Going to a Top-20 university has the tendency to instill in students just a tad bit of arrogance. Right off the bat, on Frosh-O weekend (now “welcome weekend” at Notre Dame, because somehow it is so offensive to say “freshman” these days), first-year students are told, “you’re the most accomplished incoming class this university has ever seen!” Students at the so-called elite institutions are reminded of just how capable they are, and, rubbing shoulders with professionals who lead enviable careers, they are socialized into the culture and trappings of upper-class America. Whereas in 2013 the median wage of workers over the age of 25 in the United States was $32,140, the average starting salary of a ~22-year-old Notre Dame graduate is $53,400 and the average mid-career salary of someone who went to my alma mater is $106,000.

Pictured: a freshman “first-year student.” What is this, Hogwarts?

None of this is intrinsically wrong. As the size of the applicant pool continues to grow, elite universities are able to be more selective in their admissions processes such that most freshman classes really are the most accomplished in the history of their universities—and while perhaps informing 18-year-olds that they constitute the most accomplished incoming class in their institution’s history might stoke their egos, it’s not wrong to tell the truth. Neither is affirming students’ worth and enabling them to connect with professionally accomplished mentors. And for that matter, earning a lot of money is wrong only if it occurs within the context of a greater injustice—for instance, if that money has been made through exploitation, or if one’s having too much results in others’ having too little.

The real problem is twofold: firstly, others who are underprivileged but equally talented are not given the same opportunities, and secondly, those who do enjoy such opportunities begin to think of themselves, not just as more accomplished, but rather as better than others in the comprehensive sense. As William Deresiewicz notes in Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, the difficulty with being told constantly that one is among “the best and the brightest” is that “everybody else is, well, something else: less good, less bright, and in any case, beneath you.” It is evil, I think, to attribute others’ not having the same privileges as oneself to their being worse: it’s true that many people who get into places like Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Emory, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton, Yale and Harvard have worked their asses off, certainly, but so have many underprivileged individuals who, instead of expending their efforts into cultivating impressive talents, participating in résumé-building extracurricular activities, or, hell, doing their homework, worked part-time jobs to support their families. While elite students had the resources to prepare for SATs, others have had to spend their cash on more urgent things, like eating or living in a half-decent apartment. Thankfully, the measure of a person is not their credentials but rather their character—and given that there are noble and decent people from all walks of life, it’s entirely wrong to affirm that we are in any way collectively better.

You may think that this does not happen—who would be so arrogant as to claim publicly that they are better than others?—but internally, convincing oneself that one is better is a self-protective mechanism that people use to rationalize their privilege: there are plenty of nativists who judge illegal immigrants and who, ignoring injunctions from every moral system to be compassionate, insist instead that the U.S. should kick out 11 million human beings, most of whom migrated to escape poverty, or that France should shut its borders to immigrants during what is the most urgent refugee crisis that the EU has faced since its foundation. The rationale used by backward-thinking people everywhere is that somehow they have earned privileges that others have not, that they are better. Yet the very fact that one thinks oneself better is a failure of humanity, and thus, in fact, evidence of the opposite.

As Deresiewicz notes, students at elite universities, whose superiority has been affirmed throughout the course of their entire lives, often find themselves at least subconsciously believing that they are comprehensively better than others; they are, he says, “incessantly encouraged to believe that academic excellence is excellence, full stop, that better at school means simply better—better morally, better metaphysically, higher on some absolute scale of human value.” Now, it is true that I think Notre Dame, more than most other schools in its U.S. News & World Report bracket, does make an effort to prevent the emergence of this sentiment of moral superiority. Drawing upon its Catholic mission and character, the university is strongly committed to social justice and goes to great lengths to sensitize students to the difficulties and injustices borne by so many (I particularly love our late university president Theodore Hesburgh‘s prayer, “God, give bread to those who are hungry. And to those who have bread, give a hunger for justice”). Notre Dame hands out grants like candy for students to serve in poorer areas of the U.S. and to volunteer in developing countries—they threw $6190 at me last year to go teach English in Morocco. But the fact remains that it is an elite institution, and that beneath the conscious affirmation of solidarity with those who suffer so unjustly, there is the subtle awareness that going to Notre Dame qualifies us to do better and more important things than our peers.

The title of this post is “On moving home after college, especially when that home is in another country.” I haven’t actually spoken about that subject as of yet, but let me cut to the chase: here in British Columbia, Canada, where I grew up and where I once again find myself, nobody knows about the University of Notre Dame or cares about how supposedly prestigious it is. In fact, people don’t really care about the university name on your diploma in general—they just want to know that you have a diploma, and the differences in prestige between McGill and, say, Thompson Rivers University do not play that substantive a role in hiring decisions. This is great for the cause of equality but has been an absolute nightmare for me in my job search, because nobody gives a shit about the fact that I went to one of America’s great universities, and so my unemployed self cannot simply expect an amazing job by virtue of the school that I attended.

Seriously, who cares?

No-one gives a shit about the school that I went to. Nobody cares. But you know what? This is fantastic, because it reminds me that I am not better. I do not get special privileges because of the prestige of my school. I have to compete in the job market like everybody else and prove my own worth—and this is how it ought to be. For privilege (or the lack thereof) does not define us. Character does. And there are a lot of people who are better than me in that regard.