It's April madness, where high school kids frenzy over each other's college admission result. Once they calm down from peer comparison jealousy and parental disappointment and the regret over the uselessness of college admission counseling, people settle down with whichever school ranked the highest in U.S. News that they got into and enter the next frenzy: asking upperclassmen for advice.
From various software projects and the endeavors I did in high school, I still know a few friends a few years below me who just got into college. I congratulated them for their college admission results and offered them generous advice.
Their questions always seem to be:
- How's your college experience
- Which college should I choose
To which, I always answered
- College really is just another school, except, you are living or dying on your own. And people drink. So, don't overthink it. I didn't treat college as a special place, and my experience validated my attitude.
- Whichever one ranks the highest in U.S. News. Because that's what you will end up picking anyways, and your parents will pick based on U.S. News on your behalf too despite the illusion "you choose your own college". Higher ranking schools doesn't mean better classes, but they do mean more resources and higher prestige. And job market chase after prestige. CMU has quant firms and big tech chasing after them at a job fair every week (I heard), while many other colleges never have had an actual job fair with big names.
And I always add: "The best people I know became so good are good not because of college. The UCSB team that went to the ICPC world finals contest got so good on their own. The professor in charge of ICPC don't even reply to their emails, let alone coaching them. And the people who built great projects learned the art on their own. If you merely follow the class projects, you will end up with nothing more some AI slop, which you still have to learn and build on your own anyways, because professors are not engineers. They just administer the grading."
College, as another step in our mass-produced education system, creates good average. But it doesn't create the outliers. The outliers grow themselves and lament over how did the less qualified people end up in better colleges. This article is by the guy who made it to the ICPC World Finals at UCSB. He's doing great now. So are a lot of my other friends who ended up in worse colleges than they qualify for. And don't worry about them. They are all doing great now. After college application, merit stands out more.
So, to all of those asking upper classman for advice about which college to go, or doom-scrolling r/ApplyingToCollege on Reddit, just do it. Just commit to a decent college and work on leveling up your true skills.
Think about all the time you spent reading Reddit or hunting down upper classman for advice; had you spent all the hours on learning, say, SQL, you would have nailed all the JOIN and window functions and CTE by now.
It's really, really funny. You spend a whole summer and semester ChatGPT-ing out your college application essay, plus many more hours in high school volunteering because your mom signed you up for it, plus all the other extracurriculars you pretended to ChatGPT "please make me sound passionate about my non-profit tutoring underprivilied kids".
Then Ivy league results come out, UC results come out. You get jealous over some luckier folks because they got into Berkeley and you didn't, and rot the last semester and summer of high school senior year away, swearing that you will "lock-in" in college.
And in college no one is locked in. ChatGPT is locked in though. Oh by the way, it's $10,000 a quarter if you are in the cheapest state-university. $100,000 a year if you are in USC. How much did you worry about saving that $20 off an Amazon coupon? And look at how meager an Amazon coupon saved you compares to that diploma that doesn't even get you a job these days, beacuse college creates averages and outliers are not born from colleges.
So, just do it. Accumulate true skills, whatever the skills may be as long as they are somewhat useful that you are genuinely passionate about. Did I say "passion"? Wake up, you can't fake passion now. You can fake a 501 non-profit application, but you can't fake 4 years of where your time will go.
Just. Do. It.