The importance or lack thereof of college prestige varies for various majors, career paths, and graduate / professional schools. Perhaps it may be helpful to list the usual known levels of importance.
Nursing: low
Medical school admission: low
Law school admission: low
Law: high with respect to law school prestige
PhD program admission: varies by major, and specifically for departmental prestige as viewed by academia in the major
College faculty (tenure track): high, and specifically for departmental prestige of PhD school
Biological sciences (BA/BS level): low
Engineering (BA/BS level): low to medium
Computing (BA/BS level): low to medium
Wall Street investment banking: high
Management consulting: high
I am not sure this is true. I’ve heard, through my kid, comments made by senior leadership at FAANG as to which schools are Tier 1 in quality and which schools are not. Seemingly industry has opinions on where to focus for hiring.
We’ve also seen large name based out performance for the privates that are not necessarily highly ranked for CS. As an example, in 2022 Princeton placed a clean third of its class into Google/Meta/Msft/Amazon. The first two comprised some 70% of the group. And these are not necessarily considered the top employers in that space on campus. The dept places another 20% into quant where the pay is 1.5-3 times the pay of the above four. Those are numbers that I am sure are not achieved by other equally ranked CS peers such as GTEch or UW or even UCB.
2023 has not been good overall, but that’s been the case everywhere.
I have had attorneys tell me contradictory things about this. I know there are people at top law schools who got their undergrad degrees from schools that aren’t highly selective. I have also been told that most of the people at top law schools come from highly selective institutions.
Biology- while prestige is not important, I do think the school needs to have opportunities (ie research, etc). It is also important to take advantage of what the school has to offer. That is most important.
Genetic Counseling- low, other things are very important, but not school name
Speech Pathology, OT, PT- low
Teaching (k-12) is another field where undergrad prestige doesn’t matter, aside from a few schools where it might.
I interpret “does prestige matter?” as “do top employers in that field treat applicants from certain schools preferentially?”
This is true at the top investment banks, for example, which hire primarily from a narrow set of schools (not unlike old country clubs that would only accept members from a certain social class).
I don’t believe this to be true in the software industry. Princeton students place well because they are a pre-filtered group of very smart, self-driven applicants who have learned in a rigorous environment, had excellent opportunities in many forms, have a demonstrated ability to test well, etc. And not because software companies treat Princeton preferentially.
School preference also differs significantly across companies that hire software engineers. FAANG and other big name companies do target some schools - but a much larger group than the IBs. Smaller employers, and non software firms on the other hand don’t place as much value on the school’s name.
So, in aggregate, I think “low to medium” seems correct to me for the software industry.
If this is true, and you are in the industry and I am not — so it must be true — why do similarly ranked CS schools place quite differently? Unless you think Princeton attracts stronger CS kids than GT, UIUC, or UCB, on average. Incidentally Princeton is a school where kids can freely move in and out of the major. Even someone who indicated English can switch to CS.
Yes, I believe Princeton admits stronger kids than the other schools. And they will do well at whatever they set out to do. Even if they switch from English to CS.
And remember, (for this prestige question) we’re talking broadly about the software industry in general, not just the big name firms. That’s a very wide range of firms that vary in size, domain focus, location, etc.
Given G’s active recruiting at dozens or hundreds of colleges, perhaps “Tier 1” is a much larger set of schools than just a small number of elite colleges.
A big reason behind the difference in strength of students, of course, is that those other schools you listed are public schools and are mandated to accept a much wider range of students. They can’t cherry pick to the extent Princeton can. So it’s not really a like to like comparison.
Now, if you look at the honors colleges within some of these top schools, then you’re going to find similar caliber students. These students either didn’t make the cut due to institutional priorities, or couldn’t afford to go to an Ivy - but very well could have.
I am not in the industry nor do I know many recent grads who are, so this is pure idle speculation on my part, but the following possibilities occur to me.
Princeton grads more likely to seek FAANG jobs
other schools you name have much larger number of CS grads, so percentage may not be as high but sheer numbers may be greater
I have no idea if there is any truth to the above (nor do I particularly care ) , but I evidently have nothing better to think about this afternoon.
Washington and UCB students are near large numbers of smaller local computing companies which can be significant competitors for hiring them versus the small number of big well known companies. At Princeton, the main alternative may be Wall Street.
I think a Princeton kid is less likely to accept a low paid CS job because there are other alternative non CS jobs that pay reasonably well. So in that sense yes.
For NYC non-diversity investment banking positions, almost all undergraduate hires are from Ivies and about 10-15 other schools. Schools are divided into target and non-targets. Non-target kids can sometimes break in after getting an MBA from a target school.
I was told that there is some name value here — I’ve heard of some 80-90k undergrad bio jobs that tend to lean name brand school. Primarily in bio consulting.
I can’t speak for CS per se, but for engineering my suspicion is that this is incorrect. My son is on an elite team at a FAANG. They don’t have any new grads. I asked him where people went to school. He said all over the map including a large number from Europe. What unifies them isn’t the institutions where they matriculated, but the previous work they did, and probably just as importantly, who they did it with. It’s a small sample size, and not directly CS.
) , but I evidently have nothing better to think about this afternoon.