Elite Colleges Don’t Buy Happiness for Graduates

The Wall Street Journal:

A word to high-school seniors rejected by their first choice: A degree from that shiny, elite college on the hill may not matter nearly as much as you think.

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University of Pennsylvania Professor Martin Seligman, who has studied the psychology of happiness, said it was impossible to know whether the college experiences Gallup asked about were the cause of later success or simply coincidental to it.

“One hopeful possibility is that if college were changed to produce more emotional support, this would result in much more engagement later in life,” he wrote in an email. “Another, less interesting possibility” is that people engaged at work who said they were emotionally supported in college are simply upbeat to begin with, and that rosy outlook colors their memories.

Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal