There was then a post about how one kid made use of her alumni network. The exchange got me thinking but I didn’t want to derail that particular thread, as it was a student asking for school x vs school y advice.
My D (a college senior) used her school’s alumni network a few times over the years. Once for an internship that she got, once for one she didn’t (but could have had the following year), once for a mentor program organized by her college. She got value from those interactions, but IMO nothing earth shattering.
For a few weeks this winter she reached out to, and interviewed, a couple dozen alumni who’d made their info available to students to be contacted. In the thick of it she had more than one a day, I think in the end she did more than 20. She found these info interviews VERY helpful (and got over an old fear of speaking on the phone, win win). She wasn’t looking for job offers, just asking how they got where they were (and I think she chose alumni from her major, to see what they were doing with it).
In a different situation, she was referred to a company for a job by one of her professors. She skipped over the regular HR process because a VP-level person was an alum and that college prof put them in direct contact. She was ultimately offered that position.
What do you think, do alumni connections matter in choosing a college? How much work was it to “use” those connections? Anyone have anecdotes to share?
My D has a gap year position that she interviewed for while abroad. She found out about this job through her school…not through alumni connections. She got her research positions through her professors.
Her professor connected her to the alumni organization in our city. I guess we will see what happens.
Personal and professional contacts and connections do matter. But not necessarily alumni connections. It’s people whom know personally, or who know of you, that matter. This doesn’t mean your college name is irrelevant; just that connections and contacts are not the same as “old school ties.”
Every job my son has had came through his OWN network, and none of those involved alumni or persons from his college. Every job my daughter had had has some through her own connections and accomplishments, or through friends, but not through alumni per se.
I can’t speak to it from the parent perspective as DD is only a college freshman and landed her co-op at a school career fair.
But, DH has recruited from our alma mater via the school’s career center. I would say it’s no more than a foot in the door to get an interview, but sometimes that can be enough to land a job.
We have a friends’ with a pre-med daughter who was able to get all kinds of medical shadowing through her school’s alumni network.
IMO though, a school’s career center is the stronger asset, although sometimes that can go hand in hand with the alumni network.
My son is taking full advantage of the alumni at Michigan. He started a tech club last year and litterly on the day they registered the club with the school they got emails from alumni willing to help. He is putting on a tech conference there in a few weeks and they had meetings with some alumni for advise and help in planning.
Like anything else, it’s what you make of it. Next year when he applies for internships hopefully some of these experiences will help.
I totally agree with @OHMomof2. Just talking with alumni gets you over that fear factor. Many professors have help my son with these endeavors as his group had to set up video conferences almost weekly for getting companies, lectures, etc for their student organizations. He is so much more at ease talking with strangers and can tell his interview skills are polished compared to when he started. Think it just gave him confidence talking to them. Plus alumni are role models in a sense. Talking to successful people is a good road to go down if you want to be successful.
My S got jobs in varied ways. One internship was from a kid he was in math league with in 8th grade—both were in engineering and the friend wanted S to have his job over the summer so S would leave when he went back away to college and leave the position vacant. The other internship was from applying and interviewing.
For his job, it was again applying and iterviewing.
It was helpful that his engineering school had fairs with lots of employers looking for engineering students. So far, alumni connections haven’t helped him as far as I know.
D has been making movies with her fellow alums. They are all working together, seeing which ones will stay in the business and which ones will swap to another field.
I met with a young woman who reached out to me via LinkedIn, only because she was a grad of my university. I offered to meet her for coffee and spent about an hour, which I was happy to do. (Note: I never got a thank you or acknowledgement and so didn’t recommend her to my company, where she had applied. A bit of timely follow up and a I would have).
I’ve gotten interviews/jobs from networking with folks from my HS and MBA program (and I’ve helped friends from my MBA program get interviews, some which led to jobs). They were from around when I graduated but we weren’t friends beforehand. I don’t think anything from undergrad (a manager, not direct, from my undergrad may have pushed for me in an interview process).
It’s more the friends you make, IMO. Especially the ones who end up in your field.
I agree it can be a foot in the door, which may possibly make all the difference. But I can also imagine that experience may vary. For example, if one is from a large university living in an area flooded with those graduates, it may mean less to someone to have that connection. Conversely, I bet if someone living in Arizona or Kansas comes across the resume of a fellow Middlebury or Colby alum, that would really stand out to them as special! Additionally, certain schools are known to have very strong school spirit and loyalty and strong alumni network (Notre Dame comes to mind). And obviously the larger a school is, the more potential alums you will be able to reach out to or happen to run into. Just overall, assuming someone had a positive experience with their college, it usually makes someone smile to reminisce or bond over some aspects of their college life. Rarely a negative.
I think if my D decides to do physician shadowing she will reach out to alumni, as noted above. Our area is not flooded with grads from my daughter’s school…yet we have a strong alumni network here.
My d accepted an offer from the company she interned with the previous summer. She landed the position through Purdue’s “Round Table” job fair. On her first day, she was both surprised and touched to arrive at her desk and find it decorated with Purdue “gear” from the alumni that work in her office. A very warm welcome back and reminder that she has a network of support.
I’ve said this repeatedly on CC: Parents make way too much of alumni connections. Having a network can be very important, but not always. I went to two elite schools and have never had to use an alumni connection let alone my schools’ alumni network for a job. In fact, I live outside of my school’s alumni network as they are concentrated in other parts of the country. But it’s the network you build, not the school’s larger alumni network that may serve you well in the future. Furthermore, people on CC tend to elevate the alumni network of elite schools when from my experience it’s the big athletic schools that have the more powerful alumni networks. I live in Texas and more times than not, if a company is interviewing 3 candidates and the hiring manager or interviewer is a UT alum, the UT candidate is going to get a tip over the others. Same for the other big schools in Texas.
Another side note about alumni - DDs university brings in many notable alumns to speak and mentor current students. There are also “field trips” to companies with strong alumni connections.
PS when DD shadowed at NASA in HS and was asked where she was planning on going to college, there was a chorus of “Boiler Up” that went up in the meeting room. That was a nice feeling for her.
D goes to a school with a very strong alumni network and it has been very beneficial. There have been alumni panel events at school as well as industry specific networking events in various big cities where students are able to get a feel as what working in a particular field would be like, in addition to making contacts. Alumni also post quite a bit of the internship opportunities available through the school’s career center. And the alumni network funds stipends for students who have unpaid internships, a big benefit.
I think a good career services department is more important than a strong alumni network. Career services will often have the connections that you will never be able to make on your own.
Many jobs are gotten through networking. I was just talking to a friend whose son got a summer internship job thanks to his girlfriend’s father (who helped set it up, helped the kid prepare for the interview, etc.) You never know where or which connection will end up helping you. I got my last two jobs through people I met in my book group.
I used to joke that if alumni connections were the most important thing to consider in selecting a college, we should all push our kids to go to Penn State that has the most alumni of any school in the nation!
The alumni network was very important to my son who went to Carnegie Mellon. He actually got to know CMU alums from a list serv that is pretty much an open tab on his laptop 24/7. He met a bunch of them in person at Carnival spring of freshman year. In 2009 he had an intership lined up which fell through in April when the economy tanked. The list serv came through with some suggestions for companies that still had openings. The next year a recent alum recommended him for an internship at Google.
From reading here my question to everyone is did your child “reach” out to the alumni? They aren’t going to run after the kids. If applying to internships did they reach out to their own alumni associations for their school? On LinkedIn, etc. This is where I see the benefit. There’s no guarantee but people tend to want to help especially when there’s a connection. No better connection then going to the same university.
H got one job when the interviewer happened to be a fellow alum. No real evidence of “preference,” but it seems likely. S got his first job based only on a recommendation from a former classmate. No application, no resume, no transcript, no interview. Just a phone call offering S a job he’d never applied for.
D and S#2 never had any connections in their fields, and that has probably been a disadvantage. S#3 got a “dream internship,” and H may have helped. H had been college friends with a higher up person in the company, but only had 2 contacts with him in the last 35 years…No proof that the message H left on the top guy’s home answering machine was ever received or had any influence. S had excellent qualifications, top guy probably had no involvement with low-level stuff…but maybe he got S’s application pulled out of a pile of thousands? (Fwiw, the internship wasn’t “all that.”)
Connections are important. But they can be any connections–friends, neighbors, former co-workers, relatives–and all of their connections, too. (My sister just got a job through a former co-worker’s neighbor.) Alumni networks are just one small piece of your network.