<p>Most people do not get their first jobs through career fairs or networking events at their colleges. Sometimes on this site we seem only to talk about a few industries and a few companies within them. You’d think every last graduate wanted to work in IB or at Google.</p>
<p>@sally305: Not sure about most, but many kids do get their first job through on-campus recruiting and their first few job through networks (which includes many of their college buddies).</p>
<p>Yes, Both of my kids got interviews from contacts from on campus recruiting, career fairs and from leads from their school departments. </p>
<p>“Just out curiosity, what would people consider elite? Would a school have to be at the HYPSM level to be considered elite? Outside of the top 10 Universities and top 10 LAC’s, do you feel the benefits of having an UG from that institution diminish? Say somewhere like Vanderbilt vs a State U.”</p>
<p>Anyone who doesn’t consider all of the top 20’s (and quite a few below that as well) as “elite” is just completely full of nonsense, and isn’t even worth being listened to. Vanderbilt is an elite school - just because some people in Pennsylvania haven’t heard of it just means that they haven’t heard of it, doesn’t make it not elite. If my kids were choosing between HYPSM and Vanderbilt, I’d say - pick whichever of those suits your fancy. Because fundamentally it’s all the same. And I have no dog in the Vanderbilt fight one way or the other.</p>
<p>On these forums, the definition of “elite” often appears all schools ranked or perceived to be equal to or higher than that which the elitist poster is affiliated with.</p>
<p>“Elite” is just too fuzzy a term.</p>
<p>In some circles, USC is considered elite. In others, it is not.<br>
In some circles, UNC is considered elite. In others, it is not.<br>
In some fields, UIUC and NYU are definitely elite. In others, no.
And that goes the other way as well. JHU is generally seen as an elite private, but I know no one who calls their MBA program elite (and Yale SOM is top-15 but not in the M7 or generally seen as top 10).</p>
<p>That’s why I said it’s dependent on goals (career and region). So when considering schools & programs, it helps to ask more focused questions.
Do all the well-known software companies recruit from UIUC? Yes.
Is NYU Stern a Street target? Yes.
Is WashU Olin a Street target? Generally no (or a semi-target at best).</p>
<p>In some industries, there may be a difference between Vandy UG and average-state-flagship UG. In other industries, there would be no difference (or with Princeton UG).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Joni Hersch (2014) made a similar comment about the D&K studies:</p>
<p>“Although Dale and Krueger’s research (2002, 2014) is widely cited as evidence that earnings are not affected by selectivity of undergraduate college once individual characteristics are accounted for, their research is based on data from students at a limited number of highly selective colleges and universities. This means that those students who were admitted to more selective schools than they ultimately entered were still attendees (and usually graduates) of highly selective institutions, and does not mean that the same individual would have been equally successful had they instead attended a nonselective college.”
(<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238</a>)</p>
<p>However, “nonselective college” refers to colleges well beyond the US News top ~100.
Much of the CC discussion focuses on more or less the same 34 schools that supplied D&K’s data, or else on other schools that are nearly as selective. If you are aiming at top ~50 or top ~100 schools, your choice of major probably will have more impact than your choice of college on your future earnings potential. So if your main goal is to get a well-paying job, it makes little sense to go deeply into debt to attend a top ~20 college instead of another good (but more affordable) school. </p>
<p>PurpleTitan, to be clear, I agree that many college students find their first jobs through recruiting events, career centers, etc. But not all companies market themselves this way, and not all students have a job immediately after graduation (meaning that they may find leads through other sources than their alma mater).</p>
<p>As for which schools produce the best outcomes for students in terms of career placement–those with reputable programs in a particular market generally do very well. A LOT of hiring is local, and if solid candidates are available in the region surrounding a company’s headquarters, they don’t need to look more broadly.</p>
<p>
</a></p>
<p>That is the paper that appears to define four tiers of schools as:</p>
<p>Tier 1: Private research university (about 40 of them)
Tier 2: Private LAC (about 160? of them)
Tier 3: Public research university (about 70 of them)
Tier 4: all others</p>
<p>These tiers 1 through 3 do not appear to be divided very well by selectivity, which throws the whole study into question. Unless someone subscribes to both “private is always better than public” and “research university is always better than LAC”, then the tiers do not really make sense.</p>
<p>Actually, Joni Hersch was not trying to distinguish only selectivity differences. She was trying to distinguish “differences in status”. She based her tier definitions on both the Carnegie Classification and Barron’s selectivity categories. Whether you agree with those tier definitions or not, I think the important point (for purposes of this discussion) is that she could not demonstrate very significant earnings differences, after controlling for ability, until she arrived at schools in the lowest tier (“nonselective institutions”). Among graduates of selective private research universities, selective private LACs, and state flagships, there appear to be no very significant earnings differences (after controlling for ability.) </p>
<p>Are there significant differences in other kinds of success besides earnings? Neither D&K nor Hersch examined that. They are trying to measure a kind of success that most colleges, for most majors, are not in business necessarily to produce. It would make more sense to do controlled measures of intellectual achievements such as alumni PhD completions, publications, patents, and academic distinctions. </p>
<p>“On these forums, the definition of “elite” often appears all schools ranked or perceived to be equal to or higher than that which the elitist poster is affiliated with.”</p>
<p>I had the very same perceptions of what were elite schools and what weren’t well before my kids were applying to colleges. It’s not a new definition. I think anyone with any brains whatsoever recognizes that (say) the top 40 universities in the country are all extremely good places where anyone can get a fine education, and the exact elision from “extremely good” to “elite” is in the eye of the beholder. </p>
<p>When you get to the “only HYPSM are true elite” mentality, then of course you’re dealing with someone who is eyeroll-worthy. It’s about as stupid as saying the only elite people in a sport are those 3 who won the gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympics.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Agree. This would likely produce quite a different list of “top” schools since LACs (and not only the highly selective ones) tend to punch above their weight in terms of production of future PhDs.</p>
<p>I don’t know. I have to be honest here. The people who I know in the working world who have PhD’s just don’t really impress me all that much. There’s more to smarts than pure academic smarts – and there are plenty of people in the real world who are smarter than they are. I wouldn’t particularly care whether a particular school produces a lot of PhD’s, as it’s just not something I value tremendously for myself or my kids. </p>
<p>Well, maybe it’s different living in a college town and having lived through (most of) my husband’s dissertation years. I value the intellectual curiosity, critical thinking and research skills that are sought after in PhD candidates. For some types of kids (like my son), colleges that are highly regarded for developing these attributes are very appealing.</p>
<p>I do agree that academia and the “real world” are two completely different things, and that there are many different types of intelligence. And I do dislike the credential-snobbery I sometimes experience in my community.</p>
<p>The Forbes subrankings actually have rankings by PhD production rate as well as prestigious award winners rate. Many LACs definitely do do well in those “academic” categories (as well as most Ivies/Ivy-equivalents).</p>
<p>However, fewer LACs do well in the 2 “professional/pre-professional” rankings that I look at: Forbes’ “American Leaders” subranking (which is kind of a “Who’s who” ranking) and WSJ’s ranking by matriculation in elite pre-professional schools. The Ivies/Ivy-equivalents really do well in those categories: <a href=“Ivy-equivalents - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents.html</a> </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>One might think that those who pride themselves on seeing beyond the facades of the “top schools” would notice the hollowness of the “scholarly idealism” that lurks beneath the skin of the newly-minted doctoral student.</p>
<p>Do the much-professed problems with those aforesaid “top schools” vanish at the graduate level?</p>
<p>I can read Sa’di, Tolstoy and the Yahwist at all hours and be as contented as I can ever be, but I’m much too suspicious of academia to want a PhD. (I say, haughtily, with Emerson, the Gnostics, and the Chan Buddhists, that my skepticism is all-comprising and all-arrogating.) </p>
<p>Well, honestly, some of the PhD’s I’ve known were just utterly pedantic and not in touch with the real world, and their ability to deconstruct minutia didn’t make them any “smarter” than anyone else, just more willing to engage in it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is just what I would expect. It would be hard for small colleges (which most LACs are) to be equally good at both.</p>
<p>While I agree that some PhDs can be pedantic bores (or boors), all of us here value good teaching and mentorship for our college-age kids–which of course is provided by PhDs, in most cases. How do people who are so skeptical of academia reconcile that?</p>
<p>It begs the question - do you have to have a PhD to be a good, effective teacher?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That may have less to do with the “quality of education” but more to do with factors like the self-selection of the kinds of students (perhaps the more pre-professionally-oriented students are less likely to choose LACs?) or non-academic characteristics of the schools (a small LAC, particularly in an out-of-the-way location, may attract fewer employers recruiting students, so preparation for professional life after college may not be “on the radar” as much?).</p>