Where did you get in? Where were you rejected?

This. The name on the degree is important for one huge reason (besides the excellent education, which I do think you get from a name school, often just by osmosis because you are around so many smart, driven people): Getting your first job. Harvard students intern at the New York Times. Harvard Law students start at Skadden. And some of them will still get their ass kicked down the line by the BU or BC Law grad who started off at a mid-level firm. A name school raises the odds that you'll start somewhere higher on the chain.

And let me parse that a little further. It guarantees nothing. The name school merely increases the odds that you'll start somewhere big. A bad student at Harvard is a bad student. A straight-A student at a small school or State U can still be a Rhodes Scholar (see: Myron Rolle) or a rocket scientist or president or John McCain's running mate and best-selling author.

 

I've had that dream of not attending classes all semester, and then needing to pass the final in order to graduate, too.

Thing is, I rarely missed any classes during my four years of school. Except for Spanish, my freshman year.

My school had a rule where if you missed more than three classes, your grade got knocked down a peg. I ended up missing three classes through the first 14 weeks (there was a final project that was already finished, no final exam). Two of them I missed because I was out of town for a family obligation. The other one was because I was so sick I couldn't get out of bed.

Final day of classes, when really, nothing was going to happen except that we would receive our grade for the project and to fill out the professor evaluation forms, my alarm doesn't go off for the only time in four years. I oversleep. My grade drops from a C to a C-.

 

I knew in eighth grade. Always wanted to be a writer but figured it'd be too hard to make a living as a novelist. Loved the idea of writing for a living as a journalist.

 

Applied and accepted at Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Tulsa. Didn't have much interest in going farther away than that at the time.

Got the best (academic) scholarship offer from Tulsa so that's where I went and graduated in 1989.

 

No way that's a real school.

[/too lazy to look it up]

 

Accepted: Syracuse, Boston University, NYU, Local U.
Rejected: Notre Dame.
Attended: Local U.
Should have attended: Syracuse ... I had no idea what I wanted to do going into college, so I decided to save some $ until I knew what wanted to do instead of going to Syracuse, which was my first choice. Turns out, it would have been the right one for my eventual career. Getting that D in Calculus freshman year made it tough to transfer sophomore year and by junior year I was pretty well settled in with what I was doing, so I stuck around.

 

I think it's a branch of the U of Arkansas

 

That's Monticello. Montevallo is in Alabama, a public liberal arts college about 50 miles south of Birmingham.

 

Ranked 20th in this week's D-II men's basketball poll, as a matter of fact...

 

Accepted: University of Wisconsin, Miami (Ohio)
Rejected: Michigan

Very, very, very, very, very, very, very happy I went to UW. Can't imagine having a better college experience anywhere.
Went into school undecided. Didn't settle on journalism until sophomore year.