I promised a high school counselor in California I would update a very old online column whose printout on her wall is too faded to read. It asked a question I think students immersed in college visiting and application writing should consider: Where did your heroes go to college?
Most of us want our lives to have meaning. We want to add value, at least in some small way. We want to be admired.
What college do you go to for that? Where did the people we look up to get their degrees? Often it's not the best-known schools.
Let's look at government and business leaders. (I know. They have their flaws. But we are just getting started.) The past four presidents graduated from Columbia, Yale, Georgetown and Yale. But the four before them attended somewhat more modest institutions: Eureka, the U.S. Naval Academy, Michigan and Whittier.
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