Not as rare as you would think. Typically unhooked kids from our regular northern NJ private school (this is almost as unhooked as you can be, if we could measure unhookedness on some scale ) who end up at HYP or equivalent schools, end up at or near the top of their chosen majors at these schools at the end of four years.
The only major where this is not always possible is Math. Because the talent pool is global, and the tails are very very fat.
This is well known from the research of D&K. The highly selective schools have a higher density of previously high achievers. Itās not the secondary school. Itās baked into the person from their level of achievement in HS.
A āhookā by another name.
It means people are really actively trying to keep you out :-).
Incidentally this is not particular to the private HSs. I know several NNJ public HS vals (usually unhooked) who ended up at P do exceptionally well.
I believe weāre talking about importance of college prestige for first jobs. For computing, it ranges from low to medium as discussed above. Some employers do target certain schools, even if they accept applications from everywhere. Others do not.
Right, private school is often more rigorous than college. I found being a chem major at a tippy top (coming out of a rigorous private school) actually quite easyā¦
Itās important to separate correlation from causation. I donāt doubt that most of the students attending top law schools also attended highly selective institutions for undergrad. However, this does not mean that students from highly selective institutions get any kind of preference in admissions. Instead it may mean that students from highly selective institutions are more likely to apply and/or more likely to excel in admission criteria.
For law schools, we often do have a good amount of information, enough to estimate the relative influence. In past threads I have done this. For most law schools, it appeared that admission was primarily determined by a combination of LSAT score, undergrad GPA, and demographics (mostly URM status). Students with high LSAT scores were highly concentrated at highly selective undergrad colleges, so the law schools that expected high LSAT scores had a high concentration of students from highly selective undergrad colleges, and relatively few from less selective colleges.
One also needs to distinguish between correlation and causation in other fields. For example, FAANG having many students from highly selective colleges does not necessarily mean than FAANG favors students from highly selective colleges in hiring. There be correlations such as many students who think it is important to attend an āeliteā college for undergrad also think it is important to work at a company they believe others perceive to be āeliteā, or students from highly selective colleges are more likely to ace technical interviews than average. Unfortunately at most private companies, there is not enough public information to do this analysis.
Typically unhooked kids from our regular northern NJ private school (this is almost as unhooked as you can be, if we could measure unhookedness on some scale ) who end up at HYP or equivalent schools, end up at or near the top of their chosen majors at these schools at the end of four years.
I know exactly the effect you are talking about, but merely being at or near the top of your major isnāt going to be enough on its own to put you into something like the top 5% of your class overall.
This leads to some interesting nuances, in my view.
Like, if you want to go on to graduate school, I think these are indeed often good choices for the typical excellent HS student, particularly if you are flexible about your major. Like, you may think you are going to kill it in Chemistry based on your experience with HS Chemistry, but you end up not so much killing it in college Chemistry. But it turns out you are actually quite good at Economics, and that becomes your major. And then you end up placed in a top Economics graduate program, including because those not-so-good grades you got in some Chemistry courses are largely irrelevant to them.
But things are a little riskier if you would rather go to a top law school. Frankly, the people who have higher GPAs because they were in a major they were good at from the start might have a bit of an edge on the student above. Still, if you make the switch soon enough, or maybe really kill it on the LSAT, you might still get into a very selective law school. But maybe your GPA keeps you out of Yale Law, because Yale Law is just that selective.
But what if you really want to stick with Chemistry? Thatās getting to where it is not so clear you are better off at the hyper-competitive college.
Anyway, the bottom line is when you are talking about the truly most selective placementsāso like not just a āT14ā law school, but specifically Yale Lawājust finding a major you are really good at isnāt necessarily enough. But again, that Chemistry-to-Econ student might be in the top third of their class overall, and get into a top Econ graduate program, or for that matter a T14 law school.
Which I do think is a large part of the appeal of these schools. Plan B is often still very, very good.
A āhookā by another name.
Of course that just duplicates this whole conversation a level earlier.
āEliteā private high schools often have significantly higher placement rates at the most selective private colleges than even very good public high schools.
But is that because of some generic āprestigeā factor? Or some blend of self-selection, correlated factors, highly individualized college admissions resources, and GPA āadjustmentsā reflecting perceived competitiveness?
Youāve got to get that first job to get to 3 years experience. And, that first job many times sets your trajectory.
I doubt this data could ever be obtained, but, I would love to know things like thisā¦
ā¦of all the applicants with an LSAT score of ______ and a GPA of at least ______, what is the % of students accepted from highly selective undergraduate institutions? With the same stats, what is the % of accepted students who attended less selective undergraduate institutions?
LSAC presumably has that sort of data, but I agree they are unlikely to disclose it voluntarily.
As someone who was very much involved with hiring at Big Law and BB IB, the reality is while we would not overlook a ādiamond in the roughā, as a business matter we are not going to expend resources searching for them. Recruiting at a T14 law school, equivalent BSchool, or selective undergrad with a rank or gpa hurdle (and not at the extreme right tail) was just efficient for us for what we were looking for at an entry level ā the school and grades had pre-screened for us. Coming from outside that circle, while certainly not impossible, is going to be a disadvantage.
Conversely, running a regional āMain Streetā company these days, our recruiting efforts are focused on the local colleges. Point is, businesses seek employees based on the most efficient/cost effective sources, factoring āyieldā.
Every college collects those stats of its own alums and who got in where with what scores. Some you can find just by googling.
In my limited experience, itās amazing how true this is, but also how much luck and serendipity come into play too. Horsepower and experience certainly set the baseline, but being in the right place at the right time is helpful. That single encounter can set a whole career path.
Based on things that spouse and I have seen, I think that there are 2 issues. Occasionally weāve encountered people who care about the prestige of a college when hiring. In our fields (life sciences and engineering) it wasnāt common but it did, rarely, happen.
But, the other difference is that there are students who donāt care about having prestigious jobs and donāt choose to go to the colleges that are perceived as pipelines to those jobs. I have a high stats kid who could have worked towards applying to a prestige college. If kid wanted to work at a job with a reputation for caring about that, we would have encouraged it. But, kid wants to study computer engineering, likely with a focus on cybersecurity. Kid is motivated by the ability to do interesting work and do useful things, so I could easily see kid being interested in a no-prestige but necessary job working with a utilities company to protect infrastructure. Kid has a short list of colleges to consider, all with solid engineering departments that will enable kid to get a job. But, if/when kidās college doesnāt place kid at a FAANG company, it wonāt be because of lack of prestige, it wil be because that was never kidās aspiration in the first place.
Obviously this is just a bit of anecdata, but looking at the people that spouse and I went to college and grad school with, many have been successful and accomplished at doing what they set out to do. But, few set out to get high prestige jobs and would not show up in a survey has having that sort of placement right after graduating, although several have since become very well known and respected in their fields.
Makes perfect sense. If your kid is interested in cybersecurity you may want to probe deeper into how. If itās to manage cybersecurity systems in an enterprise that may point you IT oriented studies. If however the interest is in developing cybersecurity applications that would lead to different studies, potentially where prestige may become more important. Companies like Palo Alto Networks develop such software including use of machine learning models.
Spouse is a computer engineer who is guiding kid through some projects to explore interests (kid is a homeschooler). At the moment kid is interested in hardware, but that may just be spouseās influence. 
Time will tell.
But, mainly I wanted to point out in the last post that peopleās motivations influence both college and job choice. I wouldnāt be shocked if spouse and kid wind up doing similar work, but they have different motivations. Prestige, money, usefulness, interest/novelty, location, flexibility, collegiality/work environment, work/life balance - there are many factors in choosing colleges, fields/majors, and jobs. People tend to talk as if somebody goes to State U and then can only get a job at the local company, but for many people they want to get a job at the local company so they to to State U to learn what they need to know to get hired.
And, for some state schools, the local companies are the heavy hitters. According to LinkedIn, the top 8 employers of Computer Engineers from my sonās alma mater are Apple, Intel, Amazon, Google, Lockheed, Microsoft, Meta and Northrop.
Actually the data shows that āprestigeā matters most for first generation/low income people. The kid with a wealthy background and parents with strong connections is going to do just fine, no matter where they end up. The kid whoās parents never went to college and are solidly blue collar who hasnāt a clue what networking is before college benefits the most from a school with a strong name.