Most users of r/A2C overemphasize the T20, and it's going to hurt their potential in the long run.

Whenever I happen to glance at this subreddit, the majority of the posts are fixated on cream of the crop of the American Higher Education system. Every other post is centered on the Ivy League, the Little Ivy, or public schools that are so exclusive you'd think they're ivies. It's almost as if their existence is what keeps this subreddit alive.

As a rising junior at a top 100 LAC in the Mid-Atlantic, I have come to believe that this hyper-fixation on the top colleges in the country is detrimental to the students and world of higher education at large. To explain my reasoning, I will go point-by-point and explain why a T20 may not be the best choice for college.

1. Because so many people apply to T20 colleges, those who attend the college are usually considered to be some of the best candidates in the college application pool. The problem with this arises whenever an opportunity is given to the student body. Most of these students not only recognize the importance of such opportunities but have shown their ability to fight tooth and nail for these opportunities. The result is that many students spend a considerable amount of time competing for an internship or study abroad opportunity before they even participate in said activities. As a result, a lot of students who go to these prestigious universities don't have much to show for their time at college.

2. The outright majority of colleges in the T20 are research universities. Now this may sound enticing to students who are interested in doing research, but there are two major caveats that have to be considered. First, a lot of these research universities have been cutting quality of their programs, especially their undergraduate programs, to fund research and to pay for loans that were taken to fund previous researchers and facilities. A good example of this is UChicago. Second, any student who wants to do research has to consider my previous point, in that a lot of other students are just as interested in doing research. Therefore, for students going to these research universities, many of them are going to find themselves unable to help with research as well as find that their undergraduate learning has been downgraded to help the college bolster research.

3. Almost all of the T20s are incredibly expensive. Mind you, I'm not even considering the sticker price when talking about these institutions. For example, Haverford College, often considered to be in the T20 of LACs in the United States, costs (according to niche) $74,930 in tuition alone. Mind you, the tuition price for UPenn is about $68,686. Yet, as I've mentioned before, it's gets worse even if you look at the true cost of these colleges. At Haverford, only 53% of all students receive aid. That means that 47% of Haverford's student body pays the college at a price that is higher than an Ivy League institution (63% of UPenn students receive some kind of aid.). Even public institutions can be considered expensive when you think about the effort required to get into the best public school in the country. Perhaps our most invaluable asset is time itself, and if you were to assign a value to your time and calculate the hours it took you get into the best institutions in the country, combined with SATs, SAT prep, application fees, tours, interviews, and so much more, the cost of just getting into these institutions is staggering.

4. Do these institutions produce the best of us? Sure, all of these institutions can point to doctors, non-profit organizers, authors, lawyers, and all sorts of alumnus that have been a positive upon the world. Yet is this positive trend still there? From what I've heard, a lot of Ivy League students do not look towards research or stewardship as their goal but work in capital and investments instead. A lot of the people we associate with a decline in our society, both domestic and global, hold degrees at these prestigious institutions. It could be argued that for every student who is molded into a better by these institutions' instruction, the rat-race mentality and over-competitiveness of these universities creates a monster.

I have more points, but since this is already a mammoth of a post, I'll end it here.