Laney Tower

Issue date: 2/4/10 Last update: 2/4/10 at 4:30 AM PST Section: OpEd

It would be nice to get into Yale. Harvard. UC Berkeley. MIT. There would be the prestige; surely, there would be the parents and relatives and friends holding you in high esteem, occasionally slipping in that accomplishment of yours in random conversations of theirs—at dinners, or other get-togethers.

And along with the prestige comes the promise of a better job. These schools would take you, you might think, because they would want you, the first among many. If only you could get there, then your life would be set to be great.

You know you want to be there.

Your parents push you into that goal. They remind you, or if your parents are more the type, order you to get A’s because you have to get into UC Berkeley.

Among my peers, there are more who know which college they’re going to than those who have decided what job they’ll take up after their time in college or grad school. Most are really just interested in the prestige, and not much about the job opportunities.

It isn’t wrong to dream about getting into the top universities. In fact, it serves to motivate us students to do our best, to pressure us into aiming for that A. But I’d rather parents train their sons and daughters to aim for excellence instead of training them to be college applicants.

The latter logic would make sense in an Asian country, particularly China, where admission to a less-than-elite university can mean an indefinite stint as a factory worker, or a cleaner, regardless of the fact that you have a college education.

But in a place like America? In a country that offers more social mobility than other countries can give? In America, the smart and the hardworking go to Harvard and thrive exceptionally well in their lives mostly because they were the smart and the hardworking, and little because they went to Harvard.

Indeed, you can get into Harvard by aiming for it. But there is not much use in chasing prestige for the sake of prestige itself. Yiting Liu did, for example, gaining national celebrity in her motherland China for getting a scholarship into Harvard, and for the book her parents wrote—it was a manual on how to raise children to be like Yiting, so they can grow up to be like their “Harvard Girl.” (It was a tough regimen she lived with.)

But at Harvard, she was described as “unassuming” and a “typical student.” For her entrance essay, she wrote about how she wanted to study hard, get into a good college, and find a way to end poverty in China.

Yiting Liu graduated in 2003 and worked for the Boston Consulting Group in New York City. She is presently criticized by those in China for not doing anything.

It’s a misuse of effort and youth to dedicate so much effort toward such a fleeting phase of academics instead of more meaningful ambitions. What would be more meaningful is if we instilled in ourselves and in our children a mindset that strives beyond mediocrity, beyond college admissions and statistics, beyond petty ambitions. The prestige follows naturally; it belongs to the hardworking who strive for noble causes, for meaningful purposes, or for excellence itself.

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