School Ranking and Advocacy
If I would be an advocate, I would like to turn myself into someone like Loren Pope for he is a different kind of advocate. He fought for colleges who possess everything to offer students and parents, except the status and brand. Pope used to collaborate with parents to help get their children into the most well-known schools in America. He has expressed his perspective to fight for small, not-so-known, liberal arts schools all across America. Pope has published a book used by high school guidance counselors entitled Colleges that Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change The Way You Think About Colleges. This man has acted as a wonderful and staunch ally for those schools. Although he is not paid for his work, he is providing an awesome service to schools that do not get much attention but should. I haven’t heard of any Filipino who did the same for lesser-fancied schools although it’s easy to spot people who are so rabid about their school being the supreme institution.
Our society is one in which everyone seems to assume that the climacteric moment in young people’s lives is finding out which colleges have accepted them. Gaining admission to an elite school is treated to be a shining, shimmering passport to success; for bright and talented students, failure to do so is viewed as a major life setback. As a result, the devotion on getting into a mega-selective college or university has never been greater. Conversely, Loren Pope’s message is that you don’t have to go to a brand-name school to get a superior education. He has done extensive research on the 40 small liberal arts colleges that are included in his book, Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change The Way You Think About Colleges. His research included visits, discussions with faculty, staff and students, and revisits a decade later to the schools that are included in his book. All of the colleges are student-centered and have collaborative learning environments. Also, on his another book, Looking Beyond the Ivy League, Pope has persuaded that the ultra-glamor schools were losing their status as the sentinel of success and accomplishment.
I strongly recommend Loren Pope’s books to all students, alumni, and educators (especially to those who are conceited) as a way to get them to think beyond the 3 or 4 brand-name universities that most Filipinos believe are the only institutions where one can get a quality education. Isn’t it better if people will realize that, that you have a college degree is more important than where you attended at.
i’d like to see how you’d think if you were to come from one of those schools you abhor.
you can’t blame ‘conceited’ individuals (as what you coined them) for being conceited about their respective schools. they got their education from these institutions, of course they will be conceited with them. what you are not seeing is that you yourself are being conceited by writing all these stuff.
if you say that these top schools are no better, then what is?
to be fair with you, i strongly believe that there shouldn’t be any biases on schools. because schools don’t make a student excellent, it is the opposite. excellent students create the name for their schools.
if you want people to raise other institutions into the pedestal, let them prove themselves first. let the output of these institutions prove something to the people first.
to make you feel better, just put that rankings are not there to faze other institutions who did not make it on top. instead, they should use this ranking to be challenged so that they would be on top as well. the students should be challenged to put their schools on top as well.
you were saying that people must realize that a college degree is more important than where you got it, well then i guess that explains rampant unemployment rate in this country. because a lot of school just pop up to produce graduates that can’t even do simple analytics.
imagine this situation, i only have my last money and i only have to pay it for tuition, and i have the choice to go to a top school and a not so well known school… where do you think will i go? where will you go?
just keep in mind, a perfect stone will never be as precious as a flawed diamond.
And I’d like to see how you would think if you were to come from those lesser-fancied schools… I’d like to see how you would work against school biases and stereotypes.
I didn’t necessarily mean this post to be taken as an insult to other educational institutions, but I did mean to say that students with clear professional goals will pay more attention on how to hone their own skills rather than to focus on the over-rated and over-priced reputation of a single university. And considering that the true worth of your education comes from what you do after you’ve earned your degree, I should say that you can achieve amazing things out of any university if you truly have ability and determination.
Leaders in all walks of life are by no means confined to being graduates of those so-called “high-ranking†schools. Undeniably, much depends upon what a student brings with himself, and being a graduate of such institutions guarantees nothing in the way of learning and success. After all, life is more than just about “high-ranking†schools.
And I could just imagine this situation, I only have my last money and I only have to pay it for tuition, and I have the choice to go to a top school and a not so well known school… where do you think will I go? My first choice would be to attend PUP. After all, the tuition is just PhP 12.00/Unit anyway.
Whoever says that a fancier school translates to better education is either bigoted or just plain rich.
it was my dream to go to up diliman but it wasn’t meant to be. fate and circumstance had a way of getting in the way. it just happened that my parents couldn’t afford the cost of the room and board. it would have worked if my father asked her sisters in manila for assistance but he was just too proud. i ended up graduating in a small college in our province with no better prospects than working at the post office or macdonalds.
by sheer luck, i ended up in the u.s. where graduating from up, ateneo or de la salle doesn’t factor that much. in a company’s database, it isn’t unusual for institutions from developing countries to fall under the same generic bucket like “other” or “foreign college”. by comparison, institutions like harvard, stanford, or cambridge keeps their individual names. sounds like discrimination, but i digress.
after working in the information technology field for many years, i discovered that my little college education didn’t prove to be a handicap after all. i’m able to hold my own with anyone including graduates from ivy league schools in the u.s. i guess, in the end, it doesn’t really matter where you graduated. what matters is what you’re made of.
look, i admire your advocacy against school biases. and as i said, i totally agree that there shouldn’t be any.
school biases and stereotypes? i am 22 y/o and i have already a staff of three. and none of them came from my school. i picked them because they were good. but that doesn’t qualify that all people from their school is good.
but as far as i see, you’re ramblings are not mere defense against school biases but more on attacks to other institutions whom you despise because of their rankings.
and by answering PUP, you validated my argument. PUP, after all is a top school. i would have thought you’d stick to your school.
a diamond is not a diamond because it was born a diamond, it is because it was well honed for a long time.and yeah, who said that a fancier school translates to better education? nobody did.
@plaridel: Thanks for sharing!
@jonangs: I am not attacking any school. Like what I have said, I didn’t necessarily mean this post to be taken as an insult to other educational institutions. My ramblings are just plain ramblings. These are not defenses, nor are these attacks.
Well, it’s great that your mind is not contamintated by school biases and stereotypes. However, we cannot deny that it still exists. Graduates from lesser fancied schools like me still have to shoulder their way against the crowd. I’ve been a victim of school bias and that explains the fixation on this topic for this blog. I could still vividly recall the first time I clawed for a job — The interviewer asked me, “New Era? Saan yun?” I don’t know if she were just asking for the location. But her exaggerated facial expression tells a different thing. And I’m not that stupid to miss what that asshole is trying to imply — “You’re from a never-heard school.”
And just so you know, I answered PUP because I’m part of PUP. I’m taking my Master’s in Clinical Psychology. Arguably, PUP have good students. But still, from (corny) school jokes, to inter-school contests to web forums and corporate boardrooms, some PUP students have been subjected to various forms of discrimination and stereotypes, one way or another. Eyeing for a manager? Get someone from the (over-hyped) Big Four. They speak good English and sound intelligent. PUP? Nah! They’re too radical. After all, they spend half the school year squawking “I-bag-sak!†at Mendiola. Plus, they don’t speak good English and they’re not as cultured as those graduates from private schools.
Honestly, at my age I think that this topic is lame. This is just plain sophomoric and obnoxious. But lame topics make good blog entries.