“A “top student” can get a great education at Cornell College–and many choose to”
If one [generously] defines “a top student” as top 10% of HS class,
then in this case “many” = about 35% of 335 = 117 first year students.
Perhaps a better descriptor is “some” ?? “a few”??
As for NYU, to me Tisch is very prestigious, Stern is not devoid of respect, a number of the professional schools (eg Law) are well regarded, as are individual departments in Arts & Sciences (eg Courant), some in Steinhardt as well I think.
But, like at least some other multi-college universities, reputation varies by college attended there, and even major, to an extent. (which I guess is basically same view as #121)
The average Joe will equate prestige with the names he knows, and possibly their sports teams. So Jim in Youngstown will think Ohio State superior to Pepperdine or Oberlin for that matter.
The striving Middle Class family will go by what others have told them, and they will treat USNWR as the Bible.
The academic will consider quality of research for universities, and quality of the academic experience at colleges.
Oh, for the love of god. First of all, I did not define “top student” as “top 10% of HS class.” In any case, Cornell is a college that produces great outcomes for its graduates. Just because you’ve never heard of it does not mean it does not provide a challenging education that prepares students for success in graduate school and the real world.
There are many advantages to being a standout student at a small college. Here’s one example:
Oh, and by the way Professor Sherman got his PhD at MIT. The student is now completing his PhD at Rutgers and spent the summer working at CERN in Switzerland, “where he took shifts in the control room of the Large Hadron Collider and analyzed data from heavy ion collisions.”
@annwank: Ironically, most of the programs that NU is strong in or sets it apart are ones which UChicago doesn’t have or have only a small presence in.
@PurpleTitan if I’m not mistaken both NYU (Stern) and UChicago have strong economics departments, but UChicago’s economics professors and their academic caliber is mind blowing.
I think that there is less overlap between Northwestern and University of Chicago applicants than people might think. They tend to have different specialties and personalities.
There are plenty of folks who think that NYU and Boston University are public universities. My DD went to Santa Clara and folks asked us constantly why she chose an OOS public.
Simply put…not everyone knows…or cares about…all the various colleges. They just don’t.
Prestige is a broad issue to assess, but a basic quality assessment can take as little as a few minutes. I’ve known people who seem completely comfortable having an “opinion” on various colleges – and holding it indefinitely – while at the same time essentially boycotting any actual information.
I disagree that prestige is “regional and local”. I agree that it’s industry/major area specific. People in a specific field who care about and use prestige for whatever purpose know more than their regional prestigious institutions. For example, University of Akron has a highly reputable PhD program in Polymer Science. Any seasoned professional in the industry know that and it doesn’t have to be a company in Midwest. That said, when it comes to whether the most prestigious is always most chased after, there’re considerations for convenience and cost-effectiveness which could be related to regions. For example, Wharton School is very prestigious in the business world (and say a financial institution doesn’t have to be in the east coast to know that), but a company outside the northeastern part of country may not have as many Wharton graduates because 1) more graduates choose to stay in certain regions; or 2) it wouldn’t be cost-effective for a company outside NE to make great effort to recruit or to pay high salaries to many Wharton graduates, or 3) many positions can be filled by less prestigious college graduates. But it doesn’t mean because the company is located in the Midwest, they think Notre Dame is more prestigious than Penn. Note that I am not comparing the two colleges but rather to make the point on the relationship of region and prestige perception.
When it comes to hiring people, most companies (that is, not the consulting companies with their up-or-out policy) want quality people who want to work for them, contribute, progress, and stay.
If Mendoza gives them that but Wharton doesn’t (particularly in the “stay” part), they’re going to keep going back to Mendoza.
Prestige isn’t really a factor.
That’s something that I don’t think enough people realize. Most companies evaluate the person, not their school (so in that sense, the education you get and experience you bring matters more than a school’s prestige). Prestige by itself just isn’t a criteria that even registers for the most part. And the main benefit that Wharton gives you is its network (2nd most important is the recruiting opportunities out of school). Though from what I understand, Mendoza’s network isn’t exactly shabby.
@Purple Titan: You may be right in that prestige doesn’t matter in some or many fields, but that’s not what’s being discussed here, is it? Sometimes I wonder who are the parties involved in threads like this - who is trying to persuade whom that prestige does or does not matter? Why would people who are associated with prestige care to prove prestige matters (it’s not to their interest to “spread the word out”) and why would people who don’t believe in prestige care to discuss topics about prestige in length (doesn’t seem good use of their time)?
@purpletitan: I’m not disagreeing in any way with you. Both NU and UChicago are excellent schools. I just think it’s funny that our local radio talk has commented on this.
"@Purple Titan: You may be right in that prestige doesn’t matter in some or many fields, but that’s not what’s being discussed here, is it? Sometimes I wonder who are the parties involved in threads like this - who is trying to persuade whom that prestige does or does not matter? Why would people who are associated with prestige care to prove prestige matters (it’s not to their interest to “spread the word out”) and why would people who don’t believe in prestige care to discuss topics about prestige in length (doesn’t seem good use of their time)? "
This seems cynical. I get asked career and educational advice frequently both on a professional basis and for people I have social relationships with. I am candid with kids who are taking on loads of debt to attend a third tier law school- if they can’t get into a T14 Law School, or can’t get a significant merit scholarship for the next group down (BU, U Texas, et al) they shouldn’t go to law school. I am not a lawyer and don’t have any skin in the game, but I’ve hired lawyers and former lawyers and have watched the state of the legal market for over a decade and sure- go into debt so you can get a job doing doc review for $30/hour for a personal injury firm. Sure- go into debt so you can hang out a shingle doing Immigration law and clear $45K per year.
Although few people like to admit it (except for lawyers, and the blogs are full of cautionary tales of the kid who decided it was worth borrowing to attend Cooley) prestige does matter in certain fields. NOT because you can’t become a Supreme Court Justice if you go to Cooley. But because you may not get a job as a lawyer, and may end up trying to pay down your debt with the same salary you had before you went to law school.
Do you want to teach fourth grade? No, prestige doesn’t matter. Do you want to work in Ed policy/reform, or be commissioner of education for a large state or run the math/science division of a large textboook company? Yes, prestige matters. Not the prestige of “ooh, Carnegie Mellon is more prestigious than Fordham”, but because certain Master’s programs (Bank Street, Harvard to name just two) will open doors and provide networking opportunities for those policy and strategy and finance/bus ops jobs that the small state directional down the block might not provide. It doesn’t mean you can’t get one of those jobs- (unlike law school, the boundaries are more porous in K-12 education) but it does mean that you should think long and hard if you are choosing between Bank Street and Southern Connecticut State’s Master’s programs and you don’t want to be a classroom teacher for more than a few years.
I’ve been hiring people for a living for 30 years and in some fields prestige matters a lot and in others it doesn’t matter at all and in most “it depends”. But to claim that there is a conspiracy afoot to hide which fields it matters in and which ones it doesn’t flies in the face of the facts.
The reality that students and parents choose to ignore those facts (like taking on a boat load of debt to attend a marginal school in a field where prestige matters is another topic.)
