One thing that’s unambiguous is that many ambitious high schoolers believe that where they go to college matters a great deal. My post is intended to address this audience.
It’s possible that I misread, but I interpreted Swimmer963′s point as saying exactly this—it really doesn’t matter what you do in high school, as long as you get into the college you’re aiming to get into. If this is what she meant, I probably agree—I don’t think there is any one-semester high school course which can’t be entirely learnt by a reasonably bright student in about 1 week of dedicated personal study.
it really doesn’t matter what you do in high school, as long as you get into the college you’re aiming to get into.
That’s a bit my point, but not entirely. I think that 10 or 20 years later, the specifics of what high schoolers did will almost never matter. (General high school work ethic and direction/ambition in life likely does matter, if only because it will correlate, in most people, with adult work ethic and ambition). To a lesser degree, 10 or 20 years down the road, it probably doesn’t matter whether a student got into their top choice or second-or-third choice college. College admissions depend on a lot of random factors, like whether you were sick on the day of a high school exam worth 40% of your grade, and more time passing flattens out this randomness. Students with good work ethic and a strong direction in life will probably end up where they want to be anyway, once 10-20 years have passed. Students who don’t really know what they want to do still won’t know in 10 years even if they went to a prestigious college. Good work ethic and ambition is correlated with getting into prestigious colleges, but I would argue that there’s less causation there than this article seems to imply.
This is just my impression, though, and I’m generally not that ambitious. It might be different for people at higher level of driven-ness and/or with different, more academic-based goals.
Vaniver: I said “it surprises me how much...” because I expect to agree with most LW posts, and I’m slightly surprised every time I don’t agree. It’s a good surprise.
Students who don’t really know what they want to do still won’t know in 10 years even if they went to a prestigious college.
I’m really not sure that’s the case. It seems to me that people who attend prestigious colleges are likely to be exposed to a broader range of interests and opportunities than they otherwise would, giving them more of a chance of finding something that they want to do.
I guess I don’t have a big enough example set to know. Anyone know of studies done on this that try to separate variables like conscientiousness/work ethic and ambition from actual college attendance? (Given that there’s an expectation, in the US anyway, that smart, hardworking, ambitious kids will go to prestigious colleges and the rest won’t.)
How about this as a counter-example? This guy essentially got into Harvard because of one accident with a plagiarised essay when he was a kid (at least, that’s the way he tells his story), and is now a member of faculty at Chicago. I think life outcomes might be more path-dependent than we like to admit.
The second half of his story has a fair amount of detail, and implies very strongly that he was conspicuously intelligent and the first high school he was at wasn’t all that bad for students.
Unfortunately, the transcript includes that his wife thinks he has a secret to happiness by controlling his attitude towards events, but doesn’t go into detail.
It surprises me how much my attitude to this post is X
Generally, when I say “it surprises me that I think X” that happens because I thought I thought ~X, which generally happens because I used to think ~X.
It’s possible that I misread, but I interpreted Swimmer963′s point as saying exactly this—it really doesn’t matter what you do in high school, as long as you get into the college you’re aiming to get into. If this is what she meant, I probably agree—I don’t think there is any one-semester high school course which can’t be entirely learnt by a reasonably bright student in about 1 week of dedicated personal study.
That’s a bit my point, but not entirely. I think that 10 or 20 years later, the specifics of what high schoolers did will almost never matter. (General high school work ethic and direction/ambition in life likely does matter, if only because it will correlate, in most people, with adult work ethic and ambition). To a lesser degree, 10 or 20 years down the road, it probably doesn’t matter whether a student got into their top choice or second-or-third choice college. College admissions depend on a lot of random factors, like whether you were sick on the day of a high school exam worth 40% of your grade, and more time passing flattens out this randomness. Students with good work ethic and a strong direction in life will probably end up where they want to be anyway, once 10-20 years have passed. Students who don’t really know what they want to do still won’t know in 10 years even if they went to a prestigious college. Good work ethic and ambition is correlated with getting into prestigious colleges, but I would argue that there’s less causation there than this article seems to imply.
This is just my impression, though, and I’m generally not that ambitious. It might be different for people at higher level of driven-ness and/or with different, more academic-based goals.
Vaniver: I said “it surprises me how much...” because I expect to agree with most LW posts, and I’m slightly surprised every time I don’t agree. It’s a good surprise.
I’m really not sure that’s the case. It seems to me that people who attend prestigious colleges are likely to be exposed to a broader range of interests and opportunities than they otherwise would, giving them more of a chance of finding something that they want to do.
I guess I don’t have a big enough example set to know. Anyone know of studies done on this that try to separate variables like conscientiousness/work ethic and ambition from actual college attendance? (Given that there’s an expectation, in the US anyway, that smart, hardworking, ambitious kids will go to prestigious colleges and the rest won’t.)
How about this as a counter-example? This guy essentially got into Harvard because of one accident with a plagiarised essay when he was a kid (at least, that’s the way he tells his story), and is now a member of faculty at Chicago. I think life outcomes might be more path-dependent than we like to admit.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/504/how-i-got-into-college
The second half of his story has a fair amount of detail, and implies very strongly that he was conspicuously intelligent and the first high school he was at wasn’t all that bad for students.
Unfortunately, the transcript includes that his wife thinks he has a secret to happiness by controlling his attitude towards events, but doesn’t go into detail.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/504/transcript
Can you say where your impression comes from?
I got some of that from the start:
Generally, when I say “it surprises me that I think X” that happens because I thought I thought ~X, which generally happens because I used to think ~X.