My Opinion on the Articles About Elite Colleges

Out of the articles that I read this week that was about the debate of whether going to an elite college is better for a person's life or not, my favorite one have to be the article “Skip the Admissions Game” by Kevin Carey. It was a pretty interesting and convincing read compared to the other articles. The main reason why I thought this article stand out from the other ones was the fact that this writer did a fantastic job at engaging the reader by using a somewhat humorous tone toward the readers and actually used support that the readers can actually look into:

“The Community College Survey of Student Engagement, for example, identifies public two-year institutions that are unusually good at employing the teaching practices that research show lead to learning and graduation. Most community colleges participate and you can look up the results at www.ccsse.org."

I also liked the way how he wrapped up his article with an conclusion that restated his main point into a single completed sentence:

“That means that even if you're not among the chosen few, you can still get a great college education -- if you know where to look.”

The article that I least favorite is “The Specialization Trade-Off” by James Shulman. The main reason why I didn't like it so much was because there was no evidence whatsoever in the article that state that elite school focuses more on sport then education. I don't think this is completely false, but when a debater states something such as this, I think it is only fair for the him or her to provide the readers evidence such as a list of colleges that actually prefer sport accomplishments over education accomplishments. Another thing that bugged me about this article was the assumption from the writer about how sport is great enough to actually overshadow education about which benefit a certain elite college:

“But if you’re a school that is trying to beat Yale in swimming, then selecting someone on the basis of her potential in the 100-meter butterfly is a rational investment for the college.

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