<p>So I had the most interesting discussion with a HS senior and would love thoughts. To those of you who went to top schools -- top 10, ivy, schools with really low admit rates -- or have kids attending such schools, what are your (or your kids) life expectations? Is it your view that a college degree is a college degree and once youre out, everyone is on an even playing field based on your work, the network you establish etc. Or did you find that that MIT/Ivy/whatever degree opened doors for you later on (not first or second job) that you wouldnt otherwise have expected -- whether people gave you the benefit of the doubt for being smart or alums helped out or whatever it may have been.</p>
<p>The HS students question was -- if Im going to be a CPA and the guy from University of Utah will be a CPA (no offense to Utah -- I know nothing about the school), who cares if my accounting degree is from MIT Sloan.</p>
<p>Im not sure where I fall on this issue; I have work experience but am still only 1 job out of school, so I cant speak to what may or may not matter later in life, esp in the business world. (This question is more geared to business, law, etc. as I know things like medicine and dentistry are totally different ball games.) Any personal stories on this? Or how have you managed your kids expectations re what a Ivy degree will actually do for them?</p>
<p>My opinion. There are TONS of highly successful folks who did not go to HYPSM, etc. I’m not saying these aren’t terrific schools, because they ARE terrific schools. But this discussion has happened ad nauseum. They are NOT the only colleges. And they are not the only colleges where successful adults come from.</p>
<p>“Benefit of the doubt”…ahem…you might get an interview through an alumni connection. But if you really don’t have the knowledge to do the job, the buck will stop there.</p>
<p>My kids went to schools that I guess you would view as less than extraordinary. They still expect to be successful adults.</p>
<p>Most Ivies don’t have business degrees for undergrads (U Penn has Wharton).</p>
<p>I though this thread was going to be about the extraordinarily high expectations of life that result from attending what you call “extraordinary schools.” Pros and cons to those high expectations.</p>
<p>Many grads from top schools seem to be successful. However, there’s a good chance that their talents would have done them well at other schools too. Families should strive to find the best combo of fit and affordability.</p>
<p>Whether or not it opens doors depends on the field, the area where you’re applying and who is deciding. One manager at my job is not from the U.S. and she thought that colleges were where people attended if they weren’t good enough students to be accepted at universities. So if you had her conducting your interview, you would be better off having graduated from an open-enrollment college than, say, Pomona. </p>
<p>In my family’s case, the school name definitely helped one of my kids and definitely hasn’t helped another kid who graduated from a more highly-ranked school. The hiring manager that kid faced was partial to students who had graduated from HBCUs. </p>
<p>I thought the same thing that compmom thought and I think that’s a far more interesting question: do students from “extraordinary schools” have extraordinarily high expectations of life and what are the pros and cons of that. I attended a suburban public high school in a very middle-class neighborhood. The valedictorian of my high school class attended one of HYP and graduated from there but chose not to pursue a career, becoming instead a wife and mother of a man who struggled in his not-lucrative career and who had to rely on her family and community to get a job. She and I were not close but my understanding, through the grapevine, was that her father made no secret that he hadn’t paid for that school for her not to follow a career path. I also know of other people who graduate from top schools and are unemployed despite looking for work; they are often very hard on themselves. I think families who send their kids to top schools often have very high expectations for life and I do think the schools should put resources into substantial career help for all alumni, not just recent graduates. Not all the schools do that.</p>
<p>I graduated from MIT and worked as an engineer on many NASA programs. I wouldn’t bring it up, but several times when getting to know people at the start of a project, the subject of where one went to school would come up. I figure that MIT gave me about 5 seconds of “Wow”.</p>
<p>MIT is a very good school, no doubt, but I have worked with very good engineers from many different schools. You learn so much on the job, that after a while it doesn’t matter so much where you went to school but what your individual smarts are.</p>
<p>Many feel a need to hide the fact that they went to a “top” school. It almost condemns you to only being comfortable around others who also went to a highly selective school. Employers and fellow employees may have prejudices, unless they themselves attended Harvard etc. And the culture of the schools are bubbles of high ambition and high expectations, which may, at some point, collide with the essential (and I think wonderful) ordinariness of life, work and family. Also, the habitual resume-building attitude toward life can have consequences down the road: what happens when you arrive?</p>
<p>Yes, that is my opinion. Now that my “social group” has graduated quite a few of our older kids, it appears pretty random how “successful” they are and had not much to do with which college they picked.</p>
<p>It’s often said that admission to the Ivies and other highly selective colleges is “holistic”. Well, so is the education. Their students’ life expectations aren’t limited to high incomes. They want to be “thought leaders”. They want to live interesting lives surrounded by other smart people. Hence all the admission focus on extracurriculars and “passion”. </p>
<p>On the other hand … up to 40% of Harvard College graduates in recent years have gone on to early careers in investment banking and business consulting. </p>
<p>“2collegewego, I wonder what that manager would make of a Havard College listing on a resume? That is how my old manager listed it.” </p>
<p>Smile. I don’t know if she would make the connection. Perhaps she would take the time to ask for some clarity? </p>
<p>Many of the foreign managers at my school are unfamiliar with most U.S. universities and colleges. They even confuse many of our schools, thinking for example, that New School is NYU. That said, I have relatives who attended ivies who feel strongly that the name opened doors for them. It depends so much on the field and the people involved.</p>
<p>tk21769, I realize that many graduates from the HYPMS group start their careers in consulting or investment banking - but it’s really more like an internship or apprenticeship and most do not stay in those fields. Wall Street isn’t an HYPMS bastion. Most of those analyst positions are for two years and the expectation is that they will move on - to business school for many of them, or to other kinds of graduate programs. So I wouldn’t judge too harshly the students who don’t immediately jump into some other field. In fact, I would recommend a few years in these ‘pressure cookers’ to broaden your business exposure, gain some practical skills, and figure out what is really important to you professionally. (Spouse did the IB thing before grad school and consulting internships over the summers - ended up in international development working for an NGO. I did similarly and ended up in healthcare. This was not unusual at all among our peers at the IBs and consulting firms.)</p>