Students are too focused on the allure of prestigious colleges, often believing that if they can just get into one, everything else will just fall into place. All their work that led up to it will be validated. They’ll be happy and less stressed. They’ll be virtually guaranteed a life of success and fulfillment.
But college acceptances, even to prestigious schools, don’t work like that. Yes, an acceptance to your dream college would feel great and would definitely be worth celebrating. But any expectation that just getting in will start a domino-like chain reaction where everything else in life just goes your way is unrealistic and unhealthy. Your education, your success, and your life are all a work in progress, no matter where you go to college.
Author and Harvard professor Shaun Achor spent years not only counseling Harvard students, but also teaching a positive psychology course so popular that at one point, 1 out of every 7 Harvard students enrolled. I think his quote in this Psychology Today article has a lot of relevance for high school students (and their parents) who are putting too much hope into just how much happiness that dream college acceptance could likely bring (the bracketed portion is mine):
“When I was counseling overwrought Harvard students, one of the first things I would tell them is to stop equating a future success with happiness. Empirically, we know success does not lead to happiness. Is everyone with a job happy? Is every rich person happy? Then step one is to stop thinking that finding a job, getting a promotion [ed. note: or getting into a famous college], etc. is the only thing that can brings happiness. Success does not mean happiness. Check out any celebrity magazine to look for examples to disabuse you of thinking that being beautiful, successful or rich will make you happy.”
If you love a prestigious college, you think you would thrive there, and your counselor agrees, by all means, take your best shot! But also take some comfort in knowing that whether or not you’re happy and successful in college and in life will depend a lot more on you than it will on where your college sits in the US News rankings that year.