Success stories of people going to small colleges?

I guess I'm a little worried about not getting into a big-name school. Are there any examples of people who went to smaller colleges and still turned out wildly successful?

Absolutely! There are numerous folks who graduated from smaller universities and have achieved impressive successes in their chosen fields.

One notable example would be Ursula Burns. Ursula attended Brooklyn's Polytechnic Institute, a relatively modest school, and became the CEO of Xerox. She made history being the first African American female to head up a Fortune 500 company and has been named multiple times on Forbes' list of the world's most powerful women.

Another outlier is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and currently one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet. He studied at Princeton, which isn't a small school by any means but isn't the flagship state university or an Ivy that we typically think of when mentioning big-name institutions.

Or consider Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix. He got his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, a liberal arts college in Maine, before eventually getting his masters from Stanford.

In the realm of politics, the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, attended Georgetown University for his undergraduate studies - a respected institution, certainly, but not as globally recognized as Harvard or Stanford.

These examples underscore the fact that success isn't dictated by the prestige of the school you attend. Instead, it's largely determined by your own efforts, mindset, and determination to achieve your goals. Going to a smaller college can even have its advantages, like receiving more personal attention from faculty members and having opportunities for leadership roles that may be more competitive at larger institutions. So don't stress too much about the size or ranking of the college - what matters most is that it is a good fit for you and your educational and career goals.