<p>Just wondering if that is the case.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>I am not a parent I dont know. My parents don't care.</p>
<p>Some do.</p>
<p>Connections might be the name of the school helping their kid. Connections might be meeting students with parents from successful backgrounds. </p>
<p>Some people don't care.</p>
<p>My parents do. They both are graduates of Penn, one Wharton. They have personally benefited from the network times and times over when they advanced their careers. I have been accepted to McGill business and USC Marshall, and waiting on Dartmouth,Cornell and Wharton. At this point, they both think Marshall is a better choice. Of course if I got into Cornell or Wharton or Dartmouth. Things could change.</p>
<p>People say the super rich super connected go to Harvard or Yale join elite clubs and graduate and hang out with friends made at these clubs- but maybe those days are over - I don't know yet. I think Yale is the most social networking of all the Ivy's.</p>
<p>Hedoya, where are you applying?</p>
<p>BTW. My older brother got into UCLA, Berkeley, UCSD, Penn, Harvey Mudd, PRI and Carnegie Mellon. With the academics being quite comparable, he chose Penn because of the network potential. He is a junior at the Engineering school majoring in Bioengineering and double minoring in economics and engineering entrepreneurship. As a sophomore, he was able to land an internship in an nanotech consulting firm looking for MBA's for the position last summer. Partially because one of the VP was a Penn grad. He's been invited ti go back this summer.</p>
<p>As my parents always quote," Out there in the real world, especially in business, it's whom you know that counts" It seems to be the collective sentiment of the people living in my neighborhood. From grade school on, I have noticed the parents care more about setting up the right network for their kids than their academic performance.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. Both coasts have colleges with strong "alumni network" connections. It can help and probably never hurts to have someone whose" got your back" after graduation.</p>
<p>As personally depressing as I find it (not a judgement on anyone here! just not my ideal vision of college or life), I think that in some professions, networking is a relatively important consideration. Business and politics are the two that come to mind most for me. For business, I am a little puzzled by the huge obsession with undergrad--after all, doesn't anyone who wants to go anywhere in business have to get an MBA (at least, that's what my MBA mother tells me...)? I definitely understand the desire to get a prestigious MBA (my mother's is from UChicago...certainly not a no-name MBA, especially when she got it), but I don't really get the need to have a prestigious undergrad Business degree. </p>
<p>As far as politics, my father often says that for the class president with his/her eye on climbing the state political ladder, flagship state U is probably the best place to network--those are the connections that the prospective politician will need in his/her bid for mayor/state legislator/governor/etc. Politics is basically only networking, last time I checked. </p>
<p>But for your average profession, I don't think that networking or going to the most prestigious university for your intended degree that you can get into is necessary. Every school has an alumni network...I have a tough time imagining that a decent grad of any of the top Universities or LAC's would be unable to find a job/would not be recruited by any companies/would suffer for lack of alumni connections. I'm not saying that it doesn't make any difference, or isn't something to consider. But a huge factor? I tend to doubt it.</p>
<p>bioeng, I think graduates of prestige schools who have benefited from networking tend to overestimate the value of their connections, because they fail to realize that graduates of other colleges also benefit from networking. There are huge "networks" of employers who feel affinity or loyalty to big state U's; networks of employers with connections to Jesuit colleges; networks connected to a particular fraternity -- and outside of college, there are networks that are created through other connections.</p>
<p>So yes... it IS "who you know".... but it's not that hard to get to know a lot of people. For every person in a hiring position that is going to be impressed by Ivy credentials, somewhere else there is someone who is put off by that and would feel that somehow a student who attended the same in-state alma mater or has more modest educational credentials is somehow more trustworthy. </p>
<p>The most useful and far reaching network is probably the one created by graduates of the state flagship university, in that state. In other words, I think a UT graduate will line up more interviews and be more likely to get a job in Texas than a Princeton graduate would -- there just are a lot more Texans with ties to UT and to private Texas colleges like SMU than with ties to Princeton. In California, UC will carry as much weight as Stanford, and Stanford will mean a lot more than Penn, which most Californians think is a state university in some place they can't find on a map anyway.</p>
<p>But the thing is, it's not just the respective alumni touting the virtues of their school's network - lots of people in the business world agree that certain schools have extremely strong networking (USC Marshall, etc) which most schools don't.</p>
<p>Which is not to say networking is the only part of a b-school. Cal's Haas, for example, is great, but Marshall has the most undergrad networking opportunity of any west coast b-school.</p>
<p>For business schools, you might find this ranking by Business Week interesting:
<a href="http://bwnt.businessweek.com/bschools/undergraduate/06rankings/index.asp%5B/url%5D">http://bwnt.businessweek.com/bschools/undergraduate/06rankings/index.asp</a></p>
<p>Note that you can resort various columns - Wharton comes out on top, but if you pay particular attention to the categories of job placement, starting salary, cost, and student ratings -- it looks to me like UVA McIntire is where you get the most bang for the buck, at least for Virginia residents. (I'd think business majors would have some appreciation for the concept of preserving capital).</p>
<p>Maybe it depends on where in the country you live. Some areas are just more conscious about that kind of thing than others. For us, no, it does not matter very much at all. What matters most here is your reputation on your current and past employments.</p>