Despite the very silly-sounding name, J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry pulls at the heart-strings of Western culture and perhaps even taps into a deep primal longing. While Hermes High School will always hold a special place in Philip’s heart, my hope is that his undergraduate experience will prove to be the best part of his late adolescence. In short, I not only want him to earn an education that will launch him into a successful adult professional life, I also want him to spend four years at a place that resembles Rowling’s Hogwarts.
Fortunately, many colleges indeed fit this description … minus the magic and the threat of the dark lord, of course. Some resemble Hogwarts extremely well, including my own beloved Alma Mater. But not all make the cut. You can remove the commuter and online schools, ones with low retention or low graduation rates, and really any school that could go for more than eighteen months without some kind of student protest. Besides excellent academic and professional programs, I have identified nine qualities these best colleges all share.
1. Subsidized Selectivity. Harry Potter and his peers are all promising wizards. They get to go to Hogwarts; “muggles” don’t; and it appears “squibs” and perhaps even some less promising wizards are excluded as well. In the muggle world, even for those who pay full tuition and expenses, the experience at a great college is subsidized by an endowment as well as numerous research grants, government budgets and other contributions that far exceed what the tuition alone buys. Harry and his friends got to live, eat, sleep, play and study in a castle. While Draco Malfoy’s family may have been paying some kind of tuition, we never hear of it for Harry and his friends. Somehow, our society has come to believe that its most promising young people deserve a slice of life that is just a little bit like Hogwarts and is willing to subsidize them across the board.
2. Crowded Living Conditions & Communal Dining. It seemed Harry Potter was always listening to the snores of Dean and Seamus, or carrying on at the banquet table with Ron and Hermione. A typical college freshman has a similar experience living with one or more roommates normally assigned by the school, while sharing a bathroom resembling the facilities in a high school locker room and a miniature Laundromat in the dormitory basement. The population density of a college dormitory resembles that of an apartment building in a third world country, and there is always a very institutional dining hall. In a very short time, a bunch of people need to get to know one another and get along despite their differences. Once students are thrust together, they discover they share the same basic challenges and this brings them even closer. Mid-terms, Finals, adjusting to new classes, comprehensive examinations, and finding summer jobs all tend to happen around the same time for everyone. Harry Potter and his peers worried about their OWLS, important papers and exams, as well as how certain difficult teachers treated them and graded their work. The same can be said about nearly all college students at competitive schools.
3. A Celebrated History and Legacy. When Harry arrived at Hogwarts, it was not just a great school, it was a great school for his parents and for many preceding generations. Its founders and many alumni were legends. For newer colleges to earn the “Hogwarts” mystique they must give their students the opportunity to lay the groundwork for decades or even centuries to follow. Older institutions can celebrate their founders and their graduates who have been gone on to become inventors, authors, presidents, astronauts, military heroes and entrepreneurs.
4. Institutionalized Rivalries. This takes two forms. There are the rivalries between colleges and then there are the rivalries that exist within the college, such as the rivalries that exist between fraternities, sororities and even the freshman dormitories. Harry Potter enjoyed both the rivalry between Gryffindor and the other Houses, and perhaps even more Hogwarts’ rivalry with Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and the Durmstrang Institute. At my beloved Alma Mater the two largest freshman dormitories enjoyed a fierce, memorable rivalry.
5. Respect for Brilliant Eccentrics. Every good college has its own set of staff personalities that rival Albus Dumbledore, Hagrid, Serverus Snape and Nearly Headless Nick. Add to that list Starfleet Academy’s groundskeeper, Mr. Boothby and that does a very good job describing the interesting set characters that can be found on any great campus. In the Political Science department there must be two tenured professors ensuring values of the far left and the far right are each well-defended.
6. Willing to Forgive and Tolerate Immaturity and Even Foolishness. While many Rowling plots would have ground to a halt otherwise, there is nonetheless a deeper truth. Colleges tolerate a lot of questionable behavior. As long as there is no evidence of hate, pranks and stunts that no public high school would tolerate earn merely a stern warning and a community service restitution sentence. We love it when Harry sneaks out or looks into magic he shouldn’t. And the truth is our society smiles when college students cross into the grey zone, especially when sharing radical ideas in the classroom or during a student protest. We want them to develop their independence and we are willing to accept it if they stumble a little along the way.
7. Beautiful Buildings and Grounds. While it shouldn’t be overstated, a purely urban campus, or a campus with purely utilitarian buildings, fails the “Hogwarts” test. One needs a quad, an historic chapel, a tower or at least an elaborate fountain that defines the campus. Likewise, there needs to be some kind of low traffic, park-like setting for students to relax and study on a lawn chair or picnic blanket when the weather is favorable. Hogwarts wouldn’t be Hogwarts without its beauty and neither would any great college.
8. A Place to Make Life-Long Friendships and Even Fall in Love. From the get-go Ron and Harry were destined to be friends for life. And as the story unfolded we wondered if Harry would end of with Hermione, Ginny, Cho Chang or even Luna. The very choice of an institution of higher learning defines the person and brings him or her together with other like-minded people to share the formative years. If students don’t connect well enough to get this close, the school fails the “Hogwarts” test.
9. It Hurts to Leave and is Great to Return. The most painful day of my life was the day I graduated from college. After living with the same group of people for four years, we had a ceremony, a picnic-style banquet, packed our things and left, saying hurried good-byes and agreeing to see one another five years later at the reunion. Since then, reunions have been fantastic. If I could pick the most painful day in Philip’s life, it would be the day of his college graduation for the exact same reason.
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