AFTER EACH LETTER IS THE WORD.

How College Changed My Life

To the Editor:
My admittance to Stanford was my golden ticket to a college nicknamed “Paradise,”
where learning from Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and being mentored by paradigm-
changing scientists were normal. Stanford opened doors I never even knew existed,
having grown up in a small, agricultural town in Northern California. A little thing
called an “endowment” changed my life.
When I graduated in 2018, I was no longer a small-town girl, but rather a young adult,
itching to contribute something meaningful. Stanford transformed my flimsy desire to
become a doctor into a fiery passion to become a leader in health care — all because I
had witnessed this leadership in my mentors and friends.
Today, I still question what it means to attend an “elite” college, especially as
admissions scandals unfold. But what I do know is that these colleges can open doors
for those who want to rectify flawed systems and are hungry to elevate others. Small-
town girls like me just need the exposure. To those on admissions committees: Admit
more of us. Doing so can improve communities and generations to come.
Shin Mei Chan
San Francisco
LEADERSHIP: this word called my attention because I consider that a leader is a
person that help you to grow and work in team.
To the Editor:
I have a vivid recollection of the conversation that occurred in the parking lot of an
independent prep school where I taught years ago. A colleague asked me, somewhat
incredulously, “Wait a minute — you went to a state college?” There was a pause as I
nodded in the affirmative, then came the kicker: “Oh, but I thought you were brilliant.”
In places such as these, and too often in the job market, attending an “elite” college
matters very much. The fact is, it shouldn’t matter at all. My dad was retired; we could
not afford an expensive college. I earned a full-tuition scholarship and paid my own
way. I pursued graduate work at an “elite” engineering school and earned an advanced
degree from a large university. Neither was inherently superior in terms of the education
it delivered.
The college experiences that shaped my life the most centered around getting to know
people from diverse backgrounds and learning to solve problems independently. Where
or if a person went to college should matter far less than what a person has learned and
become along the way in life.
George Whittemore
Princeton, Mass.
BACKGROUND: this word impacted me, because I consider thar the background is
very important to know when you are teaching to students for having a clear idea about
the culture and the knowledge they have.

To the Editor:
My community college experience saved my life. After graduating from high school,
moving around and floundering in minimum-wage jobs, I returned to my hometown to
live with my parents. I was depressed and attempted suicide. During my recovery, I
started attending the community college in my hometown. At first, I resisted enrolling
in our local community college because I felt there was a stigma. But when I did, I
found a menagerie of students from all walks of life and professors who were deeply
passionate about their students.
Class by class, the depression that had held me down for so long began to lift. I joined
the honors program and then helped mentor other students. I presented at an
undergraduate research conference. Along the way, I met my fiancé and built a network
of peers and mentors who helped me get where I am today.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of community colleges. Their support
systems, small and tight-knit communities, and affordability are truly unrivaled. Today,
I am working to destigmatize the college experience I owe everything to.
Sarah Olson
Corvallis, Ore.
The writer will be an undergraduate transfer student at Oregon State University in the
fall.
DEPRESSION: this word caught my attention because is very common in the education
of today, there are many students that have this kind of problem and the educator should
discover if ins classroom there is this type of problems.

To the Editor:
I arrived for my freshman year at Yale still wondering why I had been admitted. I was
delighted and humbled by my access to all the resources, human and physical, that a
great and prestigious university has to offer. I wish I could do it again, but as an adult.
Yale was an amazing treat, like being taken on an exotic vacation.
My diploma must have conferred a little prestige when I went looking for a job, but
that’s all. In my 45 years in the working world, I always saw employees judged on
cooperation and performance, not pedigree. In fact, being thought of as an intellectual
fancy pants became an obstacle once in a while.
A degree from a fancy school is like having a fancy suit. Delightful if you care about
such things, but overpriced, overhyped and meaningless in our universal quest toward
living a life we love.
We are all blessed with immense and unearned privilege the day we are born. It is called
being an American.
Philip Bowles
San Francisco
YALE: because it is a prestigious university where students could learn a lot.

To the Editor:
Duke. That single word changed my life in 1966. It’s right there on my license plate.
DUKEMD. I had never been south of Washington, D.C. I had not even visited the
campus of my “safety” school in North Carolina. I was going to Yale. Except I didn’t
get in.
I found myself in a foreign land of segregated restaurants, hushpuppies that you ate, not
wore, alpaca sweaters, tassel loafers, ties at football games and something called
Brunswick stew. I also discovered that people with thick Southern accents could run
rings around me in chemistry class. And I thought I was smart!
I was pre-med, but I took many mandatory liberal arts courses. Thank goodness I did. It
was in Religion 2 that I first read the New Testament and in psychology that I read
Freud. Those classes left the biggest impressions on me as they opened my horizons to
novel (for me) ways of thinking.
I owe the rest of my 50 years, including meeting my wife in Duke Medical School, to
that very foreign land in Durham, N.C. Did it matter that I went to Duke? I bet my life it
did.
Leonard A. Zwelling
Bellaire, Tex.
SAFETY: this word called my attention because the reader should left the comfortable
zone.
To the Editor:
I graduated in 1957 from a competitive public high school in Brooklyn. After my
brother entered Swarthmore in 1951 when I was 11, my mother began grooming me and
pressuring me to get admitted there, too. I worked hard academically, became an editor
of a school publication, and took tutoring lessons all to prevent the catastrophe of being
rejected.
I did get into Swarthmore, and during my first semester began to experience the
incapacitating depressions that would haunt me for the rest of my life. I still remember
clearly my first visit home at Thanksgiving. I was riding the IRT subway to Brooklyn
and looking at the other riders and thinking, “I wonder if any of these people are smart
enough to go to Swarthmore, but I’m sure they are all happier than I am.”
Elsa Prigozy
Slingerlands, N.Y.
COMPETITIVE: this word is very important in this text, because the reader should
fight with the depression and show the best of him

To the Editor:
Can four years change your life? I arrived on the Brandeis campus in the late summer of
1982, a fresh-faced kid from a small town in upstate New York. During my time at
school I met the woman who would become my wife. Made friends who are still my
closest. Became a Deadhead. Partied a lot (sorry, Mom and Dad!). Studied a bit. Began
playing guitar.
I learned how big the world actually is, and realized for the first time how much a part
of that world I was. My mind grew, opened up. My heart changed. I became, essentially
and fundamentally, who I am today.
One conversation with a professor sticks with me. I was a middling student. He grabbed
me after class and we talked for maybe five minutes. I don’t remember exactly what he
said. It had something to do with my potential, with something he saw in me that I
didn’t see. I walked out of his office and thought of myself in a different way. Suddenly
there was an intellectual curiosity, almost a kind of muse, that I am still following. I
wonder if he ever knew?
(Rabbi) Steve Schwartz
Baltimore
WORLD: the world is different today, and it depends how you see this with positive or
negative things, but always with positive attitude.
To the Editor:
I was accepted to M.I.T. as a transfer student in 1975. It is hard to overestimate the
impact of that elite name on the undergraduate degree I earned there in mechanical
engineering. People’s response to me changes when they hear I graduated from M.I.T.
It’s like an automatic in. Forty years later it is still featured prominently at the top of my
résumé.
Gail Whoriskey Zwerling
Somerville, Mass.
OVERESTIMATE: never should overestimate to the rest of people because you do not
know the potential of people. Every person is a different world with positive and
negative things.

To the Editor:
I earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from South Dakota State University in the
1990s. Immediately after graduating I moved to the East Coast, where many people I
met couldn’t find South Dakota on a map and had certainly never heard of the
university. I was able to find jobs with good companies in various large cities and to
build a decent career. After a few years in the work force, it seemed to matter more
where I had worked than where I went to college.
I was probably not called in to interview by some companies because I hadn’t attended
a prestigious university, but there are plenty of great employers who look at more than
alma mater. All that said, I’ve seen how attending certain schools opens many doors.
It’s not a guarantee of success, but there’s no denying that graduates of top schools have
a leg up.
I have a 2-year-old and I already think about where she’ll go to college. It will
ultimately be her choice, but I will strongly suggest elite institutions. Despite my own
positive experience and my desire for it to not matter, it absolutely does.
Jennifer Healy Keintz
Eden, S.D.
Alma matter: Currently, it happens because to get a job most of companies see where
did you study and does not matter if you are a good professional.
To the Editor:
My undergraduate college experience was scattered, extraordinary and rich. The first
year was spent at the College of St. Benedict in central Minnesota, where my eyes were
opened to the Benedictines’ world of history and literature. Sister Colman cast me in
Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” and I fell in love with the theater.
The next year I studied with the Franciscans at the College of Saint Teresa in Winona,
Minn. Sister Bernetta’s huge graphic representation of Dante’s “Inferno,” which
occupied a whole wall and an entire semester of study, will stay with me until I die.
My last two years were spent at the University of Minnesota, where professors like John
Berryman, Saul Bellow, William Van O’Connor and Robert Penn
Warren were astonishing me daily. A new world opened. I began to question
everything, and to embrace learning as a means to a fulfilling life.
As Rilke says in “Letters to a Young Poet”: “Try to love the questions themselves. ...
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be
able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.”
Judith Koll Healey
Minneapolis
The writer is a novelist and biographer.
EXPERIENCE: If you make something that most like you, I am sure that everything
will be make with love and responsibility. The experience plays an important role in any
job.
To the Editor:
I graduated from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1989 — good Jesuit liberal
arts school, but by no means “elite.” The best professor I had there was a poet named
Barbara Clarkson. A student of Auden and Roethke at Bennington College, she taught
us how to write and be passionate about poetry. Her office was in the basement next to
the janitor’s closet. She smoked cigars, ashing them into a cracked teacup she kept on
her desk. I still read and write poetry today, and it’s because of her.
This is college to me: not so much where you go, but whom you meet once you get
there.
Michael Tucker
Bath, Me.
The writer is the course materials specialist at Bowdoin College.
PASSIONATE: when you make something with love and passion, I am sure that
everything will be okay.

To the Editor:
I went to an “elite” college — one of the Seven Sisters — in the late 1950s when they
were all single-sex schools. I confess to have attended only to prove to my parents, my
friends and myself that I could “get in.” Although I made several lifelong friendships
and, because of a captivating professor in the music department, developed a love for
music that sustains me to this day, I was far too immature to benefit from the potentially
excellent education that I neglected to take advantage of.
Although I confess to having enjoyed the cachet evoked by my school’s name, I’ve
often regretted that I didn’t attend a large coed school with football and basketball
games (and parties) to attend — or wished that a “gap year” had been available so that I
could have had a year to experience the real world before being immersed in an ivory
tower that, perhaps at one year older, I would have appreciated more.
Peggy Sweeney
Sarasota, Fla.
EDUCATION: The education is important in every aspect because it is the act of
teaching knowledge to others and the acto f receiving knowlegde from someone else.