Or, as we like to call it, “A Deep Dive into the History of Collegiate Notoriety.” If you’re reading the unofficial title of our new series, you might wonder if we’ve taken cues from Vanity Fair’s school of journalism or branched into scuba instruction. Although in many ways a seaside vocation navigating the ocean waters full of tropical fish might be less stressful than teaching teenagers to swim through the murky depths of college admissions, the truth is that we’ll always take the hard path over an easy one if it’s worthwhile (and let’s be honest… we’d probably be better sharkbait than deep sea divers, so here we are).
When we say “deep dive,” we mean a detailed look at stand-out programs within larger colleges. Colleges are under constant pressure to increase profit and maximize yield, and a lot of the material they put out is simply marketing. So how do you cut through the noise? In a culture that glorifies “brand names” when it comes to college reputation, how do you accurately assess the difference between a high-value department and, for lack of a better word, hype?
We’ve been helping students get accepted to the most competitive programs in their fields for a long time, and that means we’ve got a solid grasp on which schools have the credits to back up their claims and which are just performing prestige, using “competitive admissions” and high price tags to make a school look impressively selective without having robust departments to meet your academic needs and set you up professionally. The college application process is a notoriously hard one, and we want to make sure you have all the information you need to decide where you should be applying in the first place. And, if you’re looking for professional guidance putting a school list together or crafting essays for your dream school, we’re here to steer you in the right direction and perfect your apps.
The Impact of an Illustrious History (or How Reputations Are Born)
People (read: snobs) usually think that the more selective a school is, the better its programs are across the board. And it’s not untrue that a school like Harvard, attracting the top scholars from their fields to their faculty, is academically rigorous regardless of your major. But it’s also true that many schools generally considered less illustrious as a whole have individual programs that are highly distinguished for one reason or another.
Here’s an example: in 2013, the University of Iowa was the No. 1 party school in the nation according to the Princeton Review. In 2016, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported that UI had dropped to a dismal spot at #6, and, after 2019, the Princeton Review had tragically stopped publishing its list of party school rankings altogether (et tu, Brute?? are we the only ones who even care about hard-hitting journalism anymore?) — but we digress.
The point is that, although Equal-Minded People Like OurselvesTM know that you can find serious academics and committed students everywhere from junior college to the nerd playground of NASA bootcamp — UI was not necessarily taken seriousy by the brainiac community. Surprisingly, though, Iowa is the premier destination for up-and-coming creative writers. A promising novelist, memoirist, or poet is likely to consider UI before Columbia or Cornell.
Why is that? Well, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (IWW) was the first creative writing program in the United States. (It has since been revealed that the current structure of professionalizing creative writing by establishing academic programs may largely stem from a CIA project to indirectly steer American citizens away from Communism by stoking an artistic movement that stressed the importance of individualism and concrete description over abstract, philosophical writing — but that’s neither here nor there (note: it is actually very much HERE and THERE, but, like, we’re a college counseling agency with other stuff to do today)).
As a result of IWW’s novelty, Iowa has historically been the center of reputable creative writing instruction. They were the first to do it, they got famous for it, they attracted talented students and prestigious instructors, they got ample funding, and… it all continues from there. Technically, IWW is a graduate program for MFA students, but, with Iowa City as a hub for America’s foremost writers, a thriving writing community cropped up among the corn fields, and IWW understandably has established a meaningful relationship with its undergraduate equivalent. In this case, Iowa has a reputation as impressive as any Ivy in the literary community, and talent will go there, despite the debaucherous general population and the unsightly Hawkeye mascot. It has powerful lore in the cultural imagination, it has a century’s worth of institutional memory, it results in lower student debt than more commercial programs, and it has been known as the ultimate creative writing destination for so long that many writers still view it as the “best” program of its kind.
Broadening Your Horizons
And this doesn’t stop with creative pursuits. You might be more familiar with this kind of nuance when it comes to art schools — we all remember Lena Kaligaris going to RISD to pursue painting seriously (or are we the only ones keeping The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in regular rotation…?). But there are plenty of “underdogs” with a real competitive edge in STEM, too. People can look down on state schools, but an R1 institution has cutting-edge scholarship and research funding that rivals, or outpaces, smaller “elite” schools’ curriculum and lab opportunities any day of the week.
In this blog series, we’ll be investigating programs that are considered “famous” on the college circuit to fill you in on how they got their reputations and whether they deserve them. So grab your snorkel, shove your feet into some flippers, and join us for our first installment — a deep dive into Neuroscience at the University of Michigan.
If you’re looking for personalized guidance on the college programs best for you, we’re here to help.