Roberta Brown-Jones, Nederland. If you’re among the new crop of high school students (and parents) with the college search looming darkly on the horizon, I highly recommend reading Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania.

After all of the testing and focus on ACT and SAT scores in the junior year, students may need a stress-reliever. Reviewers of Bruni’s book laud it as a tonic for the sometimes “soul-crushing college admissions process.” Like Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep, Bruni’s book seeks to calm the hysteria over the college-selection process, particularly for those who feel that not getting into an Ivy League or “top-tier” school would be disastrous.

Throughout the book, Bruni cites examples of successful people including Condoleezza Rice (Denver University); Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks (Northern Michigan University); and recipients of the MacArthur Foundation “genius grants” (SUNY Albany, Louisiana State, DePaul, etc.) whose undergraduate education did not include attending Ivy League or other elite schools.

Bruni’s research indicates that the most important predictors of success after college are job performance and demonstrated abilities, not the name of the undergraduate institution an individual attended.

Bruni notes that the mythologizing of the Ivy Leagues is often a bit of a snow job. One researcher uncovered that Forbes’ “30 under 30” list of promising young Americans discloses the undergraduate institutions of its recipients who attended places like Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton while omitting this information for people who attended places like Arizona State University and the University of Maryland.

This reinforces the belief that only the most prestigious universities turn out successful people.

He also uncovers the fact that many of these schools purposely encourage large numbers of students to apply, knowing that they will accept only a small percentage of the applicants.  This selectivity then serves to increase their standing in the college ranking guides.

Opportunities afforded at some smaller, lesser-known schools are often the very experiences that  enable students to gain confidence and succeed later in their chosen profession. Instead of struggling to compete with students who have been trained to excel throughout their high school years, a smart student can feel accomplished and useful among a diversity of students who haven’t necessarily been groomed their entire lives for the Ivy League experience.

Students at less prestigious colleges often begin to grow in ways that don’t necessarily occur when students are herded from one uber-competitive environment to another. Ivy League schools, despite moderate attempts at providing diversity through scholarships, are still filled with many privileged students from the top one percent of wage earners. This is not the real-world environment that young adults will end up inhabiting after college.

Bruni notes that if a student expects to achieve wage-earning superiority, one’s field of study determines wage-earning potential more than which college one attends for an undergraduate degree. Beyond that, those who do not get generous scholarships to attend the more prestigious schools are often saddled with student loan debt that follows them for decades.

The author also laments that what gets lost in the mania to get into a particular school is that how one spends the undergraduate years is as critical as the school one attends. The most important thing that prospective students should seek in the colleges they apply to is whether they will have the opportunity to become fully engaged in their own learning. Also, college should allow time to explore and have new extracurricular experiences. These experiences should shape how a student can best use his or her talents and passions beyond college.

The most important thing students and their parents should strive for is to retain some of the magic of going to college, not the “soulless preoccupation with status.” So to all of you prospective college students: go forth and seek a college, Ivy League or not, that will keep you engaged in learning, that will provide you with an environment that both challenges you and makes you grow, and that will allow you to explore a plethora of options. There are few times later in life where you will have such freedom. It is a gift to be used wisely and thoughtfully.