Yesterday, I watched the movie “The Firm” starring Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman. The movie is basically about a young Harvard law school graduate (Tom Cruise) who eventually starts working for a small yet prestigious law firm until he discovers that the entire company is owned by the mafia and is basically a facade for illegal activities such as money laundering and tax evasion.
Anyway, in the beginning of the movie you see and hear how the Harvard graduate (Cruise) gets dozens of top-shot job offers: huge salaries, low amount of working hours, access to a VIP lounge for basket ball games… the company he ends up working for even includes in the offer, besides a huge salary, a car and a house and to pay all of the student debt…
Now, my question is, how is it in reality? Does a Harvard degree indeed get you so much pampering? Is a Harvard degree literally such a career booster and a door opener for high paid jobs?
I mean, you hear and read a lot about the (supposed???) network and connections that Harvard offers its students. So, again, how is it in reality?
“Specifically, for business and other liberal-arts majors, the prestige of the school has a major impact on future earnings expectations.”
Thanks for your reply, Gibby. But doesn’t the above quote state exactly the contrary (i.e. in the case of my question: that a Harvard degree, at least in business or law, is INDEED a career booster)?
First off, Harvard doesn’t grant an undergraduate degree in business or law.
Secondly, law school admissions is driven by LSAT scores. If a student graduates Harvard College with a 4.0 GPA but has a low LSAT, they are not getting into law school. And just because a student attends Harvard doesn’t mean they will score high on the LSAT.
Lastly, a student going into finance after graduating from Harvard does NOT have more of an advantage over another student from a top-20 college just because they went to Harvard. In other words, Harvard does not own bragging rights to getting their graduates better jobs than any other prestigious university. FWIW: I know several Harvard humanities graduates in New York City who still need help from their parents to pay the rent, as their jobs are not paying them enough to go it alone. I’ve written this before, but here it is again.
“Is a Harvard degree literally such a career booster and a door opener for high paid jobs?”
Based on the small number of Harvard grads that I have worked with: NO! Harvard is a good school, but there are a few hundred other good schools in this country.
Read Gibby’s posts carefully. Research Harvard College vs grad schools and how concentrations work at Harvard College.
I’ll tackle another part of the movie myth. Graduating at the top of a Top 20 law school (not just Harvard) does indeed open doors but:
They are long hours high stress. No such thing as a low hours, low stress, high salary.
You must continue to excel in the work force to keep from being weeded out.
Graduating at the bottom of the class at the number 1 law school in the country will not open doors to prosperity.
Investment banking is a popular career path out of undergrad for graduates of top schools but the above still apply. Competition is fierce for spots and the work hours are only for those with stamina and no desire for a personal life in early years of a career.
Thanks so much for your answers guys. OK, if a Harvard degree is not automatically a door opener for high paid jobs… then I have another question:
Why the heck should one then take on the hassle of fierce selection and large student debt to get into Harvard if it eventually doesn’t matter for future success?
I mean, that is about the only reason why I would ever consider trying to attend Harvard: Because of the idea that it will (literally) pay off…
The prestige alone, the “fantastic experience” or the admiration by others can hardly be worth the nerve-wracking selection and the vast student debt… I mean, you can’t buy anything with prestige, experience or admiration… you can only buy something with money…
So, if a Harvard degree is not really a magical key or a door opener for high paid jobs, wouldn’t it then be smarter to have a relaxed life and attend an average school/college/uni?
Kids who have slim chances of future success have slim chances for an admit to H or other tippy tops. These kids with slim chances tend not to realize what it it takes to get in or what it takes in life. That doesn’t doom them, they just have lots of growth yet.
That’s harsh, sorry. OP, you would have much to learn about top schools, if you do think of putting them on your list.
Sure, have a relaxed context. But along the way, learn what it really takes, in life, to get from “here” to 'there."
^^ Agreed. Harvard (and Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT and a host of other wonderful colleges) are looking for top scholars who enjoy being in a classroom with like-minded people. For the most part, Harvard admits are “Type A” personalities who enjoy competing to be the top dog in the classroom and wouldn’t necessarily be happy at a more “relaxed” institution.
That said, the completion in some majors at Harvard is fierce (kids majoring in science, for example, thinking of medical school). Some pre-med minded students who attend Harvard might actually have been in a better position for med school by attending a more “relaxed” college and acing their science courses rather than graduating in the bottom half of their class at Harvard. All those things need to be considered when accepting a college’s offer – but first you have to get in!
…and now you have it, the type of people who are admitted to Harvard are the same type of people that have success in certain professions, they are competitive, they work hard, they work long hours. This can be said of almost all the top schools, when you start moving down the list you can also get competitive, hard working students but then you start to get those slackers (like myself who would rather not work as hard) mixed in. Then it becomes more difficult to separate them from the employees you want because they haven’t been vetted by a difficult admission process. So it becomes a game of numbers, I have a much better chance of hiring someone who is going to do the hard work because they are doing the hard work in school already. Obviously I can do this with GPA also, but its more difficult comparing GPA’s between colleges. The real wildcard is personality which none of the schools can really vet, personality is only slightly behind work ethic in something you want in an employee…love them to be able to do the job well but I really need them to be able to get along with others to be effective.
Well, they also know how to have some fun and some impact. It’s not all nose to the grindstone, not all about grades. I think, maybe, rather than say they’re so competitive against each other, it’s that they have already agreed to a higher bar and been reaching for that, through most of hs. Maybe we could say “varsity mentality,” as opposed to JV, club, or pick-up.
HS kids tend to think the competition is for an admit, then all’s fine. But the colleges are looking for how these kids will fare through the four years.
And a kid can get top notch internship experience without going to a most-competitive college. In a sense, the quality of those goals and experiences is a vetting of its own.
The Harvard degree is the door opener in the sense that it gets you the interview many times. It doesn’t necessarily get you the job
That is not really accurate today. I cant say whether it was accurate 10 or 20 years ago. The kids at Harvard try and help each other to a great extent. The average GPA is about 3.7 which is probably good enough for everywhere except maybe some med schools, Virtually all the students would be happy at other institutions. For the most part they feel very thankful to be at Harvard. Places like Berkeley tend to be more competitive than Harvard.
The Firm was fantasy. Even in that story, though, the perks lavished on the new Harvard Law graduate were presented as excessive, and a red flag that should have alerted him to the fact that something wasn’t right there. That wasn’t, isn’t, and never has been anything like a real-world deal even for a tippy-top law graduate.
I wouldn’t go by any film. But in the book, you could feel the level of how much hard work.
Btw, I knew young attorneys who did get plenty of perks. But it was the status of the firm that allowed this. They were UCLA and Ucb law grads at the top of their classes.
“Why the heck should one then take on the hassle of fierce selection and large student debt to get into Harvard if it eventually doesn’t matter for future success?”
You see plenty of posts on CC from kids for whom “Harvard” and “Ivy League” and “MIT” seem to be mostly abstract concepts and prestigious names, who appear to have little comprehension of what would happen if they actually ended up being a student at one of those schools, living in the dorms, going to class, and needing to keep up with the homework and take the exams.
Perhaps that is one of the beneficial purposes of CC: For us old guys who have experience with university (both ourselves directly, and in helping our kids) to pass some sense of reality on to the younger folks who haven’t gone through it yet.
Nope. Not a fact at all. Every top university, and lots of non-top ones, has a long list of “billionaires and multi-millionaires” who went there. Because Harvard’s undergraduate college is so much smaller than, say, Berkeley’s or UCLA’s, it’s doubtful that Harvard has “far” more billionaires and multi-millionaires than they do, and it may not even have more at all.
If you limit yourself to billionaires, Harvard may come first, but not by some huge margin. And the chance of becoming a Harvard-alum billionaire without starting with at least tens of millions of inherited wealth is tiny.
EDIT:
Here’s the list of universities with the most undergraduate alumni on the Forbes 400 list for 2016:
University of Pennsylvania – 21
Harvard University – 14
Yale University – 14
Stanford University – 14
University of Southern California – 11
Cornell University – 9
Princeton University – 7
Columbia University – 6
Dartmouth College – 6
University of Michigan – 6
Interesting list @JHS . The question that immediately comes to mind is how many of those people come from wealthy families and would have been on the list regardless of where they went to school. Legacy used to be a much more powerful hook back when some of these older individuals went to school. Daddy was rich and went to Harvard and so you go to Harvard and are rich. But are you rich because of Harvard, or because of Daddy?
My guess is that it’s a mix. Mark Zuckerberg’s parents are certainly well-to-do – enough to send him to Exeter and buy him fencing lessons and good computers – but his fortune is hardly based on inherited wealth. Bill Gates’ parents are more than merely well-to-do, but their wealth didn’t factor into his so directly, either. Warren Buffett – who is probably on the list as a Penn drop-out, had some family seed money. I personally know at least four other people on that list (two Penns, a Yale, and a Dartmouth), and another (Princeton) who should have been if his family wealth had been aggregated. Three of them came from wealthy families and got a big step up because of it, and one got his big boost from his wife’s family. Not that they didn’t do an incredible job of expanding their family wealth – none is a case like Donald Trump’s where the family would have been just as well off buying index funds.