I work at a high tech company and recently (reluctantly) got pressed into screening entry-level applicants. The bulk of these applicants are seniors majoring in computer science. I have interviewed about 35 candidates in the past month and have observed something interesting: I am just blown-away at the high quality of the applicants that I found at many of the lesser known universities. So far my favorite candidates have been from:
University of Kansas
Indiana University
UMass at Amherst
North Carolina State University
Clemson University
These candidates were all very well grounded in computer science fundamentals and many of them had worked very hard on challenging projects. In contrast some of the applicants from top thirty schools have been less than inspiring. I have asked our recruiters to expand their focus beyond the the usual few suspects like CMU, MIT and Stanford. I know that this is a small sample but I hope this can offer some encouragement to those of you with kids in lesser known schools.
I am not surprised. I have had good experiences with younger workers from State flagship schools such as Penn State, UNC, Indiana, MD, etc. These schools always enroll a significant percentage of the best and brightest from their home states who for a wide variety of reasons are not interested in the more “prestigious” private universities.
It is hard to generalize but there is a possibility that many of these students were given financial parameters that they had to contend with and as a result may be very appreciative of what they have and the opportunities. For what it is worth I too have had this experience on candidates-- the big very prestigious schools didn’t necessarily have the ones I liked most for jobs.
I am also glad to hear this. It reinforces my DD internship experience last summer. There were 16 interns in total, 4 were business and 12 were technical. The business interns came from Harvard, Sterns and Wharton. The CS interns came from Pitt (my DD), 2 from Nebraska, UF, UT Austin, UT Dallas and other less known schools. Outside of UT Austin, none of them were from top CS schools. I also believe they all received very nice offers.
A friend of mine is an executive at a huge tech company that shifted AWAY from recruiting at top schools, and towards big state Us. She said there was a sense of entitlement among the grads from the top tech/Ivy schools and that, once hired, they really weren’t much better. Anecdotal evidence, I know.
Maybe it’s a good thing to go to a big school, where you have to fend for yourself and not be spoon fed. At UT, I found I had lots of opportunities, but I had to look for them - they weren’t handed to me.
Sounds like some bias here against Ivies and other top schools. These days, with generous financial aid policies, many students at top schools are hardly entitled, and also have to fend for themselves in a demanding, rigorous context.
I fear that in some cases, going to an Ivy could mean NOT getting the job.
That said, I am a huge fan of schools like UMass Amherst for CS.
I’ve worked with developers from the HYPSM/CMU schools and they were all excellent. I did note that they were somewhat clique-ish and basically just tolerated an public school outsider like me. The MIT and Stanford guys were the least pretentious and the most focused on getting things done. One CalTech guy was just plain weird … even for a developer.
That was 20+ years ago, so maybe things have changed.
I think this just demonstrates that there are bright, successful students in many kinds of schools (not just the ivies) and that you can get a quality education in many colleges (not just the top tier ones). Harkens back to that recent study about top kids doing well no matter what college they attend.
Companies are foolish to limit their recruiting to only a small number of colleges as they will miss out on high quality candidates (yes, I understand you don’t have unlimited recruiting resources so you do need to pick and choose). I remember (back a millions years ago) when I did some on-campus recruiting for entry level programming jobs, if we had a great entry level person from a local school we would add it to our list of places we went.
dropped it, your experience was long before the financial aid initiatives that have targeted socioeconomic diversity on Ivy campuses and other campuses considered “selective.”
@MaineLonghorn You raise a great point. A few years ago I worked for the financial arm of a Fortune 100 company. When I was working on teams that contained colleagues from the US offices, I noticed how many people that were in the executive training programs had come from strong, but not tippy-top public universities (e.g., UMass, Penn State, etc). I once asked why those schools were so popular and the response was that my company was used to throwing people in at the deep end and people often needed to figure things out for themselves (my firm was not very well managed!). The kids that came out of the large state flagships would have had to learn to survive in college with little handholding so that would make them good fits for my company!
@halycyonheather - Opportunities are handed to students that are in the honors programs. I know both UT Austin and UT Dallas have separate CS honors. Being in those honors programs brings more scholarship, research and recruiting opportunities.
As far as on campus recruiting, that does not seem to be done as much in the CS field. My DD only had 1 on campus interview from a local company, all other interviews were telephone and skype. She would have as many as 3 electronic interviews with an employer before progressing to a personal interview. This does allow companies to recruit nation wide.
@compmom – I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. I’ve been looking at all the top schools to get an idea of where D18 can get in with her stats. The Ivy school ACT mid-50 ranges are all 30-34 or higher, which is around the 99th percentile.
Are you saying that 30 years ago the Ivy ACT mid-50 would have been higher (e.g. 33-36)?
??? dropped it, I don’t understand your post and its reference to stats. You originally wrote “I’ve worked with developers from the HYPSM/CMU schools and they were all excellent. I did note that they were somewhat clique-ish and basically just tolerated an public school outsider like me.” Then you suggested that after 20 years, things may have changed.
I was just agreeing that things have changed, and was referring to socioeconomic diversity, not stats. Since the late 1960’s, the Ivy student body has evolved to be more diverse in terms of family background, race, ethnicity, income, etc. Harvard, for instance, was once full of boarding school grads. A financial aid policy that allows students of families with incomes under $65k for free, and students of families with income up to $150k for 10% of that, really cannot be characterized the way you characterize the grads 20 years ago, before the financial aid initiative.
ps and if your daughter wants to go to one of the Ivies, don’t overfocus on stats…she needs to meet a benchmark but then it really is “holistic” and what you can bring to the mix of the class
@zobroward, statistically speaking attending a school like Harvard or Yale does mean you’re smarter . It doesn’t mean you can work with others, tie your shoes, have a single friend, or are happier long term…but by all statistical measures (both on the way in and post graduate accolades) point to superior intelligence at the elite schools.
