Brown and Cornell Are Second Tier

College Search & Selection
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<p>An article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed reports on a study of hiring practices at top law firms, banks, and consulting firms. Brown</a> and Cornell are Second Tier - Percolator - The Chronicle of Higher Education</p>

<p>"The portrait that emerges is of a culture that’s insanely obsessed with pedigree. These firms pour resources into recruiting students from “target schools” (i.e., Harvard, Yale, Princeton) and then more or less ignore everybody else."
"What’s surprising isn’t that students from elite universities have a leg up; it’s that students from other colleges don’t have a chance, even if those colleges are what the rest of us might consider elite."</p>

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<p>Despite the hyperbolic language (i.e, HYP over Stanford - highly debatable IMO) I think this article raises an interesting point. Let’s say a student is accepted to Harvard and their local state school. If they go to Harvard, they have awesome chances at any of the top banking and consulting firms. But if they go to the local state school, their resume will get thrown in the garbage. </p>

<p>They’re the same student and presumably both end up with good educations, so why are their exit opportunities so different? </p>

<p>I think the best candidate for competing with the prestige of the top schools is the challenging interview. Pick up lots of students and then weed them out with tough interviews. The downside of this approach is cost.</p>

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<p>B.S article. (10 char)</p>

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<p>^ The article is wrong. Period. Not even worth debating.</p>

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unattributed data and analysis. Not very worthwhile.</p>

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<p>Apparently, the article that The Chronicle references is in press. Whether or not it’s worthwhile would require a review of the actual article. Absent that, there’s little basis for dismissing it.</p>

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<p>It depends how one looks at it. HYPSM are clearly the best universities in the US. Not many would argue with that. Among the highly educated and in senior corporate circles, the next top 30 or so LACs, private universities and public are roughly on par in terms of academic offerings and reputation. If one goes solely on that fact, by some admission, those “other” top universities are considered “second tier”. I would not be surprised if at some very exclusive companies, you either have the top 5 (plus Wharton) OR you have the top 40. Obviously, the top 5 has a better ring to it than the top 40. </p>

<p>This said, very few firms (mostly tiny PE/VC firms) and no graduate school will differentiate between the top 40 or so colleges and universities. But even at those very exclusive firms, the article did not claim that they hire solely at thos 5 universities. The article merely suggested that they find it easier to recruit at those 5. Who wouldn’t?</p>

<p>Overall I agree; this article is not very indicative of the real world. It may apply to a handful of companies, but in the large scheme of things, it is simply not true.</p>

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<p>AMEN to that, Alexandre!</p>

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<p>

This is so absolutely false that it’s not even worth commenting on but I want to so people aren’t misled by this statement. Choosing Boston College over Dartmouth or Tufts over Columbia is a TERRIBLE DECISION if you want to work in Investment Banking. From what I’ve seen from all my friends’ analyst classes, Columbia is far better represented than Stanford, Yale or MIT and slightly better represented than Princeton. These are some of the best bulge bracket banks we are talking about here (JPM, MS and Barclays).</p>

<p>As far as consulting goes, HYP have a decided advantage over other schools at MBB. However, Stanford/Dartmouth/Penn/Duke/Columbia/Williams aren’t too far behind though. Schools like Wake Forest, Emory, Rice, UCB, etc. aren’t really even on the map besides the occasional standout candidate.</p>

<p>I wonder what elite investment bank or consultancy this author is referring to. This certainly isn’t the case at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey where MIT, Yale and Stanford don’t really do better than some of the other top 10 private schools.</p>

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Did you even read the article? MIT and possibly Stanford are considered to be “second tier” schools. I would say at the very exclusive companies, the pecking order goes…</p>

<p>Tier 1
Harvard and Wharton</p>

<p>Tier 2
Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, Penn, Duke and Williams</p>

<p>Tier 3
Northwestern, UMich Ross, NYU Stern (not for consulting though), UChicago, Brown, Cornell, Amherst and Georgetown</p>

<p>

This article is complete BS and doesn’t apply to any company.</p>

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<p>^Based on your research findings, perhaps you should submit a rejoinder to the journal that is publishing the article which The Chronicle referenced.</p>

<p>What? You haven’t read the actual article? What? You didn’t actually do any research? You only have some anecdotal evidence? Oh, I see.</p>

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<p>I thought this list was more accurate than what was listed on the article and of Lesdia’s.</p>

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<p>That coming from Lesdia, why are you still so surprised?</p>

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<p>I completely disagree with Alexandre’s top 5, then with the rest of the top 40. In my experience (and countless others on CC with similar experience) its more along the lines of 7-10 schools that are heavily recruited by all the top BBs and Consulting firms. There are definitely strong tiers/segments within the top 40 schools. A great school like WashU is barely on the recruiting radar, for example, while a place like Dartmouth or Columbia might do better than Yale. This article is too simplistic.</p>

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<p>How is it surprising Brown or Cornell is second tier? </p>

<p>You could easily draw a line at HYPSM and Caltech (and many people do) so there clearly is a tier ahead of Cornell and Brown if you want to make it out to be.</p>

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<p>Well but just like lesidia"s list, this is an anecdote with no proof.</p>

<p>That list is also spurious. Johns Hopkins higher than Georgetown (10+% of the stduent body go into investment banking of some form) and CMU (Quant traders hello?) ?</p>

<p>The kid you are quoting probably used USNEWS and general reputation.</p>

<p>The guy even included Carleton and neglected Washington and Lee.</p>

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<p>Isn’t it obvious that the article is tongue in cheek?</p>

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<p>^ Not so obvious. Clearly, the title of the article in The Chronicle is provocative, but it reports on a study done by a sociologist at NU’s Kellogg School, who did her dissertation research on how top-tier investment banks, law firms, and management consulting firms recruit and select new hires. There’s no particular reason to think that her study is tongue in cheek. Here’s the abstract to her study:</p>

<p>“Although a robust literature in sociology and economics has demonstrated a positive relationship between education and socio-economic attainment, the processes through which formal schooling yields enhanced economic rewards remains less clear. Employers play a crucial role in explaining the economic and social returns to formal schooling. Yet, little is known about how employers, particularly elite employers, use and interpret educational credentials in real-life hiring decisions. In the following article, I analyze how hiring agents in top-tier professional service firms use education to recruit, assess, and select new hires. I find that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Employers privileged candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top 5) university affiliation and attributed superior cognitive, cultural, and moral qualities to candidates who had been admitted to such an institution, regardless of their actual performance once there. However, attendance at a super-elite university was insufficient for success in resume screens. Importing the logic of elite university admissions, firms performed a secondary resume screen on the status and intensity of candidates’ extracurricular accomplishments and leisure pursuits. I discuss these findings in terms of the changing nature of credentialism and stratification in higher education to suggest that participation in formalized extracurricular activities has become a new credential of moral character that has monetary conversion value in labor markets.” ([Lauren</a> Rivera - Faculty - Kellogg School of Management](<a href=“http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera_lauren.aspx#research]Lauren”>http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera_lauren.aspx#research))</p>

<p>Her study addresses legitimate questions and she had some interesting findings. Do her methods and findings warrant skepticism? Sure, especially if the study isn’t yet available for review. It strikes me, however, that some posters merely dismissed it without having read the actual article. Why? My guess is that for some of them it was dissonant either with their personal experiences or anecdotal accounts of the hiring process or with their perception of the where their own preferred university fits in the pecking order.</p>

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<p>Do “top consultants” in this industry all talk like they are 14 years old?</p>

<p>We’re talking about industries that have f***ed the whole country and the rest of their world with their business practices. I would not trust their judgements about education any more than I trust them with the country’s money.</p>

<p>Even if that were not the case, we are talking about a very small set of employers. It may be true that a Harvard and a couple other schools, many graduates do go into these fields. Elsewhere, they do not represent the career ambitions of most college students.</p>

<p>Where do Microsoft and Google recruit? Who is getting good jobs in bioinformatics without graduate degrees? Where does the State Department or the CIA look for good linguists? What schools educate the most college professors, career foreign service officers, or editors of major newspapers? The knowledge and skill needed to enter these professions represent college quality at least as well as the qualities of new IB recruits. Though I understand college quality is not really what we’re discussing here.</p>

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<p>take it from someone who works on wall street: lesdia’s list for both consulting and finance is pretty accurate, I don’t know much about elite law firms, but I’m pretty sure they do the brunt of their recruiting out of law school and not undergrad</p>

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<p>I would think your major would come into play. Engineering is far harder than Business.</p>