What's in a name like Harvard, Yale, Brown or Princeton? If you ask college admissions strategist Greg Kaplan, the answer might surprise you. It's an age-old question that resonates among a slew of ambitious soon-to-be college students and their aspirational parents caught in the fervor of the rankings race, pursuing the dream of 'going Ivy' – or having some other elite university's name stamped on their resume – with unrelenting zeal.
We really have to ask ourselves, ‘what are we getting in return for this? And are they going to be able to do what they want to do?’ It's okay to spend less on college because guess what? That allows you to invest more in their futures, so I think when someone says, 'I'm going to community college, I'm going to transfer,' that's fantastic. You're increasing the return on investment.
had better job prospects coming out of an unranked law school, UC Irvine, than I did coming out of the Warren School of Business, where obviously Donald Trump attended, and I always tell students that. What I also always tell students is look at the list of Fortune 100 CEOs and where they went to college, and notice what is absent are the Ivy Leagues.' Kaplan defines 'long-term success' as helping young people become 'healthy, happy and financially independent adults.
Kaplan's advice to students? Focus, instead, on the three traits college admissions officers are looking for – grit, passion and leadership. 'With grit, admissions officers are really trying to understand and if a young person has the skills to deal with life's day-to-day problems. In my book, I document the skyrocketing statistics that are showing that young people are just ill-equipped to deal with life's day-to-day problems.