Contrary to what many believe, that you go to college is far more important than where you go. What matters most to employers are the skills you have learned and how they can be used to solve problems. Increasingly employers are saying, “Got skills? Prove it!”

Connections may be overstated.

Sure, connections made at the most selective colleges matter but research has found that advantages conferred by these schools may be overstated. Forty years ago, elite colleges offered a demonstrably higher level of education. Today, as many as 200 colleges offer a similar level of education and have excellent faculty and facilities.

Does alma mater really matter?

“Nope,” say economists Alan Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale (2011), who looked at 19,000 graduates and compared the earnings of those from elite colleges with those from “moderately selective” schools. The latter group was composed of persons who had been admitted to an elite college but chose to attend another school. Twenty years after graduation, the economists found that whether you went to UCLA or less prestigious Sonoma State, the earnings of the two groups differed little or not at all.

Only the best for my kid.

Eighty-five percent of parents see college as an investment in the future. But their choices are not always about reality—it’s about what they believe—and for too many parents, winning admission to an elite school is imagined to be a golden passport to success. They have the idea that if their kid doesn’t get into a highest-ranked college, their life is somehow ruined.

Parents’ expectations that their children will attend top schools have risen substantially in the past decade, say admissions counselors. They don’t want their kids settling for schools they think will quash opportunity. Unfortunately, many parents don’t know a PhD from an STD. As a result, they find themselves considering only a narrow range of choices and outcomes for their kid’s education. This selective picture of reality is called “tunnel vision” (framing trap*).

So, stop obsessing over rankings—many colleges and universities can provide students with an excellent education, sending them onward to healthy incomes and appealing careers.

Graduates: show, don’t tell.

Education is the single most important factor to a high standard of living. And competency is what counts. Here’s what you can do to leverage your degree:

  • Show employers what you can do, not just what you know.
  • Focus on what you’ve learned versus what you’ve done.
  • Use your skills and experiences to guide how you think about employment.

The bottom line? It matters little where you go; it’s whether you can produce!

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

~ Mark Twain, humorist 

* Questionable beliefs can “trap” our better judgment, leading to poor decisions and unintended consequences. In the framing trap, we often focus attention only on what we know, without thinking about what we should know. This can result in choices that are too narrow, selective, or flat out wrong. Learn more about this, and other traps, in the Young Person’s Guide to Wisdom, Power, and Life Success.

Image credit: “A Great Day in June-Graduation Day” by Jcha1040 (2014), licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.