Different organizations and hiring managers have different selection processes. For example, you mentioned professional schools. Med school is one of the most common professional school interests among HYPSM… type graduates, and med schools as a whole are quite selective with a very low acceptance rate… in some cases as low as a 2% acceptance rate. Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom is that med schools emphasize other criteria besides prestige of undergrad. I don’t see this changing any time soon.
One exception that I mentioned earlier is “elite” investment banking type companies. One study found that the two most common criteria by which “elite” IB screened resumes were school prestige and extracurricular pursuits. In some cases, they focused their hiring on only what they considered to be the top ~4 most prestigious colleges, giving similar reasons to your post, as quoted below
I also don’t see elite IB hiring changing any time soon. The destinations are largely influenced by who recruits at the college. Recruiters who are focused on school prestige will be more likely to make their way to prestigious schools, just as recruiters who favor state flagships will be more likely to make their way to the state flagships. So yes, if you want to work an an elite IB company or similar company that emphasizes attending a prestigious college for undergrad, then it is particularly helpful to do so. Similarly if you want to work at Apple, then it is likely more advantageous to attend the nearby San Jose State with many alumni/professor connections, internship opportunities, recruiting events, …; then a more prestigious northeast school; like Harvard or Yale.
As far as Apple goes, I know they employ a large number of San Jose State grads but you would have to dig much deeper than that to find out what type of jobs they are actually doing to convince me that San Jose State would be better than Harvard. How many apps do they actually get from Harvard? what type of jobs are they applying for? how many apps from San Jose State? etc.
Then there’s stories like the mom who paid $1.5 million to The Ivy Coach to get her daughter into boarding school and Dartmouth. Apparently The Ivy Coach is suing the mom for half the fee that mom neglected to pay after daughter was admitted ED. Article states that services included: guiding the girl through interviews, essay writing and securing letters of recommendations.
Stories like this would impact the view people have of an Ivy education if they think graduates entering single digit universities in effect bought admittance. Where did $1.5 mill really go?
Searching the recent Harvard career fairs, I didn’t see Apple on the employer list at any of them, including the engineering career fair. Apple more regularly recruits at SJS and participates in related career fairs. There were more than 10x as many Apple engineers (“engineer” in job title) who attended SJS than Harvard on LinkedIn, suggesting a much stronger alumni network. Destination survey type lists suggest the trend continues to occur for recent hires. San Jose State is located less than 10 miles away from Apple headquarters, assisting with close ties between the school, Apple internships integrated in to SJS classes, SJS professors who have worked / currently work at Apple and have special connections to Apple and integrate Apple tech into CS/engineering classes, Apple scholarships/sponsoring at SJS, etc. I’m sure Apple would give a Harvard graduates’ resume full consideration, but Harvard does not appear to have special connections to Apple to the same degree that SJS does.
“Many parents who say prestige doesn’t matter cite fit and rigor as alternative reasons for their school choices. But those criteria are also a reputation based.”
Agree, it is interesting how so many people who say fit is more important than prestige selected the most prestigious college their kids got in, or one of the most prestigious colleges they were admitted into. How is it that when students decide where to apply, a lot of ivies, Stanford, etc. are all fits? No, they’re applying based on prestige and along as the yield of those schools are where they are, prestige and affordability are the two primary factors. If those two are good, you’d be surprised how many highly selective colleges are fits.
Imagine meeting a parent who’s kid got into MIT and they say, oh yeah great fit for him/her, I had no idea how prestigious it was.
“probably view these graduates in a different light than their predecessors because they know how insanely difficult it was for these students to get into HYPSM. To me this seems like a relatively new phenomenon.”
As other have said, notably Data10, in silicon valley the hiring managers really don’t know or care how difficult these colleges are to get in apart from generally knowing they’re tough, or for that matter know why a student got in (privilege, hook etc.). So going to one of these schools is not going to help in tech, unless you know switching theory like Turing or logic like George Boole, they will stick with what has worked for them - which is public flagships, Berkeley, Michigan, Purdue, Illinois, Georgia Tech, ASU, SJSU Wisconsin, Washington and the like, and three privates - MIT, Stanford, CMU.
In IB and consulting for sure, they will assume that if a kid got in to HYPSM, they’re Einsteinian geniuses and hire them.
"But the single most impressive feat that they have achieved in their lives (rightly or wrongly) is to gain admittance to their single digit acceptance rate colleges. "
Really? Hm. I guess we all have different measures of what’s impressive and maybe your kids just got extremely lucky to get into very selective schools without having done anything amazing to support that admission decision, but I’ve never met a kid like that so I’m trying to picture it. All the kids I know who got into very selective schools did impressive things that were the basis for the admission to a selective college. My son will be going to a single digit acceptance rate college and although that’s great, the admission itself isn’t even in the top 5 impressive things he’s done in my opinion.
Maybe people value the ___ (insert “prestigious” college name) label because it’s a shorthand to validate that the person had to be impressive to be admitted if they value external validation. It takes a lot less time to say you attended a certain prestigious college than to describe achievements. Companies get audited to have an independent third party indicate the company’s financials are reasonably stated. As another person stated earlier on the thread, perhaps our country is moving to a system where certain college degrees will be shorthand to signal an independent third party has indicated the person is somehow impressive.
There may be some link there, but I’m an anomaly for sure. I dropped out of beauty school to address my BF’s roommate need at the Univerity of Michigan her second semester. I looked pretty foolish when I questioned why there were so many ways of referring to the same university. I thought “University of Michigan,” “Michigan State University,” “Michigan Technological University,” etc. were just different ways of referring to the school I was at. So, no, not only no concept of prestige, no concept of where I was. @-)
@PragmaticMom you brought up a good point. No freaking way for me also that I will cough up big money to send my kid to Stanford if it wasn’t prestigious. Now, it was really based on fit why he did not apply to Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Columbia or Princeton or any other reach school. But we did apply and got into a nice Honors College with great merit money as a possible option.
At the same time, I would not have considered an OOS Honors College it they didn’t offer big merit money. People can talk about how wonderful Honors College is for their kids etc— and I believe them — but without big merit money I am not sure it would be as wonderful, or they would have considered it in the first place. Now, among Honors College, we chose to apply to Univ of South Carolina based on a fit because of their good International Business Program and Southern hospitality. But without big merit money, we would have went to almost any UC.
@GreatKid I actually think the fact that my kid came across as a humble and appreciative kid in his application — which is ironic because you have to try to show how humble you are — is big reason he was accepted at Stanford. You have to be humble because there is always someone smarter and more talented than you, and there are so many smart and talented people who did not get certain breaks.
We did not care about prestige at all. We were looking mostly for fit, and for my daughter that ruled out all the Ivies and other schools considered prestigious in our region. The school she goes to probably does have some prestige in its own region but certainly not where we live. She was the only applicant from her high school at almost every school she applied to, and even now when I bump into parents of her former high school classmates and we do the typical chitchat about where our kids are going to school, none of them have ever heard of the place she is going. But she is thriving academically and socially there and I can’t imagine her finding a better fit anywhere else. I proudly display her college decal on the back of my car knowing that few people will recognize it, but perhaps some will look it up and discover it!
“dig much deeper than that to find out what type of jobs they are actually doing to convince me that San Jose State would be better than Harvard.”
I don’t think anyone is going to convince you that SJSU is better than Harvard. The point is that in silicon valley, especially places like Apple, Google, etc. you don’t have to attend a prestigious college to be successful. And once you get into hardware companies like Cisco and Intel, it’s all public flagships and Stanford.
Are you implying that SJSU grads do menial work at Apple or work at the retail stores and the product or management teams are staffed by graduates from prestigious schools? That would be pretty far from the truth. It’s only when you get into MBAs where prestige matters but this is a discussion of undergrad prestige.
I attended a top “prestigious” university for undergrad. It was a pressure cooker. While I made some life long friends and enjoyed my time there, I knew that D17 would not thrive in that type of environment. She did not apply to most of the prestigious schools to which many of her peers at her top private high school aspired. She is thriving at a school that is just the right fit, with just the right programs in the perfect location for her.
I agree Websensation, it is important that kids be themselves and be authentic. I know that it adds complexity to the admissions process because it cannot be quantified by a number.
I favor holistic admissions because it considers emotional intelligence and character in addition to academic excellence.
Congratulations to your son! I hope his experience is everything he wishes it to be and he thrives!
Majors, clubs, interests, best friends, pre-med, law school & grad school plans can all and often do change once at college. Rather bank the prestige than forgo prestige to go all-in on a defined path.
How about we rephrase the question as " How much does it matter that the college your child goes to is recognized as giving a top quality education to its students."
You’d also have notably different college preferences than a prestige based selection. For example, I work in engineering. I’d expect most engineers would recognize GeorgiaTech as giving a top quality engineering education to its students, and fewer would recognize Yale as giving a top quality engineering education to its students.
When I applied to colleges, back in the stone (pre-internet) age, neither I nor my parents knew anything about prestige or the college application process, and my parents gave me no guidance whatsoever (I don’t even think they knew my SAT scores, and they hadn’t reviewed my grades in years). I had three criteria (1) more than 500 miles from my family, and (2) intellectual peers (3) large school where I could be somewhat anonymous. In high school I was the weirdo misfit who read for pleasure-- several books a day in fact. I also managed to do reasonably well in classes without doing homework or even paying attention (I was usually reading books under my desk during class.) Didn’t see the point in going to a college where I would just read under my desk out of boredom. I went to UMich, because my first choice, Berkley, sent back my application unopened for being a week past deadline. For grad I ended up going to a high prestige (Ivy) top-5 program in my field, but I only realized it was such a high prestige program many years later. Almost no one I know now recalls I went to U Mich, other than my friends from college. However, my choice of UG institution probably conferred some advantage for my graduate applications,
Fast forward to kiddos. First one went to a place where we receive free tuition owing to parental employment, no prestige. He has sufficient disabilities such that we parents needed to be in close proximity to monitor him – so the basis for the decision were financial and proximity. For the second kid, our priorities were available programs/majors/ECs to fit interests, intellectual atmosphere, proximity to urban area, and financial constraints. He ended up at the program that gave him the best financial deal and also met other criteria. Had he gotten into his “reachier” HYP option, the final determination would have still been financial, but we assume they would have offered better financial aid.
As a professor, when deciding who to invite for in-person interviews for our doctoral program, we looked more closely at research mentors and LoRs then we looked at the prestige of the undergraduate institution. So, if the ambition is grad school, students may want to consider the prestige/fame of their potential research mentors, over and above the prestige of the university as a whole.