Huh, I wasn’t aware that you needed to graduate college to go on to lead a “productive” life. I’ll be sure to tell that to my friends and families that built this nation in the factories.
(Yes, I realize that factory jobs are near extinct now but I still take issue with the statement.)
Hmmmn, the posit was made within the context of where you went to college—so not sure how graduate school and factory workers got conflated?
@romanigypsyeyes, this nation was not “built” by factory workers, or by any group, alone.
It matters a lot, they say you become the average of those 5 people you mostly associate with, go figure…
But if you are determined and constantly feed and grow yourself, then success is almost a guarantee, you can argue whether you need to go to college as well.
For engineering and CS, it doesn’t matter where you went to school.
It seems like it matters for lawyers, investment bankers, college professors, and politicians, though.
“It matters where you go to college, plain and simple” - One thing is true about this - this statement is way too SIMPLIFIED. Yes, it matters in very few careers, and it does not matter at all in very many others. While I cannot “judge” about all as I do not believe in statistics too much becuse the statistics out there is NOT taking into consideration ALL variables, so I call it “garbage in, garbage out” statistics, so, again, while I cannot judge about all careers, I am personally very familiar with 3 - medicine, CS and engineering. It absolutely does not matter for these 3 where you attended the UG. If one wants to argue otherwise, check out the data that you use and you will find that many variables in your analysis are omitted and that is why it is skewed. I base my opinion on mnay examples close to our family and on the example of my own family.
One way it matters relates to social growth and broadened outlook. The kids from our high school who go on to the state schools and regional privates seem to stay in almost their same social groups from high school, and in fact often select their schools based on where the majority of their friends are heading. Then they even room with their old high school friends beginning freshman year, since unlike at the elite schools our state universities allow you to request your roommates. Regardless, there are going to be as many as 150 kids in their freshman class from their hometown, which means they tend to gravitate toward those kids they already know. Therefore, in my context, expanded social horizons is one big benefit of going to a school which draws its students from around the country.
In addition, those kids who attend the nearby state colleges seem to focus their job search very locally as well. They want to stay around home after graduation, because, again, their friends are all here. That narrow focus may or may not limit their careers, but it often does even when it doesn’t have to because of a limited mindset. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a parent say their kid was having a hard time finding a job around here, and seemed unwilling to to even travel to the farther reaches of the region. In some cases their low starting salary/lack of full time job necessitated their living at home. In contrast, my kids could have settled in many states and a few foreign countries and been close to a few college friends, if that were a priority for them. There were places they would have preferred to live after graduation, but were comfortable moving anywhere. After all, they had already done that successfully to go away to college and thus had no fear about it. I don’t see the same outlook in the kids who stay local for college. Having been used to a 20 minute drive to college, they think an hour commute to work is very FAR.
" The kids from our high school who go on to the state schools and regional privates seem to stay in almost their same social groups from high school, and in fact often select their schools based on where the majority of their friends are heading. "
-This is the opposite of my D’s experience. One of the reasons that she did not apply to Ivy’s / Elite because she said that if she did, then she would be among the same type of students that she was at her HS (which was in fact one of the best experiences of her life by her own admission). She wanted to broaden her horizon and state public UG was a perfect place for it. To clarify, D. graduated from the most rigorous tiny private HS in our area (one of the very top of private HS’s in our state) with most kids being from lawyers / MD families. She wanted to have wide range of kids around her, with wide range of interests, intellectual levels and social backgounds as well as level of ambition. She did not care to deal strictly with academically intense, focused group. She was right about it - the advantage in her “social” development, the side that she paid a specail attention while at college was evident when she started her Med. School. It was evident to many others, her peers, superiors, patients…She was able o connect to different people easily and it has worked to her advantage and to the advantage of those who she was helping.
Re: engineering-- If you got to a school whose program you study is not ABET certified, you may have some limits in job opportunities. As for research, no study can take “all variables” into consideration. But research in general consists of studies with good data, controlled variables, and reliable outcome information. To blast all statistical research as garbage is offensive. Studies are limited in their scope. They aren’t meant to take “all” variables into any one study.
I think threads like this contribute to the numerous threads asking “is it worth it” to borrow $100k+ that we frequently see on CC. Posters in threads like this will talk about the intellectual thickness at upper tier schools and their belief that graduates from those schools are more likely to be successful than those from lower tier schools. Then they’ll jump on the “is it worth it” threads to advise families that a state school is good enough. What those families interpret that as is that state schools are good enough FOR YOU.
I understand there’s a difference between being able to write a check for something and having to take out a loan to get it, but we’re not talking about a fancy car or name brand handbags here, we’re talking about their children’s futures. What amazes me is that some posters continue to insist that top tier schools have better outcomes then act surprised at the number of families willing to take on high debt so their kids can attend them. There are other posters who I know spent decent amounts to send their kids to school, but they seem to believe kids can succeed in a variety of places. Those posters, in my opinion, come across as more credible advisors than those who truly believe the air is better at the upper tier schools.
Except you’re not differentiating the schools from the students here. You are basically implying that every non-elite school student has a narrow focus on life and will amount to less than an elite school graduate (and that somehow this is the school’s fault), which is a bogus statement to say the least. A good school gives students the tools they need to succeed. Whether or not they utilize those tools is up to them.
Furthermore…
What about the students who actually are accomplished and do succeed?
What about the fact that schools can and do set standards independent of quality of incoming students? (i.e. sink or swim)
What about opportunities that exist at non-elite schools and not at elite schools?
We can’t talk about college the same way we talk about yield output at a milk factory… these are living, breathing people. Every person has to be considered a unique entity. Statistics tend to favor the elite schools since they generally admit top students… however, statistics also ignore the students who fall outside of the norm and end up doing well at non-elite schools.
@simba9, for CS, it may matter.
If you have terrific skills, you’ll get hired from anywhere, but at certain schools, you’re going to meet fellow students who will start companies more often than you will at others.
@austinmshauri nicely put. This is exactly what I was trying to say in an different thread.
@TheGFG, it really depends on the state and the state school.
One state school I know tends to send quite a few alums, at least in certain majors, far away.
Furthermore, states like TX and CA are like small countries, so their state schools will have a decent mix of people not from your area.
Then you have state schools like UMich where almost half the student body is OOS now (and many head out of state after graduation).
Finally, some state schools have a ton of Internationals these days (and many have a lot of study-abroad options), so you could stay in your bubble (as it seems those kids you mentioned want to do), but you don’t have to.
First job at graduation recruiting may differ (often with a local/regional bias). It is less important after one has work experience.
However, be careful of schools that offer CS majors with inadequate course offerings, or which are IT majors in disguise.
Apparantly it does. According to Payscale a Colgate graduate at mid career will earn 127k a year and someone from University of Alabama will earn 77k a year.
@crabby932, yep, but what does that tell you about outcomes for any particular person who is choosing between those 2 schools?
After all, the average student entering those 2 schools will differ a fair bit (by any metric you care to employ), so any particular person would not be both at the same level as the average student entering 'Bama and the same level as the average student entering Colgate, no?
Also, regional pay differences can be a factor.
I agree with @TheGFG, and noticed something similar when comparing my friends at my top-25 school versus my friends from high school who went to my state’s flagship. Even starting from freshman year, pretty much everyone I knew was doing research or an internship during their summer, whereas my friends at my state flagship tended to work standard minimum wage jobs. I’m not saying one is better than the other, and I do think there is a benefit to working an off-campus minimum wage job. And these are just generalizations, and certainly there are students at my state flagship with very strong research experiences or got competitive internships. But there are definitely differences in the culture, and some students might benefit from being in an environment where undergraduate research is the norm rather than the exception, for example.
I’m irritated to find the Atlantic article using Jonathan Wai’s statistics about elite schools and success. Wai included graduate schools in his statistics, so someone who attended UMass as an undergrad but Stanford as a grad student, then went on to be on the Forbes Most Powerful list would be included in his list of elite school successes. Bill Gates or Carlos Slim could waltz into the Harvard Business School with an application written on the back of a napkin, but would we then attribute their success to HBS?
I do think there’s an advantage to attending an elite school, but I think Wai and those who take his research at face value badly overstate that advantage. Yes, there are a few fields where the name of the institution on one’s undergraduate diploma matter, but they are very, very few. If someone wants to write an article that reads “You’ll never be on the Supreme Court or get tenure at Yale unless you get an elite education” I won’t object. All this hand writing about whether you can ever become a CEO, get a job in a top law firm or be a mover and shaker without an Ivy League or equivalent degree is just silly IMO.