Brown and Cornell Are Second Tier

[monydad]

<p>"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>

<p>They recruit for paralegals, there was just a job fair in NYC that D2 was going to go to, with Sullivan & Cromwell, etc. Before she decided she didnt want to do that, just now anyway.</p>

[UCBChemEGrad]

<p>The article is likely very true for some elite firms in the Northeast.</p>

<p>Interesting comment in the comments section that academics have a pecking order too…claiming it’s hard to break into academia at top universities without a PhD from a top 5 school in your respective field.</p>

[bonanza]

<p>Its not just private firms. Look up where clerks for US Supreme Court justices went to school. You’ll find Harvard, Yale, Stanford…and that’s pretty much it. And these are federal employees.</p>

[LadyDianeski]

<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>Amen, amen, amen.</p>

[College_Yahoo]

<p>

@bonanza

Its not just private firms. Look up where clerks for US Supreme Court justices went to school. You’ll find Harvard, Yale, Stanford…and that’s pretty much it. And these are federal employees.

</p>

<p>I think the article is referring to UNDERGRAD, not law schools…</p>

[IvyPBear]

<p>“This article is too simplistic.”
Completely agree.</p>

<p>“I think the article is referring to UNDERGRAD, not law schools…”
There’s no point in the article that made it clear that it was strictly for undergrad.</p>

[monydad]

<p>Indeed, I found it confusing on that point. It would have helped to understand exactly who they were talking about, for what.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

B.S article. (10 char)

</p>

<p>

^ The article is wrong. Period. Not even worth debating.

</p>

<p>

unattributed data and analysis. Not very worthwhile.

</p>

<p>I’m not sure if these comments are directed to the Chronicle article that discussed the research paper, or about the research paper itself, (although the last one seems to be about the latter). It is one thing to say that a news article is biased, misleading, incomplete, or otherwise failed to properly characterize the issue at hand. That happens all the time. But to say that an empirical research paper is wrong or should be dismissed simply because such data is ‘unattributed’ is a serious charge tantamount to an accusation of academic fraud. If that is indeed what you believe had happened, then you should contact the editors of the journal in question to have the paper retracted and the author sanctioned.</p>

[sakky]

<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>True, but, ominously companies are (perhaps foolishly) not going to stop hiring them.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Whether or not it’s worthwhile would require a review of the actual article.

</p>

<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>

<p>Ask and ye shall receive. I’ve posted the paper here. </p>

<p>[Rivera</a> forthcoming](<a href=“http://www.docstoc.com/docs/69081703/Rivera-forthcoming]Rivera”>http://www.docstoc.com/docs/69081703/Rivera-forthcoming)</p>

[sakky]

<p>I think the most provocative quotes are to be found in section 7. {Bold emphases are mine.}</p>

<p>

Evaluators believed that educational prestige was a signal of general rather than job-specific skills, most notably the ability to learn quickly. An attorney (white, female) described, “I’m looking for sponges.You know a kid from Harvard’s gonna pick stuff up fast.” **However, it was not the content of an elite education that employers valued but rather the perceived rigor of these institutions’ admissions processes. **According to this logic, the more prestigious a school, the higher its “bar” for admission, and thus the “smarter” its student body. A consultant (white, male) explained, “The top schools are more selective, they’re reputed to be top schools because they do draw a more select student body who tend to be smarter and more able.”A law firm partner (white, male) agreed, “If they’re getting into a top-tier law school, I assume that person has more intellectual horsepower and, you know, is more committed than somebody who goes to a second or third tier law school.” </p>

<p>In addition to such an intelligence-based perspective on university admissions, evaluators frequently adopted an instrumental and unconstrained view of university enrollment, perceiving that students typically “go to the best school they got into” (lawyer, Hispanic, male). Consequently, in the minds of evaluators, prestige rankings provided a quick way to sort candidates by “brainpower.”When sorting the “mock” resumes, an investment banking recruiter (white, female) charged with screening resumes at her firm revealed how such assumptions played out in application review. She remarked,“Her [Sarah’s] grades are lower but she went to Harvard so she’s definitely well-endowed in the brain category…Jonathan. . . went to Princeton,so he clearly didn’t get the short end of the stick in terms of smarts.” This halo effect of school prestige,combined with the **prevalent belief that the daily work performed within professional service firms “was not rocket science” **gave evaluators confidence that the possession of an elite credential was a sufficient signal of a candidate’s ability to perform the analytical capacities of the job. Even in the quantitatively rigorous field of consulting, a junior partner (white, male) asserted, “I’ve come to the stage where I trust that if the person has gone to Wharton, they can do math.” </p>

<p>By contrast, failure to attend an “elite” school, as conceptualized by evaluators,was an indicator of intellectual failure, regardless of a student’s grades or standardized test scores. Many evaluators believed that high achieving students at lesser ranked institutions “didn’t get in to a good school,” must have “slipped up,” or otherwise warranted a “question mark” around their analytical abilities. A legal hiring manager illustrated, “Sometimes you see the good undergrad with the good grades and then the not-so-good law school, and I always say, ‘Ooh! I guess they bombed their LSAT!”’ Such sentiments were particularly evident when evaluators assessed “Blake,” a student with a high GPA from Rutgers who attended Columbia for graduate school and who had prior finance experience. A banker (white, male) illustrates, “Good grad school, okay undergrad but not Ivy League. So one thing I’d definitely want to ask him is that **if he went to Exeter [for high school], why did he go to a lesser undergrad? What happened?” **Similar processes were at play for Annulkah, a “diversity” law candidate who received near perfect grades at lower tier undergraduate and graduate institutions and had directly relevant work experience as a paralegal. An attorney (white, female) was skeptical, was skeptical, “I wonder why she didn’t get in to a better law school.” Such “question marks” about intellect applied not only to students at “state schools” and “second-rate” or “third-tier” private institutions but also those who attended highly selective schools other than those at the very top of “the list.” A consulting director (white, female) revealed such assumptions when rating fictitious candidate “Sarah”: “She’s at Stern [NYU’s Business School, currently ranked #9 in the country]. She’s there either because her husband is in New York or she applied to business school and she didn’t get in to Harvard or Stanford.” </p>

<p>In addition to being an indicator of potential intellectual deficits, **the decision to go to a lesser known school (because it was typically perceived by evaluators as a “choice”) was often perceived to be evidence of moral failings, such as faulty judgment or a lack of foresight on the part of a student. **When describing why students who attended highly selective but not “top” business schools were at a disadvantage in the recruitment process and were justifiably so, a banker (white, male) shrugged, “If you want to go into banking, you do your homework and you go to one of the schools that’s known for sending people to Wall Street.” An attorney (Hispanic, male) described how **even candidates who faced significant financial obstacles to attendance, like he had, “should be smart enough to invest in their future.” The negative signal conveyed by the lack of an elite credential was most clearly articulated by a recruiter (white, female) at a “diversity recruitment” fair I observed as a part of the ethnographic portion of my research. At a panel on applying to corporate law firms, she instructed attendees who, like the majority of nonwhite law students were disproportionately concentrated in second- and third-tier law schools (see U.S. News & World Report 2008), to list their reasons for attending an inferior institution on their cover letter and resume. She explained,“If you were admitted to a better school, say which one. .If you went to a school because you got a full scholarship, put‘full scholarship’ upfront. If you stayed close to home to help with a family business, include it. . .You need to have an explanation for it.”Thus, in many ways, the credential that elite employers valued was not the education received at a top school but rather a letter of acceptance from one. **

</p>

<p>

[quote]
Finally, evaluators discussed how the prestige of a candidate’s “school” was an indicator of their potential for future influence, fame, and status in society more broadly. As part of the ethnographic portion of my research, I observed every firm marketing reception for the industries under study that took place on undergraduate and graduate campuses in the Boston area over the course of one academic year. During these events, firms wooed potential applicants by asserting over cocktails and canap</p>

[confidentialcoll]

<p>I just went through the whole paper - there’s nothing but anecdotes - basically pretty worthless research. So many biases could be at play it’s not even funny, I can’t believe something this unfounded (with anonymous quotes not to mention) would have been published. I’ve read news paper articles with more info and data to back up their claims.</p>

[zapfino]

<p>Thanks, Sakky, for posting the article.</p>

[morrismm]

<p>Luckily my Cornell grad D2, working as a first yr analyst at top BB, and her two Cornell roommates also working as first yr analysts in IB , missed this article. </p>

<p>Thank goodness my D did not know she was in such a low tier when she applied for and got her first internship between sophomore and junior years, and then another between junior and senior year. And I can’t imagine how they offered her, lower tier student and all , a $10,000 signing bonus. Oh, and her really good friend from Yale? He didn’t get an offer. Didn’t they know he was tier 1?</p>

<p>I realize my D’s example is anecdotal. But from looking at her and her roommmates experience,her analyst class and her networking and recruiting at her school (which she is now helping with), this article is just plain wrong.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

I just went through the whole paper - there’s nothing but anecdotes - basically pretty worthless research. So many biases could be at play it’s not even funny

</p>

<p>Certainly there are plenty of problems that plague qualitative research - with the aforementioned researcher bias being one of them - I would hardly go so far as to say that the research is ‘worthless’. That’s the inherent nature of qualitative research, which somebody has to do. After all, not every research question is amenable to running statistical regressions or building analytical models all day long. Somebody first has to identify and characterize the phenomenon before others can analyze the topic at a deeper level. </p>

<p>

I can’t believe something this unfounded (with anonymous quotes not to mention) would have been published.

</p>

<p>I don’t find the use of anonymous quotes to be remarkable in the least. Again, that is how you, as an academic researcher, will ever gain access to sensitive research sites. I suspect that most qualitative social science research that uses interviews will use anonymous quotes to some degree. Her work is therefore part and parcel of a well-recognized and accepted style of research methodology. Hence, unless you’re prepared to make a statement about the value of qualitative social science research in general, I don’t think we can dismiss Rivera’s work a-priori. </p>

<p>Furthermore, whatever you may think of the quotes that she cited, the fact remains that she did indeed find people who said those quotes - unless you’re prepared to accuse her of academic fraud, which I don’t think here is prepared to do. </p>

<p>Now, is it the greatest research paper I’ve ever read in my life? Clearly not. But it’s a respectable first cut at a poorly understood phenomenon - that being the hiring practices and educational social stratification at the elite firms in question. </p>

<p>

I realize my D’s example is anecdotal. But from looking at her and her roommmates experience,her analyst class and her networking and recruiting at her school (which she is now helping with), this article is just plain wrong.

</p>

<p>I don’t understand how the article could be said to be ‘wrong’. Nobody ever said that hiring was completely deterministic. In fact, the article even explicitly stated that elite firms do not rely solely on educational backgrounds, and that many students from the ‘tier one’ schools will not be hired while some who don’t come from such schools will be hired. </p>

<p>What the article stated is that attending the schools in question increase your chances of being hired, but doesn’t outright guarantee anything. </p>

<p>Obviously an even more interesting follow-up article which I hope somebody will run is to quantify exactly how much doing so will boosts your chances. But that’s not the job of Lauren Rivera, as she’s not a quantitative researcher and doesn’t claim to be. Her specialty is qualitative methods, she has identified an interesting and heretofore poorly understood phenomenon that is amenable to her methods.</p>

[manarius]

<p>^^</p>

<p>I’m sensing some bitterness.</p>

[monydad]

<p>Some of the examples in #32 were directed to law schools and MBA programs. Hiring at the most elite firms from MBA programs and law schools has been almost this simple for my own entire working life, because the gradations, pecking order and cutoffs are pretty clear to all. Everyone knows that. For most I’m familiar with, the range was a <em>little</em> more spread out than the article indicates, but the general concept was well apparent.</p>

<p>That’s not news, or worthy of a paper IMO.</p>

<p>For undergrad it’s a little more complicated. Lots of those Harvard MBAs we hired did undergrad at various “top 30” but not “top 5” schools, so all hope is not lost for you others. The investment bank I’m familiar with did restrict undergrad hiring, but went out a little wider than the article indicates. Times have changed, but it would have been useful to distinguish undergrad hiring practices from professional school hiring in the article, instead of comingling them all.</p>

<p>(Unless they did distinguish,then “never mind”, I didn’t read it).</p>

[monydad]

<p>The other thing I’d say is, it depends on the firm, and where you draw the line on what you call “elite”. There may be a few who look only to HYP, but seems to me you will find the cream of Fordham law school represented at most wall street law firms. By measure of many, getting a job at any of these firms is “elite”, but not all “elites” are equally elite.
You can still do great going below #1-5, and I think most people consider any of these places “elite”, in the overall scheme of things.</p>

<p>Then also, it depends on what job you are doing within the firm. Different areas within each firm have different needs and there are internal pecking orders of “eliteness”. At my old firm there were NYU MBAs in the research department, but I bet none ever sniffed a position in mergers there.</p>

[notrickingme]

<p>If you look at the top firms, I am sure you will see many HYP graduates. HYP are considered the best universities. Those graduates will get an interview more easily. Remember many undergrad business majors are athletes who gained entrance with lower SAT scores and gpas. Therefore, whether they are the top individual for the job is questionable. I believe firms are not that shallow. An undergrade with an engineering major, business minor from MIT or Cornell will also get an interview. An engineer with a >3.3gpa is far more impressive than a business gpa of 3.6. In the end, the interview is most important.</p>

<p>Sakky the rigor of the admission process is truly only for a select group of unhooked candidates. Many students going to other schools have better stats than those admitted to HYP. There are literally thousands of students with 4.0gpa and >2100 SAT.</p>

[LadyDianeski]

<p>Gosh, it truly amazes me that my nephew who graduated from Univ of Wisconsin - Madison landed a plush Wall Street job in financial services. However did he do it? Must have slipped through the cracks. ;)</p>