Let’s rewind to the 2019 Varsity Blues Scandal, when wealthy families and celebrities paid college consultant Rick Singer millions for a spot in prestigious universities like Berkeley, Stanford, and Yale. Although it’s depressing, it’s not surprising that rich kids (and their parents) are faking test results and bribing their way into prestigious schools. However, the fact that people are willing to pay obscene amounts of money to cheat their way into colleges does expose our weird obsession with college prestige.

This obsession doesn’t just exist in America; Taiwanese students are equally obsessed with college prestige. Those who look forward to studying abroad aim for the Ivy League or their equivalents. Those who stay in Taiwan shoot for NTU, Tsing Hua University, and Cheng Kung University as their top choices.

In college application season, we get unnecessarily anxious, only to still be rejected by so-called prestigious universities. But we rarely stop to question why we’re chasing after college prestige.

The façade of college prestige

College admissions today is in its Gilded Age. The idea that an elite university guarantees success is more of a marketing myth than reality. Top universities don’t guarantee a good education or future success. If elite schools admit the top performing high school students, those students likely already had advantages like wealth, connections, and access to better education before even stepping foot on campus.

Colleges can brag about their small class sizes, low student-to-faculty ratio, and stellar accomplishments on their websites, but as far as their marketing strategy goes, the ultimate benefit of going to an elite school is the networking opportunities.

What happens when you go to a top university is that you get to meet kids from well-connected families. If you socialize with them enough, you might gain access to opportunities you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The faculty at these top universities are also extremely well-connected. If you’re a Harvard Law student, your professors are probably friends with top lawyers or federal justices, and they may set you up with an internship or get you a letter of recommendation after graduation.

Sure, networking can open doors, but attending an elite university solely because its value lies in connections rather than the quality of education is a shallow reason to choose a school.

Chasing after societal expectations

This isn’t to say that students are inherently shallow for applying to or attending prestigious schools. After all, we carry the expectations from our parents, teachers, and peers.

Most parents don’t want their kids to attend a mediocre college after investing so much in private tutoring, extracurriculars, and enrichment programs. Given how expensive college is on its own, it’s understandable that families want their money to feel well-spent – ideally on a prestigious institution.

That pressure gets passed down. We want to meet our parents’ expectations too. Even if we know that attending a top university is an arbitrary measure of success, we still crave social validation, and may even feel guilty if we end up at a school perceived as average.

The problematic college application process

What’s especially strange about our obsession with college prestige is how messy, and frankly unfair, the application process has become.

It’s emotionally exhausting and financially draining. Private tutoring, standardized test prep (SAT, TOEFL, IELTS), extracurricular programs, and international school tuition all cost millions of NTD. On top of that, students feel an unnecessarily high amount of pressure during the application process, spending months perfecting essays and worrying about their academic destiny.

And let’s be honest: the truth gets stretched. Students boost their applications with flashy achievements and inflated stats. “Volunteered at a children’s center” becomes “facilitated early childhood development through interactive engagement at a youth enrichment center.” The version of ourselves we submit often feels like a glossier, inflated applicant than we actually are.

Not only are applications exaggerated, the application process is corrupt. Students from wealthy backgrounds get a leg up, armed with elite tutors, exclusive internships, and insider advice. Some families go even further to bribe their way into a “prestigious” university, or rely on their connections with admission officers.

Meanwhile, the booming admission consultant industry profits off of parental anxiety, selling “strategic branding” and essay coaching as the key to Ivy League acceptance. In some cases, consultants reword entire essays, fabricating the applicants’ voices and personalities not to reflect the students, but to impress admissions officers and establish their own reputations as “successful” counselors.

The billion-dollar admission consultant industry is built on insecurity, privilege, and a culture that values prestige over authenticity. And families are stuck paying tons and playing along.

College prestige doesn’t matter much

People tend to think that high college prestige equates to a high salary after graduation. In reality, the numbers tell a different story.

Just one example: a computer science graduate from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a decent university for its CS program, earns about $131,427 annually; a computer science graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an institution widely regarded as the most prestigious in STEM fields, earns about $154,492 annually. There’s a difference, but the difference doesn’t make much sense when you factor in the cost of tuition and living expenses.

Elite colleges tend to offer a lower return on investment because their tuition is oftentimes much more expensive than, say, state universities. Moreover, these elite schools are far less accessible for students from lower-income backgrounds, yet a community college student who works hard in school is significantly more useful to society than a rich kid who cheats their way into Harvard.

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Students aren’t to blame for chasing after college prestige; the system conditions us to do so. From a young age, we’re taught that the name on our degree defines our worth. And while attending a prestigious university might make your résumé look more impressive, it shouldn’t determine who you are or what you’re capable of becoming.

The real goal of college shouldn’t be to collect brand-name credentials, but to grow intellectually, emotionally, and ethically. Living under constant pressure to get into a top school is exhausting. But it’s worth questioning this obsession and choosing to invest in real personal growth, rather than chasing after superficial markers of success.