How important is it, to get into an ivy league school as an undergraduate?

Applying to College
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Which undergrad college do you think has a greater number of highly qualified Harvard Business School applicants – Penn or a less selective public? By “highly qualified”, I mean GPA, GMAT, and work experience/success comparable to the entering HBS class? A similar parallel could be made for high selective private HSs. Highly selective private HSs have a much larger percentage of their class attending highly selective private colleges than typical public HSs , but they also have a much larger number of highly qualified applicants to such colleges.</p>

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Suppose that persons who attended an ivy or other extremely selective private college almost always list the name of the college in their facebook profile, while people who attend a less selective college usually do not list the name of the college in their facebook profile. In this case, our estimate of the ratio between ivies and publics would be very inaccurate, even if only 1/3 of the class was not included. More than 30% of the actual incoming class might come from public colleges, yet fewer than 10% of the 638 might come from public colleges in our biased sample group. It would be a different story, if we randomly selected 2/3 of class members instead of using a biased sample group.</p>

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<p>@GMTplus7‌ If it is the last school you attend that counts, does undergrad matter at all? For instance, my physics teacher attended Cornell University and then went on to receive his master’s at University of Bridgeport, a much lesser known regional university that isn’t even ranked. Yet he was still able to do great things</p>

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<p>The idea of going to college is not to get a job though, obviously that for many is the desired result. It’s to learn how to critically think while existing in an environment that matures and broaden you as a person. If you are lucky enough to have the aptitude and work ethic to attend one of these schools. Due to resources and peers one would think those traits are will be advanced more so at an elite school than at a school with lesser resources and talent amongst the student body. Compare it to being a top football player. Can you get to the NFL from Ball State absolutely. But due to resources and peer pressure your chances are better at Ohio State </p>

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<p>You get the privilege of going to school with the most talented students as a group, in this country. You are the pick of the litter… You and family get bragging rights. Yes, there are a lot of advantages to go to the top schools in the country. There is definitely a lustre that goes with going to such schools and that lustre remains through future endeavors. </p>

<p>How important it is, I don’t know. It depends. For some it can make a huge difference in their lives, for others, not so much, and still for others, not a good thing at all. </p>

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<p>@shawnspencer‌: What that shows is that school only matters some when it comes to doing great things. Doing great things is mostly up to an individual.</p>

<p>@mkayak: Only the MBB consulting companies pay to send their employees to b-school full-time, and the number of kids who land MBB jobs out of even HYPSM undergrad is small. Banks do not pay to send employees to B-school full-time. Banks may reimburse for PT B-school, but some of the companies with the most generous PT tuition reimbursement policies (Intel, P&G, and Chevron), do not require Ivy degrees to get in to. Plus, many of the most elite B-schools do not have PT programs. So I would say that is a poor reason to drop $200K now.</p>

<p>MrMom62:
Of course the elite privates would be overrepresented at the top B-schools. They’re overrepresented in the M7 b-school feeder industries of banking and consulting and in general are smarter. However, that doesn’t answer the question of whether a kid who could get in to an Ivy and went somewhere much cheaper instead would be disadvantaged by doing so. Basically, is the signalling and network worth the cost. If your goal is to break in to M7 b-school feeder industries like banking and consulting, it may be (but if you’re in-state for MI and can get preferred admission to Ross, you might as well go there, as they’re a Street target as well). But you better succeed.</p>

<p>The lower risk/cost route (if a good in-state public is an option and you’re full-pay) is to go there. A good number of large companies recruit at those types of places, and frankly, if you make a name for yourself at Intel, you’ll still have a pretty good shot at a top B-school. </p>

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<p>From the WSJournal: Top 25 Schools whose graduates are favored by recruiters:</p>

<p><a href=“http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060?mobile=y”>http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060?mobile=y&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The schools at the top of the list are all big state schools. Only Cornell & MIT make it on the list, and they are below Carnegie Mellon.</p>

<p>Sure, plenty of Ivy students have great futures, but they all don’t turn into Mark Zuckerburg-- “would that be regular or skim milk, maam, in your caramel macchiato?”</p>

<p><a href=“unemployed | The Ivy Lie”>http://theivylie.com/tag/unemployed/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>You can assert that if you wish, but until you can prove it, it’s a rather far-fetched explanation to get to the point you seem to want to make. After all, haven’t you heard the joke about how it’s Harvard and Yale grads who never tell anyone where they went to school, other than saying Boston or New Haven? Given that the members of the class had no idea that anyone would mine their data, I’d say it’s pretty close to a random sample and anyone who’s an expert in statistics would probably confirm as much.</p>

<p>Also consider that P&Q ran two separate studies, one of HBS and one of Wharton and the same schools showed up in both lists of the Top 25 - including such well-known schools as IIT - that would be the Indian Institute of Technology. You have to get into the mid-teens before unique schools start showing up on either list, but they parallel each other pretty well, which only confirms the idea that going to an elite school gets you into an elite school. It’s not an ironclad rule, but it certainly seems like it’s the way to bet.</p>

<p>Let’s actually take it a step further and see what we do know. We actually know the names of every school that got at least one student into HBS, all 264 of them. And a lot of them are foreign school, further decreasing the chance that a US public got even one student in. By my count, there are 132 foreign schools on the list, but I’m sure I could be off a bit, but that’s 50% for estimation’s sake. That leaves 132 US schools, and a quick search reveals that very, very few of them are “directional” or “state” schools. Large numbers are private. Virtually every school listed is a Top 100 US News National or LAC, I haven’t bothered to check every one, but it’s overwhelming. This is not a case of students not listing their schools, Harvard released the list, and the publics are just not there.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/admission-requirements/Pages/undergraduate-institutions.aspx”>http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/admission-requirements/Pages/undergraduate-institutions.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Unless somehow Georgia Southern got in a slew of graduates, all of whom were embarrassed about going there, the idea that elites feed elites holds.</p>

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It was an example of how a biased sample distorts result. It also is not inconsistent with the profiles of persons on my facebook friends list, most of whom are several years out of college (ivy grads far more likely to list college name in profile that grads of less selective colleges).</p>

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You also see students from the northeast tremendously overrperesented at Harvard undergrad and students from most central states tremendously underrepresented. If you had two equally qualified applicants – one from New York State and one from Wyoming, would you bet on the New York State applicant since Harvard’s class averages ~100x more students from NYS than Wyoming? Or might you think the tremendously larger number of students in Harvard’s class from NYS relates to a tremendously larger number of highly qualified applicants from NYS?</p>

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You didn’t look very carefully. There are dozens of university of … colleges, many of which are not particularly selective. For example, the following are all publics that are not ranked among the top 100 in USNWR. I’m sure there are others that did not catch my eye while skimming through the list. There are also many not in top 100 privates on this list, some that US news considers regional.</p>

<p>Arizona State University
University of Arizona
University of Cincinnati
Florida A&M University
Georgia Southern University
University of Kansas
Louisiana State University
University of Maine
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Montana State University
University of Nebraska
University of Oklahoma
University of South Carolina
University of Utah
Virginia Commonwealth University</p>

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<p>I think you’re proving my point. If you want to maximize your chances at HBS or Wharton, are you going to pick one of those schools, or an Ivy, given the choice? Each of those schools probably got one student in, may two, or rarely three. There are a whole lot of equal or better publics to those above with zero.</p>

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How many highly qualified students do you think applied from these less selective not in top 100 USNWR colleges? I’d bet it’s a small fraction of the number of highly qualified students that applied from most ivies, both because a much smaller portion of the student body is composed of top students and because students who have reasons for favoring local publics over ivies for undergrad often have those same reasons for favoring local publics over ivies for grad. If there are far fewer highly qualified applicants, one expect far fewer admissions, even if HBS does not consider the prestige of the undergrad college name.</p>

<p>As for the college that maximizes your chance of admission, it depends on the student. Some students thrive as a big fish in small pond and struggle when a good portion of the class is composed of stellar students; while others do not reach their potential in an environment where they are not as frequently challenged or where there are fewer opportunities. </p>

<p>In any case, Harvard Business School is certainly admitting students who come from less selective undergrad colleges, and HBS’s admissions website discusses many criteria that are important for admissions and even addresses the importance of undergrad reputation in a FAQ, yet they do not imply any thing of the sort to wanting to admit ivy grads over public grads. Instead they emphasize wanting to have a diverse class full of students with many undergrad backgrounds on multiple website pages. One could just as easily conclude that if two candidates were equally qualified, Harvard might favor the one that adds to their diversity with a unique undergrad background and related experience over the one that doesn’t really stand out and instead looks like many other similar ivy grads. However, I expect that the primary admissions criteria are the ones that they focus on the website and various admission discussions, rather than whether the undergrad college is an ivy or public.</p>

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<p>Yes, the directional schools aren’t well represented (and I wouldn’t expect them to be; they’re generally not much so much cheaper that folks would choose them over a state flagship), but respectable public flagships certainly are. 12 of the 13 public B10 schools are represented, for instance (only UIowa isn’t).</p>

<p>Look, for Wall Street, the Street target and semi-target schools certainly provide an advantage (you can look them up in Wall Street Oasis; mostly privates, but also UMich-Ross, Cal-Haas, UVa to some extent, and UNC by the NC banks; also, Illinois CS gets recruited by the high-frequency trading firms along with the other top CS schools). </p>

<p>For MBB, HYPSMW certainly provide an advantage. </p>

<p>For tech entrepreneurship, in terms of network, Stanford leads by a mile, followed by MIT & Harvard (and maybe Cornell), but Cal CS and Illinois CS are in the next tier with the rest of the Ivies, CMU, Duke, Rice, & USC (and considering how many startup founders Cal has; 2nd only to Stanford, you could arguably bump them up a tier). In the tier after that are actually a bunch of public schools that are strong in CS like Texas, Wisconsin, UDub, UCLA, UCSD & some privates.</p>

<p>Outside of those industries/fields, does it make sense to spend about $150K more if you aren’t extremely loaded and you have a strong in-state flagship option where you can get scholarships<em>? I find that hard to justify</em>*. Especially since, if you are good enough to get in to an Ivy, you’re likely to get substantial scholarship money at other privates and LACs such as Babson, Bentley, CWRU, Dickinson, Howard, Kettering, Macalester, Ohio Wesleyan, RPI, Santa Clara, Seattle, GWU, Tulane, W&L, and Webb (all represented on that HBS list). Even Emory, Olin, Oberlin, & USC.</p>

<p>Even for those specified industries, if you do well at a solid undergrad school and are interested in Wall Street, say, you can use the money you saved on undergrad and use it for a Masters at a Street target (which are usually much easier to get in to than undergrad).</p>

<p><em>Though for pre-med, I would avoid the top public flagships that are full of pre-meds like UMich, Cal, UCLA, UVa, UNC, & UT-Austin or those elite privates (outside HYPS and maybe a couple more like Rice</em>**) who curve their science classes; a LAC that offers enough of a discount that it’s competitive with in-state rates is likely best.</p>

<p>**Well, except for maybe SPH. Stanford because they’re so connected in the Valley and carry a top brand everywhere; Princeton because of the tight alumni network and brand, and Harvard because the name and network do open doors.</p>

<p>***Rice does extremely well at placing pre-meds in part because of their relationship with Baylor Medical and a great pre-med advisor. A school like that would be golden.</p>