I was driving in western Kansas recently and saw a Ft. Hays State University front vanity license plate. Hays is about 5 hours west of us, so you don't see that often around the Kansas City area. I realized that my initial reaction was to wonder why anyone would display and brag about this, as I didn't know much or think much of the university. Of course, I was in their back yard, so of course they were proud of their university. My reaction was snobbish, I was surprised to find. I should be happy that this person wanted to go to a university and learn something and better themselves. Why the automatic dismissal because I went to a bigger university?
As an aside, I did some quick research just now and discovered that Ft. Hays State's enrollment is 11,200 - if you count the 6,000 online students from China. Really? That's amazing. How did so many Chinese find out about this relatively obscure
American University? Are there a lot of Chinese Professors at Ft. Hays State? What a strange fact to uncover. This leaves 5,200 graduate and undergraduate students at Ft. Hays State, so the online students outnumber the warm bodies in seats.
However, my university isn't really that much more prestigious in the great scheme of things, in the bigger national pecking order. It does have about 23,000 enrollment (I think that's bodies in seats, but it doesn't say). So it's bigger than Ft. Hays State. I'm not sure it's known as an engineering or technical giant, though. I know if you want to really impress people with your engineering degree, it should be from Berkley or MIT (graduateshot.com puts Stanford over Berkley and my alma mater is not ranked in the top 55). So just as you would not move to some big city and put a Ft. Hays State bumper sticker on your car, you would probably not put a Kansas State logo on your car, either.
The Ivy League and most big east coast schools' alumni display some well deserved superiority complexes. There is much evidence to back up their pride. The Ivy League produces many Presidents all of the current Supreme Court Justices and a great deal of the leaders in business and medicine. MIT is unequalled in engineering. There is little subjective evidence that these schools are not the best (except in sports - which proves my point, I think).
Do these universities admit only the best students, or do only the only the best strive to attend such good universities? I think it's a combination of both. Only an intense desire would drive you to attend such a place. If someone is the type to to aim for an Ivy League education, then to prepare for years, and then to go through the grueling application process, they start out already on a course to higher purpose and stronger ambition. The perception of a higher quality of degree from some schools is self fulfilling.
This is not to say that this kind of education is the only way to get to the top. There are countless examples of self made millionaires that don't even go to college. Sometimes success comes from hard work or common sense, not from what is learned at college. However, within the system, whether it be corporate or political, the source of the college degree is the key that opens doors and showers opportunities on people.
My college days were nothing special, I know now, with experience and the perspective of time. I partied, chased women, and did enough to get by many semesters. I did not understand what I was studying in the broader context, and frankly, I did not live up to my potential. I recently had a dream with an old house in it. The house was dilapidated and falling apart. This was a little like my fraternity experience at college. It was not squalid, but not luxurious either. My brother did live in a house that was literally falling apart when he was in college. I would have to say that sometimes having nothing can make you hungry for more. It can force you to try harder. Other times it just drives you down. I know I thought college was great at the time when I went, but looking back now, it just seems average now. Certainly nothing to look down my nose at a smaller university over.
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