"Well Known" Schools are All That

Written by Sofia Totino

December 7, 2021

Deferred. Denied. And of course, the one everyone wants to hear, accepted. When you think about it, college in America is quite an unfair principle. Take one of America’s top colleges, Stanford University, for example. According to The College Board, you pay an application fee of $90 (the highest application fee in the country, by the way) to have a 4% chance of being admitted. So, if you are able to beat out 96 out of 100 other people for a spot at a Stanford education, good for you. If you were not one of those people to get a spot, I must ask: what reason drove you to apply to Stanford in the first place? Did you honestly love the school itself, or did you read the U.S. World and News Report’s “Best Colleges of 2020” list and apply to its top ten schools? Or was it a question of obtaining a job after college? Maybe your peers or parents encouraged you to apply to Stanford or a school with a similar acceptance rate. All of these explanations are likely. Thousands of teenagers apply for undergraduate admission to more “well known” schools in America. The real question is, with such low acceptance rates, why is the number of applications to “top” colleges increasing? We will examine the reasons why so many people apply to top universities, and how the amount of people across the world sending in their applications compares to the people at Melrose High School.

What Makes a School “Well-Known?”

A college being “well-known” depends less on the value of its education than its stance in the public eye. Sure, Yale University brags about their 15 million volumes on their website, while Salem State refuses to say how many books they hold - most likely out of partial embarrassment. But books mean nothing if you learn nothing from them. The classes offered at each school are what really matter. The nursing programs at Villanova University and Salve Regina University are quite comparable, as they both offer many of the same classes, including anatomy and physiology, organic chemistry, and statistics I. Regardless, the Villanova nursing program acceptance rate is 10%, while the Salve Regina nursing program acceptance rate is 40%. If the curriculums are so comparable, why is there such a large gap between their acceptance rates? It is all about Villanova being a more “well known” school. Villanova is ranked #49 on the U.S News and World Report’s Best Colleges of 2022 list, while Salve Regina did not even make the list. But why? Salve Regina’s nursing program has a 98% NCLEX (national nursing exam) pass rate - the same as Vilanova’s. It is not a question of quality education. It is a question of rank in the public eye. More people see Villanova as a “good” school, so more students apply there. According to Villanova’s website, 22,909 students applied for undergraduate admission in the 2020-2021 admission cycle, but just 6,000 were accepted. Salve Regina accepted 3,000 students of 5,000 applicants. Despite Salve taking in half of the students Villanova does, Villanova gets over 4 times the amount of applicants they receive. The ratios of students applying to Salve and students applying to Villanova are very far off from one another. Since Villanova is a more well known school, hundreds of more students apply there. 

Comparing Acceptance Rates of “Top” Colleges in America to Melrose High School

How do students at Melrose High School add to the reputations of colleges that appear in the U.S. News and World Report list? I wanted to find a correlation between acceptance rates of “top” colleges and people from Melrose High School who are applying to those colleges for the 2021-2022 admission cycle. To do this, I asked 50 seniors who were in classes with me if they were applying to two incredibly selective colleges in the Boston area, Northeastern, and Boston University. I chose these two schools to compare because these are the two “top” schools that I have heard the greatest amount of seniors applying to. I also know these two schools are considered “top” schools, as they land quite highly in the public eye. In the U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges of 2022 list, Northeastern is tied with Villanova at number 49, and Boston University rests at number 42. Boston University, with an 18% acceptance rate, is incredibly selective. The official BU website states that there were 75,559 undergraduate applicants in the 2020-2021 admission cycle, not much different from their 74,586 total for 2019-2020. Northeastern, with an 18% acceptance rate, saw their greatest number of undergraduate applicants to date in the 2020-2021 admission cycle. The Northeastern website states that the school received “75,233 applications for fall 2021, a 17 percent jump from the previous year, when 64,428 students applied for the fall 2020 freshman class.” With the addition of so many new applicants, Northeastern’s acceptance rate decreased from 27% in 2020 to 18% in 2021. More students want to attend than ever before. However, this did not stop many Melrose High School seniors from applying for the 2021-2022 admission cycle. The table below indicates the amount of Melrose High School seniors applying to either Northeastern, Boston University, or both schools. 

We should note that this study only included a small portion of the total seniors at Melrose High. Since I only asked certain portions of the students who share classes with me, many students are not accounted for. A student who is the captain of multiple sports teams, leads multiple clubs, and volunteers at his or her church for four hours per week could definitely have a better chance of being accepted to Northeastern or Boston University than a student who does none of the activities listed. However, based solely on the data I collected, as well as the data of various acceptance rates from Northeastern and Boston University, there is a high probability that many students will be disappointed in March when letters that read “denied'' arrive in their mailboxes. Since Northeastern’s acceptance rate is only 18%, and roughly 75% of the people I surveyed are applying to Northeastern, the odds are just not in everyone’s favor. Based on data alone, it seems that about 27 students applying just to Northeastern will be let down in March, or January for students who applied early. Roughly 21 students who applied only to Boston University will be let down. 

There is a possibility that schools such as Northeastern and Boston University may accept more students from cities around Boston simply because of geographical location. This means that Northeastern and Boston University may be more likely to accept students from Melrose, Massachusetts than Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is not always the case, though, because there are many other factors besides geographical location, such as GPA and extracurricular activities, that account for who gets into what schools. I heard about roughly ten students from Melrose High School, who were seniors for the 2020-2021 school year, and were accepted to Northeastern. This is a large number of students accepted to one college from one particular school. Also worth a mention is that these are not the only top schools that people from Melrose High are applying to. I know of schools with even lower acceptance rates, such as Brown, Notre Dame, Duke, and more. And this is not just at Melrose High. The reason these schools receive so many applications is because so many teeangers, from all over the country, apply and hope for acceptance. This system of applying and hoping with all of our hearts to get in is an unfortunate reality, as it is likely that many people will be rejected from their favorite schools.

What are the Real Reasons for Wanting to Attend Top Colleges?

So, why do so many people want to attend “well known” colleges and universities? One of the main reasons is economic stability. In a 2002 episode of the popular drama Gilmore Girls, Emily Gilmore puts it perfectly: “With the job market dwindling...everyone knows the best chance for success and financial security is not just to go to college, but to go to a top college.” Well said, Emily. The name of that episode, in case you're wondering, was Application Anxiety. Emily’s point is valid, as many youngsters do want to attend well known colleges in hopes of finding a job after graduating. Picture the following scenario: you are the owner of the law firm that defends the American branch of McDonald’s from lawsuits. You need to add one more person to your firm to really strengthen your team. Would you add the individual who graduated from the University of New Hampshire Law School with a GPA of 4.0, or the candidate who graduated from Yale Law with a GPA of 3.7? You probably think the Yale graduate is more qualified, simply because he graduated from Yale. More often than not, the Yale graduate would get chosen, not because of grade point average, but because of the reputation of the school. This happened in 2015 with a Yale graduate named Aaron Hopkins, who was chosen as one of the lawyers to defend MacDonald’s in a lawsuit. He was picked over Quinnipiac law school graduate Leonard Bates (Kasity, 2016). 

This is not just the case with lawyers. This repeatedly occurs in multiple professions with multiple jobs. In the AI field, for example, “More prestigious organizations focus on a small set of elite schools. Many job postings, such as those from Google, Facebook, and Pinterst, list “degree from a top university” as a prerequisite.” The same source recalls that “Stanford graduates constitute more than 5% of the workforce of Facebook and Google...Carnegie Mellon alumni constitute more than 7% of employees at Uber and Pinterest, and 11% of Yelp Employees are UC Berkeley alumni” (One, 2019). If you think this correlation of attending a school with a 7% acceptance rate and “earning” a job at Google is a coincidence, you are wrong. Sure, the people who work at Google and Facebook were most likely hired, at least partially, for their talent. But they were also hired because their applications read “Stanford”. And this favoring of applicants who went to good colleges by an employer is not just present in the field of artificial intelligence. Researchers at Indeed conducted a 2016 survey of 500 employers at big name hospitals, marketing companies, and insurance companies. Just some of the companies and institutions they collected data from included Progressive, Cleveland Clinic, and the marketing department for M&Ms. Paul Wolfe, senior vice president of human resources at Indeed, reported that “Nearly 49% of hiring managers reported believing that the institution an applicant graduated from plays an important role in hiring” (Dishman, 2016). Just about half of the managers Indeed surveyed reported that the college an applicant graduated from matters in their decision of hiring. The article also reports that “Thirty-seven percent of managers who reported their alma mater as a top school prefer to hire candidates from top institutions only...41% of managers who didn't graduate from a top-ranked college said they weigh experience more heavily than a degree” (Dishman, 2016). Managers who graduated from a top institution prefer to hire employees who also graduated from top institutions. This makes sense, as many people tend to group with people of similar qualities. There is a large bias, especially in hiring managers from larger companies, to hire the candidate that graduated from a well known institution. 

Networking is also a major reason many people want to attend top colleges. JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs host the majority of their on campus interviews and information sessions at jobs fairs at top colleges. In 2016, the company left the most employers at Harvard and UC Berkeley (Crimson, 2018). With the most representatives being assigned to top colleges such as Harvard and UC Berkeley, it is more likely that people who attend those schools will be chosen as employees. The same article reads that “The top targets for Bulge Bracket Banks (the largest and most profitable banks) are the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Harvard University, Cambridge University, and Cornell university” (Crimson, 2018). With more chances to network, it is no doubt that people who attend more well known schools have a leg up on those who attend lesser “prestigious” universities. 

Another major reason that many people want to attend well known colleges is for their own reputation. To illustrate, when a person says “I go to the same college that Jeff Bezos went to”, it could encourage this person to actually believe they can succeed if they go to Princeton, simply because Bezos went there and is known to many people as “successful”. This is not the case for everyone who attends top institutions, however, as many of them are very humble and know that success depends on oneself, not the college one attends. 

So, why are “well known” schools really all that? It is nice to graduate from the same college as Jeff Bezos, and network with people from Google and Cleveland Clinic. However, just going to a top school does not necessarily guarantee you a job after college. You can receive a great education from a school that is less well known than Princeton or Harvard, maybe even not go into debt from student loans, and still end up with a great job. It really depends on what type of college experience you alone want to have for the next four years. Urban or rural? $30,000 per year versus $60,000? Rather than focusing on college rankings, you should consider the options that are right for your and your family. 

Sources

https://collegesearch.collegeboard.org/home

https://collegeadmissionsstrategies.com/why-is-college-admission-getting-more-and-more-competitive/

https://smartcollegevisit.com/2019/11/early-decision-denied-deferred-now-what.html

https://www.correlation-one.com/blog/are-recruiters-too-focused-on-top-tier-schools

https://www.fastcompany.com/3060544/despite-evidence-hiring-managers-are-biased-towards-graduates-from-top-colleges

https://www.crimsoneducation.org/us/blog/campus-life-more/top-university-success/

Various school websites, including Salve Regina, Northeastern, Stanford, and Villanova