The Unimportance of a Top-Ranked College

Many college freshmen are starting their university lives in colleges they didn’t want to enter. Either they didn’t quite qualify for that Ivy League degree or, more likely, they couldn’t afford to get into the higher-rated school. If they come from a wealthy suburb and an upper-middle-class home, their parents are apoplectic and almost apologize to their friends for their failure to motivate their children into a school with a better U.S. News & World Report ranking.

While things like money and a family fortune can start you at first or second base in the game of life (instead of starting in the batter’s box), the importance of a name-brand prep school or a top-tier education are grossly overrated when it comes to defining tomorrow’s leaders. A recent Wall Street Journal column illustrates the relative unimportance of top schools with later success. Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott attended Pittsburg State University. ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson went to the University Texas. Warren Buffet graduated from the University of Nebraska. Current Intel and Costco CEOs attended local state schools nobody 50 miles away from the college has heard of, including me. If you scan the Fortune 500, only 10% of their CEOs attended an Ivy League school, and more attended the University of Wisconsin than Harvard.

Intelligence and connections are nice to have, and it will certainly never hurt to have that Ivy League degree, but ambition and drive trumps everything else. Whether you want to run a Fortune 500 or be an entrepreneur or even a professional athlete, the people who work the hardest and try the hardest are the ones who typically end up succeeding. They don’t let the lack of a big-time and expense-laden Ivy League education hold them back. I didn’t attend an Ivy League school, but my friends and I used to joke every time we walked through Harvard Square we were probably walking past bums who were smarter than we were. The will to succeed, plus an old-fashioned work ethic, will always overcome IQ and what it says on your diploma.

Many of our business leaders didn’t even finish college. The exploits of people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ted Turner and Michael Dell are legendary in business circles. They didn’t let their education or mediocre grades slow them down. And don’t forget – after your first job, your education goes from the top of your resume to the bottom. You will learn more about business and reality in the first six months out of school than the four or more years you spent in it. And if you talk up your SAT scores or college GPA on your first job interview, you’ll be tarred as foolish and unready for a career. And if you try to impress future dates or make new friends by impressing them with what you learned in school or your inclusion in the honors society, you’ll be alone every Saturday.

When I look back on my prep high school, I recall that many of the people who got A’s basically regurgitated whatever the teachers told them on tests and papers. That probably got them into good colleges, but when you enter the business world, doing everything by the book will probably get you stuck in middle management. The real leaders challenge rules, and find new ways to solve problems – they take risks by not doing what they’ve learned in school or even on the job. Sometimes they fail, but more often they’ll be more happy and successful than those who continue to do it the rote way.

So if you are reading this and didn’t get into the college of your choice, or blame your lot in life on your job or education, stop fretting. You’re smarter than you think, and you find smart people at every job and college. Take a look at some of them, learn where they went to school, and you’ll understand why the name of your college or what it says on your diploma does not predict your future. None of the people I mentioned above would let their lives be foretold by a dippy high school guidance counselor or college admissions officer, and neither should anyone else.