What actually makes a good education?
By Daniel Lee
21 February 2019
Angela Noronha (bottom left) at her company, Cialfo

Angela Noronha turns down an Ivy league school when she could not say “yes” to this question: “Do I need to be spending this much of my parents’ money to do what I say I want to do which is to help people?”

“I feel like the Ivy league schools truly have the experience, foundations and are institutions I can trust more when it comes to giving me a better education.”, Megna Srinivasan, grade 10 FIB student, says.

“I think that if one gets into Ivy League schools there are more chances of one becoming successful.”, Sumin Hahm, grade 11 student, says.

This is what many of the high school students in UWCSEA East think of the Ivy league schools – prestigious, selective, and evidently, superlative. A collection of 8 universities in the United States that select only the elite students from all around the world. Their academic prestige and remarkable alumni are just some of the many inevitable temptations that high school students face when considering university. But are Ivy league schools actually worth the money and time you put in?

Here is an anecdote of a person who gave up a seat at an Ivy league school to pursue her dream.

Angela Noronha, a 28 years old parent who currently works at the college application platform (Cialfo), who was “so fixated on going on the Ivy league”, said “no to literally 3 full-ride scholarships to go full pay at University of Pennsylvania.”

“I was so involved that I think I was in 5 clubs and I was in the undergraduate assembly,” Angela says when she describes her indelible experience at UPenn during her first year. She was very satisfied with her life until her parents told her the ineluctable truth that “they said yes to her going UPenn because they wanted to help her achieve her dream but they could not actually afford it.”

When she went back home that summer, she was very deflated because she knew “her parents would not support her financially unless she transferred to Wharton”. The occurence of Typhoon Ondoy (a huge natural calamity that occurred in Philippines in 2009) eventually “shook her out of her stupor” and showed her that she “did not need to be in an Ivy league school, spending tons of money, to make a difference”.

When this dreadful disaster occurred, there were huge outpourings of local efforts to fix the damages caused by the typhoon. The local organizations and the government came together to figure out what they could do to make the situation better, such as providing relief packets for the victims as a short term solution and thinking of how they could design a more disaster-resilient city as a long term solution. Seeing all these local people who don’t have “Ivy league degrees” and “have probably never even traveled on an airplane” “doing exactly the kind of work that she saw herself doing in the future”, Angela asked herself a question.

“Am I worth the cost of educating 20 kids in the best school in the Philippines?”

And she could not say “yes” to this question.

Angela struggled a lot during her first year in Ateneo de Manila University because she was “surrounded by people who weren’t motivated”, and she was “comparing the quality of education to Penn”. However, when she was asked “Where can I love more?” by her advisor, she realized that “the Philippines was still where she needed to be”, but she needed to “find value beyond what the school could offer”. She then started to look to the whole experience of being in the PH and met social entrepreneurs and NGOs, seeking to make a change in Manila.

What is the value of an Ivy league degree? The reputation you instinctively gain for its academic prestige, the inconceivable experience you have during the course of 4 years education, and the alumni connections all around the world are just a few astonishing benefits to mention. But should we, as high school students, put all of our priority on going to Ivy league schools just because of “Ivy’s sake” when there are tons of great schools where we can become exactly the person we are meant to be?

Joan Liu, who is very admiring of Angela’s choices and also a university counselor at UAC (Universities Admissions Centre), says we should not. Joan compares students who are only aiming at Ivy league schools as “athletes who only want to settle for the Olympics”. She thinks that the cultural pressure, peer-pressure, and the “pressure we put on ourselves” may result in achieving things that you might actually not have chosen for yourself”. She believes that “it is much more about what you make of the experience once you get there” because “there are many different paths in which people can become successful”. At the end of the conversation with Joan, she advises high school students “to look at the long run” because “definition of success is much larger than a very narrow group of schools”.

If Angela’s family did not have financial difficulty, if Angela was not there in Philippines when the natural calamity occurred, if the natural calamity did not occur at all, would Angela have made the same choice?

Angela does not seem to know the answer to this, but she says the decision she made was her own decision, and she will never regret the choice she made.

Angela, now as a mother of two sons (age of 2 and 4), is very happy with her life.

There is no right answer in life. Ivy league schools are not always the optimum way to achieve happiness and success. We should do what we truly want to do, regardless of our goal being judged, criticized, or influenced by others because there are many different paths in which people can be successful.