??? @50N40W, engineers may also look for startup money.
And it’s more nuanced than that. Not all engineers plan to stay engineers for life. In fact, most don’t.
Sure, name matters in certain fields, and in NYC. But who is so unsophisticated as to think that those fields, and NYC, are the only game in town?
It’s blindingly evident that it differs dramatically by field and region of the country. If you’re sitting in NYC and you pride yourself on being soooo sophisticated that your firm only hires from HYPSM and so forth, but you have no clue whatsoever that in Texas UT-Austin and A&M and SMI have “prestige,” or that in the Midwest Michigan and Notre Dame have tons of prestige, or that in the west UCB and UCLA have a lot of prestige … Then you’re not nearly as “sophisticated” as you think you are. “The world must be like my backyard” is unsophisticated thinking.
^ Agree with the above.
For some reason, it seems that many people on CC can’t see the world in shades of gray and across multiple dimensions.
There’s almost no difference between HYPSM and other Ivies/equivalents. There’s almost no difference between Tufts/ND/UMich/other near-Ivies and the Ivies/equivalents. There’s almost no difference between the near-Ivies and UT-Austin/UNC. There’s almost no difference between UNC and an average flagship. There’s almost no difference between an average flagship and a lower flagship/directional. That doesn’t mean that there is no difference between a directional and an Ivy/equivalent. And that difference will matter a lot or not at all (or even work the other way; there are directionals that are tops in a certain field, for instance), depending on industry, occupation, region, experience, how much someone networks, and so many things specific to an individual’s characteristics and circumstance.
@grayscale yes, I did choose Penn over some of HYPSM and a ton of other schools (I over-applied because my competitive high school had me believing it was necessary). And yes, I personally only applied to schools where I could genuinely see myself (which meant no MIT, among others). But at the end of the day, you can see yourself more at some schools than at others, even if all of those schools would be a good ‘fit.’ And there is nothing wrong with allowing those factors to play more of a role in your choice than prestige. If you would be a little happier at less prestigious school- that matters for ALL of the reasons I just mentioned. Even if the job outcomes won’t be comparable to the more lay-prestigious school as they would be among Penn/Columbia and HYPSM comparison, I still think a perfect fit serves you better than a prestigious name because small differences in fit can have outsized consequences for which prestige cannot always compensate.
@PurpleTitan And your stance seems to be that you will just insinuate motives where there are none and bless your heart for the rigorous education comment because anybody who sees things differently from you of course couldn’t possibly have had a rigorous education themselves. The study results does support their conclusions, with caveats and they list it in the paper. I have studied enough regression and statistics to know that. Is the study perfect? No. But show me a study that doesn’t have detractors in terms of its methodology. Calling this paper shoddy is the height of hubris. I saw your outcomes based ranking methodology and I think rigorous education didn’t save you from lot of methodological issues either. Should I call that attempt shoddy?
“Almost no difference” implies there is a difference, however much that may be.
@VeryLuckyParent, you may have any opinion you like, but I do question your judgement. After all, what exactly in the data and setup of the Vanderbilt study supports the conclusion drawn? Did you see my points raised? Care to address them or try to defend the Vanderbilt study? Try to persuade. In a rational manner. Launching personal attacks or seeing nonexistent ones is not persuasive.
And how are you sure that the author did not have ulterior motives? How else would you explain the peculiar (and IMO, nonsensical) way that the author set up tiers?
And I stated that, as my outcomes-based rankings are solely outcomes based, it’s more for bragging rights than anything else. I certainly am not saying it’s a predictive model.
^lol. No need to call him out explicitly. He’s suffered enough having gone to northwestern. He had to invent terms like ivy equivalent to justify his own insecurities.
@fractalmstr , if you don’t mind, I could use an explanation of this point.
The other thing is that certain fields have sort of up and declared themselves “prestige” fields, which is kind of silly. They’re only prestigious to the people who desire to enter those fields. The people aspiring to work in investment banking at Goldman Sachs might not find working for Edelman PR “prestigious,” but so what? The person who aspires to be the global head of Edelman one day doesn’t particularly find GS to be all that impressive. Neither of them are dying for the others’ job.
My former media clients (HBO, Clear Channel, etc) would LOL at the notion that they would want to have a boring banking job, when they can be at the forefront of entertainment and shaping people’s tastes. Yet on CC we are supposed to think that everyone thinks banking is prestigious across the board. It’s odd.
It really does not, or if it does it is way down the list. Despite the ones you read about, most funded ventures are not founded by recent college grads, so your professional experience far outweighs the sheepskin. Most of those you do read about also got angel or family money first and proved the model.
And if you have no experience, they are going to assign some to you, and your equity is behind a preference now and they have 3 board seats to your one… and even if they do let you run your company for a while they will change that once you miss a quarter…
Met with many VCs in my career, and do not recall being asked for my Alma Mater once – even on sand hill road.
@youcee, depends on how you see the world. Every school will be different from every other. So will every major. But how much difference and for good or bad will be dependent on many variables.
@PurpleTitan It’s not my study. I don’t need to defend anything to you. I will let others read the paper and make up their own mind. Btw, largely cutting and pasting the words of the authors to then show that you have somehow discovered problems in their study is laughable. They are very clear in the paper on the study’s finding and limitations. Anyway I’m done with this conversation. It’s digressing from the original intent of the post
Lots of buttons have been pushed
@grayscale For a newbie here on CC you certainly chose a hot button issue to post. Any reason why that you would care to share?
So much depends on individual circumstances. People’s interests, talents, resources, work ethic, and the cards life happens to deal them all matter. It’s very easy to say people should choose the most prestigious school when you’re not footing the bill. Unfortunately, people who don’t know better are often convinced they must do whatever it takes to get that “golden ticket.” I think that’s a mistake.
I recently spoke to a divorced mom who’s overextending to send her oldest kid to a name brand private school and hopes that finances will work out all 4 years. The dad is a deadbeat and she has little savings, no retirement, and zero assets. She’s now talking about using credit cards and PLUS loans to pay for the younger child to dorm like her brother (even though she was accepted to a very good school within commuting distance of their home) because the assumption is that any school you can commute to isn’t “good” enough to help you get a “good” job. She’s working a physically demanding job and will be 70 when her youngest graduates from college. I hope her children do well because they’re going to need to support her in her old age.
I believe in upward mobility, and although I’m working to position my children as advantageously as possible, I recognize that my attending college at all is an opportunity my father’s parents couldn’t afford to provide for him during the Depression, so we’re already advancing as a family. Starting at a 4-year college instead of commuting to a cc is an opportunity my sister and I didn’t have because my father lost his vision when we were quite young, but it’s one my husband and I have been able to provide our son. Dorming at a 4-year school won’t be possible until I’m done homeschooling our dyslexic, dyscalculic, dysgraphic daughter and can go back to work. Our plan is to use whatever I can earn to pay for a couple of years of dorming for both of them, if that’s what they want, as well as grad school. I don’t want them to have to struggle through school working a full-time job like I did.
My hope is that my husband and I will be able to help any future grandchildren go away to school, if that’s what they choose. And that’s more about the opportunities students on campus (who aren’t spending all their free time working to pay the bills) have to network and take advantage of on campus resources. My college years consisted of a full-time course load and a full-time job.I hope to make the path easier for my children and their children. Prestige never entered my head.
One of my siblings started at our local cc on a full Pell grant and full NYS tuition grant. She’s making the same 6-figure paycheck as everyone else in her Manhattan based TV network. She recently registered at an online SUNY to finish her bachelor’s. Not having the same tier of colleges on her resume as her coworkers hasn’t seemed to hurt her career any.
@VeryLuckyParent, the quotes I listed were ones I made and of problems I found with the paper. You choose not to defend the paper but you did choose to post a link to it, then choose to cast aspersions in an inflammatory manner on someone who has, as you said, read the paper and made up my mind about it, then choose to avoid questions that I have asked you. Not exactly a profile of either courage or character, in my opinion.
Is there really any need to continue this thread? People will think what they want to think, people will do what they feel makes sense in their situation. IMO this thread is causing agitation/rudeness and no opinions are being changed.