<p>Which is why I don’t think that the notion that Berkeley may have a terrible career office is truly the answer. As I said, I don’t think that Berkeley’s career office is significantly worse than that of most large state schools, nor is it necessarily worse than that of many highly regarded private schools. </p>
<p>The far more likely reason is the point I’ve been making throughout this thread: most students - particularly in the liberal arts majors that comprise the vast majority of college students, but including even some engineering and other preprofessional majors - will not take jobs that tightly correspond to their major. Who really cares if you graduated from a top-ranked English program if you’re just going to end up (literally) pulling lumber or managing an Abercrombie & Fitch? I know a former engineer who decided to switch to becoming a real estate agent during the housing boom and made far more money than he would have made if he had stayed as an engineer…and he’s not giving any of that money back even though the real estate markets have collapsed. Who cares if you graduated from a top-ranked engineering program if you’re just going to be slinging real estate? </p>
<p>That is why I argue that the university package proper - including the prestige of the general brand name, along with networking and other career opportunities - are actually more important than the strength of any individual program. For example, much of the success of the aforementioned engineer-turned-real-estate-agent was from sales to fellow alumni, by which his school connections gave him an opening. </p>
<p>Let’s face it: 5-10 years after you graduate, nobody is really going to care exactly which classes you took as an undergraduate. Heck, you yourself may not remember even the names of all of the classes you took, forget about what specifically you learned in those classes. They’re also not going to care about how strong your overall major was. But the general university brand name and alumni network will continue to maintain value.</p>