Does where you go to college matter more today than it used to?

Parents Forum
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<p>When I was growing up, huge chunks of people weren’t interested at all in colleges like Harvard or Yale. That meant that there was less competition for those “top” schools, and that it was perfectly possible to find fabulous people at public universities all over the country. </p>

<p>On the other hand, because of the reduced competition, if you were in the demographic that cared about the Ivy League (for example), there were much sharper differences between the students who went to the very best colleges and those who went to the almost very best colleges. My school, with graduating classes of about 90, used to send 8-10 kids/year to HYP. Penn (and, especially, Wharton), Brown, Columbia were places where people who were good students but nowhere near the top of the class would go. Six people in my class went to Williams, and they probably included the median GPA in the class.</p>

<p>Today, there is hardly any difference between the kids who go to Harvard and the kids who go to 20-30 other colleges, including Penn, Brown, Columbia, and Williams, not to mention Northwestern, Duke, Tufts, WashU. My sister went to Stanford with a B+ average; no one even suggested that she should apply to Harvard or Yale. </p>

<p>In other words, today there are a lot more students applying to the elite colleges, and a lot more colleges that deserve to be considered elite. So, in a sense, it matters a lot less which of those colleges you go to. </p>

<p>A few more points. </p>

<p>All the selectivity of colleges happen when people are 17-18. Anyone with half a brain knows that selecting people at that age means that you are not going to succeed in choosing the people who will be the top performers at 25, 30, or 40. Maybe, on average, you will, but it’s going to be very diluted. Just to make up an example: Harvard might get 20% of the 2,000 most impressive high school graduates, but its alumni may constitute 5% of the most impressive 30 year-olds. That would probably be more than any other college had, but nowhere near enough for any employer to say “I will take a Harvard grad over any other candidate.”</p>

<p>Out in the world, there are lots of interesting things to do, and even in a tough economy lots of room for really talented college grads. Harvard (or Yale, Stanford, wherever) grads get lots of good jobs, but they get beat out all the time by people who went to “lesser” colleges. Among the kids I know who have gotten great, dream-type jobs over competition from Harvard, Stanford, MIT grads are recent graduates of Berkeley, Chicago, Wesleyan, Carleton, and Amherst. Now, that shouldn’t surprise anyone; those are all great schools with great students. But it just doesn’t mean that much that, 4-6 years ago, they seemed a tad less impressive than the kids Harvard, etc., accepted. Their accomplishments in college and immediately afterward mean way more than their high school GPA, test scores, and ECs.</p>

<p>Second, you make a big mistake when you express surprise that the best intern at a position came from Michigan. Sure, Michigan has huge classes, and admits a lot of people. Simply getting admitted to Michigan has never meant as much as getting admitted to Harvard, and therefore knowing nothing except that someone has graduated from Michigan has never meant as much as knowing that someone graduated from Harvard. But Michigan has academic resources that are absolutely comparable to Harvard’s, and it attracts a broad range of students, including some who are peers of any Harvard student. So someone who has been a great student at Michigan is absolutely competitive with anyone coming out of Harvard.</p>

<p>Third, it may be the case that large investment banks and consulting companies do a lot of their recruiting for new college graduates at only a handful of colleges. However, by and large, the people they hire that way are cannon fodder. Very, very few of them will spend more than a few years at the place that hired them out of college. If you look at the partner/MD-level people at those firms, the people who have careers there, I think they actually come from much more diverse backgrounds, at least as far as college is concerned. And they get those positions not by getting hired right out of college, but by proving their worth doing other things in the world first.</p>

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<p>Maybe we can find that study of CEO’s and where they graduated from. Surprising.
Here’s an older one: <a href=“http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1227055,00.html[/url]”>http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1227055,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>JHS, I think you misunderstand me. </p>

<p>Every college you mentioned is a great school. I don’t think there is anything special about the HYPSM anymore. </p>

<p>I wasn’t surprised at Michigan and neither was my wife. It was the HR department in her company that was surprised. They are the ones that pressed on for her to make sure that this was really the intern she wanted. Finance has been much more insular than engineering. </p>

<p>In 2013, Michigan is a tippy top school in engineering. </p>

<p>I get a lot of resumes from directional state universities. These are not name brands. I don’t know how to evaluate the competition these students faced. Right now I don’t have to. In a few years I might. </p>

<p>When I see a Michigan or Illinois or Purdue or CMU student with a good GPA and expertise in my area, those students get extra weight because of who they had to compete with to get those grades. I’ve found that they are more likely to be top performers than someone with a 4.0 from Utah State University. I’ve learned from my early mistakes.</p>

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<p>Just interesting: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/930123-colleges-ceos-first-10-fortune-500-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/930123-colleges-ceos-first-10-fortune-500-a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>CRD, I personally agree with you, just don’t see it’s really how the world works. Of the thousands of good companies, you cannot assume the hiring folks know “Wesleyan, Carleton, and Amherst” and the host of other top schools. I’ve got highly educated fiends who don’t know much. And, it depends on the field we’re talking about.</p>

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<p>[Where</a> the Fortune 500 CEOs Went to School - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/articles/2012/05/14/where-the-fortune-500-ceos-went-to-school]Where”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/articles/2012/05/14/where-the-fortune-500-ceos-went-to-school)</p>

<p>Here’s another one, but it includes MBA’s, etc. so it isn’t that helpful. </p>

<p>One thing to consider is that big state schools have a lot more students than the elite schools. Also, 33% of CEOs majored in engineering, which isn’t that good at the ivys.</p>

<p>I want to go into consulting, so for my field, I think the prestige is probably worth it at least for getting my 1st job.</p>

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<p>Getting the potent internships will be key. If the prestige school offers a better connection, fine. But the competition for those will be there, too. You will have plenty to weigh. As we often say on CC, it is not the name of the college, it’s how it specifically fits your strengths and needs- and how well you use your time.</p>

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<p>I supposed it depends on the job market. If I had to learn more about directional state university I guess I would. I currently don’t.</p>

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<p>Classic, if you were in charge of hiring speech pathologists for a large school district, you would know a lot about directional state universities. </p>

<p>These threads always involve people talking past each other. The camp which believes that where you go to college is irrelevant doesn’t like to hear about all the fields and disciplines where it matters. The camp that believes that it’s highly relevant doesn’t like to hear about the fields where it (mostly) doesn’t matter. And NOBODY likes to hear what I think is the essence of the matter- it depends.</p>

<p>I’ve been hiring for a living for 30+ years. And the answer is- it depends. If you want to teach 7th grade language arts in suburban Philadelphia, there are a bunch of colleges in Pennsylvania (and NJ and Delaware) that can all get you there just fine. More or less fungible. If you want to develop trading models at Bridgewater or DE Shaw then it matters a ton. And everything in between.</p>

<p>But we can continue to talk past each other. Posters here have basically called me a liar for telling them that my employer asks new grads for their GPA (and then we ask for a transcript). I get that you may hire people for your company- and that your company doesn’t ask, or care about GPA. And you’ve been working for 30 years and have never been asked. But MY company asks. You can, of course, decline and not answer (I did- I honestly didn’t remember since I was 20+ years out of undergrad by then.) But that’s not the same as saying, “Oh, GPA doesn’t matter”. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.</p>

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<p>The other thing is that the kinds of jobs and careers you are exposed to will be different depending on where you go. I went to a small women’s college that was very focused on giving back and doing community-oriented work, so there were a lot of TFA hopefuls, teachers, primary care physicians, PhDs in social sciences, social workers, social welfare lawyers, etc. trying to come out of there.</p>

<p>I go to Columbia now and the atmosphere is totally different. Much more IB/management consulting driven, much more pre-med driven, more engineering/computer science driven. People want high-prestige jobs that make good money, whereas that wasn’t as important to students at my undergrad. It affects what you value, too. My ideas about what I value and what kinds of jobs I want have changed - partially as a function of growing up but also as a function of a completely different peer group.</p>

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<p>I think the issue is convoluted when we start in generalities and move to specific experiences. Some of us worked for many companies, some for few.</p>

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<p>So to answer the OP’s direct question- in some fields it matters more than it used to and in some fields it matters less. There are more companies hiring out a national talent pool than there used to be (it’s just cheaper to fly candidates around than it used to be), so in some cases, the local “it’s fine” college is less important to companies in their region than it used to be. But there are more college kids aware of companies outside their backyard as well-- so the trend to get hired/move someplace besides your own community has accelerated.</p>

<p>Some grad programs really care about where you went to undergrad and some not; some fellowships are oddly concentrated but that’s beginning to shift, etc. And people like to trot out the neighbor or friend that “made it big” on Wall Street starting as a floor assistant, no college at all, and now runs a big commodities firm. Well- those days are pretty much over for the current crop of HS kids.</p>

<p>So-- it depends.</p>

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<p>Well, all we have are our own anecdotes and opinions, so here’s mine.</p>

<p>I went to college at a very small school with a national reputation, but not even in the top 100 colleges in the country (current rankings). In fact, it was often confused with another larger university that it shares part of its name with.</p>

<p>I’ve lived and worked within about 80 miles of that college my entire life. I usually get the job that I interview for. And almost every interview has contained some mention of my undergraduate education - because it’s an unusual institution, and local employers have heard of it. They know the stats for the kids that go there are high, and given the curriculum, well, let’s just say it’s not very attractive to the average student.</p>

<p>I always found it funny that people gave me a break because of my undergraduate education, as my jobs have never had anything to do with my education. But the employers all felt that attendance at that particular school was testimony to the fact that I could think, or analyze, or write. Even an interview in 2010 referenced this school, though I graduated in '79. </p>

<p>I spent several years as a hiring manager myself, and I have to say I’ve thrown ivy league candidates in the trash bin because they wanted too much money. I’ve hired folks from schools I knew nothing about, nor did I care. Talent and work smarts always mattered much more to me. What people have done post graduation mattered to me. The interview mattered most, to me.</p>

<p>So given all that, especially the discrepancy between the way I’ve been evaluated and the way I evaluate others, I have to agree with blossom. It just depends.</p>

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<p>For most jobs, a super-bright person with a high GPA from a top school would not be the best fit, the best performer, or the most likely to stay.</p>

<p>If you are hiring for some regional manufacturing company, an honest hardworking graduate from a decent local college would be just fine.</p>

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<p>Claasicrockerdad, so you are telling us that for example a candidate with 5 years experience you look at the name brand of their undergrad school?</p>

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<p>To answer the original question: Mostly NO, it does not matter where you go to college.</p>

<p>It’s not that I don’t agree with you. I definitely do. I agree that it depends on the industry and how a good school usually shows some good work ethic/success/intelligence. However, in my very humble opinion, I think it depends entirely on the student themselves and what they make of that opportunity. So just a simple answer to your question from me would be “no.”</p>

<p>I believe every school has many many opportunities available – it is just up to the person to take it and run with it. Fast. And you need to try harder to search in certain schools, because obviously recruiters love to see HYPMS students. But even if you go to a small-town college, I am positive there’s some opportunity for you. It just depends on how you take it and what you do with it once you graduate.</p>

<p>I’m saying this because I believed, for the longest time, that where you go mattered a lot. I tried my butt off to get into prestigious schools. I ended up staying home due to money and honestly speaking, my university is not well-regarded… especially not for my major. But now I am going to graduate in four semesters. I’m so close to the “real world” eeek! I’ve realized that panic in not getting into my dream school does not even matter. I realized that turning down some well-regarded universities was an okay choice. And I know my future is going to be fine career-wise.</p>

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<p>It does not hurt to go to a name school, and as you said, can help with certain industries. But the other part, about it being what you do with the degree, I agree with your dad on that one.</p>

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<p>Great question. The school matters a lot less. Accomplishments matter a lot more. The competition maters a lot too. </p>

<p>I have to say, I love hiring people for their 2nd job 5 years out. It’s a lot lower risk because they have a track record. </p>

<p>It’s getting harder to find the people I want. I’m seeing fewer great resumes. 5 years ago was 2008, the first class who got hosed by the great recession. There are a lot of great people who have been underemployed. I might notice the great school and consider that the individual actually has far more capability than they have been able to use while being gainfully employed, and give them a chance to restart where they should have been. </p>

<p>That’s really the limit though. I would say that for your 2nd job, your accomplishments on your first job matter a lot more than where you went to school. I also like startup experience. 2 years in a startup is like 5 years of experience in a large company. I’ve seen it from both ends. </p>

<p>However, the individual from the great school is more likely to have gotten a great first job - i.e., harder and more challenging, and so the advantage of the name brand does often carry through a good part of one’s career. I learned very early on during my co-op days that the MIT student and the Northeastern student weren’t competing for the same jobs.</p>

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<p>Where I live, having attended the state flagship is a better networking “opening” than having attended a more prestigious university. When you have the state U on your resume, along with the various things you were involved in during your time there, you are likely to have something that triggers a sense of connection or nostalgia in someone reviewing your application. Also, people here think the flagship IS prestigious, and often assume that people who have degrees from private universities are “elitist” or “other”–or that they come from an elitist/other background. It’s strange.</p>

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<p>There’s an important issue I don’t think anyone has addressed yet:</p>

<p>Very few (at most) people who go to Ivy League colleges and their equivalents stop with their bachelor’s degree, so that completely muddies the waters for determining how important their colleges are to their careers.</p>

<p>Among the people I know from the high-prestige college I attended, the only people who never got meaningful graduate degrees fall into one or more (or all) of the following categories (a) born into rich families and have worked mostly in a family business, (b) tremendously entrepreneurial AND lucky, (c) writers or journalists, or (d) never graduated from college in the first place. I got exactly one job where my undergraduate college mattered – an internship on Wall Street during college that led to a permanent job offer I turned down. While people who know me definitely associate me with my college, my law school and post-law school clerkship have been many times more important than my college. My resume is no better than that of friends who went to colleges like Albion, Arizona, Rice, Tulane, Missouri, Texas . . . .</p>

<p>I hardly know anyone who went to a prestigious college who would not say something similar. My sister is the exception who has had a very successful professional career in a financial field without ever getting more than her Spanish Lit BA. I know some people who have worked their alumni connections assiduously to help build their careers, but they all had JDs and/or MBAs shoved in there, too. Realistically, the only people whose careers have really been based on their college ties are a few journalists and screenwriters, and even there many got graduate degrees, too.</p>

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<p>At least in the business industry, I would think that an elite undergrad school to an elite consulting job to an elite MBA would open up tons of doors and give you a very strong network for the rest of your life. It would also always give you a step up on the competition.</p>

<p>If I decide to pay the money for an prestigious school, I think I need to ensure that I get a prestigious entry-level job to ensure a return on investment of my 200k education.</p>

<p>Do you agree with this train of thought?</p>