I want to thank all of you for your (name removed by moderator)ut. My niece is looking for the campus/dormitory experience. I will not try and influence her on going, or not going to this college. She is a smart girl. I can only pray that once she is on her own, that she will have common sense to avoid trouble.
I just wish she would realize that she does not need to spend thousands of dollars on an education, in order to be successful. We have more than one Catholic college here in Metro Detroit, that she could attend and get a excellent education from. Unfortunately, she was raised to believe that she needs to experience the campus lifestyle.
The decision is hers. I will just support whatever decision she makes.
What I would like to tell is that she would be just as successful by going to Madonna University in Livonia, as she would if she went to the University of Dayton. But you can’t tell people anything they don’t want to hear.
One quick point: that last is going to depend in part on what she wants to do.
Note: I will be the first to say that the following situation is utterly idiotic, but it is the way that a good bit of the world works.
If she’s going into certain areas of business or finance, or wants to get into grad/doctoral programs in certain other areas, how highly a school is ranked is of the utmost importance. Many larger/international companies simply won’t consider smaller/lower-ranked schools’ alumni at all for hiring purposes now, or if they do, rarely, hire such a person, the employee may well get stuck in a dead-end job simply because of the name on their diploma.
As an example, a friend of DH’s/former coworker was a star in his department. His department consisted primarily of individuals with undergraduate degrees in the business field applicable for the department. He, however, was the only person without a degree from a top school in that field, and was told point-blank by HR that he’d never get beyond where he was for that single reason.
He left and got a master’s degree from Really Big Name School. The master’s degree taught him exactly nothing related to his field, nor anything practical for his job. It was a piece of paper that costs six figures.
As soon as he graduated, his former company started begging him to come back at a higher level and significantly higher rate of pay. He declined, and went to another company which also wouldn’t have hired him without a diploma from Really Big Name School, even though, as I mentioned, that degree meant absolutely nothing from a practical perspective.
I’ve heard this story over and over again from other coworkers of DH’s. Everyone agrees that this is a serious problem on the corporate level, but things are unlikely to change for the next few decades, at least.
I also second the Newman Center on a public campus idea. Look into them. Some are execrable, but many are top-notch. At our local one, there’s daily Mass (sometimes twice-daily), frequent Confession times, good spiritual direction (leads the
nation in vocations!), etc. That way, one gets the solid Catholic teaching without the cringe-worthy private school price tag.
(And yes, a previous suggestion to apply to a lot of schools both private and public and seeing which offers the best financial aid is also a very good one.)
