Saturday, May 26, 2012

The Highschool Senior's Perspective

In 1996, I (Lenny Teytelman) got accepted to Columbia and Stanford.  My brother was a graduate student in Stanford, I was dying to go to California, and Stanford was ranked far above Columbia in any of the majors that I was considering.  There was no contest.  My only problem was that I fell in love half a year before I had to decide between these schools.

I did realize that first-time love, at the age of 18, before starting college, was most likely doomed as a relationship.  But whatever the chance of failure, I knew that if I moved to Stanford, there was absolute certainty that the relationship would end.  I decided to "sacrifice my education" for the infinitely low odds of the relationship succeeding.

I was right to choose love - we got married two years later and have been together since.  I was wrong to think that Columbia was a sacrifice.  Now I know that for undergraduate studies, it is irrelevant whether one goes to Columbia or Stanford.  Back then, the sacrifice felt monumental.

Sure, a high school senior, under the influence of love, seldom has the perspective on college choice of a tenured professor or a CEO of a big corporation.  The goal of this blog is to share exactly these perspectives on how to choose a college.

The initial e-mail that started this blog is in this post.

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