Does It Matter Where You Go to College?
This year, more than 2 million Americans will apply to college. Most will aim for nearby schools without global brands or billion-dollar endowments. But for the tens of thousands of families applying to America’s most elite institutions, the admissions process is a high-cost, high-stress gantlet.
American parents now spend almost half a billion dollars each year on “independent education consultants,” and that’s not counting the cost of test prep or flights and hotels for campus visits. These collegiate sweepstakes leave a trail of frazzled parents and emotionally wrecked teens already burdened with rising anxiety, which raises a big question: Does it really matter whether you attend an elite college?
The seemingly obvious answer is, ! How could it not? Ivy League and equivalent institutions of America’s billionaires and more than half of ’s list of the attended schools where incoming freshmen average in the top first percentile of SAT scores.
