The following article has been excerpted from Fiske Guide to Getting Into the Right College   By: Edward B. Fiske and Bruce G. Hammond Only you can decide what is important in a college, but we would like to help you avoid two major pitfalls.

First, many applicants mistakenly think that prestige automatically equals academic quality. Call it the brand-name syndrome: the idea that if you haven’t heard of a college, it can’t be any good. Many big-name schools do deliver educational excellence, but others are overcrowded, overrated, and coasting on reputation. There are scores of comparatively little-known colleges, most of them small, that offer an education every bit as good.

But you’re probably thinking, Don’t all the best jobs go to Ivy League graduates? Not by a long shot. They get their share, but so do graduates of countless other schools that aren’t household names. In a landmark study of colleges with the highest percentage of graduates earning a PhD degree, the top finisher wasn’t Harvard, but Harvey Mudd College. Harvard placed thirty-seventh, behind liberal arts colleges such as Eckerd, Wabash, and Kalamazoo, which continue to produce excellent graduates with much less fanfare.

Our second pitfall is also caused by career jitters. In the name of practicality, too many students get stampeded into career preparation and lose the once-in-a-lifetime chance to get an education. If you’ve wanted to be an accountant since age six, don’t hesitate. But if you plan to major in accounting just because you think that’s where the jobs are, think again. What’s the point of using your college years to prepare for a career you might not enjoy? And how are you going to know unless you sample different things? In the working world, nothing is less practical than devoting fifty or sixty hours a week to a job you don’t like. That is why so many high-priced lawyers and investment bankers are quitting their jobs today. They have a few extra dollars in their pockets, but they are also miserable.

College career preparation may help you land that first job, but it may also leave you stranded there when other people have moved on to bigger and better things. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that current college graduates will go through half a dozen careers on average. Even for those who stay in the same industry, a liberal arts education offers the flexibility to make lateral moves on the way to the top. As any corporate president will tell you, the people who get to the executive suite are the ones who see the big picture and, more often than not, got a liberal arts education. You can always go back later for that business or law degree when the time is right.

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