The 5 Most Overrated Colleges in America

Some colleges are the Zara dress of higher education.

You see it on the rack and think: wait, this is kind of fabulous.

The cut is good. The color is right. Everyone else seems to want it. You buy it at full price because, at the moment, it feels expensive in the right way.

Then you wear it twice.

The hem starts unraveling. The fabric pills. The zipper gets weird. And by next season, the thing you thought looked chic suddenly looks like fast fashion pretending to be luxury.

That is how I feel about these colleges.

These are schools offering degrees that I’m not sure will keep their value next season.

This is not “we couldn’t get in, so now we hate it.” I’ve gotten students into every single school on this list, including some of their hardest majors.

So no, this is not sour grapes.

This is me saying: some college brands are overvalued. Some are riding on a reputation they haven’t earned. Some are charging luxury prices for an experience that feels increasingly mass-produced, under-resourced, overcrowded, or inflated by admissions tricks.

So here are the top five colleges I think are overrated.

Northeastern

Northeastern is not as prestigious Northwestern. Yet it has a 5.6% acceptance rate — on par with Yale.

Northeastern did not suddenly become Yale with co-ops.

It became very good at making itself look impossible to get into. And now, because Northeastern has an extremely small acceptance rate, families assume it must be one of the most elite schools in the country.

A tiny acceptance rate can mean a school is academically extraordinary.

But sometimes, it means the school made applying very easy, got an enormous number of students to throw in an application, and then accepted only a small slice of them.

Northeastern has no supplemental essay, no complicated school-specific writing section, and no major barrier that forces a student to stop and ask, “Do I actually want this school?” So thousands and thousands of students apply.

The applicant pool balloons.

The acceptance rate shrinks.

The school suddenly looks more elite than it actually is.

A college degree is a long-term bet, not a four-year experience.

You are betting that the name will still mean something in ten, fifteen, twenty years. You are betting that employers, graduate schools, professional networks, and future gatekeepers will still hear that name and think: rigor, access, talent, judgment.

But not every famous college is aging well.

Some of these schools are still impressive in very specific contexts. Some are absolutely the right choice for the right student. I am not saying smart kids do not go there. Smart kids go everywhere.

I am saying families need to stop confusing “popular right now” with “powerful long term.”

UCLA & Berkeley

I know UCLA is hot.

Everyone knows UCLA ais hot. That is not the issue.

The issue is that I do not think the UC application process evaluates students in the smartest way anymore.

I have seen students get into Ivy League schools and other brutally selective private universities, then get rejected by UCLA.

That does not mean the student was weak.

It means the system is weird.

The UCs are test-blind, which means they do not consider SAT or ACT scores at all. So instead of using test scores as one piece of academic evidence, they lean heavily on grades, activities, and four short Personal Insight Questions. Each UC response is capped at 350 words. The UC says these questions are meant to show personality, leadership, creativity, challenges, and other pieces of the student’s life.

That sounds nice. But in practice, I think the format has a low ceiling.

It rewards students who can explain themselves clearly and efficiently. That matters. But it does not always reward the kind of deep intellectual weirdness, emotional complexity, academic obsession, or original voice that elite private colleges or other prestigious public universities often care about. I actually think that the University of Michigan has a better process.

There is a difference between asking, “Did this student do impressive things?” and asking, “Who is this student intellectually, emotionally, and humanly?”

I prefer colleges that care about the second question.

I want a school to care about a student’s talent as a person. Their academic character. Their originality. Their weird little obsessions. Their voice. Their intensity. Their humanity. Their ability to think in a way that cannot be flattened into a GPA, activity list, and four tidy blurbs.

And yes, there are brilliant students at UCLA and Berkeley. Obviously. But I do not think the UC system is currently built to identify brilliance.

UC San Diego’s own internal working group found that incoming students are arriving with serious gaps in math and writing preparation. Not “they need a little review before calculus.” Not “they forgot a formula over the summer.”

Actual remedial math.

I bet the same problems are occurring at UCLA, and I don’t want my high-achieving student sitting next to someone who can’t do basic algebra.

UCLA is still a major name. But I do not think families should mistake popularity for precision.

UC Berkeley

Every complaint I have about UCLA also applies to UC Berkeley. Same application. Same UC problem.

And with Berkeley, there’s another issue families love to ignore because the name is so shiny: it is a massive public university.

That matters. Especially for pre-med and pre-law.

For pre-meds, intro science classes are huge, the competition is intense, and students cannot simply dodge the hardest core requirements by taking them elsewhere without potentially weakening their med school profile. They need top grades, lab access, professor relationships, strong advising, and recommendation letters from people who actually know them.

That is much harder when you are competing with thousands of other ambitious students for the same classes, labs, office hours, and opportunities.

For pre-law, the problem is different but still real. Law schools care about GPA, writing ability, recommendations, and intellectual maturity. Berkeley’s name helps, sure. But the name alone does not get your student into the right seminars, build close faculty relationships, or make them stand out in a sea of other high-achieving political science, history, econ, and philosophy kids.

Berkeley is a serious school. I’m not pretending otherwise. But families need to stop treating prestige like it magically creates mentorship. If your student needs close advising, easy professor access, smooth course registration, or a more personal runway to medical school or law school, Berkeley may not be the dream. It may be the bumper sticker.

NYU

New York City. Purple branding. Washington Square. Cool kids in cool coats walking very quickly while looking like they are late to a film festival, a finance internship, or a nervous breakdown.

It photographs beautifully. But then you look at the price!

For 2026-2027, NYU lists its general undergraduate cost of attendance at around $96,988 for on-campus students.

Historically, NYU has only met about 79% of demonstrated need. This “gapping” leaves families to cover the remaining 21% through high-interest private loans.

And this is my issue with NYU: the school is often priced like an Ivy League university, but it does not always deliver an Ivy League undergraduate experience.

There is no traditional campus in the way many families imagine one. There is no cozy contained college world. The “campus” is New York City, which sounds glamorous until you realize that means students are also living inside one of the most expensive social environments in America.

At a normal college, hanging out can mean sitting on the quad. At NYU, hanging out can mean buying a $19 salad while pretending that is a personality.

NYU is not equally worth it across every major.

For some students, NYU is exactly right. I would never say otherwise. A focused Stern student, a serious Tisch student, a student with a very specific reason to be in New York, yes, there is a case.

But for a degree in engineering or pre-law or pre-med?

The brand is cool. The location is cool. The kids are often cool. Cool does not pay off private loans.

Georgetown

Now, for my most controversial take, Georgetown to me is like prestige on life support.

Georgetown is the one people get very emotional about because the name still hits. D.C. The Walsh School of Foreign Service. Politics. Diplomacy. Fancy children in quarter-zips saying “Hillternship” unironically.

Compared to its "Peer Group," Georgetown is broke. Its endowment is roughly $3.3 billion, which sounds like a lot until you realize Harvard is at $56 billion, and even Brown (the "poor" Ivy) has $8 billion.

The truth is that a smaller checkbook means that Georgetown students have fewer resources, worse faculty, poorer facilities, and weaker financial aid. That financial pressure has led Georgetown to seek money elsewhere. Whether or not it’s politically correct, they’ve chosen to take that money from Qatar.

Research shows that Georgetown has received more than $971 million from Qatar over the last 20 years.

Georgetown brands itself around justice, human rights, global ethics, and moral seriousness. Qatar, meanwhile, is an authoritarian monarchy…

This has raised massive red flags about academic independence and "soft-power" influence on their D.C. campus, particularly within the Walsh School of Foreign Service. It makes the school’s “international relations” brand feel more like a paid PR arm for foreign interests than an independent academic powerhouse.

The point is not that these schools are bad.

For many families, these colleges are the Zara dress at full luxury price.

Some brands get stronger over time because the underlying product is excellent: serious academics, serious resources, serious mentorship, serious outcomes.

Other brands get louder while the seams get weaker.

And families need to know the difference.

We are not impressed by a name just because everyone else is. We care about what the school actually gives your student.

The worst college purchase is not the cheap option. It is the expensive option that only looked expensive when you bought it.