Thanks for sharing. It’s now 20 years since I was a high school senior applying to colleges. Here’s what I think is worth knowing that I didn’t. Note that some of this advice is a bit US centric and likely skewed by my career in software engineering:
Going to the most prestigious college you can is potentially worth it if you want to do something that requires a strong signal of competence (careers in academia, consulting).
Going to the cheapest quality college you can (probably a major college in state) is a great choice if you need a degree to get a job or you need some time to learn to be independent before you can get a job on your own skills.
If you like to learn and are already able to get stuff done on your own without people micromanaging you, you can probably skip college if you can convince someone to employ you since you can learn on your own for free (or get your employer to pay for the time you spend learning things) and once you’ve had a job that serves as a much better credential than any degree for getting your next job.
I found undergraduate education very helpful for giving me time and space to “grow up”, and it gave me a shared baseline of knowledge that helped accelerate me in my career, though one that I think someone could learn on their own under different circumstances. Graduate school was helpful in similar ways, mostly for me in that it was the first point at which education got hard enough that I had to work to succeed (I found out what “studying” was, had to learn and fail and learn how to manage my time, energy, and motivation) and couldn’t coast by on my raw smarts. On the other hand, I probably stayed in school longer than necessary because I was confused about what I wanted, and a push to join the workforce sooner rather than later might have been helpful.
Thanks for sharing. It’s now 20 years since I was a high school senior applying to colleges. Here’s what I think is worth knowing that I didn’t. Note that some of this advice is a bit US centric and likely skewed by my career in software engineering:
Going to the most prestigious college you can is potentially worth it if you want to do something that requires a strong signal of competence (careers in academia, consulting).
Going to the cheapest quality college you can (probably a major college in state) is a great choice if you need a degree to get a job or you need some time to learn to be independent before you can get a job on your own skills.
If you like to learn and are already able to get stuff done on your own without people micromanaging you, you can probably skip college if you can convince someone to employ you since you can learn on your own for free (or get your employer to pay for the time you spend learning things) and once you’ve had a job that serves as a much better credential than any degree for getting your next job.
I found undergraduate education very helpful for giving me time and space to “grow up”, and it gave me a shared baseline of knowledge that helped accelerate me in my career, though one that I think someone could learn on their own under different circumstances. Graduate school was helpful in similar ways, mostly for me in that it was the first point at which education got hard enough that I had to work to succeed (I found out what “studying” was, had to learn and fail and learn how to manage my time, energy, and motivation) and couldn’t coast by on my raw smarts. On the other hand, I probably stayed in school longer than necessary because I was confused about what I wanted, and a push to join the workforce sooner rather than later might have been helpful.