There exists a debate about whether it is worth going to famous universities.

Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be
Actually, it can matter where you go to college

Both of the writing above has good points. What is beyond debate, however, is that WHAT you study in college is very important. AND, what should concern most students and their parents is that it is not easy to be admitted to the college that teaches what the student wants or needs, nor to graduate in four years.

Every student has aspiration of their own. If they don’t have some idea about their future, it really is important to at least decide what they will major in when they get to college. If they choose a wrong major for their future, they will likely waste years of their life and a great amount of money until they move to the right course of study or job for their eventual career choice.  Therefore, it is important that a student narrows down his field of pursuit as much as possible, as early as possible, while studying some things on the side in case he needs to change the field. 

Every major for every school has their own set of qualities they look in a student. Many majors may not accept a student with very high test scores and grades if he doesn’t have scores or grades from certain key subjects they consider to be very important. In high school years, you cannot take every subject tests and AP exams there is. Realistically, a student can handle one or two subject tests and one or two AP courses within a year. It is important that a student makes plans for which subject tests and which AP courses he will target in order to best utilize his time, and maximize his chances for the primary and secondary field of choice.

Just taking those tests and AP Courses isn’t enough for most colleges, especially if you wish to enter into a school that has generous financial assistance, specialized study programs, or ones that have some faculty members who is renowned in the field of interest. Any school that has some positive reputations will require the students to have a very high score in certain key tests or subjects. If a student has some impressive accomplishments in certain key areas or subjects, even highly selective schools may be forgiving of some low scores in subjects or test they don’t consider to be as important. Therefore, students should strive to have at least two subject test scores or AP exams score that is very impressive if they wish to be accepted in a department for major of their choice in any colleges.

Thus, students and parents should remind themselves that all these discussions about college’s name value does not mean they can simply pay minimum attention to the college application process. All the parties of the discussion still emphasize hard work, good preparations, and need to learn as much as possible. Doing well in key subjects relevant to the major of student’s choice will also help him do much better after he is accepted into college. Think about how much more money additional year in college will cost because the student haven’t mastered all he could about the core subjects while he was in high school. If a student seeks to learn more than what is taught in high schools in the core subjects, chances are that the student will be more likely to graduate from college with degree of their choice in timely manner, greatly saving money while improving his future prospect, no matter which college they attended.  For these and many, many  other reasons, it still is important to study hard in high school, and people should not be ashamed of seeking help, nor be afraid of challenging themselves to learn new subjects. Think about this: Einstein, after he published the papers for which he got his Nobel Prize (papers on photoelectric effect and Brownian motion), he needed to receive help in math from his friend in order to write his papers on General Relativity.  If someone as brilliant as Einstein needed help with math, we shouldn’t think bad of asking for help in studying when needed.