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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People are motivated not to believe that where go to college doesn’t matter all that much, at least within the top 150-200 or so.  Parents  who have been carefully curating their kids lives with “the right” schools, suburban/country club sports, like fencing, swim, tennis, golf, squash, LAX, etc. and math enrichment since 4th grade, all geared to getting into that coveted T20, do not want to hear it won’t make that much difference in the long run. [/quote]

It all depends. You can't be sure of anything in life. Just do your thing at a given moment. 
[b]If all things are equal and doesn't matter[/b], I would like to go to a #15 ranked school rather than #189

[/quote]

The bolded phrase is doing A LOT of work in that sentence. That’s exactly the point, colleges are complex ecosystems, and all things are NOT equal.  Cost, location, curriculum, prestige, housing, access to internships, gender balance, athletics, faculty ratios, class size, career placement, strength of different departments, etc.  That is a lot to sweep under the rug as “all else equal”.  The kid who can get into #15 will likely land a fat merit scholarship to #159 or whatever.  For someone looking to go to grad or professional school, the latter very likely may be the smarter decision.  But ranking are stupid because they take something incredibly complex and they dumb it down to a single reductive number that can’t possibly represent everything, or even most things, that people care about in a college, unless that one thing you care about is how envious your neighbors or co-workers will be of your window sticker.[/quote]

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