Many students base their application decisions on prestige. They look to articles and websites listing Top Colleges, and they rely on marketing as their guides. These students believe a “good school” will make them feel more worthy. Others limit themselves to “easy” schools to avoid the unworthy feeling that comes with rejection. Both of these approaches can easily lead to anxiety, confusion, and poor decisions.

It’s simple at its core: when you apply to a college, you either get accepted or rejected. And getting rejected feels awful. (I graduated high school in 1992, but I still remember my college rejections. I remember my college rejections better than I do my high school graduation.) Getting the bad news makes us feel deflated and unworthy. That unworthy feeling, that moment of rejection, is the center of the college application process for many students. The “am I worthy?” mindset has become the prevailing mindset for so many students, parents, and possibly the whole system.

For some students, the fear of feeling unworthy dictates their applications. They only apply to colleges they’re already pretty sure will accept them. They don’t push themselves very hard in their search or their applications. They play it safe. This is probably not done consciously—few people will tell you they only bothered to apply to easy schools—but it’s done all the time. And to be honest, there are some merits to this approach. It tends to be more time-efficient, because you’re not spending nearly as much time looking at schools you’re unlikely to attend. A student asked me once, “Everybody applies to a safety school, and most of us end up going there, so why apply to anything else?” The problem with this approach is that there are too many lost opportunities. Even if you do go to a school you easily qualify for, the process of searching for schools—of thinking about what you really want and what you really have to offer—is an impactful and enriching one. Also, if you’re subconsciously settling for the easiest option, you’re also subconsciously feeling disappointed in yourself for not trying out other possibilities.

For many more students, though, the “am I worthy?” mindset works in the other direction: if being rejected feels bad, then being accepted feels good! So they try to see how many acceptances they can get, see how prestigious a school they can get into, and spend most of their time thinking about “best” schools. What makes a college a best college? For students caught up in the “am I worthy?” game, the main criteria of “best” colleges are: people have heard of it; people seem impressed when you mention it to them; it ranks highly on ranking sites; they have a low acceptance rate. When students say “I got accepted to _____,” they want people to say “wow!” not “where is that?” They center most of their application process around people saying “wow!” and the feeling of worthiness that comes from it. 

I’ve got nothing against prestigious colleges. I’ve happily helped students apply to prestigious colleges over the years. There are lots of reasons to go to one. Those schools are highly rated and famous for good reason. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting people to say “wow.” The problem is centering most of the college search around prestige and fame. The problem is using something as narrow, impersonal, and vague as prestige to base your feeling of worthiness. The problem is using such a narrow set of criteria to make a huge decision about your life. 

Parents fall into the “am I worthy?” trap as much as students do–maybe more. The range of choices is as overwhelming to parents as it is to their children. The pressure to make a good choice is as high for parents as it is for their children. The desire to impress people and feel worthy is as high for parents as it is for their children. And parents are often less informed than their children. Over the past 27 years working with students, I’ve talked to a lot of parents, and they often say the same thing: “I want my child to go to the best school possible.” That’s a great start, but if parents don’t think enough about what they mean by “best,” they often follow the same mindset as their children.

Not surprisingly, high schools contribute to this, too. I taught senior English for nine years at a public college-prep high school, and I admit that I was as bad as anyone else. When people asked me about that year's senior class, I would usually begin my answer with a statement about the students going to “wow” schools. “It’s been a great year,” I would say. “We’re sending two to N.Y.U., one to Duke, and one senior is working on going to Cambridge." I should have said something more like “It’s been a great year! Most of our seniors have thought carefully about what they need from college and what they have to offer, and so most of them have made wise choices that will empower them for decades to come.” One of the easiest ways for a high school, private or public, to demonstrate that it is “elite” is to show off that their students go to “elite” colleges. Elite colleges are a shortcut for students, parents, and high schools to feel worthy and project that worthiness to others. It makes sense, as many shortcuts do, but it can backfire, as many shortcuts do.

There’s no single way to plan for college and apply for college. There are many factors–academic, social, emotional and financial–that go into your decisions. But the first step to making the application process wise, effective, efficient, and possibly even joyful, is to make sure that you’re beginning with a mindset that avoids using your college choice as a way to prove your worthiness to yourself or others.