<p>My brother have a business degree from Cornell but I find very few hiring managers really care where he went to school. I would like to believe that having a University Degree from an Ivy League College with a 3.5 GPA would make a difference to companies because it showed that he am highly intelligent and mixed it up with the most brillant minds in America. But I think most hiring managers are not impressed .</p>
<p>I think it really depends on the manager and the company. In some places there is more “pull” from your state’s flagship university.</p>
<p>My son’s Ivy school actually did help him get his foot in the door for an interview with a company that did not interview at his school. </p>
<p>My law school degree (top 3 back then) continued to open doors for me well into the point of my career where I thought it was silly that it would do so.</p>
<p>There are a lot of things hiring managers like to see, including work experience (or relevant internships). Good luck to your brother!</p>
<p>I don’t think that is really true. I think if you have the “Ivy degree” if is also expected that you have done far more than just gone to class and have a “3.5 GPA”. When hiring, employers are looking for past work experience which very often Ivy students are fortunate to have. It really is more about what you have done with the Ivy degree than simply having one. It has opened so many doors for all of my sons including the one from the non Ivy but excellent school. I really don’t know if they would have been so fortunate post graduation if they did not attend the schools they did. I would like to think that the school and the experiences is what made the difference and I do think the experiences were in part due to the schools they attended. Each of my sons had great internships from their freshman year when other kids were working retail jobs or in restaurants. I am not putting those types of jobs down but if a kid can show solid internship experiences upon graduation they are more likely to gain employment sooner rather than later.</p>
<p>I’m not the decision-maker, but when I review resumes of new grads or young people with minimal work experience, I do pay attention to where they went to college, and a highly ranked school in their area (ivy or not) will get my attention.</p>
<p>It could make a difference in that some schools have more interviews on campus where hiring is done. If you can get a job from one of those, it make life easier. But my neighbors kids who went to Colgate, UColorado and Grinnell and were great students all got enviable positions from those schools’ interview programs that rival those that most ivy league or any kids get. It could also help at some firm where the personale director or someone seeks a “name” degree. </p>
<p>But most of the time, getting that key job to earn a living wage and get on track has a lot of seredipity and depends on your experience and performance in earlier jobs that may not be what you wanted. My son spent several years in retail before he got his current position that is the sort that ivy leaguers want. Really, it was chance and his skills and knowledge of office machines that got him hired as the company was being plagued with breakdowns for a while. They would have hired him without a degree for that.</p>
<p>I am an engineering manager. To me, a degree from an ivy league school (or other selective school) is one factor, among other factors, such as internship experience. For experienced hires, it matters very little, with more relevance for new grads. </p>
<p>The biggest influence is when there is an alumni connection, for example when one of the engineers in my group who attended an Ivy reached out to a professor at that school with a job description, and the professor recommended several graduating students, one of whom we ended up hiring.</p>
<p>Your misperception is a very common misperception for people who are not from the US – that the Ivies are exalted and that people overtly prefer their students. In actuality, many companies recruit at certain schools, including state flagships, merely because it’s easiest. Can I ask what country you are from and why you thought this?</p>
<p>I picked a U of North Texas grad over a Dartmouth grad for one position. He was a great hire. The school made no difference - I was looking for personality and skills.</p>
<p>Degree plus any work experience (summers, during college etc.) will trump degree plus zero work experience for me. I don’t pass judgement on the college that granted the degree, since some kids can only afford so much and it could be a mistake to assume that an Ivy League graduate might be a superior employee to a regional university student.</p>
<p>My current “star” at work went to U of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.</p>
<p>One of my previous companies hired an Ivy League histoy major for an engineering lead postion. The newly hired lead ****ed everyone in the team off. He did not know the technical aspects for his position. He played politics. He led the team to a wrong direction. And he was stingy. He went to lunch with the team, ordered a $7 meal and pitched in only $5.</p>
<p>On the other hand, other managers and myself usually prefer the UC graduates over the CSU graduates if they have similar GPA and years of experience when selecting their resumes for interview because we know the UC graduates have rigorous training. We don’t discount the CSU graduates but we look harder in their qualifications.</p>
<p>I actually won’t hire anyone who went to an Ivy League school because of two bad experiences with new hires who thought they were “too good” for the job they were hired to do. It just caused too many headaches.</p>
<p>H will only hire Ivy league if it’s grad school. The exception being a Penn grad or a Cornell engineering grad. But, those kids generally went to school to get “job training,” which is different. </p>
<p>Good luck to your brother. He should emphasize his willingness to work hard and that “no job is too small.”</p>
<p>Most of us realize that we hire a new grad to train. College really doesn’t train you for work, especially if all you did was go to class and study.</p>
<p>If you want a broad cross section response on this question, it’s probably a good idea to go to a more general message board. For example, if you are looking for an engineering job, go to an engineering board, not CC. It’s like going on the Harley Davidson entusiasts message board and asking whether they would prefer to hire someone who rode a Harley over someone who rode a Kawasaki. I’m not sure thats really indicative of attitudes in general.</p>
<p>Although I’ll note that the posts so far on the thread are pretty balanced.</p>
<p>I used to hire technical writers. Most of them were new to the profession, or comparatively new. I was looking for people who loved to learn, were very bright, were excellent writers, were interested in computers and software, and had superior verbal communication skills. I was mostly hiring for potential, not looking for people who had done precisely this job before.</p>
<p>Generally, I found that an applicant with a degree from a superior school was more likely to have all of those strengths. I approached each candidate as an individual, but a degree from a good college did catch my eye. </p>
<p>While I can certainly understand that one’s experiences with applicants can affect one’s expectations, the idea that people would state that they won’t hire from a particular school or set of schools is very short-sighted, IMHO.</p>
<p>The other caveat is having a “brilliant mind” doesn’t always equate with performance. We’ve all worked with the person who thinks and thinks and thinks but can’t make a decision to save their life. Or the person who builds a GANT chart that is so complex no one can figure it out. Or the person who is a perfectionist and can’t let go. Having a brilliant mind or perfectionist tendencies isn’t necessary the absolute qualification.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ll admit to this, too. I am looking for potential and the ability to learn the job. I hire people with medical degrees to do a non-medical job. An undergraduate degree from a top-notch institution such as one of the Ivies is one thing that does catch my eye on a resume as a likely indicator of a high level of native intelligence. We actively screen out arrogant people in our interview process, but I actually think people who have undergraduate degrees from very competitive schools are often humbled by the experience in college, and are readily able to believe that there are many, many people in the world who are as smart as they are or smarter. Having future MacArthur fellows among your roommates will definitely cut you down to size.</p>
<p>I have an Ivy undergrad degree and I believe it has opened doors for me–doors to the INTERVIEW, not to the job itself.</p>
<p>I should add, just to be fair, that we rarely hire people who aren’t refered to us by people we already know either personally or professionally. Same with H’s situation. </p>
<p>H is in finance, so I wouldn’t worry, I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities for the Ivy League grad in finance, just not with him.</p>
<p>As for me, we help people. We help a population that is in trouble and has a need of incredible patience and compassion and non-judgemental assistance and confrontation, people who are the same age as, or slightly younger than, these grads. If they think they are “better” than the population? They are simply worse than useless. They can cause a negative outcome.</p>
<p>We’re just looking for something else.</p>
<p>^^ Stereotype much? I know plenty of Ivy grads who are capable of compassion and, gasp, may have even majored in a “soft” liberal arts field. Even my own son did plenty of community service work while at Penn. It really amazes me that it seems to be OK to lump all Ivy grads as not being able to play well with others, having no patience or compassion and being conceited. Where do you people COME from? Did it ever occur to anyone that every school consists of an entire population of unique individuals?</p>
<p>I probably am stereotyping, based on my experience with the two kids I advocated our hiring, and who turned out to be “above it.” I don’t even blame them. They probably just needed some maturity. I actually liked them, by the way, and found them other placements. It’s not like they disagreed with me, btw. We are still in contact. </p>
<p>It’s not a lucrative field, what I do, and anyone who wants to do it is going to have to go to grad school, anyway. I hired these two young women and I think they were shocked by the conditions. A lot of the people who do best at what I do have a whole “school of hard knocks” before they have any real schooling anyway.</p>
<p>If somebody were to come to me with the right background, with a history, I’d look at any of them. Very few with the kind of history I’m talking about are going to land at an Ivy. So? It’s not glamorous. It’s gritty work. If I’m stereotyping? So be it. It’s the rare place where you would have an advantage BECAUSE you screwed up when you were young. We’re looking for outcomes and effectiveness, but I’m probably not who the OP wanted to talk to, anyway. So, I’ll bow out.</p>
<p>When I interview new college grads, I look at their transcripts not so much for where they went…but what they took for courses. Their college/university really doesn’t matter much to me at all. The applicant needs to respond well to the interview questions…and in my profession be able to do a demonstration lesson to show us what they can do in our setting. To be honest, the school they attended means very little.</p>
<p>Agreed with MOWC…the students from ALL schools should be viewed as individuals…not cookie cutter kids from a particular school.</p>