I don’t know about the others but I know my kid who is a freshman at an elite college was already getting offers for next summer’s internship. One of them pays $12k/m plus perks and benefits. With only a month and half into her college the employers are clearly not paying for what she has learned in college. Some of her friends are getting offers of $15k/m from Wall Street firms for summer internships. There is no doubt that the top 10% best paying employers do focus on college names.
One of my favorite tidbits of advice to prospective students is to ask a department where recent grads in their desired fields have gone. If they like the answers (answers fit what they want to be doing), the college is perfectly fine as long as they have similar stats, etc, when they graduate. If there are no answers or they don’t like the answers it’s not an automatic decline, but it definitely throws up a caution flag to consider when selecting the final choice.
@jzducol that’s crazy! My daughter interviewed at the end of her freshman year for a summer sophomore internship…are you saying these freshman are getting internships for freshman summer or sophomore summer? And yes, there are definitely target schools out there!
@collegemomjam. These kids are also getting 5 figure signing bonuses for these summer internships.
Unbelievable. Good for them!!! It must be nice for them to see their hard work pay off so early in the game. I know both my daughters got their internships earlier than most people and it definitely made them feel like they were being rewarded for working so hard. It’s nice when it works out that way. On the other hand, my daughter who is a senior and has had her job offer from her internship that started as a sophomore externship for sometime now has friends that went into senior year without any post-grad plans, and many of them are starting to secure jobs. Not the top ones with the signing bonuses, but nice jobs that should position them for nice careers.
Nobody in any “elite” college surveys I am aware of reported an internship with a salary that high, so it appears to be extremely uncommon. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s certainly not a good representation of what one can expect from attending an elite college. I also wouldn’t assume that your daughter saying that her friends said that they received a high salary offer for an internship on Wall Street means the top 10% best paying employers focus on college names.
Salaries tend to vary more with job position than with being a “top 10% best paying employer”. For example, in the previously linked Yale survey, top 10% salary was a little under $90k. It’s quite common for CS grads working in SV to have starting salaries above this level, including ones who attended less prestigious colleges. It’s not as common for biology/chem grads working for the same SV employers to have starting salaries at this level, including ones who attended prestigious colleges. A good variety of SV tech companies offer pay at this level for certain types of CS positions, not just the most prestigious employers. Some of the more popular SV tech employers include some of the Ivy-type northeast “elite” colleges in their employer fair attendance, but generally also recruit at less prestigious publics for CS positions. LinkedIn often shows a large number of “software engineer” type CS hires from several less prestigious publics and few from Ivy-type northeast "elite"colleges.
You mentioned Wall Street, which can be different. Some investment banking and consulting type positions do focus on college name. However, they are the exception, not the rule.
never mind.
Look on Glassdoors.com for internship and starting salary rates.
I think we had already determined it seems like the Banks and Consulting firms are more interested in what we are calling the “elite”. Both of my daughters have gone through this recruiting and the kids at these superdays in NYC are MOSTLY from Ivy-Esq colleges. My daughter was at one just a few weeks ago and Harvard, Yale, Penn, and MIT all had students there. There are usually one or two “outliers”, as well…but the bulk has undeniably been from what many would refer to as the “elite”.
But is it possible as it relates to the tech industry and the SV jobs, (of which I know very little about because my girls are studying finance) the employers have their own version of elite? I realize rankings don’t always mean much but some of the top 25 Engineering schools from US News include:
Georgia Tech
U of Illinois Urbana Champaign
U of Michigan
Purdue
U of Texas
Texas A&M
U of Wisconsin
Virginia Tech
UCLA
Penn State
UC San Diego
U of Washington
U of Maryland (who is tied with Harvard and U Penn for 25th)
These are all great schools for lots of different majors but most of them would not be considered “elite” unless you are looking for a specific major (like BME from GTech). Michigan and Texas and probably Wisconsin are probably also on the “target” list for some banks/consulting firms, as well. And UCLA, even though they don’t have an undergrad business school.
So as many of you have been saying…the answer is it depends on who is hiring and for what position.
I do believe ultimately the reputation of the college has a lot to do with getting that first interview and that there is some correlation to lifetime earnings (if we use that as a measure of success). But there are many ways to skin a cat and I’m sure there are many, many successful people in all industries that went to schools not considered “elite” for their field of work. But many that did.
IBs and consulting firms tend to hire from Ivies and other elites because the people who do the hiring are mostly from these schools. They’re personally biased toward graduates of their own alma mater, or schools similar in their mind to their alma mater. The same applies to most large SV firms, except their current employees already come from a much wider range of schools. Smaller SV firms may still have their own preferences/biases for the same reason.
As to the usually high salaries for freshman summer interns at a few elite colleges, my guess is that they are in a highly desirable technology area, even if they’re hired by banks and hedge funds. Banks are highly concerned that they’ll be dis-intermediated in a not-too-distant future by technologies (a number of SV firms are trying to do just that), so they’re bulking up in those technologies, trying to stay ahead of the curve. The same technologies have also become increasingly important to many hedge funds. Their competitions for these type of talents are driving up the cost.
Again, why are certain posters so obsessed with outliers? The average elite graduate isn’t making $150-300k out of college or getting $30k summer internships. The investment banks and top consulting firms don’t even pay that much for interns. And I know it may be hard to fathom, but most students aren’t gunning for the very tiny number of super high paying internships and full time outlier positions mentioned on here, nor are they competitive for such positions coming from even the tippy top schools. So great for the handful of kids who get these internships and full time jobs, but for everyone else, who cares?
D1 is responsible for her bank’s associates and analysts. I do not believe they are paying that much (12k-15k/mon) for their summer analysts and they also do not offer it to freshmen, maybe few sophomores.
"These are all great schools for lots of different majors but most of them would not be considered “elite”
You seem to define elite as only being private colleges, the most respected here is Berkeley EECS (the only program where Stanford may loses cross-admits). Do you straight up think any degree from say Brown is more elite than Berkeley because one is an ivy and the other is not?
“I do believe ultimately the reputation of the college has a lot to do with getting that first interview and that there is some correlation to lifetime earnings (if we use that as a measure of success).”
Is there any evidence for this, most studies could not find a correlation, much less causation between college prestige and wealth, outside of URMs benefiting from the prestige boost.
“For example, in the survey of hundreds of employers in a variety of industries at https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/items/biz/pdf/Employers Survey.pdf , college reputation was listed as the least influential factor in evaluating resumes of new grads for hiring decisions.”
I agree with that but here’s the thing again, if word got out in silicon valley company that you used reputation or rankings to make a hiring decision, you’d be excoriated and probably lose your interviewing privileges. This is something that even if you do it, you won’t admit it, even in a survey. Again though, I do think that reputation could matter in getting the interviews, that’s why grads from the top-10 in us news engineering/cs (UCB, Stanford, CMU, MIT, UM et al) may have a slight advantage.
@theloniusmonk that’s why I put the word “elite” in quotes…meaning perception of elite vs. maybe the reality. As I am sure you area aware, especially if you follow other threads on CC, there are some people obsessed with Ivies. If you happened to have ever seem my posts on the topic, you would see that I am NOT one of those people.
I do look at salary information a lot and from what I can see, earning potential seems to be a function of not only prestige of the school but also the “techiness” (is that a word?) of the school. So you may see a Penn State engineering major making more than a philosophy major from Brown, of course. I think I have seen reports over the years suggesting there is some correlation, but I don’t have any links. But if you think about the extreme examples, I would venture to guess that and average Econ major graduating from Harvard would probably have more earning potential than an Econ major from Loyola Maryland (which is an excellent school). But I’m sure there are some Econ majors from LM that make more than Econ majors from Harvard, on a case by case basis. But overall, chances are, at least in my opinion, the same major at the more prestigious school might create more lucrative opportunities. There are of course so many other factors, like geography, connections, right place/right time, etc. But all things being equal, I think in the extreme cases, the more “elite” the more financial potential.
What are some of the popular Tech/SV majors that employers are looking for? Can anyone enlighten me? I don’t know much about those majors. Thanks.
Employers are looking for a wide variety of majors, but it’s CS in particular that is associated with a high salary. Software engineering is key for many of the SV tech companies that are typically discussed here. Many positions state they require a CS major and test for CS related knowledge and skills during the interviews. For example, the average starting salaries reported in the most recent UCB survey are below. CS is far ahead of other majors.
EECS – $109k, most common job title is “Software Engineer”, most common employers are Amazon, Facebook, Google, …
CS – $107k, most common job title is “Software Engineer”, most common employers are Amazon, Facebook, Google, …
Non-CS Engineering Majors – ~$80k
Economics and Math – ~$70k
… Studies – ~$50k
Biology – ~$45k
Ivies also often show a similar pattern. For example, numbers for Cornell are below, which is usually considered the Ivy that is strongest in tech majors.
CS – $105k, most common employers are Google, Amazon, and Microsoft
Non-CS Engineering Majors – ~$75k (highest is Electrical/Computer at 90 and lowest is Biological at 55)
Economics-- ~$70k
… Studies – $50k
Biology – $50k
Thanks! My son is really enjoying AP Chem this year (he’s a junior) and is starting to consider a STEM major. He’s very good in math, too. What would be a good engineering area for someone interested in chemistry? Chemical engineering, obviously, but any others? He will definitely be looking at state flagships and other non-Ivies.
I think what would interesting is to see how much they are making 5-10 years later. Engineers tend to have higher starting salaries, but tend to plateau unless they move up to management or become revenue producers, whereas other careers may start at lower pay and catch up in few years. I think it is true in IB, they often double their pays every few years, especially when there are good years.
Re: #98
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html shows survey results of median starting pay and mid career pay by college major.
It also shows survey results of 10th, 25th, 75th, 90th percentile mid career pay. Some have much higher variation than others. E.g. the 90th percentile to 10th percentile pay is around 5 for music, but only around 1.9 for physician assistant.