University of Virginia alumni wrote a list of what to look for in a college. They are clearly happy with their matriculation venue, but I liked their words of advice because no one crams their alma mater down the reader’s throat. It’s just good advice about how to find a school that’s a good fit for you and why that’s important.

Some good bits:

I would tell a high-school student to look for the characteristics that fit themselves and not just go for what everyone else is looking for. I knew many people who just applied wherever the “in crowd” was applying. They ended up transferring or not doing well. You really need to look for a place that suits you, a place where you can call home for the next four years of your life. Think about what you want to study, what interests you and what/where you are most comfortable with, and go from there. Laura Dornan Frick (Economics ’05)

Looking back from the middle of the PhD, my advice is: you can get a good education anywhere if you really want to. It doesn’t matter that much. Stop stressing. When you visit the school, look for a place where the students are serious but don’t all look stressed and constipated, where the faculty are friendly and willing to talk to you…Frederick Ross (Physics, Mathematics ’05)

Having gone through this drill not too long ago with my son (who is now a college sophomore), I feel fairly well prepared to answer. The student needs to decide on some basic criteria for schools: large/medium/small; coed or primarily single-sex; urban/suburban/rural; geographical area of interest; level of competitiveness for admission. Having decided on at least most of these criteria, whittle these down and start visiting, using something like the U.S. News book as a guide. We found in our visit to 12 colleges — UVa unfortunately not among them since my son wanted to attend a smaller school — that you really do have to visit and talk with as many people as possible to see what the school is like. One thing we always did was to pick up copies of the student newspaper to see what students seemed to be concerned about. You can also get a measure of the conservative-liberal direction of the school by what’s on the bulletin boards. A small college that offers “The Vagina Monologues” is probably not too conservative. Bottom line is that my son chose a small comprehensive college in Pennsylvania barely a three hours’ drive from our home in Northern Virginia and has been quite happy and academically successful there. The small size of the college means that every one of his professors is a real credentialed academic, and he has gotten to travel to Japan with the professor who teaches him Japanese in a class of eight.
James T. Currie (MA History ’69, PhD ’75).

Many people have a tendency to view colleges and universities as being mere stepping stones that will open doors to future endeavors and so they choose to study at an institution that they believe will open the most doors. While it may be impossible to not contemplate such a factor in the decision-making process, high-school students should not have such a narrow view when deciding where they will be spending four years of their lives. When I was at UVa, I never viewed my educational experience as a means to end, but rather, it truly was an end in itself. High-school students should try and find an institution that will not only challenge them academically and prepare them for the future; they should also look for a school that fosters an environment that makes just being there worthwhile.
Kevin Hakala (Slavic, Government ’06, Law ’09)

Posted by Alexa Harrington

For my entire high school career I was under the horrendously asinine assumption that because I was smart (or so all the adults around me reported) I shouldn’t have had to really work at learning; I should have been able to look at the information once and instantly absorb and understand it. That approach never worked out as well as I’d imagined it would.

Needing further proof of my non-super-humanness, I continued to assume that I had instant absorption and comprehension abilities when I hit college. Furthermore, I added a whole new branch to my stupidity: I assumed that because both of my grandfathers were science professors, I should of course be capable of comprehending all the science-related jargon in my biology courses instantaneously, no learning curve required. I had no proof, not even a glimmer of a fact to base this on. For the grandchild of research scientists, that was some stellar use of the scientific method.

And, continuing even farther along the now hopelessly moronic road of ill-logic, I figured that since both of my grandfathers were scientists, it was in my genetic make-up to be able to read and instantly understand scientific research papers, which are not known for simplicity or the use of layman’s terms. Of course! That totally makes sense. Because everyone knows that if your mom is a surgeon, you can skip medical school and just grab a scalpel, open up Joe Schmoe and fix him right up. You were in your mom’s uterus for Pete’s sake. You therefore have innate surgical skills imprinted in your DNA. Everyone knows that. It’s sound biological reasoning.

Or not. You know, now that I’m older and I really think about it. Well, that’s a shame. Having a biologically built-in understanding of scientific flim-flam (technical term) would have really come in handy for me. After I gave up on my imprinted-DNA theory, I spent a lot of time deciphering reading material the same way every other student has to: looking up words and then terms and, finally, whole ideas and theories until I understood every piece and could reassemble the whole picture and it made sense.

Too late for me, I came across this very helpful tidbit via Lifehacker. It’s a simple guide to reading scientific research papers. The author does an excellent job of explaining how to read with maximum comprehension. She also points out to everyone who didn’t already know (I think only me) scientific research papers are a bitch to read and there’s a method to getting through them. Avoid making my mistakes–it’s always better to make your own new and exciting ones.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I think I’ve been pretty consistent in showing my immense frustration and disgust at the amount of pressure high school students are under these days to get into The Ultimate Ivory Tower College of Academic Wonderfulness. The hoop-jumping is endless: the AP classes, the SATs, the ACTs, the transcript padding, the private college counselors being hired, blah blah blah. It’s a freak show.

Along with my consistent crankiness with regards to the undue pressure adults feel compelled to bury their offspring under, I have also tended to blame the parents and the media for telling the kids the house is on fire when clearly it isn’t. There are plenty of schools out there; the chances are excellent that any graduating senior that wants to will get into at least one college.

And no, not everyone gets to go to Harvard and Yale. As an undergrad, why would you want to? Do you know how busy the faculty at those schools are? They want to teach there more than you want to get your degree there. Managing to get tenure anywhere is difficult. Getting tenure at an Ivy is almost a mathematical impossibility (much like getting into the NBA, being struck by lightning, or winning the lottery). They have to publish or perish, and lecturing to an auditorium full of undergrads is incredibly low on their list of priorities. A lot of the time grad student TAs are giving the lectures.

Much better to go to a smaller school with a viable instructor/student ratio, learn from actual faculty, be a name not a number, and learn how to learn instead of how to cut through the bureaucratic red tape that is large universities. Then go to the school with the name that will impress people at parties for your graduate degree, become a TA, and teach all the lowly undergrads so the professor can get his/her research done. It’s like some effed-up version of the circle of life.

Enough. I started this post to apologize and instead I completely digressed into another adult-bashing rant. What I had intended to write about was this post Melissa Lafsky over at Freakonomics put up a while ago. It somehow managed to escape my notice until now. I do actually know (somewhere deep inside) that not every adult is hellbent on crushing the souls of our children. I apologize profusely to Mr. John B. Gilmour, who is clearly a good parent. He wrote this to the NY Times:

To the Editor:
I have noticed several articles in The Times on how difficult it is to get into college. I assume that your goal in publishing them is to drive my daughter, a high school sophomore already worried about college admissions, over the edge.

You have succeeded. Now you can stop. John B. Gilmour
Williamsburg, Va., May 16, 2007

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Penelope Trunk has this blog and wrote this book. I haven’t yet read the book (not planning on becoming a Brazen Careerist quite yet as I’m still floating through the halcyon days of mommy-ness) but everyone else seems to like it. I’ll be making Brazen Careerist flashcards for myself someday in the not-too-distant future when I jump into the rat race.

Her blog I have read. Her focus is writing “advice at the intersection of work and life.” Gen-X and Gen-Y are whom she seems to be writing for, but most of what she has to say applies to anyone. Although, maybe not the independently wealthy folks who have no careers to forge, no time management issues and no major goals to tackle. Even those lucky bastards should read her stuff: she’s logical and is never pedantic and is never ever gratingly upbeat. She has no patience for whiners. And sometimes she’s a little bit cranky. Which may be why I’m such a fan.

Penelope Trunk is not her real name. Now I’m pissed that I didn’t think to come up with a smashingly fake internet personae. Her story is interesting. She was kicking corporate world booty when 9/11 happened. Being a block away from the Towers when it all went down made her do some re-evaluating. She downsized her material life, had a baby and left NYC. Reading about her decisions and how she came to make them made me happy again with my decision to focus on my family first and my career second.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

In honor of the first SAT and ACT test dates of the 2007/2008 school year, I found these excellent arguments for parents to simmer down and back off. Your kids won’t end up working in badly ventilated, inadequately lit factories. Probably. But keep in mind that this is what they’re doing when you think they’re locked in their rooms studying:

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I’d be willing to bet that I was the only adult in my niece’s life that didn’t corner her at her high school graduation party and demand, “So! What will you be majoring in this fall? What are you going to do with yourself? What do you want to be when you grow up?” I knew that whatever she was planning on studying mattered to some extent, but it wasn’t life or death. Nor was her choice of major going to define her utterly (despite popular belief). I felt like it would have been the most disrespectful line of questioning I could have asked.

First of all, I’m only fourteen years older than she is, which I don’t feel gives me enough seniority to claim adult status to her kid-ness. Secondly, she’s one of those rare people who come into the world fully baked—already a complete person. Seven-year-old Sasha would stare down 21-year-old me and explain what my problem was and how I should go about fixing it.

Fully baked or not, she (bizarrely) still asks me for advice on occasion. Without fail, the first words out of my mouth are, “Seriously? Because you know that I don’t know what the eff I’m doing, right?” Does she ask me because I don’t talk to her like I’m right and she’s wrong? Or is it that she appreciates my full disclosure with regards to being as clueless and confused as everyone else? Perhaps it’s that I’ve never blown sunshine up her a**, lied to her, or pretended to know more than I do.

When high school was done and she was ready to head off to college, she cornered me and asked what my stance on college majors was. She told me she hadn’t decided on one, and wasn’t sure how to go about choosing. She was sick of people asking her, she had no idea what career she might want to aim for, and she figured I could shed some light “because you were in school for so long.” Ouch. Here’s the gist of my wisdom/experience:

The deep dark secret (the logical truth that I can’t believe most people haven’t realized) about the undergrad degree is that it doesn’t matter what you major in. There are a few exceptions (aren’t there always?). If you were born with the freak gene that allows you to see the future and you already know what you’ll be doing for graduate work, then it would behoove you to choose an undergrad degree that’s a variation on your planned graduate degree theme. Something biological or chemical would be good if you were hoping to end up in med school, for instance. Getting accounting training if you are planning to start your accounting career is another great example. Or maybe a future career in psychology would provoke you to look into psychology degree programs. You get the point.

Otherwise, it doesn’t matter. College is for learning how to learn. And for getting that incredibly expensive piece of frame-able paper. No one really cares what you studied, just that you got in, did the work, learned some stuff, met some people, and grew up a little before going off to seek your fortune.

College is expensive and will be at least four years of your life. Don’t waste it slogging through a major that brings you nothing but misery just because the adults in your life told you it was the sensible thing to do. You’ll be so sick of that particular topic by the time you graduate you’ll never pursue a career in that field anyway. Work is called work because it’s hard. As is most of life. College is the one time in your life when you’re allowed some freedom. Before college you’ve got a bunch of adults around, constantly telling you what to do. After college you’re immediately expected to step up and be one of them.

Seriously, you have from the age of twenty-one until you die to be a superiorly responsible and ridiculously stressed-out adult. If you can possibly swing it, spend college learning about something that makes you happy. Because if you die of something tragic at the age of forty-five, you’re going to be so pissed off that you went with the degree in accounting (like Uncle Milton told you to do) and never pursued your real passion (underwater basket weaving).

The many knowledgeable people who agree with my claim that your choice of major neither guarantees success nor seals your fate in the Ziploc Bag of Doom:

NPR: What’s Your Major and Does It Matter?

Take These Small Steps In College For A Big Career Later

Choosing A Major

University of Washington Student Guide

Does College Matter?

Do Majors Really Matter?

Taking the Mystery Out Of Majors

Jobs of the Future: Does a Major Matter?

Posted by Alexa Harrington