Parents, while you’re out (hopefully) enjoying your barbecue today, take a mental inventory of your friends and where they went to college. In fact, you can do this pretty much any time.
Are those who went to prestigious colleges happier and more successful than those who did not? Do they have happier marriages and better behaved kids?
Graduates of prestigious schools had to work hard to get there. And they’ll probably sing the praises of their alma maters like most people do when they look back on their college years.
But chances are that your Fourth of July barbecue will be full of adults who had to make their way in the world like the rest of us regardless of where they went to school. Graduates of prestigious colleges don’t get handed better lives any more than graduates of less selective schools are forced to start their lives deep in the end zone.
I’m about to go spend my Fourth of July with happy, successful, wonderful friends and family members. My barbecue inventory (not counting the baby and the dog):
UC Irvine, Colgate, Goddard College, Occidental College, Sarah Lawrence College, UC Santa Barbara, and Santa Clara University.
Happy Fourth!