When I went to college, back in the early Jurassic, we didn’t have all these newfangled guides and magazines and surveys to tell you what school to pick.
You went where your parents told you to apply — mostly because great-uncle Joe was a free-spending alumnus and would carry some clout with the admissions committee. Or perhaps that’s where Mom or Dad went and they’d been dressing you in the school colors since you were in diapers. Or, if worst came to worst, you hoped against hope that you got into your safety school, an institution with admission standards so flexible that all that was required to become a freshman was a pulse and a check for tuition.
(Where I grew up, that institution was, according to urban legend, the school then known as Rhode Island Junior College, RIJC, a set of initials which inevitably gave rise to the unfortunate nickname “Reject.”)
Today, U.S. News, Forbes and others offer anxious students (and their impoverished parents) rankings that not only purport to indicate the quality of America’s institutions of higher learning, but also let you know if you’ll be getting value for your money.
(Want a good return on your investment? Guess what? The earning potential of an engineering degree from MIT is going to be just a tad more than an art history degree from, oh, anywhere. There, I just saved you the cost of a college guide book. You’re welcome.)
This is valuable information if you have known since junior high what you want to do with the rest of your life.
Most people heading off to college this week do not know that. In fact, if they still have the same major — let alone the same point of view — by the time they graduate, I would argue that they have wasted four years.
So, herewith is a personal guide to college. (And, no, I don’t know how much money you’ll make.)
— Does the library have at least one section with old, leather-bound books, preferably in Latin, next to some very soft armchairs deep in the stacks?
— Is your first roommate someone of completely different outlook, background and possibly even a Yankees/Giants fan?
— Will you have at least one professor who, instead of sticking to the syllabus, will regale you with tales of his anarchist days on the streets of Chicago in the 1960s and the finer points of Marxist theory? And this is a statistics class?
— Does the dining hall have a supply of trays that can be converted, on snowy nights, into reasonably dangerous sleds?
— Is there at least one dive-y bar within walking distance that has a, shall we say, “negotiable” stand on checking IDs?
Welcome to the class of 2022.