Read the full article at Inside Higher Ed.

Are students better off at the most prestigious college to which they can be admitted? Or might many of them be better off at a college -- less prestigious, perhaps -- where they may be an academic star?

For decades, sociologists have pointed to a 1966 study to answer the question. The study found that academic success in college (regardless of the rank or reputation of the college) was a better way to predict career success than simply the reputation of the college or university attended.

To be sure, many students who did well at top colleges succeeded, benefiting in part from the reputations of their alma maters. But for many other students, the self-confidence and direction gained by attending a college where they thrived seemed to push these students ahead. “The Campus as a Frog Pond,” the study, makes the case for being a big frog in a small pond.

It would be easy to assume the study -- from The American Journal of Sociology -- is dated. It focuses on male students, and those students were overwhelmingly white in an era when opportunity was denied to others. (Notably, the “better off in a small pond” argument is made frequently by critics of affirmative action with regard to minority students, most prominently by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but the 1966 paper and a new one focus on white and Asian students.)

Kaidu Wu, a graduate student in social psychology at the University of Michigan, says that much subsequent research has backed the 1966 findings, even if many prospective students and parents focus only on rankings and prestige, not fit.

She set out compare how different groups of people relate to the big frog in small pond/small frog in big pond choice when it comes to college admissions. With two Michigan colleagues -- Stephen M. Garcia and Shirli Kopelman -- she has published the results as “Frogs, Ponds and Culture” in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Her research found enduring interest in being in the large pond (in terms of prestige) -- especially but not exclusively among those with Asian backgrounds.

In one of the studies for the project, the research team surveyed white and Asian-American undergraduates on the big pond/small pond choice (after first surveying and finding that the undergraduates understood the metaphor).

Both groups opted for being a small frog in a big pond, but Asian-Americans were more likely to have this preference -- 75 percent vs. 59 percent.

For a second study, the team looked at adults (older than traditional college age) -- white adults from the United States and adults in China. Here the idea was to look at attitudes once people had left their college years, and the question gave more of a downside to being a small frog in a large pond.

Those surveyed were asked if they would rather attend a “top 10 college” at which their academic performance would be below average, or a “top 100 college” at which their academic performance would be above average.

Here 58 percent of the Chinese sample opted for the big pond option of attending the top 10 college, even with below-average academic performance. But only 29 percent of the white American group made that choice.

In an interview, Wu said that the results point to a need for counselors, parents and others to encourage high school students to think beyond “big pond” colleges.