are around 60 TER (roughly equivalent to having better marks than 60% of your peers in your year) as opposed to UWA with entry requirements around 93, the subject matter, and manner in which it is taught, does not lend itself to providing me with a higher probability of earning a decent salary. I could go to TAFE and learn how to reference an Australian Standard or I could go to a more theoretical university and learn how the Australian Standard was developed from first principles. It teaches me better problem solving skills which I can apply outside of a single specified problem.

People have said, it is up to the student to make the most of university. I absolutely agree. But I also believe that the student should strive to attend the best that they can afford. With my qualification I'm not going to apply to a government job. Of course they are not interested in where you obtained your degree. I look for the private consultants, those with reputations for quality design. I know that I am up for the challenge that working in such an environment demands. I know that they seek applications from only 2 universities in the entire state. I expect to be pushed hard and mentally challenged at my job, using what theoretical background I've learned and apply it to generate new solutions. And I expect to be paid handsomely in return. But I speak only from my very limited views as an engineering/commerce student.

It's about balance, yes - the student must set their goals for their future and work accordingly. Once they have a degree, irrespective of where they obtained it from, it's up to the student to capitalise on their learning. I merely state the hypothesis that going to a more reputable university has a higher chance of obtaining success, but it is by no means assured, as Non points out.

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Good point. It probably doesn't any more. I graduated in the early 90s, when political correctness started.

For the record, if I were running the show, I'd bring it back down to 18. Old enough to vote, old enough to die for your country, old enough to drink some beers.

People say it saves lives. Whatever. If you're locked inside your house at gunpoint, it will also save lives. How far do we want to go?

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