High school comes with a lot of stress and decision making. One of those decisions is what college you want to attend and what career you want to spend the rest of your life doing. Getting into a college that you want and planning the rest of your future can be stressful and difficult. Many people wonder if what college you go to matters for your future.
While some may argue that what college you go to matters for your future employment, most employers put little weight on what college you attended, though many high schoolers stress about it and try to get into prestigious colleges. Other factors like teamwork, communication skills and experience play larger roles for future employers.
A lot of high schoolers spend and devote most of their time in high school trying to add to that resume to get into the college of their choice. They will overwork themselves, take challenging classes and have an “all or nothing” mentality when it comes to getting into college. But this time and effort simply isn’t always worth it.
“You’ll do equally well in terms of income, job satisfaction and life satisfaction whether you go to an elite private college or a less-selective state university,” author William Stixrund said. According to a study done by Pew research. “you don’t need to be a top student or go to a highly selective college to have a successful and fulfilling life.”
Most high schoolers stress about the idea of choosing a college and determining the rest of their future. But this simply shouldn’t be a big of a deal as we make it out to be. Employers prefer experience and what you did in college over what college you attended. We spend a lot of time taking classes to try and get into these prestigious colleges when we should be spending that time in high school trying to figure out our interests.
“The significance of attending a top college manifests not only in one’s likelihood of getting a job, but also their average earnings,” Forbes said. “Ivy League graduates with approximately three years of professional experience earned a median annual salary of $86,025 in 2022, compared to graduates of other schools who earned $58,643.”
Although this is true, this has less to do with the college itself making the difference and more the class in which the person originally came from.
“The median family income of a student from Harvard is $168,800, and 67% come from the top 20 percent.” According to the New York Times. “About 1.8% of students at Harvard came from a poor family.”
But most of Harvard’s students come from an upper class background, meaning the income coming out of college is not because of Harvard but instead their family’s connections and income.
As a high school student myself, I would stress out about what college to attend and that it could determine my success in the future. But now I know that is just simply not true and I should focus on taking classes that interest me.
“I recruit and I hire for experience,” Vice President of Human Resources for AbsorbTech Heather Chung said. “Can they follow directions? Can they work well with others?”
Often we focus so much on work and trying to get into a prestigious college that we as high school students forget to work on the fundamentals for every job, which is people skills and experience. What university you go to doesn’t matter in the long run. But what does is your experience, what you did with that time in college and your willingness to learn and work well with others.
In conclusion, provided that you take the right major and take courses that give you valuable experience, the college you attend is far less important than your skills like teamwork and communication.
