I was raised and still live in New England, and at least in our circles, the schools everyone knows are the ivies and the NESCAC schools Then the engineering-y schools, RPI, RIT, WPI, Northeastern. Then most of the big state unis.
@gallentjill Your mention of Pomona triggered a memory of how, before I became immersed in the college search process about 5 years l ago, I ran into someone in my neighborhood I hadn’t seen in a while. I asked where her kid was going to college. She said since her kid did not get into Babson she chose Bentley. Never heard of both those schools before but to be polite smiled and said “congrats” but inside felt sorry for her, thinking that those two schools were the best her kid could do. But with further research I realized how excellent those two schools are for business and how selective as well. Other neighbors at that time said their kids were going to Northeastern and SUNY Geneseo. In the late 70s/early 80s those two schools were not where serious, good students applied to. The point of the story is that I agree with you that most people, especially those not involved in the college search process, have not heard of most colleges, and this is particularly true if the college is located out-of-State and without recognizable division 1 sports football and basketball teams that shows up on our TV screens oftentimes throughout the year. And for some colleges the reputation and quality of the school has transformed dramatically for the better in the past 30 years, but first impressions and reputations are still hard to shake.
I grew up in the Midwest so certainly knew that Grinnell, Oberlin, and Kenyon were highly-regarded back in HS, but as I’ve said before, I only knew Bates as a hotel, Colgate as toothpaste, Hamilton as a founding father, Smith as a common last name, and Colby as a type of cheese. I had no idea what a Vassar was or that it existed.
What we know about colleges used to be quite fragmental and limited. 40 years ago, there were some guidebooks, but really no national rankings; no “online” information [there wasn’t yet an “online” at all]. So we used personal advice from friends and family and what we could glean from college catalogues or the mass media. Everybody heard of the “Ivy League,” Notre Dame, and a few other colleges in the city or state where they lived, but systematic information was scarce. We also had fragments of information from personal contacts but relied also on public images and stereotypes. I went to the public library to check out college catalogues; and I wrote to several schools requesting catalogues and application forms.
My father had graduated from UConn; my mother had finished only high school. A couple of uncles had college degrees, – from UNM (BS, MS) and Caltech (PhD).
I grew up in L.A. The summer between high school and college I worked as a gardiner’s helper (i.e., mowing lawns and pulling weeds). My boss couldn’t understand why I was going to a no-name school in Oregon (he had never heard of Reed) rather than LA Valley College or San Fernando Valley State College (now named Cal State Northridge), which were just down the road.
I never wanted to attend USC b/c in my youth, USC was mainly known as a school for socially privileged and as an excellent sports college: football, swimming, baseball, you name it. I wanted to go away from home for college. If I had stayed in L.A. it would be UCLA (3 of my sibs attended UCLA, 1 attended Caltech). Now, however, I would rank USC much more highly, though perhaps below UCLA. I didn’t apply to Pomona b/c I thought Pomona was in an orange grove on the other side of L.A., and I was appalled that they had a $20 application fee (twice the amount of any other school I applied to). I couldn’t ask my parents to fork over that money unless Pomona was my #1. However, the fee was lower at Stanford so I applied but was rejected. 4 years later, I was accepted at Stanford Law School, but I turned them down and went for a PhD at Wisconsin.
I ended attending Reed for my BA b/c I had a very trusted advisor – the uncle-professor at Caltech, and who said he was admitted to Reed many years ago. One of my brothers did apply to and graduate from Caltech, but my uncle regarded me as more likely to focus on social sciences (and he was right). In other words, my uncle understood the concept of “fit” and gave us really good advice. But we hardly made a national search for options.
Looking back 40 years, I think I had excellent undergrad and grad school experiences, as did my sibs. But it was pretty much catch-as-catch-can regarding putting together systematic information.
Also, bring non-Catholic, while I certainly knew ND was a football power and Georgetown was a basketball power, academically (other than Georgetown being renown for politics/foreign affairs), I (and other non-Catholic friends) regarded ND, Georgetown, BC, DePaul, Loyola, Marquette, and SLU as being about the same academically.
@Taverngirl Ha! I had to go look up NESCAC. I had no idea all those schools were part of a league. There are really no sports in my house. But it does explain a bit about why certain schools get mentioned so often.
Brand names still count regardless of the product being sold. In Maine and Rhode Island a great hotdog must be red. The only difference is food color, but we all know local foods must be respected!
It takes time for things to change, but they do! Congratulations to BU, Northeastern, Duke and uppity Stanford (you took on Harvard and MIT)! Things were very different when I applied to Colleges in 1963. Brown and Columbia were facing an Ivy League drought. Brown made such a recovery that they became a case study at the Harvard business school. About the same time Bowdoin College had a very similar experience. (For the west coast, Bowdoin is in Maine.)
Polytechnics used to be schools where mechanics learned math, even algebra. Some people still think that is what they do. Girls don’t want to get their hands dirty working in the garage. It is changing.
Princeton would not change their name to accept the considerable Duke family endowment. A small bible college saw the advantages, accepted the Duke endowment and built a fabulous campus. More important than that, they managed it well an built an incredible University. Duke gained a reputation as a “Yankee” school because they were giving great FA packages to kids from the classic magnet schools in the large northeastern cities. My father left after one semester because the classes were not up to his Providence Classical HS standards. I doubt any of the people in our family could gain admission today!
Change, when well managed, can be good!
Yep. Stanford use to be Duke/Northwestern, which use to be USC/NYU, which use to be BU/Miami, which use to be pretty much open admissions if you could write a check.
I’ve been a hiring manager for >30 years. With the exception of a couple jobs (like investment banking) it makes absolutely zero difference from where a degree is from. None. Once you have first job the degree is just a check box on an app. All that matters is experience and performance. An Ivy grad and a podunk U grad hired for the same job get paid exactly the same amount.
Grad school is a different story.
Posting from SoCal. Two kids in college and one more to go, none in SoCal colleges. I have been through pretty extensive searches, yet continually am reminded that schools are mostly regional. Few can spell “Caltech” correctly, many do not realize that USC is no longer the rich kids family school, and that Harvey Mudd is a top notch science undergrad school. Now excuse me while I go look up NESCAC, Babson, and Bentley so I can learn something new today.
Midwesterners have a different perspective than those on the east coast. Top tier state flagships mean one doesn’t need to look at dozens of small schools instead of relying on one’s state U’s honors. There is a difference when there are so many small schools of likely better caliber than the state flagships in the northeast and a huge population competing for spots in the close to home region.
The “real world” depends on where you live. Upstate NY versus New York city. East coast versus the rest of the country. Etc.
I remember that when I was applying there was a form you could fill out for the Suny schools. You ranked your top choices, but if you had over a certain GPA, they guaranteed you admission somewhere. I applied to three, maybe 4 colleges plus that check box and was done. Of course, we had to fill out each application separately by hand so that really was a deterrent to over applying! I ended up at an IVY (Not Harvard. I was much too intimidated to apply there). There is no way I would have been admitted today.
By the way, it really was the wrong place for me. It was very much a throw you to the wolves and see if you survive kind of place. Absolutely no support for the undergrads. I think we were just supposed to feel grateful we were there and supposed to be smart enough not to need any help. No real advising. No hand holding. No one to care if you ever slipped up or fell behind. I was book smart, but not street smart and not a very independent 18 year old. I would have been much better off at a nurturing, supportive place without any brand name at all.
If it doesn’t matter where you went as an undergraduate or in grad school, why is it common practice for companies to put in your bio (when announcing promotions, major awards, etc.) where you got your degrees? They do this even if the last time that you set foot on campus was 20-40 years ago. Why wouldn’t they just write that you got a BS (or MS or PhD) and leave it at that? Better yet, since your education doesn’t matter once you’ve landed your first job – and after that it’s all about performance – why do they mention your educational background at all? Sorry folks, many people, especially those in power, very often care, even decades after you last sat in a classroom.
@whatisyourquest I’m not saying your education or where you obtained it doesn’t matter. That is the topic of a different thread. I think most people agree that there are innumerable ways in which it both does and does not matter. I was only noting that before I started the college search with D1, I, personally, hadn’t heard of most of the top ultra-selective schools that are so sought after. When you are totally immersed in the college frenzy, it can seem as if where you attend is the most important thing in the world. It can also seem as if everyone around you will see your alma mater as some sort of badge of your worthiness. Its nice, every now and then, to remember that most people have no idea about the rankings of these schools outside of maybe 10 or so very famous names.
@whatisyourquest If you read those bios often enough, you will see the point of emphasis is on the individual’s career path, not on where they were educated. It’s essentially a resume in pararaph form starting with the last job first. I read them all the time and find it fascinating when I find a CEO from a top 200 school with a degree in Music or French. It proves that you can end up at the same point having taken a different path. What is also important to remember is that the top 1000 CEO’s represent more than 400 colleges/universities.
Checking in from “real world” upstate New York, where I’m a short drive from Cornell, Colgate, Hamilton, University of Rochester, RPI …
Rest assured, everyone knows these schools. Well, they may confuse RIT and RPI …
Reputations tend to be regional outside of the big name schools that most people know. For example, outside of NY, nobody knows what Colgate, Hamilton, University of Rochester, RPI are.
Yes, and no.
When you read the bios of the top 1000 CEOs, you’re reading mainly about people who spent their careers under a completely different education and workplace culture than exists today. Most of those leaders - and they’re mostly white men - started their careers before there was much comparative information about colleges, few people went to college and those that did went mostly to regionally known or state colleges, even if they were top students. They started at a time when it wasn’t uncommon for a “go getter” (AKA - perky white dude) to work his way up from the mail room into positions of increasing responsibility. They started at a time when being part of the boy’s club often took one further than actual performance.
Times are changing and will continue to change. It’s much less common for a guy from the mailroom to work his way up to VP, performance is now at least as important as being a white guy who golfs with the other white guys, and people are more aware of strength of college degrees.
Will it still be possible to go to a poorly ranked college, work one’s way up from an entry level position and be a Fortune 500 CEO? Sure. But I think that will become less and less likely as time goes on and information about college programs is available and meritocracy is more of a thing.
The exceptions will be in tech and people who are entrepreneurs who start their own business. Other than that, I think the business world will become more of a dogfight just like the college admissions process. 40 years from now, the bios of the top 1000 CEOs won’t be mostly white guys who went to random colleges.
@WildestDream yes, that has been established. @wis75 used upstate New York as an example of being in the “real world” where no one recognizes the name of any schools, apparently. Ain’t so.
I’m in NY and until recently, I thought University of Rochester was some kind of regional public school.