<p>Thank you! Now I feel like kicking myself in the face for not figuring that out.</p>
<p>lol rastogr… there’s an abbreviation thread at the top of the page… i used it alot when i first found cc</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52585-abbreviation-thread.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52585-abbreviation-thread.html</a></p>
<p>Excellent post, alynor. Thanks</p>
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<p>In the case of NYU…that’s still effectively the case. NYU’s FA policies are so stingy from my own experience and those of dozens of classmates that there may as well be no FA. There was a reason why it was commonly known by many NYC locals and kids at my urban public magnet as “rich kid’s school” back in the early-mid '90s. Granted, it also didn’t command the degree of academic prestige it has currently. </p>
<p>I also know several recent NYU grads who are struggling in their eyeballs in debt because of their miserly FA policies. Being $100-200K+ is bad enough for someone from an upper-middle class family. It is catastrophic for those from the poor and the middle/working class families.</p>
<p>I hire a bit but not below the MBA/PhD level, but talk with folks at some of the big consulting firms and worked in investment banking/PE/hedge funds earlier in my career. In general, there are not that many students from the top 10 or 15 schools so as bovertine pointed out, they are not always one’s competition. Indeed, Peter Capelli suggests that big corporations are less enamored of Ivy grads (and prestigious school grads generally) than they used to be. See [Corporations</a> shun the Ivy League. - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/id/2112215/]Corporations”>Corporations shun the Ivy League.). </p>
<p>Where they are highly represented is at the top-tier consulting firms, i-banks, PE firms and hedge funds. And those areas, my sense is that Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore are considered along with the Ivies and MIT and Stanford but many other schools (including LACs) are not. For example, a partner in one of the big strategy consulting firms interviews at Ivies, MIT, Stanford, and Amherst and Williams. He didn’t mention CalTech, but they explicitly don’t stop at a number of East Coast schools including Tufts, Bowdoin, Bates, Wesleyan etc. I wonder if in addition to Stanford (and I’d guess CalTech) on the West Coast, they also stop at some of the Pomona/Oxy/Harvey Mudd group as well but I didn’t ask him that question. The exclusion of most of the East Coast LACs from the school visits doesn’t mean that people from those LACs/schools don’t get hired – they do, but they have to find other ways in. And, they get jobs there after getting top-tier MBAs.</p>
<p>I helped people start a couple of hedge funds a number of years ago. There, we hired recent college grads. We were hiring for a combination of IQ, technical ability, comfort with problem-solving and willingness to work hard. We hired kids from Princeton, MIT, Harvard, etc. In general, the kids from MIT were fantastic but the best employee we had was a math/econ major from UMass Amherst who just kept teaching himself new things and new skills. (But, he came after work experience whereas the other kids we hired were fresh out of college). We also hired from a couple of kids from lower tier schools and they just couldn’t really do the work. We would probably have looked closely at Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore kids if they’d popped up in the applicant pool (and a very limited number of LACs) but as a small firm without an HR department, we did screen in part by undergraduate school. I don’t know how representative the two data points I described, but I suspect that they are replicated somewhat, at least in the Northeast. </p>
<p>OP, I wouldn’t recommend limiting your thinking to those schools because of the somewhat easier tracking into management consulting/banking/hedge fund jobs or that you should choose schools by the average income of the graduates. But, the biggest difference with respect to employment is not LAC versus university but a combination of: 1) how effectively the schools screen for the things employers want (e.g., our firm wanted IQ, technical and problem-solving abilities, and willingness to work hard); 2) the reputation of the schools to the employers who matter; 3) the aspirations the schools encourage in their students; and 4) the loyalty and size of the alumni network.</p>
<p>I have a recent grad from a ~25 rated LAC and another just finishing Sophomore year. As a grad myself of a small LAC I have always been a big believer in them and happily paid full freight to send my kids to one. I must say that the results of their experience have been far different than mine and have caused me to re think the value significantly.</p>
<p>DS#1 Graduated with a neuroscience degree. Bright but with mediocre grades and limited research, etc. One year later still not much in the way of jobs and direction. He didn’t work hard enough, can’t blame the school for that, but what I came to understand is that the degree of motivation of the peer group that seems to attend an LAC of that category today, and the “learning for its own sake” environment that pervades the institution simply did not prepare him for the current competitive job environment. The institution did not “add value” to help him get where he needed. I think that a state school with more hungry kids and the need to scramble to get what you want would have been better training.</p>
<p>DS#2 is doing better, getting good grades as physics major, but again not in an environment that strongly encourages research, or assisted with summer jobs, etc. He was going along getting A’s, yet would be no competition to a grad of a large university or engineering school that had 4 years of research and internships under their belt by the time of graduation. DS has just made a decision mid stream to switch to a 3-2 engineering program and transfer to a institution and degree that will be more useful. It will take him major scrambling this year to make it work, and another $70K on top of the full pay LAC. Yet I feel lucky that we “dodged the bullet” of sending yet another LAC grad out into the market unprepared to compete.</p>
<p>I was heartened to hear of a posters H who hires smart LAC grads and gives them a chance. A wise strategy, one that I also follow, but not what is typical out there anymore.</p>
<p>My personal conclusion is:</p>
<p>What really matters at least for the first job is not what happens in the classroom (yes, grades still count), but the the degree of focus on research, internships, summer jobs, etc. Rate the institution by how well it and the student body will encourage and drive achievement to that end.</p>
<p>Most LAC’s don’t score very well in that category, though at the very top few I think it is better because the kids who get in are already driven to be successful.</p>
<p>If I had it to do over again I would have sent DS#1 to the best state school he could get into and DS#2 to a university or mid size college environment that had an engineering program from the start.</p>
<p>Some firms do not recruit on campus at some of those LACs because they are in the middle of no where and the pool is too small for it to be worth their while. Often when a firm decides whether to recruit from a school is pushed by an alum (senior) of that firm. A lot of firms recruit at Cornell(not that Cornell has better students than LACs) because they get a lot of bang for their bucks for a trip, and there is a large alumni network.</p>
<p>DD1 is a rising senior at a highly rated non-LAC private univ where the cost of attendance this coming year is >$58K not counting her flights home. Neither DW nor I think this was that much of a better experience for her than the flagship, but I’m sure there were several in her class for whom this school gave their money’s worth. My feeling is that the most significant aspect of whether a school’s cost is worth it (be it $20 K or $60k/yr, LAC or research) is what the student does with the opportunity …
In our case we were fortunate that we didn’t incur any debts, and if the school didn’t take our money, wall street would have helped take care of that. Not very different from some parents we know who sent their kids to private K-12 at $20-25K/year and can never definitively say if it was worth it or not.</p>
<p>If money would have mattered, it would have been a really tough call for us to have decided whether to take on debt or second guess ourselves for the rest of our lives, but I still don’t see this much as an LAC specific issue.</p>
<p>My son just landed an interesting entry level job working in our Governor’s office at our state capitol. I know he would never have had this job opportunity if it weren’t for the fellowship he applied for, and received, at the recommendation of his profs while attending his private LAC. </p>
<p>There’s a lot to be said for the intimate student/professor relationships that are often a part of these smaller learning communities. The personal interest that these profs take in their students can lead to a lot of open doors that might not have opened otherwise.
I’m not saying that this doesn’t happen for kids at the large publics- of course it does. But I can’t help thinking that the smaller population at my son’s LAC made him visible in a way that would have been much less likely in a school with 20,000+ students, as is the case at our state flagships.</p>
<p>Was this highly selective liberal arts college worth the money? Well, even our state flagships, by the time you factor in room and board, cost more than half of what we paid at his LAC, so the difference in price is incremental, not monumental. I tend to think in his particular case, it was definitely worth the difference in price, and not just because of whatever job opportunity came to him or will come about in the future, but because he received a superb education. Full pay- no regrets.</p>
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We have friend’s son who is likely to be in this state. He was supposed to graduated this past spring (from Princeton), but is still (theoretically) working on his thesis. His work experience is working at a vet one summer and making some movies another summer. (His mother - ironically in light of this thread - wishes she’d been able to persuade him to go to Amherst instead.)</p>
<p>I think another thing to remember is that just because XYZ Corp doesn’t recruit at a given college, that doesn’t mean that they think less of the students, or that they are biased against it, or that they spit and laugh if they see a resume from that school. It’s just practicality - companies can only spare their employees to recruit at so many places, so they narrow it down based on practicality, ease of getting managers to travel there, likelihood of students to want to move to the company’s offices, preexisting relationships, etc. – not because they are making some grand statement that some colleges are worthwhile and others aren’t.</p>
<p>sewhappy-</p>
<p>I tried sending you a PM, but your mailbox is full.</p>
<p>If you contact me via PM, I’ll then send it to you.</p>
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<p>When you say “mediocre grades”, are you accounting for the much lower average grades STEM majors tend to face? It is not unheard of at many schools…especially rigorous LACs/unis with little/no grade inflation for STEM majors to graduate with cumulative averages in the mid-high 2.x range. In a few institutions, graduating with a 2.8 cumulative average as a STEM major places one in the top third of his/her class.</p>
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<p>It’s good to know what employers look for, as shared by shawbridge and bovertine. For that set of qualifications, where one goes to school may be less important than if the school has/produces grads with such qualifications.</p>
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<p>Could it simply be that since LACs tend to be small, companies sending traveling recruiters may find that a visit to a Big University brings more candidates per trip than a visit to a Small College, with LACs mostly in the latter group that is passed over?</p>
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<p>I do think there is a difference between MIT and Harvey Mudd experience.
It is completely a personal decision whether to spend $55K for any college but stating that there is no difference between HYP and Amherst/Williams/Swath is just plain wrong.</p>
<p>There is lot of value in the name recognition otherwise branding will not exists in the society. Ignoring the brand value or good will of an institution is not justifiable.</p>
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<p>It’s not just practicality. Companies recruit at colleges where they think they will find good employees in the intended field of work. I’ve recruited at many companies in Silicon Valley as part of New College Graduate recruitment program.
Companies fly 5000 miles to Boston to recruit at MIT while don’t fly to LA to recruit at Harvey Mudd, USC or UCLA.</p>
<p>There is a distinctive value of branding or good will of an institute similarly to a good will associated with a company. Google stock at $500 a piece or good will of Facebook even before going public is not ignorable then why do we want to ignore the Good Will or brand recognition value of educational Institutes or Universities.</p>
<p>It’s being childish to say there is no value of HYP experience over Amherst/Williams/Swath.</p>
<p>“Childish?” Really? Can there be differences of opinion without the name calling?</p>
<p>SOME companies go to Boston to recruit MIT and OTHER companies go to LA to recruit Harvey Mudd, USC, UCLA. I know you want to think that MIT is so vastly superior to everyone else that its career center is just hopping night and day with six figure jobs being passed out like candy while the poor kids at HM, USC and UCLA sit there anxiously awaiting the one company that may deign to blow the dust off the career center’s doors, but that simply isn’t reality.</p>
<p>He’s saying companies that recruit at MIT recruit at Stanford, Caltech and Berkeley, not Harvey Mudd or USC. However, they also recruit at Cal Polytech.</p>