Lily Malcolm asks why ambitious go-getter John Kerry ended up going to law school at decidedly middle-of-the-road Boston College rather than a more prestigious institution. Lily has some theories:

Maybe he was sick of the Ivy League. Or he decided BC would be better for his political career. Or he had terrible grades (how bad would they have to be to outweigh a Silver Star?). Were there financial complications? Geographical constraints?

Obviously I can’t read Kerry’s mind. My gut level feeling is that geography, alone, wouldn’t explain it—assuming his resume was as impressive as Lily indicates it should have been, Kerry could have gone to Harvard—historical Yale–Harvard grudges notwithstanding. And, generally, the “political career” explanation only works when you’re talking about leaving the state or region for law school; no rationally ambitious Mississippian would dare try to come back home and run for office after going to Princeton or Yale, what with the perfectly good (at least for such political purposes or for in-state practice, if not for one’s future reputation on the national scene) law school sitting right here in Oxford.

Indeed, it’s possible that Kerry’s high-profile antics after returning from Vietnam had a negative impact on his stature; law school admissions committees in the early 1970s, I suspect, were rather conservative bodies filled with men who served in World War II or Korea before their academic careers. Hanging out with the Hanoi Jane crowd and publicly accusing your comrades-in-arms of being war criminals don’t seem like the sorts of activities that would have endeared Kerry to an Ivy League admissions committee circa 1971.

That being said, people end up at particular schools for the most idiosyncratic reasons. Someone familiar with my academic record and standardized test scores probably wouldn’t guess I’d have degrees from the University of Memphis and Ole Miss. The place where one got a particular degree is only a very rough indicator of one’s talents—something I’m hoping (though skeptical) that hiring committees bear in mind.

Update: Lily has an update with a number of different perspectives.