<p>I'm a senior, and many people in my school are very judgy about where others go to college- so basically, if a person says they're not going to Rutgers, TCNJ, Penn state, or the University of Maryland, they're stupid (no one really knows about top schools besides the ivies either).</p>
<p>So once you're in college, do people even care- like, would a Chapel Hill student look down on someone going to NCSU? Would a kid at CSU Chico student be seen as 'dumb' by someone from Berkeley? Or does it not matter after high school?</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter from what I see. Sure, during senior year people are like “OMG you got into an ivy!!” Or something. but when it starts, people start to care less because people choose colleges for all different reasons – prestige being only one out of many (and IMO things like money and campus life are probably more important).</p>
<p>And in all honesty, you find that you begin losing touch with a lot of people from high school minus a few good friends. I graduated three years ago and where you go to school doesn’t even matter anymore, whether it be Harvard or CC.</p>
<p>It matters in some places, especially to investment banks like Goldman Sachs. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter to your every day person, no. Probably 90% of my friends are at top universities (MIT, Berkeley, UCLA)…do they look down on me for going to Cal Poly Pomona? No. </p>
<p>Do employers? It just depends on where you want to get a job. If you need a bigger profile school to increase your chances at those extremely prestige competitive entry jobs, there’s always graduate school. The important thing is that you have to be equal or better to one of these graduates and demonstrate your worth when applying for jobs. Hey, if you can perform brainteasers on the spot, score similar on IQ tests, program like a master, etc. then you’re just as good as the next guy for the competitive jobs. But they won’t know that most likely because there’s an HR department that screens people out. “Didn’t go to Harvard? Well, I don’t know any alumni that can vouch for you from your school. Trashed.” Top universities have a good reputation of pumping out good and smart workers, that’s just a fact. </p>
<p>Your education matters less after getting your first job. However, if you plan on going to academia, you better be getting into a R1 institution for graduate school for your PhD. Otherwise, good luck getting a job at a good university. </p>
<p>Overall…I don’t think it matters all that much, but you need to be smart enough to know when you’re doing something that it does (professionally). Your old high school buddies won’t care where you go unless they’re bad people to begin with. I don’t see why it matters if people think you’re stupid. As long as you know you aren’t, what’s the problem? That being said, go to the very best institution you can get into. You want the best education for yourself. </p>
<p>It will damage you if you’re sporting a 3.0 from CSU Chico and the guy next to you has a 3.5 from UC Berkeley. So the lesser known your school is the better you must do.</p>
<p>“would a Chapel Hill student look down on someone going to NCSU?”</p>
<p>I’m a Chapel Hill student and the answer to this question is yes. (Certainly not between friends–I have plenty of friends who go/went to State–but in general, yes, hahaha). AFTER graduating from COLLEGE, I’m not so sure.</p>
<p>As someone going to a UC, I don’t look down on anyone going to a CSU. Unless it’s Sac State. ;)</p>
<p>For reactions from people who aren’t students, in my area people tend to be impressed if you go to any UC. CSUs usually get a reaction along the lines of “Oh, that’s a(n) ok/good/decent school” (depending on campus), in contrast to the “Wow, you go to a UC?!” reaction. I personally think the difference in reactions is a bit ridiculous, but that’s what I’ve seen.</p>
<p>Other than initial reactions though, from what I’ve seen people in general don’t care where you go/went.</p>
<p>Usually you don’t KNOW where other adults went to college. One acquaintance told me he went to Amherst. I was not really impressed that he felt the need to tell me.</p>
<p>I am MORE impressed at someone’s major. For example, a woman who I really thought of as “just a housewife” turned out to be a math major - wow! I couldn’t have done that.</p>
<p>It’s not about where you go. It’s about what you do.</p>
<p>I’d be much more impressed by someone who went to CSU Chico and had a handful of great internships or got an article published in a top tier journal than by someone who went to UC Berkeley and had nothing to show for it.</p>
<p>There will always be some people who care. They’re probably the same people who were exceptionally/obnoxiously snobby about it in high school, too. If you are planning to go to school past your undergrad (i.e., for MD or PhD), your grad school is what matters. I can imagine in certain fields or with certain companies a specific set of institutions could have sway.</p>
<p>For the most part, though, high school is the height of petty smugness. At some point people in general have more important things to worry about than the name of the school.</p>
<p>Adults are not usually like high school students in judging people by where they went to college and indeed it doesn’t often even come up socially.</p>
<p>There are opportunities everywhere, but sometimes they are more abundantly available to students at more elite universities.</p>
<p>My sister went to community college and it took many years but she was able to transfer to Chico State, got a degree in computer science and landed a great paying job in silicon valley. She was hired in an industry expansion phase but has been through many contractions and and layoff periods as well as expansions, but always managed to stay employed and always has been highly compensated.</p>
<p>I worked at a tiny nonprofit where there were Ivy managers and even the $15 per hour worker bees went to impressive LAC’s and other well regarded uni’s. All except for the accounting and finance people, lol.</p>
<p>Agreed - it might matter in college because it’s still salient to you. But after college, it won’t matter to the majority of people. Once you start working, you will work with people who went to all kinds of colleges - and in grad school, you will be educated alongside people from all kinds of colleges, too. You’ll realize that people can be just as smart and hard-working from any university or college.</p>
<p>I don’t think so. Once you start college, everyone’s too busy with their own lives. HSers just have more time to be judge-y In terms of employment, it might be a different story, but I don’t think there’s a big issue with social status. If someone says that they went to Princeton 5 years ago, others will be impressed, but not as impressed as seniors are when one of their classmates just got in.</p>
<p>To me, it doesn’t matter once you leave high school. Matter of fact, it shouldn’t even matter when you’re in high school. There’s no reason to ever look down on anybody, each college has its pros and cons. Sometimes I wish I went to another place, sometimes I don’t.</p>
<p>Yes, people care a lot about social rank after school and that includes college namebrand. This is most obvious when fertility centers are buying eggs from women–women who go to Harvard, Yale, etc. can sell their eggs for thousands of more dollars then a woman who didn’t. My female friend is attractive, goes to Harvard and is almost 6 feet tall–I found out she could sell her eggs for a lot more money than I could have imagined…</p>
<p>In employment, whether school prestige matters depends on the field. In finance and consulting, it tends to matter a lot (also law with respect to your law school). In some other fields, it matters less, and much less after you have work experience. Note also that notions of which schools are most desirable varies in different fields.</p>
<p>A friend of mine went to Cal State Fullerton, she had started at community college. I knew her for many years before she mentioned that she went to Caltech for grad school. But the work she does now she didn’t study for at either college. She was a chemist but her lungs got burnt in a lab accident so she had some vocational oriented retraining and is a database programmer.</p>
(Certainly not between friends–I have plenty of friends who go/went to State–but in general, yes, hahaha). AFTER graduating from COLLEGE, I’m not so sure.</p>
In terms of employment, it might be a different story, but I don’t think there’s a big issue with social status. If someone says that they went to Princeton 5 years ago, others will be impressed, but not as impressed as seniors are when one of their classmates just got in.</p>