A "Good" College

I found the introduction of “What Makes a College Good?” by Nicholas Confessore to be very intriguing. In particular, I enjoyed reading his first few introductory paragraphs, in which he spoke of the college-admissions process. He mentioned how admissions have become much more selective in recent years, further increasing the number of schools to which students apply. Confessore acknowledged the pressure to get into the “right” schools, and found that college visits and college guides and rankings have a major influence on where students even decide to apply. Reading about this, I thought back to when I first applied to college. I had decided that I didn’t want to have to take out loans to pay for college years later, so living in Wisconsin, the cheapest schools were obviously the in-state, Wisconsin schools. I ended up applying to four schools in total, all in Wisconsin. Two of which are private universities and two are public. I picked these schools to apply to because they were all relatively close to home, and at the time, I honestly didn’t feel great excitement in selecting a university. I toured three of the four universities that I applied to, but I do not recall looking into the college guides and rankings Confessore mentioned in his paper. In my guidance counselor’s office, there definitely was a pamphlet of all of the state schools compared on a chart, but this mostly covered details such as price for tuition and room and board, average ACT score and grade point average accepted, and other information regarding the college. Although I have not observed college guides and rankings in a magazine or book, after reading Confessore’s paper, it sounds extremely logical that these rankings do matter, that students probably do regard these statistics and numbers in making their college decision. Confessore made a point that, sometimes, because of these ratings, universities value prestige over their student’s learning. Though this is not true in all cases, the status of being a “good” school is definitely important to the students that apply to that particular university. When I was accepted into the schools I had applied to, everyone told me, “Oh, the University of Wisconsin – Madison is such a good school.” I thought to myself, well if it is such a “good” school, and supposedly the “best” state school in Wisconsin, then why not go there? I enjoy being in Madison, and I am very happy with my decision to attend school at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Overall reputation and rankings of universities affect the number of applicants and those who accept their admittance, so it is only logical that colleges make it a goal of theirs to obtain high ratings.