<p>I've seen countless of threads on this board that Columbia> Brown, HYP is the best, etc. but does it really matter to employers? I assume that a degree from HYP would be viewed more favorably than from a Columbia degree, but would a Columbia degree really be viewed as more favorable as a Brown degree or even to an extent, a Cornell degree?</p>
<p>No, and I sooo wish HS students didn’t have to keep asking other kids in HS these questions.</p>
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Yes, of course. I thought it was common knowledge that all employers keep carefully updated rankings of schools on their desks for this purpose.</p>
<p>Job interviews don’t actually exist, except when you have two or more people who went to the same school (the best of the entire applicant pool, of course).</p>
<p>OP, as an old CEO, let me say it simply: all of these elite universities (10-15-20 of them, depending on the elitism of the employer) are all viewed equally as great petri dishes for breeding cultures with skills that are necessary, though not necessarily sufficient, for the task at hand. I know of no one, absent an interview, who views an HYP candidate as inherently superior to a Dartmouth, or even Northwestern or Berkeley, candidate in a real life job application. One peril of hanging on websites like this is that you read a lot of posts parsing data to create chasms of difference in quality between schools that are, in the final analysis, essentially equal.</p>
<p>PBR is exactly correct. The only people who make these fine distinctions between the top schools are high school seniors. No one else. If you said the word “Lower Ivy” in real life, you’d get laughed at.</p>
<p>Ah I’m sick of these threads as well.</p>
<p>No. They don’t really care.
Going to a top school might get you an interview…it won’t get you the job. No one would pick a Columbia grad over a Brown grad simply because Columbia is a higher ranked university…</p>
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<p>Well, actually, I believe the real issue is not that employers maintain carefully calibrated sorted lists of various universities that could parse the difference between HYP and Columbia - for which I would certainly agree they do not - but rather that much, probably most, hiring is performed through social networks, and college is one of the most effective ways to build a powerful social network that you would not have otherwise. Surely we’ve all heard the phrase: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. </p>
<p>As a case in point, if Steve Ballmer had gone to Columbia, he would surely not be the billionaire CEO of Microsoft right now. How he was invited to join Microsoft in the first place was simply that he had been Bill Gates’s old poker-playing pal at Currier House at Harvard. Facebook was founded by 3 Harvard roommates - if any of them had decided not to go to Harvard, he wouldn’t have become rich (and perhaps Facebook itself would never have been founded and everybody would still be using MySpace or Friendster). I can think of a number of private equity firms which are exceedingly difficult to break into unless you have an existing social connection with one of the partners or directors, which often times means a social connection to the Harvard network. </p>
<p>The point is not so much that certain schools are formally viewed by employers as ‘better’ than others, but rather that certain schools offer access to more prominent networks, and it is through networking with which you obtain the best jobs. For example, I find it to be no coincidence that Barack Obama has sprinkled within his administration many of his old colleagues from his days at Harvard Law. Similarly, Bill Clinton brought in a prominent number of his old Yale Law and Oxford colleagues into his administration: former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich not only studied at Oxford with Bill Clinton as Rhodes Scholars and then joined both Bill and Hillary at Yale Law, but Reich had apparently even dated (or at least saw a movie together with) Hillary while in college. Let’s face it: if Reich had not known the Clintons through school connections, he probably would never have become Secretary of Labor. </p>
<p>But perhaps the most egregious example of all - although one involving leveraging a social network to effect admission to a school rather than the other way around - is of Blake Gottesman, who was Jenna Bush’s old high school boyfriend while George Bush was Governor of Texas, and then become his Presidential personal aide. He was then later admitted to Harvard Business School without ever even having graduated from college at all. Surely George Bush’s own status as being both President and a Harvard Business School alumni had nothing to do with that, right?</p>
<p>Now, to be clear, none of this is to say that I agree with the prevalence of social networking within the hiring process. But what can I say? Like it or not, it is what it is. Hiring is not entirely meritocratic and probably never will be, and personal connections and networking will always be factors.</p>
<p>sakky~
You are exactly right! :)</p>
<p>I agree with JBR and I disagree with Sakky’s reasoning. To say this billionaire or that billionaire wouldn’t be as rich if he hadn’t attended said university is a spurious conclusion. Who knows what would have happened if Steve Balmer attended another university? he could have met another roommate and they could have started another bigger company than Microsoft or he could have been offered to head up another multi-national firm. Or he could have stroke gold on his own instead of being in the shadow of megalomaniac like Gates. And this post was about employers not entrepreneurs. After all, what elite university did Shawn Fanning, the inventor of Napster, go to? None. And he completely changed the world of music forever. if a student wants a good social network, join a frat or a professional organization after graduation or during. Many college networks and organizations are national now in many cases. As for presidents, what is there to say that these guys wouldn’t have stacked their admin with colleagues from their Alma Mater if they had also gone to the university of Iowa as well. All you’ve shown is they’ve stacked their admin with those they went to school with, not that it was necessary that these be elite schools.</p>
<p>I think I remember hearing about some super-hyper-elitist hedge funds or whatever that would only recruit at Harvard and Wharton undergrad, but those are the extreme exception to the rule. And for all I know (and hope) the’ve folded in the economic collapse.</p>
<p>My own company just lumps all Ivy League apps into one collective “awesome” pile :)</p>
<p>“I agree with JBR”</p>
<p>JBR huh? LOL! Ivyleaguer, only in Dubai would anybody come up with that one! hehe</p>
<p>Seriously, I also agree with pbr, although Sakky’s point is worth nothing, if only in extreme and exceptional cases. However, the vast majority of students (even those are Harvard) will never become billionaires and finding jobs upon graduation will not always be a result of alumni connections, although those also help.</p>
<p>As for the question at hand, most employers, even the most exclusive, will approach the Ivy League, and several other elite universities, in a similar fashion. On an individual level, recruitment activity will vary from company to company and from campus to campus on an annual basis. But overall, the top universities will all receive similar attention, with Harvard and possibly Princeton and Wharton getting some “special” treatment in isolated cases.</p>
<p>Answer is no. But you can’t deny that Harvard has a better “click.”</p>
<p>Haha sakky still posts here. That’s awesome.</p>
<p>Basically what he said. The real advantage is having friends who all go to Ivy Leagues. They are all high-achieving and often end up in prestigious companies and they can help you get in. That’s just to get your foot in the door though.</p>
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<li>Some people at one place I worked at did care, somewhat, and made distinctions.
At the end of the day, job candidates who get that far are interviewed extensively, and judged as individuals. But there was a mindset/ predisposition I perceived by certain people in this one place to the effect of, if you were really good enough to be here, why didn’t you go to HYPM? A mindset which many candidates overcame, but it was still there.</li>
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<p>Predispositions aside, everyone realizes that there is a distribution of capabilities of individuals at every institution.</p>
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<li><p>I’ve actually worked at places where it seemed more like the reverse. They all went to flagship public U’s. Anyone who didn’t was deemed to be an overprivileged elitist who might want special treatment and wouldn’t fit in. That’s what it felt like to me, anyway. They wouldn’t let me recruit at the eastern elite schools.</p></li>
<li><p>I know a few people from these schools who were helped by college networks, more who weren’t.</p></li>
<li><p>I’ve witnessed a case, at employer #1 above, where the network actually hurt the job candidate. He was interviewing in our department, they were going to make him an offer. But there was a “top dog” associate in the department who’d lived on this guy’s floor at (HYP), said the guy was a royal ***. He convinced them not to give the guy an offer.</p></li>
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<p>Obviously we’ll never know. But the odds of that seem highly unlikely: after all, what other multibillion dollar software company have Columbia alumni ever founded? I’m confident the odds are on my side: if he had never gone to Harvard, he would never have met Gates, and he wouldn’t be a billionaire CEO right now. Sure, he probably would have been a successful manager somewhere - but not that successful. He was the 43rd richest man in the world (in 2008), hence the chances that, in a parallel universe, he would have been just as rich (or richer) as opposed to being poorer seem to be low odds indeed. </p>
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<p>I completely agree, the post is about employers, not entrepreneurs. Steve Ballmer is not an entrepreneur. He didn’t found Microsoft; Gates and Allen did. Microsoft, as the employer, hired Steve Ballmer, with the Gates connection being the crucial factor. </p>
<p>Let’s be perfectly honest: if Steve Ballmer didn’t know Bill Gates, he wouldn’t have even known that a job at Microsoft was available, as Microsoft was still a startup at the time, with Ballmer joining as employee #24. Startups don’t formally recruit because they don’t have the resources. If you’re a company of just 23 people, all of them engineers, you don’t have the capability to conduct a nationwide talent and recruitment search. You’re simply going to hire people that you already know, because that’s the best you can do. Gates knew Ballmer from their old college days. If Ballmer hadn’t gone to Harvard, Gates would have probably hired one of his other old college pals. </p>
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<p>And how much money does Shawn Fanning have, relative to Ballmer? So I’m not sure that proves your point. </p>
<p>I think what you mean to say is that if you’re going to become a successful entrepreneur, then the school you attend may not matter. But, let’s face it, the vast majority of people are not going to become successful entrepreneurs. Rather they’re far more likely to be the guy that those successful entrepreneurs hire, in the same way that Gates hired Ballmer. Microsoft had only 2 entrepreneurs as founders, but all of the employees from the original team - including many of Gates’s old Harvard pals - became filthy rich.</p>
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<p>Well, except for the glaring fact that Presidents tend to come from elite schools. I agree with you that if somebody who graduated from the University of Iowa had become President, he probably would have stocked his administration with his Iowa pals. The problem with that logic is that of all 43 men who have become President (don’t count Grover Cleveland twice), not a single one of them were ever produced by the University of Iowa, yet a whopping 6 were produced by Harvard alone. No other school can boast of 6 Presidents. </p>
<p>Furthermore, elite schools are going to have a strong edge in terms of producing successful politicians for at least the near future. For example, who’s the leading Republican candidate for 2012? Probably Mitt Romney, with his 2 degrees from Harvard. Who’s the leading Democratic candidate for 2016 (or even 2012 if Obama falters)? Perhaps Hillary, with her Yale degree. I’m not aware of too many University of Iowa alumni threatening to take the Presidency anytime soon. </p>
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<p>Nobody is saying that everybody at Harvard will become billionaires or President. But what is undeniable is that the Harvard alumni network is arguably the the most powerful alumni network in the nation, and is therefore may be the primary reason to choose that school. </p>
<p>Come on, Alexandre. You’re an MBA grad. You know what I’m talking about. We both know the value of alumni networks, and we both know that that’s what schools are actually selling. Again, I agree that only in extreme cases will your alumni contacts afford you the possibility of becoming a CEO billionaire or Secretary of Labor. But under more normal circumstances, alumni networks do indeed offer possibilities for better jobs and faster advancement. Social networks are powerful forces.</p>
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<p>Actually, I would make a more general statement: one important reason to attend any top school as opposed to a lesser school is for the alumni network. For example, one reason to choose Berkeley over a CalState is for the better alumni network. One reason to choose UMichigan over Michigan State is, again, for the better alumni network. </p>
<p>Nor do I see anything particularly irrational in doing so. Given that social networks, whether we like it or not, are an important factor that determines career success, why wouldn’t you want to equip yourself with the better network, ceteris paribus? Why would you choose to deliberately forgo an advantage?</p>
<p>I 'd rather be Shawn fanning than Ballmer. Fanning was a real pioneer and earned his street cred on top of it. funnily, enough someone with my moniker should be pro your argument. LOL. Hmm.</p>
<p>sakky,
Your logic is really weak. Your are assuming that Harvard had anything to do with Balmers ability to become a billionaire. Had Bill gates gone to Podunk U he still would be the founder of Microsoft. It is true that aLumni from ivies dominate the list of billionaires. If anything going to Stanford would increase the odds, especially in the software sector.</p>
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<p>Yeah, but at the end of the day, who has more money? </p>
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<p>I’m afraid it is *your *logic that is really weak. Sure, I agree that if Bill Gates had gone to Podunk U, he would still be the founder of Microsoft. But we’re not talking about what happened to Gates. We’re talking about what happened to Ballmer. The fact remains that he met Gates at Harvard. If he had not gone to Harvard, he would never have met Gates, and hence he surely wouldn’t be one of the richest men in the world. Ballmer is not an entrepreneur, nor is he an engineer. To become rich, he needed to meet somebody to hitch his star onto, and he did that through his Harvard connections. </p>
<p>Now, I agree with you that Stanford is also an excellent choice - by no means was I restricting this discussion purely to Ivies. But the point stands - strong social networks matter in terms of your overall career success.</p>
<p>Take Brin and Page of Google. It is debatable whether Google would have been successful as it was had Brin & Page had never met at Stanford. But even if we assume that they would have, that still leaves open the question of what would have happened to the original Google engineering team, most of which was comprised of Brin’s and Page’s old engineering pals at Stanford. If those team members had not gone to Stanford themselves, they would have never been invited to be members of the original Google team, and they wouldn’t consequently be filthy rich now. </p>
<p>The point is, for every 1 brilliant entrepreneur who become business tycoons, there are many ‘henchmen’ who become rich by riding in that entrepreneur’s slipstream. In many ways, this is not “fair” - after all, the original Microsoft or Google engineers didn’t work any harder or weren’t more talented than the engineers at many other firms, yet they became far richer. That’s because they were provided with the opportunity to join the right startup - an opportunity that few people enjoy. I couldn’t have simply decided in 1975 to join the original Microsoft engineering team for the simple reason that Gates wouldn’t have known me from Adam. How many “undeserving” millionaires has Microsoft created?</p>
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<p>Well what if Gates met John Doe at Podunk U?..then John Doe would be a billionaire…from Podunk U.</p>