To be clear, I am not referring to my actual long-term friends from college, but rather to the whole vibe that happens when you meet someone and are sized up for how useful you might be to them in the future (do you have money? contacts? skills? are you smart?), which was prevalent.
That’s interesting. My D recently attend a panel of grad students in her major talking about their experiences and her take away was while the master’s students seemed happy, the PhD students all seemed stressed and miserable.
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I’ve taken a weird career path.
I went to a ‘no name’ school and it was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done in picking that school. I wouldn’t change it for the world. I loved the classes, most of the professors, made a ton of lifelong friends. I don’t think the school had anything to do with me getting a job, and I don’t think a different school would have made any difference either. I do think that I learned a lot which helped keep me well rounded during my career, though.
I had no clue what I wanted to do when I graduated school 16 years ago. That probably sounds weird. But, zilch. Nada. I did some freelance web development for a few months to earn money while trying to figure it out. I decided to accept a job working in customer service as a temporary thing while I figured out what I wanted to do. I applied and interviewed for a few other companies but most were meh. That few months at that job has turned into 16 years. My career has taken me across different 5 departments in a bunch of different roles and 7 paygrades higher than where I started. If a role gets stale and something else looks interesting, I go for it. I’m one of the few people that I know who can (and has) change between positions in tech and on the business side interchangeably.
I enrolled in a masters program in 2019 and I’m almost done with that. I have 2 more courses to go which I plan to finish up next year. I have no clue what I want to do with that. It’s not exactly what I thought it would be, but I’m so close to finishing so I might as well get the piece of paper. 
I’ve been having a lot of conversations at work lately surrounding figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. I still feel just like I did 16 years ago - no freaking clue. I have however over time identified a list of things I enjoy doing, and a list of things I don’t enjoy doing. Hopefully, as I move forward in my career, I can work towards roles that encompass more enjoyable things and less bleh things. We’ll just see where the next 16 years take me.
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I know my undergrad college helped me get into a management training program after graduation because the head of HR’s son went to my school and he said he knew it turned out good graduates.
I think I learned a LOT about writing and thinking critically and college really opened me up to larger worlds, even though I think I had a pretty good HS education.
Another advantage of going to a selective college was the network. I literally have 4 sorority sisters I can call who are doctors in different specialties, plus classmates outside the sorority. My DH (who I met in college) and I have friends who have started well known companies, worked in high levels in DC, and and in C suite offices. Our alumni are very loyal and DH got a meeting with a well-known business person just by reaching out and mentioning the alumni connection. Things like that have served us well in our various careers.
Having said that, I WOULD NOT choose a college solely for this reason and I absolutely would not go into debt for it. I think our careers went where they went because of who we are and the skills we brought to the table. But the college connection may have eased the way a bit.
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@Shadret,
LOL, if you have been on cc long, you know it’s not your standardized test scores that would have gotten you into those top schools 
I went to a local four year state school because that is what my parents could afford. Although I loved my time there, I feel I would be happier overall if I did go away to school to gain independence from family and friends so I could understand who I was, and not be what everybody wanted of me. I do know many of my peers from college are successful, so it is not the degree from the school.
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I’m just grateful I got to go to college. I went to a good state school but not sure I could gain admission ANYWHERE equivalent now because my discalcula meant I couldn’t get through more than one year of high school math ( and very poorly at that). My friend whose kid suffers from a similiar disability has had a ridiculously tough road to try to gain entry to college. Her entire life is now wrapped up in her disability. For me it was something I could basically work around with ease. The number of people though who insisted in my past that my lack of numeric and mathematical skills would prevent me from having my career sickens me. The counselor whom told me that “ even in the legal profession you MUST have decent math skills” is someone I still hate. No. No you don’t.
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I went to a very small LAC, clueless, and then a large you’ve heard of it grad school because my career of choice required a Master’s.
Couple years into my first job, I was 8mos pregnant when I was told to quit, or I would be fired (and lose our only health coverage) bc my boss didn’t want to deal with a maternity leave. This was perfectly legal at the time.
I spent my children’s formative years as That Mom Volunteer, and then one of my kids was diagnosed w a permanent and life-threatening rare disorder, so working was not an option. I stayed home to stabilize our life for years. Happy to do that.
Eventually I returned to work, but after downsizing and budget cuts , found myself changing into a unrelated field. My young coworkers, I suspect, consider me a cautionary tale of failed work (She has a masters and she’s doing clerical for $13/hr? )
My point is I have worked exactly where I thought I wanted, worked where I had some of what I wanted, and now work at a miserably underpaid and undervalued position that is exactly where I need to be for the life I have. It is both nothing like I imagined and everything I need. Nothing about where I got my degrees would have changed where life has taken me. Life is more than a career, more than your degree, and more than your plans — but the school brochures won’t say that.
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@greenbutton — so glad you are flexible enough to be able to meet family needs while bringing in income to help the household. Juggling loved ones with serious health conditions does definitely change life perspectives.
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Hi @fendergirl ! So glad to hear you are doing well!!!
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I can relate to this. For decades after I graduated, I still had nightmares that I hadn’t got my degree because I failed to meet the math requirement.
I had to drop two different math classes and finally took a class called Liberal Studies Math. I remember nothing much of it except we learned how many different ways we could recombine all the letters in the word Australia. I cannot remember how to do it, btw. The next semester, the university did away with it. I’m so grateful for that class.
And no, I’ve never needed any skills I learned in high school algebra or geometry, but I am sure a CC’er is going to tell me that I’m wrong😄
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Hi jym!! Glad to see you doing well too! I’m sitting here scratching my head on a final for school at the moment. Needed to take a break to clear my mind. LOL.
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What an absolutely wonderful thread/question! I just discovered it and was fascinated to read the thoughts of other CCers. I must say many of us have a similar way of thinking about things.
For me, there is NOTHING I would change about either my college or law school. They were/are both “top schools”, but that has nothing to do with what I am going to write. Instead, in different ways, both of them gave me the latitude to let me find who I was.
For me, I got into a superb college, but it wasn’t my first choice. I was sad for a night (I think back then, it was April 15 that many college decisions came out), and then I decided to run with it as far and as hard as I could.
When I started college at the end of that summer, I was coming from an extremely rigorous and strict private school. When I started college, I couldn’t get over how free I was! I remember the joys of skipping class for the first time in my life (shame!) so that I could watch TV in the student commons (very pathetic use of my so-called freedom). But the rigors of my high school prepped me well for college, and I found things easy (with the exception of chem, but I managed there too). That earlier training gave me the ability to join many, many student and city organizations, reaching leadership positions, while maintaining good grades, until the senior slide set in for me in a very massive way!
Again, for law school, I went to a “top one”, but I was totally clueless during the first year. I was very young and exceedingly naive, so I didn’t quite “get” what we were studying in law school. However, I got very lucky to get a first-year clerkship at a great law firm, and my boss way back when was my mentor then and still a great friend decades later. It was after my summer of clerking at a law firm that I began to see how the law worked, and my performance the next two years in law school skyrocketed. I loved the law then, and I still do now.
But again, it wasn’t the law school; instead, it came down to me. I worked my tail off as a law clerk, often spending the night at the law firm fascinated by all there was to know, and not because the firm in any way required it or caused it to happen. And then I did it again for the first 10 years of being a lawyer, and that’s made all the difference for my career. Stuff comes pretty easy to me, and I get things done very quickly. That gave me the ability to do a ton of admin stuff for my law firm in addition to the legal work, and that too has greatly helped.
I can genuinely say this: even though I went to great schools for both college and law, neither of the schools was my first choice. But there’s a phrase that has become edict for me now that I learned on CC: love the school that loves you. My children are now reaching college admissions age, and I am telling them that perfectly correct phrase as much as possible. It doesn’t matter WHERE you go; rather, what matters is WHAT you do with where you go.
I have met some incredible Ivy/top school grads and lawyers, and awful ones too. Equally, I’ve met incredible and awful grads from non-top schools. These days, I couldn’t care less where someone went to college or undergrad. I want to see how well they can write and speak and think. And how honest they are. Anything else, I can totally work with.
In short, I tried to make the best of where I went to undergrad and law. It doesn’t matter if you go to Harvard or the lowest ranking college in the world: you will succeed if you work hard and take advantage of the opportunities you are given, and create some opportunities in the process. If you approach whatever you do with the joy of learning, the zeal to work hard, and honesty, everyone around will take notice. Life is what you make it, in every possible sense.
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Funny thing - not long ago I was looking through my alma mater’s class notes, and I was like, “I don’t know who any of these people are.” Including the ones who’d died. No idea. It bothered me enough that I went and looked for an obit, and when I saw the photo, I was like, yep, still have no idea who you are, but you definitely look like someone who would’ve gone to my school. Along the way, though, I wound up making close friends with people who went to the fancy school I turned down. We’re useless to each other as networkers, unless you want a rally or march held in your town as part of a global movement. We just really enjoy each other’s company.
I attended three of HYPSM and taught at one. I wouldn’t pursue prestige for prestige’s sake, but I believe that my career and life have been enhanced by attending them. I felt I was lucky to get in to my undergraduate school and feel very fortunate for the opportunities I have had there and since.
I worked incredibly hard as an undergraduate (did well there and my undergraduate thesis under a famous advisor in a STEM field was published in the best journal in my field). I got into the best grad school in the world in my field and hated it (it was more theoretical and I was interested in more application). Because of my undergrad school and my performance as an undergrad, it was easy to switch to another top school for my PhD.
I don’t know how much going to a prestigious undergraduate school increased the probability of getting into a top grad school with a full ride (e.g., no TA or RA work required) because in a STEM field, it is relatively easier to judge talent and a number of my classmates in the first grad program were from less prestigious places. However, I think the ability to switch was easier because of my undergraduate school and record.
While I was doing my graduate work, I became somewhat disillusioned with my field (it was just too far at that time from real decisions) and decided to find something else to do. But, I figured that, rather than switching fields at that point, the best thing to do was to complete my PhD in the STEM field from said prestigious university – people in the general world would assume I was smart – and then convince people to let me try another field. To pursue my interests, I took graduate courses in several social sciences, business, public policy and law while getting my STEM PhD and was offered post-docs by two of my professors, one in psychology and one in business, the latter to work on a new area that was just beginning to get academic attention (and strangely was linked to almost all of my my various graduate courses). The business school professor was, I think, genuinely pleased to bring someone over from my STEM department and knew my advisor quite well and knew of my undergraduate advisor. I think it really helped that the hiring department knew my advisors as I was switching into a new field. They had to interpret my undergrad advisor’s recommendation (apparently, “he has some talent” was a blazingly positive rec, but he did also say that I had achieved results in my undergrad thesis that were better than he thought possible).
From there, I was hired to teach at that business school, which is one of the very top ones. Because I was planning to go into an unconventional field in which I had no training other than the post-doc, I think the probability of getting that offer was much higher because of the schools I’d attended (in part because they were part of the interconnected academic elite and knew each other) as well as the quality of my work .
After a few years of teaching, I decided to get some real world experience and senior colleagues at my business school introduced me to folks on Wall Street and elsewhere. With no experience in business and only a STEM PhD and a business school professorship, I talked my way into a job at an investment bank, at which I worked for a year. I think my chances of getting that job were a lot higher because I was on the faculty of a prestigious business school – the partner who hired me had gone to said business school and knew/admired the referring professor. My leave of absence from business school was supposed to be for two years. I switched to working in a family office – recruited by one of my former business school students – and spent five years there before deciding not to return to academia and to never work for anyone again.
After a bit of soul-searching, I started a consulting firm that I continue to run and then co-founded a couple of other firms (quantitative hedge fund, tech startup) and brought my business school co-author in as a business partner in the consulting firm early on. I typically teach one week a year in an executive program but am otherwise solely working as a consultant, entrepreneur or on pro bono projects. I think my affiliation with said business school still makes things easier.
As I moved from the pure technical/quantitative to the softer side, the importance of the prestige of my schools (especially the business school) increased. When I started the quant hedge fund (at which I never worked full-time), investors really liked the fact that I a) had the STEM PhD; b) had been a prof at a prestigious school; and c) could speak in English about technical things. We got a buyout offer from a big hedge fund, in part because the head of the hedge fund called my graduate advisor (whom he knew). I think the tech startup’s chances of receiving funding was enhanced a lot by the fact that I was a famous guy in the field (that investors could tell in part from my past affiliations). It also made recruiting employees easier.
I love what I do for a living. I develop ways of thinking about common problems that are different than what has come before and, with luck, these ways of thinking help people/companies think and act more effectively. As a consultant, I apply the approaches I develop and really put things into action. When I have ideas, I write them up (books, articles, op-ed pieces), suggest the ideas to others, or start companies or start/participate in pro bono projects (contributed to the end of a civil war in one of them).
My friends from undergrad, grad school, and academia are friends not contacts. Some can be helpful. One friend was CEO of a public traded company and engaged my firm to help his company and also introduced me to several other prospective clients. Another friend, who was a university president, read an op-ed piece I wrote and introduced me to one of the people who was in a position to execute on the idea. I’ve gotten referrals for huge amounts of business from one of my closest friends, whom I met in grad school when he was starting out in the field I went into and encouraged me to move in that direction. We still get together annually on a hiking trip in which we examine our goals and objectives for life and then look at how we are allocating our time to see if we our working most effectively in alignment with out objectives. He has referred work he either doesn’t want to do or wants help on and knows he can trust the quality of my work. So well-placed friends have referred/provided work and often provide connections, but, unlike @elf1, I think of them as friends, not contacts.
I agree in part with @mynameiswhatever. Going to great schools is not sufficient (at least not for those already blessed with family connections, wealth, etc.), you have to put in the hard work. I think I slept very little as an undergrad: I worked really hard on my coursework, had a job as a research assistant, played on a minor varsity team, and as a senior probably worked from 10 pm to 4 am on my senior thesis. When I was a young professor, my wife and I realized that we were each working 7 days a week and decided we needed to agree upon a day to take off. I became very well-known in my field because of books I co-authored (saw a study which looked at citations and my first book was the 5th or 6th most cited book in the field, although I think another less-cited book is much better). In building up my consulting firm, I was probably on the road 3 weeks a month and my employees are still not surprised to get an email from me at 2 or 3 am and again at 7 or 8.
Had I gone to different schools, I probably would have a different career as there was a lot of serendipity involved in the specific direction I chose. I think I would still have worked hard and done well in life. But, I can imagine having a very different career. I might have stayed an academic. I might have joined a Silicon Valley firm early on. Who knows? But, I feel very happy where I ended up.
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@lindagaf, I think geometry was very useful for sailors and probably for architects but I can’t recall times I have really needed it. HS algebra can occasionally be useful. You probably haven’t missed much.
But, what people really need to learn (and our society suffers from them not teaching effectively or more broadly) are: 1) how to learn from data; and b) how to make decisions under uncertainty (which involves understanding something about probabilities).
The other benefit from studying math comes from learning to formulate proofs (something that doesn’t happen usually until after calculus although one can learn it from number theory). My observation is that understanding how to formulate and prove theorems really strengthens people’s ability to reason clearly from premises to conclusions (and to distinguish between premises and assumptions and their logical implications). I can see that in social science professors and actually in lawyers (I work with lawyers a lot). Some people are naturally good including lawyers and social scientists (and don’t need any other training) but I have seen that work in that kind of advanced math makes it very difficult not to understand the nature of a logical argument.
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Once upon a time I might have given you the example of trying to figure out which was a better deal the storage place with a smaller monthly cost, but a bigger up front fee or the other one with no fee but a bigger monthly cost. There’s an algebra equation for that. But honestly you can just take out your calculator and brute force the answer which of course depends on how long you actually use the storage unit.
But these days there are calculators for everything on the internet.
Even as an architect I rarely use math for anything more difficult than adding fractions.
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Ugh, I hate adding fractions. When I detail precast concrete, I find myself having to add distances such as 15’-5 7/8" and 22’-3 11/16". It drives me nuts.
You’d hate them even more if you had spent five years in Germany where everything is metric!
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I don’t think the reason to teach geometry is because it’s necessarily useful for everyday life. The reason to teach geometry is to introduce to HS students a new way to think about problems. Geometry brings the rigor, the elegance, the abstraction, and the multiplicity of solutions of mathematics altogether for a HS student. It, rather than calculus, is what shows whether a HS student should major and pursue a career in mathematics, IMO.
Typically, only a small portion of what a student learns in schools (K-12 and college) is directly applicable in her/his career. The basic skills and knowledge s/he learned in schools not only allow her/him to pursue a career in some field(s), but more importantly, give her/him the ability to draw connections/inferences, and even offer insights into some totally different fields.
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