Illini Bluffs - Seeking Programmatic Strength

In the world of things that matter to your academic outcomes, I cannot overemphasize the importance of understanding institutional programmatic strength. That’s just gotta be job one, if you’re primarily concerned with the strictly academic outcome. But here’s the thing, college is about more than strict academic outcomes. Sure, it matters. It matters a lot. But there are other things that also matter. How those other things compete for attention in your mind is something only you can answer. But I know enough about the college experience and talk to enough students, moms, and dads, to know that for them other things do matter. And some of those things will absolutely give academics a pretty good run for their money. The social scene. The distance from home. The guiding institutional principles — is it faith-based, is it super rigorous, is it known for helping undergrads land great jobs or get into top grad schools? These things may very well compete for priority attention with something like programmatic strength. But it will be up to you to decide how important it is and where it will fall in your overall scheme of priorities. The fact is, if you want to go into journalism, you can do no harm by going to Western Kentucky University, but the fact is, if you went to Northwestern instead, you’d almost certainly have a broader range of grad school or career options waiting for you upon completion. Now, if you don’t want to leave Kentucky for college or can’t quite see yourself in a Chicago winter in a dorm room, 500 miles from your parents, Northwestern, no matter how good its programmatic strength, is not the right call for you. See what I mean?