<p>Well I'm sure we have all had this debate more times than we'd like to recall... but this time, let's have a concensus.</p>
<p>It's no secret that the majority of CC'ers eye the Ivy League or other top tiered schools like gold bricks or that they tend to read US News and World's annual rankings like a salary chart. Given this- especially those of you who have experience in the REAL world, just HOW important is attending an undgradate ivy league education in context of the job market. </p>
<p>Let's discuss this in the context of the most popular professions- engineering/medicine/law/business. Will a company truly care what undergraduate school you attended, as long as it's a respectatble institution? Say Student A graduates from Michigan and goes on to MIT Engineering. Student B is from Princeton undergrad ends up at MIT as well. Assuming, comparable GPA's, are their chances about equal for a job opening?</p>
<p>Personally, for a top student, I think it's probably easier for that student to get into a top professional school from a non-ivy league competitive arena. It's easier to stand out among weaker competition. I'm still talking about really decent undergrad programs. I think this is probably true... so given this, what's the big fuss with the Ivy Leagues? I definitely see this in my magnet HS where the average SAT before the new ones were1450+. My home town HS had an average SAT of 1080~ And it's SO HARD to stand out when your friends are on the United States Olympic math/bio/physics/computerolympiad team. Comments? Agree/Disagree?</p>
<p>If you're looking to go into the "Business Industry" (for the lack of a better term) such as Investment Banks or Consulting, the undergrad school does matter alot. </p>
<p>For Academic graduate school, your undergrad does have an effect, but it gets more complicated. A famous faculty recommendation can give you an edge, but undergrad and graduate prestige do not always go together. </p>
<p>For Professional schools, the undergrad school name matters less.</p>
<p>How about med school? For example would it matter if you went from Washington State U to U Washington Med school or UWashington to the same med school?</p>
Say Student A graduates from Michigan and goes on to MIT Engineering. Student B is from Princeton undergrad ends up at MIT as well.
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If both end up at MIT for graduate school, their undergraduate schools won't matter so much. </p>
<p>However, it is easier to get into a top graduate program from a top undergrad school (maybe not so much for this particular example, since Michigan engineering is probably better than Princeton). Do you think it's easier to get into a top grad program than it is to get into a top undergrad program? MIT EECS, for example, takes about 100 applicants for 2500 spots.</p>
<p>Graduate programs are aware of the strength of the student body at various schools, and know the difference in difficulty between getting a 4.0 at a weaker school vs. getting a 3.3 at a more difficult school. They adjust their views of the applicants accordingly.</p>
<p>The thing I would not want to trade is going to school with incredible bright people on the whole. Every class, everyday, is truly a learning experiece I cherish. It's hard to stand out at my high school, average SAT about 1375, but I would hate to g to a college where the competition was any less.</p>
<p>AHShockey999, i keep hearing that but i DO want to disagree.
Yes, part of it is WHO you know, absolutely. HOWEVER!:
WHO you know will very well depend on WHAT you know. What i mean by that is JUST because your dad is an investment banker doesn't mean that you will be successful in it as well. Sure, you'll probably have an easier time getting a job than someone who doesn't have that advantage. But if you want to be successful in the field, you still have to know the information and know how to present yourself, rather than how to be presented by someone else.
Hope you understand what i mean by this.</p>
<p>As far as med schools go, in my opinion it matters less. The med school itself is what will determine how good of a doctor you will be.
Same with law. Law School will matter much more than pre-law undergrad.</p>
<p>one thing i always wondered is the med school acceptance rates at Ivies. Places like Harvard and Yale boast a 90% acceptance rate to a med school in comparision to the national 50%. But I don't believe these students made medical school because they went to an Ivy League; I believe that they got in because they are smart. They most likely would have gotten into a medical school going to a lesser college. It's just that the Ivy Leagues accept mostly top tier students who are all capable to getting into medical school.</p>
<p>That's just my 2 cents for undergrad and med school</p>
<p>the only place that matters is the last place you go to. undergrad matters if you don't go to graduate school. if you are 100% certain on grad school - then your undergrad school means nothing. you just need to make sure you do well wherever you go for undergrad. If you say got a MBA at northwestern for example, no one will care if you went to harvard college or richard stockton college.</p>
<p>The reason why higher schools do better has less to do with the name than it does what the various schools offer. EX If you go to a UC there a many more students and much higher class sizes. To get more "noticed" requires a lot more out of students, and some professors at such schools may not make themselves available to students. Compare that to MIT at which students dont need to do much more than tell a prof. of their interest in a prof's work and they get to work w/ the prof.</p>
<p>
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the only place that matters is the last place you go to. undergrad matters if you don't go to graduate school. if you are 100% certain on grad school - then your undergrad school means nothing. you just need to make sure you do well wherever you go for undergrad. If you say got a MBA at northwestern for example, no one will care if you went to harvard college or richard stockton college.
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</p>
<p>The mass media, and by extension the general public, will care about whether you went to an extremely prestigious undergrad program even if you go to a less prominent graduate program.</p>
<p>For example, when the Unabomber was revealed to be Ted Kaczynski, the media just couldn't stop talking about how this brilliant Harvard-trained mathematician turned into a violent antisocial hermit. In fact, many news organizations ran exposes detailing what supposedly went wrong at Harvard to turn Kaczynski into such a sociopath and how Harvard's academic and social environment supposedly corrupted him.</p>
<p>However, what I noticed that almost all media organizations failed to mention is that Kaczynski only did his undergrad at Harvard. He got his PhD in mathematics from Michigan. Why weren't there any exposes about how what went wrong at Michigan and how Michigan corrupted him? </p>
<p>Similarly, Adhmed Chalabi is a controversial Iraqi politician who was one of the expatriate Iraqis who headed an umbrella organization of anti-Saddam Hussein revolutionary agitators and who may have fed false information to the US about Iraq's WMD programs. Chalabi is now a powerful minister and politician in post-war Iraq. I have noticed that stories about Chalabi will invariably talk about how he is a brilliant MIT-trained mathematician, but will almost never mention the fact that he got his PhD in math from Chicago. </p>
<p>It's clearly "sexier" to talk about a Harvard-trained mathematician gone mad or a MIT-mathematician turned political revolutionary than to talk about a Michigan or Chicago trained mathematician doing either of those things, although really, it's the place where you get your math PhD that truly "trains" you to be a mathematician far more so than your undergrad program does.</p>
<p>I doubt that selectivity has anything to do with how the mass media portrays its stories. For example, if the Unabomber had went to Michigan for undergrad and Harvard for his PhD, I strongly suspect that the media would still portray him as a "Harvard-trained mathematician".</p>