How Not to Choose a College

A recent story in the Los Angeles Times reported that Occidental, a small liberal arts school where Barack Obama spent his first two years of college, will have an expected enrollment increase of 21 percent this fall—a rise that may be largely attributable to the so-called O-O connection. Many incoming students were attracted to the college because Obama once went there; for some, attending the same school is both inspiring and legitimizing, particularly when explaining their college choice to family and friends.

But is choosing a school because someone famous once attended it a good plan? Similarly, should students apply to—and decide to attend—a college that, for whatever reason, is suddenly the place to go? A school's popularity or transitory fame shouldn't be a factor when contemplating choices in higher education, yet it often is. Each year college counseling offices are faced with multitudes of seniors applying to the same highly sought-after school—even when the college in question doesn't fit the students' goals and even though the students realize that only one or two applicants from the same high school will be admitted.

Of course, among the incoming Occidental class will be students who were searching, say, for a small college in Southern California offering an excellent liberal arts education and who heard of the school or had their interest piqued because of Obama's attendance there—a different situation entirely from those who applied simply because it was one of the President's alma maters.

The popularity of any given college waxes and wanes, typically for reasons having nothing to do with the school itself. But just because a college is in vogue or someone famous went there doesn't necessarily make it a good choice.