I’m mainly applying to those that I am really familiar with and not to unknowns or hole-in-the-wall colleges. Not judging those who do, to be clear. I’m just wondering how much does a college’s prestige matter when your out of college and looking for a job?
As an employer, I do give “points” to applicants from prestigious colleges for entry or close to entry level jobs. When I was on “Wall Street” (law firm and then investment bank), we did focus our recruiting efforts for entry level jobs at the most prestigious colleges and professional schools. We certainly hired paralegals, analysts and associates from non big “name brand” schools, but those candidates had to work harder to get their foot in the door. The importance of the undergrad school diminishes over time and eventually becomes a footnote as employer focus turns to job experience and accomplishments as well as perceived personality fit.
Your college placement office might be rather important for that first job. And the quality of that office does not depend on the college’s prestige. Some colleges really hustle to prepare and place their grads. Some have a binder of jobs that companies can add to if they want to, but don’t really make the effort to market their school. Many colleges have better connections with local companies in their region. So, going to school on the east coast while looking for a job on the west coast can be harder.
Even prestigious colleges can have less-than-ideal placement offices. I remember reading an article about an Ivy(?) college being accused of selling it’s students to the highest bidders, leading to lots of placements in finance and consulting firms who can pay the cost to use the career office, to the detriment of other paths that may be suited to the grads as well.
It depends upon what type of job you are looking for. Law firms, particularly expensive “high end” ones, and investment banks are two areas where prestige matter relatively more. Most other places prestige matters very little.
Motivated by a combination of earlier threads on CC plus two informal meetings that I already had scheduled for other reasons, I recently asked two high tech hiring managers whether they would rather hire a software engineer from Harvard or a software engineer from UMass Amherst. Both said immediately with no hesitation that they would rather hire a software engineer from UMass Amherst. I think that the point was that they have had good experience with software engineers from UMass, and that they were concerned that someone from Harvard would be more likely to be hard to manage. I will note that UMass Amherst is a very good university and certainly well above the “hole in the wall” college level. My sample size of two is obviously very small but I got exactly the answer that I would have expected.
Depends on the situation. The following are the usual examples given for more school prestige consciousness than others:
- Investment banking employment.
- Management consulting employment.
- Law employment (based on law school ranking).
- College faculty employment (based on PhD school's prestige in major).
- PhD programs in some subjects (based on undergraduate school's prestige in major).