Hunched over her laptop and squinting at the blue light emanating from her screen, Sara Wilkinson frantically typed and typed, finally letting out a long breath as she finished the last of her essays. After spending countless hours on her applications for weeks with no end in sight, Wilkinson had finally done it; she had just submitted her last college application.

Hundreds of thousands of other seniors experience the same thing as Wilkinson, spending the majority of their days working on their college applications. As seniors compile the activities and grades they’ve earned over the last four years and attempt to fit their whole life onto an application, many of them feel stressed and anxious about their future. The thought of entering into the unknown coupled with the possibility of their long-held dreams of attending prestigious universities shattering is too much to bear.

In addition to their schoolwork and extracurriculars, most high school seniors have the added responsibility of applying to colleges. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 61.4% of 2023 high school graduates were enrolled in a college or university the following fall, meaning that the majority of seniors do choose to apply to universities or attend community college. Many find this process highly stressful, including Wilkinson.

“It’s a lot more than I thought it would be because it’s not all just one application, like the common app. There’s the UC, there’s the Cal State, there’s all the supplementals. But you just have to get it done, because that’s the only way. You just have to stay focused and push through,” Wilkinson said.

Many high schoolers have also pinned their hopes on attending a prestigious university, ranging from the top-tier Ivy Leagues to other well-regarded universities, such as UCLA and Duke University, and have spent the majority of their lives curating the perfect application.

“Mostly, I focus on my grades in school. I try to keep them up as much as I can. And then I do a few outside-of-school activities, like dance. I also do community service with Key Club, and I just try to keep myself busy,” Wilkinson said.

Other students have worked to find different methods of attending their dream schools, such as attending Middle College or working towards a transfer degree from a community college, inspired by graduates who were able to enter their dream schools and live successful lives from then on.

“My experience in community college was as a commuter school, with all sorts of people from different walks of life. On the other hand, Cal was a much higher caliber school than any of the community colleges I attended, and it was much easier to get a job out of Cal than it was out of other schools in the Bay Area. And when I started hiring, I noticed that the people coming out of Cal and Stanford were a cut above most other computer science degrees in the Bay Area,” said transfer degree and UC Berkeley graduate Joe Hart. 

However, the pressure to get into a prestigious college such as UC Berkeley or Stanford University has caused students to stress as they plan for the future and calculate what will gain them the best chances of admission to a “good” college.

“I am choosing not to apply for colleges this year and instead attend community college because I feel like I’ll have a better chance of getting into schools due to the transfer agreements that the San Mateo Community College District has with the UC schools, and also because getting into colleges with an associate’s degree as opposed to just a high school degree is statistically way easier to do. So earning a transfer degree would better my chances of getting into schools that I would like, as opposed to settling for schools that will only accept me as a high school student,” said Carlmont senior Tina Sum. 

According to The Hill, it is commonly believed that a degree from a prestigious university will set students up for success in the future. High schoolers in particular have been told that attending a prestigious college will secure their future jobs, a successful career, and the upscale life they’ve always dreamed of.

With the increase in students aspiring to attend such universities, students have started hiring college counselors to help them work through the application process.

“I think students/families come to me in a mix of situations, but most are really looking for guidance in high school with an eye on what’s happening in the college application process,” said private college admissions counselor Agnes Chan. “There’s a huge variety of students in the world and they’re interested in different schools; we like to focus on finding a school that’s a right fit — this is usually a combination of learning style, school social/academic culture, size, location, and sometimes prestige comes into the conversation as well.”

Attending a prestigious college often costs more than just the tuition — tutoring, college counseling, and private high school are all additional costs that frequently go hand-in-hand with other college-related fees. The effort that students put in to build the so-called perfect application is so extensive that it sometimes begins to weigh on their mental health, leading experts to question whether college prestige is even worth the cost.

The book Current Issues in Economics and Finance attempts to understand if the benefits of college still outweigh the costs through an explanation of how the average wages of college graduates have been decreasing over time, while college tuition has only seen sharp increases. Still, those with lower levels of education, and non-graduates, have also experienced falling wages, explaining the increase in college enrollment.

A study from Pew Research Center considers the worth of college as well, explaining how both U.S. workers with and without bachelor’s degrees have seen the same changes in wages amid rising college tuition and student debt. The study also concluded that a minority of Americans find it important to have a four-year college degree to get a well-paying job today, half believe that it is less important to have a four-year degree in today’s world than it was 20 years ago, and a minority say that earning a four-year college degree is still worth the loans a student might need to afford college.

Additionally, recent studies from Forbes have emerged suggesting that an Ivy League degree might not matter as much as applicants think. Ivy League colleges were originally known for their athletic, not academic achievements, and due to their high costs, lack of merit scholarships, and exaggerated standing, might not be worth the cost and effort. 

Investopedia has expressed similar sentiments, describing how the majority of Americans no longer believe a college degree is worth the cost and effort, and how prestige isn’t a universally definitive term. While some determine the prestige of a university by its national ranking, others consider its acceptance rate, or its success (or lack thereof) in producing future leaders as indicators of prestige. The article also highlighted how barely any of the top 10 CEOs from Fortune 500 companies attended highly prestigious schools, reintroducing the argument of whether attending a prestigious college significantly improves one’s quality of life or chance of future success.

Many individuals have found themselves living happily despite not attending a prestigious college, and share the belief that a prestigious degree is not the only way to a successful lifestyle.

“I like the route that I took because it allowed for me to really understand what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, and across all of the opportunities that I had at Boston University and at the University of San Francisco, I ingrained myself in additional programs that allowed for me to gain more experience,” said Andrea Struve, an AP Capstone teacher at Carlmont High School.

With evidence showing that the prestige of a university might not matter quite as much as it once did, students have begun to reconsider their dreams of attending one. Many students find that the price of earning a prestigious college degree might just be too high, including the rising tuition costs, which increased from $4,648 in 1963 to $14,307 in 2021 according to the National Center of Education Statistics.

“I do not want to go to a prestigious college, mostly because they tend to be very expensive. If I were to go to one of those schools, I would have to pay for some of it myself, and I personally don’t think attending would be worth it for me to go into student debt,” Wilkinson said.

Several graduates also factored the cost of attending a particular college into their college decision. 

“Part of the reason why I accepted the transfer to the University of San Francisco is because everything was fully funded for me. When I was at Boston University, I only had financial aid, and the amount of debt that I was accruing there was prohibitive versus having something fully funded,” Struve said.

In spite of the costs, graduates from prestigious colleges support the long-held theory that college prestige does matter by explaining that where their degree came from played a significant role in their success and improving their quality of life.

“Attending UPenn has helped my career in several ways. One, prospective employers have associated my UPenn education with a level of competence and capability, which opens up job opportunities. Two, I am able to gain access to UPenn’s alumni network. Three, a UPenn education taught me the skills and gave me the confidence to learn new things and solve new problems. More importantly, I have made lifelong friends in college. In fact, I met my spouse at UPenn, and that’s the greatest reward for me,” said Will Dong, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who currently works as a principal at PG&E Corporation.

The idea that attending a prestigious college is beneficial is also backed by evidence, with a Counterpoints study finding that higher education is worth the cost based on the fact that college graduates had much higher average annual incomes than those who had not attended college at all.

Similarly, a research report published in JSTOR questioning whether college was worth it asserted that the financial returns of graduating from a four-year university significantly outweigh the costs of attending that university; in other words, that college is worth the cost.

“I think attending UPenn was certainly worth the cost and effort for me. In terms of cost, UPenn provides generous financial aid to those who need it; for those who don’t, I believe the cost of UPenn is competitive with other quality universities. In terms of effort, I think giving your best in doing something of importance to yourself is always worth it, regardless of whether it will lead to admission at a prestigious college,” Dong said.

According to the JSTOR report considering the worth of college, the major a student chooses can have a strong impact on how they end up in the future, possibly more than the prestige of the college they attend.

“If you’re going to a prestigious school just so you can say that you went there, I don’t believe that you’re necessarily going to get the best experience there as opposed to if you went to a school that is less well-known, but has a better major that suits you,” Sum said.

So while a college degree certainly impacts one’s quality of life and future, whether it is worth the cost and effort — to attend a prestigious college in particular — is still up for debate. Depending on the major a student chooses, whether they are eligible for financial aid, if they find the need to hire a college counselor, and many, many other factors, the “worth” of attending such a college varies.

“As an immigrant, attending a prestigious college was my main focus in high school. My parents worked hard to support my education, and I wanted to do my best to make them proud. Looking back, however, I think attending a prestigious college should not be the ultimate goal. Instead of focusing solely on an outcome that one cannot control, I believe the main focus ought to be on the process of self-exploration and self-improvement, which is within one’s control,” Dong said.

Although attending a prestigious university offers many benefits, often including better academic resources, increased opportunities for networking, and enhancing students’ skill sets, students can also rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, and with the added responsibility of maintaining their grades in their effort to curate the perfect application, their effort may no longer generate an adequate return on their time and money.

“I think a lot of emphasis is placed on attending a school that is name brand, and if it isn’t a good fit for you, I don’t think it will serve you in the long run. You might receive a degree, but you might not be happy across the four years, or you might not understand what it is that you want to do while you’re there, because it might be hard to be there,” Struve said. 

As seniors continue working on their college applications and look anxiously toward their future, they may rest a little more peacefully upon realizing that not attending a prestigious university does not mean they will not be successful in the future. 

“I really do believe you can go to any college, get a good education, and be successful as long as you just work hard,” Wilkinson said. “It’s not the college that matters so much as the effort you put in.”