College selection

Some factors to consider when choosing which college to attend are:

Prestige

Some people say that you shouldn't worry too much about where you go to college, because it won't matter later on in life. While it's true that where you went to college tends to matter less over time, it still has an impact on your life trajectory: the opportunities that are available to you early in life affect the opportunities that are available to you later on, and more prestigious colleges generally offer better opportunities than less prestigious colleges do.

There's a case to be made for focusing on personal growth during high school rather than getting into a good college: your personal growth during high school also shapes the opportunities that are available to you in the future. But to the extent possible, you should work to grow personally while working on getting into a good college.

Some advantages of going to a prestigious college are:

Higher earnings

Data show that mid-career annual earnings of UC Riverside graduates ~ $81k/year and of UC Berkeley graduates ~ $112k/year. UC Berkeley is generally considered the most prestigious University of California college, and UC Riverside among the least prestigious University of California colleges. This suggests that going to a more prestigious college increases your expected earnings.

The actual increase in earnings is less than the $31k/year difference: UC Berkeley students are probably more ambitious than students at UC Riverside, and also have higher ability even before going to UC Berkeley, so that one would expect a gap even if they all attended the same schools. But the gap partially comes from prestige of school. Employers generally are more likely to hire a student from a prestigious school than a non-prestigious school, because going to a prestigious school signals that you have higher ability than other people do. For example, high paying investment banks, law firms, and management consulting firms show a strong preference for graduates of the top 4 ranked universities in the country.

Peer group

Going to a more prestigious college exposes you to stronger students. Ben Kuhn at Harvard describes advantages of being in a peer group with stronger students:

By watching how more competent people work and think, you can often pick up useful study habits and better techniques for the subject you're studying [...] Both more advanced students and instructors can be very useful for the academic advice they provide later. Knowing talented students has given me info about several excellent courses, as well as summer opportunities, I wouldn't otherwise have known about. A professor who can become a good mentor is also invaluable

Making connections with stronger students is also useful for networking later on in life, because stronger students tend to be in positions of greater influence later on than weaker students are.