OneSTDV (“Stan”) has a good post followed by a good discussion when it comes to college choices. He weighs the importance of location (not important), size (important, bigger is better), social life (get drunk, make friends quickly), and academic prestige (overrated).

Here are a few contributions I have on the subject:

Honors College: He’s absolutely right about the honors college. Bar none that was the best decision I made prior to enrolling at Southern Tech University. The classes were far better and more interesting. Most importantly, though, was the social aspect of it all. Honors dorms. Somewhere between a third and a quarter of my classes were honors classes and somewhere around 100% of the college mates I still keep in touch with were fellow honors students.

One person in the comment section told people to beware of honors colleges as “Political Correctness Factories” and another said “Even crappy state schools like Arizona State have hundreds of National Merit scholars.” In the case of ASU and the like, yes they have many National Merit Scholars. Want to know where you are most likely to find them? Which dorms you are most likely to live with them in?

This advice is particularly pertinent if you’re going to college where you’re going to be on the right side of the bell curve. Southern Tech is a good, but not great, university. But I would say that the average SoTech Honors College person is going to be brighter than the average student at much better universities. I’m not saying that there weren’t some people that snuck in (given my academic profile, I may have been one of them), but it’s a reasonably good way to have some of the benefits of a more selective and expensive university without the drawbacks.

Location/Region: Steve Sailer of all people actually makes a really good point: Region matters. If you have the money, it might really be worth your while to go off to school in the part of the country where you would prefer to live. The connections will be important. I find it noteworthy that a lot of people I met at Sotech who were from out of state settled down in Colosse.

Male/Female Ratio: The first commenter says this is important. Peter says that it’s not because they’ll all sleep with alphas anyway. The dial leans towards Peter on this one, though not because of the Alpha Beta Theory. I think that more important than gender ratios is culture. Schools that heavily skew towards males tends to fall into one of two categories: Agricultural and Techie.

The thing you have to worry about with an ag college (typically non-urban land-grant universities usually named Something State University) is not so much the gender ratio but the culture attached to it. A sort of conservative culture where men are men and nerds are weenies. Even if the numerical odds are not stacked against you (and many of these colleges have reached parity) the culture may well be. Investigate.

Techie schools are going to have the odds stacked even worse against you and a lot of the paltry female population will be Asian (and no Asian-American). However, while for those girls that remain the odds are good the goods are odd as they say. It’s not all that hard to come across as considerably better adjusted than a lot of your peers. It’s sort of like how anime conventions used to have terrible male-female ratios and yet my friends and I each had some measure of success at one. It wasn’t about ratios, it was about competition. We showered. They didn’t. We won.

Likewise, schools with really good male-female ratios can be no good at all. If you go to a wealthy private school, you can run into a situation like this:

It also reminds me of a particular private university in Colosse, Gulf Christian University, known for its snobby women who only date rich men. There’s an email joke that makes the rounds every couple of years that lists jokey complaints from attendees of all of the local universities in the form of “What I want to know is…”. GCU’s entry was something along the lines of “What I want to know is why in a university that is 75% female it’s the other 25% that can never get laid!”

GCU is not a very religious school except for its name, so it’s not that if you’re wondering. If you don’t have what the women at a particular college are going to be looking for, it doesn’t matter how much the numbers slide in your favor. I think it’s also the case at many schools with more female than male students you’re going to have a lot of the females being older women going back to school.

Size: I agree with OneSDTV on this one. Bigger is generally better. I think this is particular true for nerds and less conventional people. If you’re the type of person that can fit in anywhere, it doesn’t make as much of a difference. But I think there are generally more upsides and fewer downsides to a larger school. And even if you discount socialization, if you go to a small school with a really good X Program, what happens if you change majors?

Making friends after freshman year: My experience contradicts Stan on this one. The friends I made in college were spread out over years. If you live in the dorms, college isn’t like high school where you’re surrounded mostly by people in the same grade as you. Every year a new load of freshman roll up into the dorms and you can make friends with them (and that’s excluding transfers). My former roommate Hubert dated a Freshman in each of his first three year at Southern Tech. My ex-roommates Dennis and Karl were below me. Hubert himself was ahead of me. It’s a lot more flexible.

That being said, making friends is one reason why it’s less desirable to spend two years at community college and then transfer in. Stan is not totally wrong. It’s best to get settled and hit the ground running. You’re not doomed if you don’t, but having to jump in halfway into your college career is not preferable.

Academia: This is kind of a tricky topic and I suspect it varies from one situation to the next. My impression in the northeast is that where you went to school matters a great deal more than where it does in Delosa, where I am from. And California may be another place where it has such a clear demarcation between the have (University of California at _) and have not (Cal State – _) universities. And people that are wanting to enter extremely competitive fields. I also would not forego a chance to go to a bona fide Ivy League school. Other than that, though, I agree with Stan. Particularly with the “Honors College” caveat.

Interestingly the data on this is a bit conflicting. Black Sea points to a study that suggests that people that could have gone to an Ivy League school but didn’t ended up just as well. Superdestroyer points to another that says that’s not the case. I’ll have to look closer into this.


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23 Responses to Collegiate Thoughts

  1. Linus says:

    So let’s say an honors college at a larger university has about the same enrollment as a smaller institution with higher academic standards – what’s the advantage to the honors college?

    When I was making the decision, the smaller institution was a way to surround myself with students who wanted to learn and separate myself from those who didn’t. Seems to me an honors college largely accomplishes the former, but would have trouble achieving the latter.

  2. Peter says:

    My guess is that Betas are better off at larger universities, though not necessarily land-grants for the reason you note. At a big place the sheer volume of female students might mean that a Beta can find his match if he’s diligent and lucky. What’s more, let’s say that partway through his college stay he embarks on a conscious effort to de-Betaize himself, to the extent that’s possible. With the anonymity of a big campus he’ll find it easier to make a fresh start and avoid those who remember him the way he used to be.

  3. trumwill says:

    That’s a really good question.

    I would say that the big difference is that an Honors College has big-university advantages that a smaller college doesn’t. Not just in terms of campus events and social clubs, but a wider variety of majors to choose from. You can put the honors students in your more immediate surroundings, but also have exposure to a great many more people (and the sorts of things that added numbers can bring to a school).

    I didn’t find separating myself from those who didn’t want to learn to be a problem at Southern Tech. Not like in High School where they were disruptive. That being said, it was the case that classes full of honors students were more interesting than the classes with a more general population. I can see the appeal of going to a school that’s all like that.

  4. rob says:

    Black Sea points to a study that suggests that people that could have gone to an Ivy League school but didn’t ended up just as well. Superdestroyer points to another that says that’s not the case. I’ll have to look closer into this.

    I don’t think there’s any realistic find out. The sort of people who get into an Ivy and don’t go aren’t the same as people who do. They’re probably less ambitious for one.

    I’d lean towards suggesting going to a good school where you’re better than average. It’s a dirty open secret that many people who matriculate don’t graduate. It’s a huge financial hit to pay for a couple years for no degree. Even going back to school later, it’s a permanent negative on a resume.

    People who get into various schools aren’t random samples, but there is a reasonably good accidental experiment: affirmative action. Not just for race, so please don’t redact this. I prolly got into Reed on geographic diversity. I might have done better at a lower tier school. Might not’ve, but who knows. There was a study of African Americans in law school. Black students who went to schools where their gpa and LSATs were closer to the white students passed the bar at a higher rate than black people who had similar qualifications but went to better schools. The difference could be ambition, or who knows. Plausibly people learn more when the level of instruction is geared towards them. I’d learn more in an average calculus class than going to school with Laplace.

    Being above average at a decent school can catch more attention than being average at a great school, which I suppose is the point of honors colleges. How “easily led” one is matters, but I’m not sure the peer environment is better at higher tier schools.

  5. trumwill says:

    Peter, the anonymity of a large campus is another advantage to going to a bigger school. It’s less the case if you’re in a knit community like an honors college, but there’s still more flexibility. When responding to Linus’s comment, one of the thoughts that crossed my mind was that if you go to a small school and don’t fit in, what can you do? That being said, if you’re smart and in a school with other smart people, your chances of fitting in are better. There’s a reason that my social circle didn’t need to expand much beyond the Honors College.

    I’ve been mulling over larger and smaller dating pools lately. It seems to be the case that larger dating pools are actually more competitive. I notice a lot more in the way of mismatched high schoolers and college kids here in Callie than I think I have ever seen before. The smaller non-Mormon dating pool in Deseret seemed to have more inefficiency than the Mormon dating pool in the same state.

    However, if you have a niche product to sell, it’s much more difficult to sell it in a small market. Maybe you’ll get the better end of the stick of a mismatch, but you’re more likely to make do with someone that you’re less than compatible with that doesn’t appreciate you as much as someone that picked you out of a larger crowd would. If that makes sense.

  6. trumwill says:

    Rob,

    Affirmative action in the context that you mention it is fair ball. So long as we don’t get into a discussion on the merits of the policy, it can provide some insights. I don’t suppose you have any links to the study?

  7. superdestroyer says:

    Considering that most state university have poor graduation rates, being a shy individual at enormous state university (ESU) greatly increases the chance of the person dropping out.

    Look at the university of Minnesota. The six year graduation rate is 63% and it is a commuter school. A shy male student majoring in a science, engineering, or busienss will end up in large lecture hall classes and after freshmen year will be living off campus and going to school will be the same as going to a job. The chance of success is much lower than going to a private school, living on or close to campus, and not having large, lecture hall classes.

  8. Peter says:

    I notice a lot more in the way of mismatched high schoolers and college kids here in Callie than I think I have ever seen before.

    Do you mean mismatched as in unlikely pairings, or in the sense of not dating at all?

  9. trumwill says:

    Superdestroyer, You can also go to ESU and live on campus, though. And you can join clubs if you’re worried about your shyness of which there generally more available. And honors colleges (also recommended) generally have smaller, more intimate classes available.

    Peter, the former.

  10. ecco says:

    Trumwill,
    Would you mind expounding on mismatched high schoolers and college kids? It’s still not very clear.

  11. ecco says:

    Also, I totally agree with the regional comment. I see evidence for it time and time again. I would definitely advise people to not move to a different part of the country and unless they see themselves settling there. Then again, I don’t think most people at 18/19 are capable of making that kind of decision.

  12. trumwill says:

    Ecco,

    In relationship marketplaces (think of a college or a high school as a marketplace), it seems that the larger the marketplace the more efficient it becomes. There’s less settling for lack of available alternatives. You’re less likely to luck into someone a whole lot more desirable than you and you’re less likely to be stuck with someone a whole lot less.

    In a small marketplace, it’s easy to lose the game of musical chairs. If you blow it with someone that is an equal match, there are fewer people with equal market value to fall back on. As such, there are more market inefficiencies.

    It’s sort of like comic books off and on the Internet. It used to be that if you wanted back issues of a comic, you typically had to pay something reasonably close to full price or more to get it. Why? Limited options. Since the people selling comic books have a limited number of customers, they have to make more money on each comic sold. eBay blew the top off off of that. Now you can quite easily get them for a third or a quarter of the price. There’s somebody somewhere selling what you’re after and from their perspective there is somebody somewhere looking to buy it so you don’t have to sweat small profit margins. The eBay comic book market is ruthlessly efficient that way.

    And so it works with relationships. The more options you have, the less likely anybody is to have to settle. That means that you are less likely to have to settle, but also that someone else is less likely to settle for you.

    Does that make more sense?

  13. trumwill says:

    Rob, thanks for the links. Unfortunately, they illuminate the problem with using affirmative action as an indicator of first and second-choice dynamics: it’s too political. It seems that both sides of the argument are working backwards from their position on the issue itself. The Creative Destruction one in particular seems mostly interested in poking Cato’s eye.

    On the whole, though, it seems like those arguing that mismatch adversely affects the “beneficiaries” have the slightly stronger argument. Using first-time bar pass as a metric strikes me as more useful (for our purposes, anyway) than counting all of those that passed the bar after any number of attempts (though the latter does matter more for the question that they are exploring, which is the best way to produce more black lawyers). I also think that they have the better end of the selection bias argument as I find EqualJustice’s contrary opinion that the smarter kids may be going to the weaker schools for financial package reasons.

  14. trumwill says:

    I would definitely advise people to not move to a different part of the country and unless they see themselves settling there.

    The only exception would be if you’re looking at a school with a national profile. If you go to the University of Michigan, you don’t have to worry as much about being stuck in the state of Michigan as if you go to West Virginia University. On the other hand, sometimes universities have pipelines into larger cities. Tulane University, for instance, has a strong pipeline into New York City. A lot of smaller states have pipelines into nearby larger states. It’s probably not a bad idea to see where a school’s largest alumni clubs are.

    But these are exceptions. By and large, go to school where you want to settle down if you can afford it. I would caution against going too deeply in debt going to Queens College when you can just go to Florida State instead.

  15. rob says:

    Rob, thanks for the links. Unfortunately, they illuminate the problem with using affirmative action as an indicator of first and second-choice dynamics: it’s too political. It seems that both sides of the argument are working backwards from their position on the issue itself.

    I thought the case was stronger when I mentioned it last night too. While Sandler isn’t black, I’m more or less sure his kids are.

  16. Maria says:

    What are the implications for AA when online higher education becomes a reality? The elites will have to offer online courses to compete with upstarts, and then how would they know what their enrollees look like? Obviously you can’t bring something like all med school classes online, but engineering? Teacher’s college? Law? Yeah, I see those as pretty much doable.

    Universities won’t be able to exclude bright but average or low-income white students from online courses. I foresee that online courses will but a huge dent in the AA industry.

  17. trumwill says:

    The elites will have to offer online courses to compete with upstarts, and then how would they know what their enrollees look like?

    I don’t think they will have to do that at all. Not at the expense of an admissions process similar to the one they have now. The Harvards and Berkeleys maintain their stature through exclusion and will always be more desirable than a Cal State online program regardless of the education they actually provide. You’ll probably see more schools go the University of Maryland route – especially flagship schools in small states that could use the enrollment – but none of the elite universities.

  18. Maria says:

    don’t think they will have to do that at all. Not at the expense of an admissions process similar to the one they have now. The Harvards and Berkeleys maintain their stature through exclusion and will always be more desirable than a Cal State online program regardless of the education they actually provide.

    For how long, though? It the quality of the education of their graduates decline, while the quality of those who take online courses goes up, how long will it be before employers start to notice?

  19. trumwill says:

    The quality of student coming out is less important than the quality of student going in. Exclusive universities don’t have to actually provide as good an education as long as the people leaving are the ones that came in as the best and brightest.

    I would also add that while there are opportunities for tremendously good and affordable education through the Internet, they’re going to have a hard time competing on quality alone. Their selling point will be quality+value.

    It’s commuter colleges that would be under the most threat from a good, affordable online education.

  20. Maria says:

    Hmm, you’re probably right about that, Will. All in all, though, I’d rather my kid go to a decent online college than a top-tier one, to escape the “progressive” brainwashing. My heart is set on Hillsdale but I’d like to go the online route if we can’t get into that.

  21. trumwill says:

    Does your son have a contrarian personality at all? I know various people (including myself) whose college’s tilt ended up pushing them (sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently) in the other direction. My best friend’s conservative Christian university had him going in a Christian and graduating an atheist. The “brainwashing” can actually backfire if you’ve got a critically thinking kid.

    There are also some conservative schools out there or at least schools with strong conservative communities. Particularly if you’re willing to look at out-of-state or private school tuition.

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