Employers that reject applicants because they started at community college before completing a BA/BS at a university

So this came up in another thread, where it is claimed that if the student in question started at a community college and then transferred to University of Virginia to finish a bachelor’s degree in CS, some employers would reject them based on starting at a community college:

If “quant” means “elite quantitative finance”, perhaps that is not surprising, since elite finance has a reputation of being college-elitist to begin with.

But it does not seem to be especially common otherwise in computing hiring, or is it? How about other kinds of hiring?

To the extent that employers are college-elitist in hiring, and reject those who started at community college, that suggests that those employers are implicitly highly concerned about the state of the applicant as a high school student, when their high school credentials and parental finances and circumstances determine the name of the college they start at.

My H has worked for a number of different companies and said they would never discount an applicant for starting at CC.

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My DH took two years of CC courses before enrolling in a bottom 1000 ranked school in engineering. He has had a VERY successful career as an engineer. He credits the CC with getting him back in the college mode (he had taken about 8 years off). The bachelors school he went to encouraged and helped with coop placements…and this was also a great help.

So no…no discount here other.

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The only time one’s degree matters in most fields is for the first job. After that, all they care about is whether one can do the job one’s being hired for.

No employer cares in the least that a person with a degree from a 4 yr school started at a community college.

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This is correct.

How would the employer know? Your degree would be from X University, not Y Community College AND X University.

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As I hinted in my post above, the employers (at least the ones that I know) who reject candidates based on the low ranking or community college on their resume do not do so because they are elitists but out of necessity. These are employers who do not simply need programmers but also strong mathematical background and critical thinking. This combination is hard to find in fresh graduates even out of elite schools (our company has rejected a fair share of MIT and Berkeley CS grads with perfect GPAs). It is also NOT the case that there aren’t graduates from lower ranked schools who do not possess these skills. It is more of a matter of statistics and the resources available for recruiting. If we need 100 interviews from T50 to fill 1 position, it will take significantly more interviews from say T150-200.

Edit: Perhaps I am in a bubble of niche computing jobs and highly selective employers, biasing my opinion.

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When you apply or interview on-campus they ask you to supply an unofficial transcript.

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Sure, but we were talking about regular non-campus employers.

You don’t seem to understand. Any student can print out an unofficial copy of their transcript from the registrars office. An employer can demand to see it.

Most resumes I have seen have separate entries for community college and 4-year college in their education section. If not, employers can also determine this if the resume shows when the candidate attended the 4-year college. Employers can also request unofficial transcripts as part of application package.

Between two UCB CS graduates with similar upper level CS and math courses and grades, but one started at UCB and the other started at a community college and transferred to UCB, would you automatically assume that the one who started at a community college does not have the needed mathematical background and critical thinking, but the one who started at UCB may?

To be clear, when I said we have rejected graduates from MIT and Berkeley, I did not mean those that had 2 years of community college before going to Berkeley. I meant people who spent 4 years at Berkeley (and perhaps Masters and PhDs too).

No I would not assume that. However, the course level info is hardly available on resumes, and it is very likely that the CC resume gets filtered out before someone has a chance to look deeply into the rigor of higher level course work.

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I can understand this thread if it is directed at posters who are employers, i.e. “Do you reject applicants because they started at community college?” but otherwise how would anyone know? No one can KNOW that they didn’t get an interview or the job because they started at a community college. How would they know it wasn’t because of their gpa or they didn’t have a grad course in programing or had 6 misspelled words on their resume?

I did have a boss once tell me that he wouldn’t have interviewed me if I’d gone to X law school, which was 5 blocks away from Y (where I went). He only told me this after I was working there, so I never would have known if I hadn’t been interviewed and hadn’t been hired. It was kinda well known in our department that we ‘didn’t’ hire lawyers from one of the 3 law schools in town – until we did and he was a really good lawyer. So much for that policy.

I don’t think many companies would publicize this policy of auto rejecting CC students.

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In other words, someone (or some automated process programmed by someone) in the hiring process decided to automatically reject applicants who started at community college, even if they completed their BA/BS from one of the few universities that someone at your company deems acceptable, right?

That is correct. That’s exactly what I said in my original post.

Friend of mine said they don’t interview outside (what they consider) Tier 1 institutions. You just find more diamonds where there are more diamonds, and yes you miss out on a few.

Perhaps they should openly state that, as well as openly state what colleges (or law schools, etc.) are acceptable or unacceptable to them, so that they and applicants will not have to waste both of their time. Since what college (or law school, etc.) one attended is not a protected class with respect to illegal discrimination lawsuits, wouldn’t that be better for both the employer and applicants?

Older S works for a very large and well known financial company. He was surprised that someone his age started there from our hometown in CS 6 months later. He wasn’t in the general honors/AP at their school. He went to our local CC and transferred to UVA and was hired for CS the summer after graduation making six figures.

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It could still lead to claims of illegal discrimination. What if the firm said they don’t hire from Howard, BYU, Pepperdine or ND? No reason given, but what impression does it leave?

Firms definitely can show their preferences by not interviewing AT those schools, but I really doubt a firm would ever risk not being willing to accept an application from a graduate of certain schools and at least running it through their regular hiring decision tree. Waste of time? Sure, but not worth a law suit for doing it any other way.