Awilda Rodriguez explains parental fixation on elite colleges
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, writer Beckie Supiano asks why parents indicted in the recent admissions bribery scheme would go to such great lengths to help their children get into an elite school. Citing experts in the field, she uncovers reasons such as the pervasive idea that one’s measure as a parent can be judged by which school their child attends. An emphasis on status is another possible reason for “admissions mania.”
In this article, Dr. Awilda Rodriguez also explains why people are fixated on elite colleges when it is possible to get a good education at multiple other institutions. She states that elite colleges are about long-term ease, in actuality. She adds that the decision she made as a teenager to go to Princeton still continues to matter: "I won't ever not be a Princeton Tiger," she said. “Sure, it's possible to get into a good graduate school or land a prestigious job without ‘Princeton’ on one's résumé. But having it there opens doors. You're able to leverage this privilege in all of these overt and subtle ways, if you so choose, for the rest of your life.”
