<p>Canuck- school is not a good proxy for ability (nor was it ever- read Karabel and all the other descriptors of how these schools needed quotas to keep the smart kids OUT). However, like any other commercial enterprise, companies need to hire X number of employees at a cost of Y. So I can go to every single Cal State campus and meticulously weed through undergrads to find a few dozen stars per campus and then assemble an interview day. Or I can go to Stanford or Berkeley or Swarthmore or Williams and find the kind of density that makes hiring cost effective. Berkeley is huge and Williams is tiny- but the density is there. I can send a recruiting team to every single directional in Texas and pick off the top of the class, or I can recruit at U T Austin.</p>
<p>You are assuming that companies are making a value judgement that somehow the graduates of one school are not as good (less prestigious) than another, or that top candidates can ONLY be found at the prestige type schools. Correlation, not causation. There are more strong applied math majors (or econ majors with strong quant backgrounds) at Princeton than at Rowan. That’s a fact. So it’s cheaper for a company looking for strong math skills to recruit at Princeton- the yield is higher, fewer man hours are required to screen resumes and meet the students. That doesn’t devalue the ability of a top math student at Rowan- it’s just not efficient for a team to spend a day on campus to end up with two candidates who can pass the company’s own math/critical reasoning test.</p>
<p>You mis-state the case when you say the soft firms focus on prestige. They don’t. They focus on hiring people in a cost effective way who over time, prove economically valuable to their firms. The fact that the “prestigious” colleges have made the job much easier by assembling a pre-screened group of 22 year old who create a dense population from which to hire-- that doesn’t mean the companies are fixated on prestige.</p>