<p>Af that point, all would pass the screening so that GPA and school would not matter as long as courses taken were equivalent. </p>
<p>My son interviewed at some top companies, and was hired over Ivy and other big name school, coming from a relatively unknown LAC. The companies wanted SAT scores, and High school records as well, and a few times he was asked about his choice of colleges. The courses he took and the knowledge he demonstrated on site seemed to be particularly important. He was sure when he started the job process he would be trumped by the name schools, and he was not. </p>
<p>Clearly most do not want to answer this hypothetical question directly. I will go ahead and buy-in though and do exactly what the question calls for… using the exact criteria supplied. With such and only knowing what was offered, I would hire either the Yale grad or Stanford grad. This is clearly a personal bias based on my overall respect for the undergraduate education offered at those two institutions. I am someone who grew up in a middle class family in the suburbs and attended Johns Hopkins University. I would also clearly prefer to add-in a host of other variables to the process & would never agree to hire anyone based on such a limited amount of info, but if compelled to solely answer the hypothetical question as written… Yale or Stanford. If pushed to narrow it down to only one… Stanford.</p>
<p>And maybe that is also why Parchment’s one-to-one comparison tool ranks them #1. Their program is designed to demonstrate the most common decisions when students are admitted to two schools… and then, which do they prefer? At their website, you can compare colleges to find out. It is fairly interesting… and it at least offers some insight on a macro basis when looking at all college applicants as a group. Using their model that asks you to choose among schools you were accepted to, their Top Ten Rankings are: 1. Stanford University 2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3. Harvard University 4. Princeton University 5. Duke University 6. Yale University 7. Caltech 8. Pomona College 9. Harvey Mudd College and 10. Brown University</p>
<p>My DH does a lot of interviewing and, after relevant experience, it usually comes down to likability, attitude, and people skills. He’s in finance.
Playing the game, I’d go with the Yale grad, using the criteria of the importance of getting along and relating to others. Just my biased opinion.</p>
<p>I work in a company that has 9000 employees (mainly scientists and engineers) and GPA is EVERYTHING to even get a look. With so many college graduates and so FEW jobs GPA is the only form of measurement they have to pick out the best from the pack. Don’t fool yourself in thinking GPA is not that important several years ago that might have been the case but not anymore. </p>
<p>I can still remember a few years ago we were recruiting on the Purdue campus and one of the professors told me he had a student graduating with a 3.3 GPA and indicated he was a much better candidate than the two guys we were there to interview who both had 3.9s. He really wanted us to interview him but we didn’t want to waste the guys time. I’m sure he went off and did wonderful in another company but he couldn’t work for us.</p>
<p>Why don’t we just look at reality of each college to compare instead of speculating? You can google: “ABC career survey” where ABC is the name of the college.</p>
<p>This is completely anecdotal and maybe off point, but I got into a casual conversation about colleges with one of the top three HR managers at a major multinational (wont name firm or industry but its an everyday brand). That person worked there all their life, rose up in the HR ranks from a first year out of college. And completely non deliberately let slip in the middle of the conversation “I grew up in …(not Eastern Seabord) of the US, went to college there, and automatically pull applicants from that area to the top of the pile, and try to hire them above all” At first I lost all speech, but upon reflection decided, its human nature, one takes care of one’s own.</p>
<p>Hasn’t anybody ever gone through a purely theoretical exercise?</p>
<p>Ceteris Paribus All things held constant.</p>
<p>Purely for argument’s sake, assume that the only meaningful difference between applicants is their GPA/school.</p>
<p>I think the OP is trying to create a discussion about what somebody from an employer’s perspective might think when looking at Ivy leagues versus state schools, and how GPA might come into play.</p>
<p>A 3.4 GPA at Harvard is wholly unimpressive. Their grade-inflation is well-documented. A better GPA at a school of the same caliber (Stanford or Yale) is much more impressive.</p>
<p>as an employer, to me it would be what the job was.</p>
<p>If it was in finance, for example, I’d probably interview the local state Uni person first (UCLA) under the perhaps mistaken impression that i could not “afford” the HYS candidates.</p>
<p>Otherwise, it would solely come down to the interview.</p>
<p>Interesting. I have worked in three fields in my life: music education, mechanical engineering, and building computer networks for Chicago businesses. I know a competent musician from Stanford who failed as a music educator, an average Dentist from Stanford, a decent pastor from Yale. In the computer and engineering fields? I very much doubt anyone from the Ivy’s would be hired. I never met a single one. I have known several Ivy grads that I have met in passing…they are doctors, college profs, and financiers. A few are high school teachers. I have met more Stanford grads in the Chicago area than UCLA grads.</p>
<p>The issue is that those of us who actually have an employer’s perspective know that (a) there is no such thing as a situation where the only difference between candidates is GPA/school, and (b) in 99% of employment situations school is such a marginal consideration in any candidate evaluation that it’s about as relevant as eye color or hair style. Someone with blazing red eyes and an extreme Mohawk might have trouble getting hired for a position with lots of in-person customer contact, but anyone in the wide range of normal eye colors and normal haircuts, no one is going to notice the eye color or hair style, much less evaluate what one person has vs. another.</p>
<p>It’s a fantasy of high school students that employers care a lot where you went to college. It’s also a common belief of some parents who come from cultures (mainly Asian) where there is a clear hierarchy in higher education, and it really may matter throughout your career, depending on what you do, whether you went to University A or University B. But in the U.S., at least, it really barely matters at all, and fine distinctions between roughly equivalent colleges mean absolutely nothing. Even investment banks and high-end consulting firms, that really limit their recruiting and hiring to a relatively small number of colleges, care very little or not at all about the differences among the places they recruit. Certainly not about any differences between Stanford and Yale (except, probably, for engineering).</p>