<p>Joshua Persky, an out-of-work investment banker, has been hunting for a job on Wall Street for more than six months. Recently he got so frustrated he decided to get a little creative.</p>
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<p>Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Joshua Persky, an unemployed investment banker, stands on Park Avenue in Manhattan, wearing a sign that reads: "Experienced M.I.T. Graduate for Hire."
Last week, Mr. Persky, 48, stood on Park Avenue, handing out r</p>
<p>It definitely opens doors and gets you interviews, but it doesn’t necessarily mean an MIT graduate is an automatic hire for any job. There’s much more to hiring employees than just their alma mater.</p>
<p>My Indian friends that graduated from Cornel and Stanford engineering schools have been unemployed for more than 8 months. One just recently found a job and the other one has been begging me to get her a job. If Stanford is such a powerhouse as far as networking is concerned then why does she have this problem.</p>
<p>No althlete. She is very good in Math. The type that got 800 in Math on SAT for the first time. Her family did not let her major in math, so she went to medical school. But she hated biology and turned to engineering. She got a MS EE from Stanford. BTW, last time I talked to her, her husband and her are still plotting to send their kids to top boarding schools in NE so they can have top jobs in America. They plan to screw up their kids just the same way as her family did to her. Seems like soap opera isn’t it?</p>
<p>I really don’t know the details of this so it’s really hard to draw a conclusion. For all I know, she could be dealing with the death of her sister, which is killing her ambition.</p>
<p>For this MIT grad, though, his MIT diploma REALLY helped him find a job. </p>
<p>I agree though that sending children to “top high schools” just to get a good job is ridiculous. The parents should send their kids to public schools where they can easily be in the top 5 percent and get a free education, and they’ll be just as well off as any private school kid.</p>
<p>Being international complicates getting a job because the companies are required to sponsor your visa. Perhaps it is not so for the U.S. citizen graduates.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be so quick to point to his alma mater as the exact reason for him getting this job. Surely he listed his college education in his resume when he was searching for a job during his six months unemployed. Why didn’t it help then?</p>
<p>While I’m sure the MIT diploma helped him get his foot in the door, it was him who had to show he was qualified for the job and not the diploma.</p>
<p>It is very hit or miss with these things. I say, work your as$ off wherever you go and you will be okay. I don’t care what school a person goes too, if a state university student is a hard worker and a Princeton legacy does nothing but go to dinner club, the state student is getting the job they both interview for.</p>
<p>But if the state school kid was really that smart, he would be in a prestigious honors program, so the fact that he didn’t go to a “top school” wouldn’t really matter.</p>
<p>Yeah, Just because you are an MIT grad for hire doesn’t get him the job.</p>
<p>It gets people to notice him. It will get recruiters to consider his resume and to take a closer look at him. It’s far from a guarantee for a job opportunity.</p>
<p>This is not the best data to go by… either is what post number 1 provides. But this is an interesting link of older congressmen and senators with their educational background. I know that jobs and politics vary in skills, etc. But I think this proves that quite honestly, as long as you work hard, your college matters very little in many respects. Now of course I would choose to Harvard 4.0 compared to the Georgia 4.0. But both might just be as qualified.</p>
<p>I believe there is a strong belief in some cultures that going top schools get you to top jobs and voila your life is set. Some going to these top schools because of these beliefs and graduate with huge debt load.</p>
<p>The name of a school is like the hook for an essay. Just “experienced banker for hire” is boring to read, but MIT grad? That draws in your interest. That makes you want to read more.
However, if one were to continue reading, and realize that the essay lacked direction, substance, evidence, whatever, it wouldn’t get a good grade; even though it’s hook was phenomenal.
The name gets you attention, your work does the rest. With a shortage of jobs, however, and many people vying for attention, the big name school is definitely a bonus.</p>
<p>If you graduate from a top school but you are so caught up in yourself that no one can stand to be around you, then I’d say you lose a lot of the effectiveness of going to a highly ranked school. Humility and character, not to mention experience and work ethic, get you farther than a name.</p>