<p>P.S. Item b) above wasn't faculty advice; it was something I found out in my reading that I felt was relevant to your question, so I added it.</p>
<p>As you have attended Harvard, aren't you in that famous Ivy "job-network" that is basically a job insurance?
Or do you get in there after you've finished master/phd?
Don't personnel managers look at the school you finisehd the Bachelor?
At least you've spent 2 years at that college, twice as much time as at an master programme...</p>
<p>Oh and one more thing. If a good undergraduate school doesn't really, really help you in you professional life, why is everybody soooo keen on getting into one.
Why does everybody spent effort and money at an Ivy school if you could also get a good GPA at an average college and apply afterwards?</p>
<p>hi,
i am a german high-school equivalent student now, considering what do do after my graduation. It is really the dream of my life to study at Harvard, Stanford or maybe MIT/Caltech or Yale/Princton. My direction will be biochemistry/biomedcin/engeneering.
When do you think I will have the best chances to get into one of these top Us? Should i do my bachelor at a german U (maybe with some months abroad) or is it better to apply for a top College directly after High School?
I would be glad if some of you could help me...</p>
<p>"If a good undergraduate school doesn't really, really help you in you professional life, why is everybody soooo keen on getting into one."</p>
<p>The best damn marketing departments in the country. Every high school student believes that buying into the best brand name school is their ticket to the fast life.</p>
<p>The realistic differences between Ivy league schools and their very similar non ivy counterparts, boil down to perceptions and attitudes by those attending it. HR managers may be personally impressed by a person with a degree from Harvard but the project manager or in academia grant committee, may not be.</p>
<p>In my personal experience, grant committees are not at all immune to being impressed by a student's academic background -- actually, I recently got back an NIH review that made several favorable comments on my choices for both undergraduate and graduate training.</p>
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In my personal experience, grant committees are not at all immune to being impressed by a student's academic background -- actually, I recently got back an NIH review that made several favorable comments on my choices for both undergraduate and graduate training.
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<p>I have to (sadly) agree. In fact, what I have found is that academia is one of the most, and arguably the most prestige-conscious profession I have ever encountered. People are always sniffing around everybody else's CV's to see where they went to school, including undergrad.</p>
<p>It actually makes some (perverse) sense that it be so. Other people will go to college, graduate from it, and then leave. But, by definition, people in academia stay within the college environment for their whole lives. Even if you leave one college, it's usually to take a faculty position at some other college. So it's perfectly natural for them to be constantly thinking about colleges, including the pecking order of status among the colleges. It would be like if I was a professional baseball player: I would constantly be thinking about who the best baseball teams are.</p>
<p>Most non-professional (i.e. not business) master programs are really not that hard to get in unless you want scholarships. PhD admission would be a different animal. I got 3.3 from Northwestern and got into every single engineering master program I applied to, including Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley (didn't know it would be that easy!!). Granted, I did really well on GRE but still.</p>
<p>Non-business Master's programs in general are much easier to gain admission than the undergraduate and PhD levels. I talked to an admission counselor here at Michigan about a specific professional master's program related to my major, and she told me I was an easy admit simply because of my background and where I attended college. Northwestern is an elite school. I can go back to grad school whenever I want. The MBA is the most competitive program.</p>
<p>I guess you can say academia is very image/prestige-conscious of where one attends for undergraduate studies. It's also considered good to attend a more prestigious program in one's field of study for graduate studies.</p>
<p>OP, the "famous job network" is mostly a pop culture myth. No one "gets it" at any point in a Harvard education. It might have existed fifty years ago (though I don't know), but no longer. The times in my life when I've been out of work, I didn't call up another Harvard alum; I sent out my resume and went out on interviews just like everybody else. An Ivy background has occasionally helped me in the job search, but usually just because a particular interviewer happened to be impressed by it...certainly not because the institution guaranteed me a job.</p>
<p>It sounds to me as if you are equating a Harvard degree with lifelong security. That's not the real picture. No Harvard degree at any level, or any college degree, can provide you with that kind of insurance. </p>
<p>I do agree with other posters on this board that, within academia, in some contexts, it can help you out. I'm not saying that an Ivy background is irrelevant...just that it's no safety net.</p>
<p>I can corroborate Loft's statement about the whole safety net thing when it comes to an Ivy league education. Here in Boston where the workforce is literally saturated with Ivy Leaguers- some employers seek out fresh recruits from lesser known schools- who are willing to work just as hard for less. (LOL outsourcing to State Schools)</p>
<p>And Harvard here is so ubiquitous that a Harvard education is nothing to gloat at. Not to say that Harvard isnt amazing in its own right- it is, and (empirically anyways) the students who go there are very humble about their prospects and lead very normal lives. And why shoudl'nt they be? Harvard is a huge, overarching institution which produces just as many grunts as it does presidential hopefuls.</p>
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OP, the "famous job network" is mostly a pop culture myth. No one "gets it" at any point in a Harvard education. It might have existed fifty years ago (though I don't know), but no longer. The times in my life when I've been out of work, I didn't call up another Harvard alum; I sent out my resume and went out on interviews just like everybody else. An Ivy background has occasionally helped me in the job search, but usually just because a particular interviewer happened to be impressed by it...certainly not because the institution guaranteed me a job.
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<p>While I certainly agree that no institution can guarantee you a job, I would argue that school job networks are very much alive, and Harvard's in particularly is arguably the most vibrant of all of them.</p>
<p>To give you a case in point, I know a Harvard grad student who wanted to study the social psychology of the finance community, and the private equity industry in particular. The research question that was being pursued involved a significant chunk of field research involving interviewing and surveying of partners in the PE industry. Harvard is one of the few schools in the world where you can actually do that kind of research, and arguably the only such school. {The Wharton School at UPenn may be the other. Maybe.} That's because Harvard has extensive ties to the private equity industry, such that he was able to find a large enough number of industry participants who were willing to work with him such he could build a statistically significant dataset. It is widely acknowledged that if he had gone to any other school, he would not have been able to pursue this line of research because he simply wouldn't have enough access to the industry. To reiterate, he wasn't even looking for a job in the industry (although he might very well end up working there once he graduates). He was just trying to research the industry.</p>
<p>Now, to be fair, I do agree that you do have to use the network properly. If you can't or don't want to use it, then you will get nothing out of it, as nothing will be handed to you. Even with the access that Harvard can provide into the PE industry, that guy had to spend many months contacting industry players and getting them to agree to be part of his study. But at least he had the access. At other schools, he wouldn't even have had the access.</p>
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I can corroborate Loft's statement about the whole safety net thing when it comes to an Ivy league education. Here in Boston where the workforce is literally saturated with Ivy Leaguers- some employers seek out fresh recruits from lesser known schools- who are willing to work just as hard for less.
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<p>Actually, I think that the major part of the problem is that you're in Boston. It is widely understood that the Harvard brand name increases in value exponentially the farther you are away from Boston, or in other words, that Boston is where the Harvard name is the least valuable.</p>
<p>Yes, sakky, I think we are essentially in agreement.</p>
<p>I think people may have skewed understandings of what an alumni network is useful for. I think people imagine that when you graduate, the alumni network contacts you with a job offer from a hiring manager who attended your school and the cycle continues with each job change. That really is pretty unrealistic. Alumni networks are great for finding information from insiders. When I moved to a different part of the country after college, I went through the online records of the alum network and found people in the sciences in my new city. I then contacted them and asked their opinions on the companies that they work for and other companies that had job postings online. I gained valuable insight into what makes somebody successful at one company vs another (eg. one local biotech was so narrowly focused on accountability that they were willing to trade experience for somebody with a background keeping legal-proof notebooks, on that application, I cited how I contributed to the success of our intellectual property case with meticulous record keeping and collaboration with our legal team). I was offered that job.</p>
<p>but is it really easier to get into the Master than in the bachelor programs??</p>
<p>Yes, except the MBA program.</p>
<p>does it make a difference where you got your bachelor degree? Wether in a top or a middle rank U or maybe outside of the US?</p>
<p>Ahhhhh I don't think so! Didn't we sort of answer your question already with several posts- where you go for undergrad doesn't matter all that much. It does impress people but on the long run, no. At the end of the day, they're going to look at your numbers, LORs, and essays over the name of your school. Unless it's a super crappy one.</p>
<p>Honestly, you may actually change your mind over the years that maybe Harvard education/degree isn't all worth the hassle for the tassle. I used to be gung-ho about getting in Brown or Stanford when I was a senior in high school. Now I'm in a MA program at Michigan and looking towards a PhD. Brown is definitely out. Stanford is on the list but I'm not going to cry about it if I don't get in just because there are many, many other wonderful programs that are just as competitive to get in. </p>
<p>Also I agree about the oversaturation. Being a OOS at University of Michigan, it seems like everybody in the state of Michigan has a UMichigan degree and I begin to wonder how employers in this state treat people with Michigan degrees versus someone from OOS (Out Of State). It's great to meet people with Harvard/MIT/etc degree in Boston but it can drive you a little batty and make you feel little less special. Having this experience, I wouldn't go crazy about getting a elite university degree.</p>
<p>Hence the comment about how people far away from Boston would be more impressed with a Harvard degree than those IN Boston.</p>
<p>This oversaturation phenomenon is interesting. I fully expect to end up in Boston at some point and it is strange that a Harvard degree would mean less there than in San Diego for instance. In my experiences, even in Madison, a degree from UW Madison was still very valuable but that may have been due to the extensive state university network of Wisconsin.</p>
<p>Perhaps I can only speak from experience, but because the organization I work with is affiliated with Harvard Divinity School, we turn down alot of applications from Harvard grads (most are not HDS students) in favor of people with more diverse academic backgrounds. Then again, we are extremely progressive and we are constantly canvasing for applicants from less privileged backgrounds. </p>
<p>I would venture to say that with the exception of Med and Law students, Harvard grads are less likely to find promising careers in the Boston area than elsewhere. This stems partly from the relatively higher expectations of Ivy leaguers as compared to State Schoolers and because the competition for those highly coveted jobs is so fierce. </p>
<p>I wouldn't even dare apply for a coordinator position at Oxfam knowing full well that 5 or 6 Harvard grads have already applied for the same job.</p>
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This oversaturation phenomenon is interesting. I fully expect to end up in Boston at some point and it is strange that a Harvard degree would mean less there than in San Diego for instance. In my experiences, even in Madison, a degree from UW Madison was still very valuable but that may have been due to the extensive state university network of Wisconsin
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<p>I think it has something to do with the unique nature of Boston as perhaps the most intellectual city* in the country, hence the nickname 'Athens of America'. The area is so thick with students and professors that merely having gone to a top college - even Harvard or MIT - does not seem particularly impressive, because lots of local people, especially the professors, have done that. You need to be well cited and/or have gotten tenure before you begin to distinguish yourself from the crowd. It would be like if you've appeared in movies: that would be impressive anywhere except in Los Angeles, where lots of people have appeared in movies. You would need to be a major movie star to distinguish yourself. </p>
<p>Note, obviously there are many *college towns that are highly intellectual. Berkeley, for example, has more PhD's per capita than any other place in the country. But I'm talking about a major city or metro area here. The entire Boston area is perhaps the most academically focused of any such area of comparable size in the country. Berkeley and Palo Alto are highly intellectual, but the rest of the Bay Area, not so much.</p>