<p>This is probably an over-debated topic, and probably somewhat controversial, but I just felt like I needed to bring this up. I read about how graduate schools/companies don't place as much emphasis on school ranking and prestige as most people think. That people can make up for it via internships and high gpas at a lower tier school. However, when I brought the subject up to my dad (who is a VP at a pretty big tech company), he scoffed at me. He said the reality of the situation that NO ONE wants to face is that companies screen out people by which school they go to. In his company for example, he claims that if the applicant didn't come from a school ranked at least as high as UC Berkeley or UCLA, they are automatically rejected or " resume straight in the trash bin " so he says. When I asked him about 4.0 students from like, UCI or UC Davis or something of that " ranking ", he said that they are automatically rejected, no matter the GPA. He also said that most major companies do that, and that's just the truth of it all. That the lower tier schools end up getting employed by startups or small companies. That seems to contradict a lot of what is found by researching online/on these forms. =/</p>
<p>What company does your dad work for (if you don’t mind saying)? Lol, that makes me feel bad. I did hear that it is harder to get jobs at top companies coming from a “lesser ranked” school, but I always thought that a great GPA, internships, or something amazing you’ve done as an undergrad could overcome that. I didn’t think you were automatically rejected but that you would have to have to work many times as hard to find something that makes you as impressive as one from a “highly ranked” school.</p>
<p>^ If that’s true for most companies, than that is a major problem.</p>
<p>That’s not true. Once you’ve been employed for any decent period of time (say 5 years or more), no one cares where you went to school or what your GPA was (gpa shouldn’t even be on the resume), all they care about is where you last worked, what you did, and how successful you were at the job.</p>
<p>For new hires, some companies will set “target” schools, and if you’re not from a target school, they won’t interview you unless you’re an excellent candidate. This is particularly true in technical fields, like engineering. Target schools aren’t always top 10 schools, though. I worked for one Fortune 500 company that had Texas A&M as a target school, but not Stanford or MIT. That’s just the way it worked out for that company.</p>
<p>Marvell Semiconductors =X Probably shouldn’t be saying this online but oh well…</p>
<p>(oh, and in case you want to know the reason, Stanford and MIT graduates had low acceptance and retention rates)</p>
<p>That may be true, but say you came from a lower tier school. The job probably isn’t going to be a big company and although you get work experience, my dad said that it still doesn’t count for much if it was just at some startup or a small company. He made it seem like it was a cycle, and if the doors closed on you, it would be much more difficult to get back in.</p>
<p>I think your dad suffers from a myopic experience.</p>
<p>Why would you say that? He was telling me these things over lunch when I argued that UCI graduates could be just as successful at UCLA graduates. And he said that was just the way the big companies ran. I mean, I could easily disregard what he said, if it weren’t for what he’s accomplished, done, and still does. He said a lot of the things he said were what the CEO would constantly say.</p>
<p>Maybe he was just trying to “scare” you into going to the school he wants you to go to?</p>
<p>I’m not doing engineering. 
I’m a music major/economics major. Haha but my bf is a prospective EE engineer thats why I look up these things.</p>
<p>Does he like your bf?</p>
<p>It sounds like he doesn’t.</p>
<p>Big-time employers will NOT give you the benefit of doubt if you received poor grades at a top tier engineering school… but if you get good grades from a reputed, very tough engineering school (i.e. MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, CMU, etc.) then you are set. GPA is REALLY important coming out of college if you want to work for a big, famous company such as Microsoft, Google, etc… I would wager to say that a person with a perfect 4.0 in engineering from a state school is better off than somebody with a 3.0 at a place like CMU or Cornell.</p>
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<p>How often are CEO’s involved in hiring these recent grads?</p>
<p>Well why would a CEO say anything but that there company gets the cream of the crop. I’m not saying that your Dad is lying but if I was the CEO of a company trying to make it big, then I would woo my consumers saying that my company gets the best of the best from the top schools like MIT, Stanford, etc.</p>
<p>Different companies target different schools. Some will target Texas A & M and not Stanford because Stanford grads are generally looking for a different type of job and the company wants people who will stay long term.</p>
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<p>Then consider Google’s hiring practices, circa 2003.</p>
<p>*For the most part, it takes a degree from an Ivy League school, or MIT, Stanford, CalTech, or Carnegie Mellon–America’s top engineering schools–even to get invited to interview. Brin and Page still keep a hand in all the hiring, from executives to administrative assistants. And to them, **work experience counts far less than where you went to school, how you did on your SATs, and your grade-point average. “If you’ve been at Cisco for 20 years, they don’t want you,” says an employee. ***</p>
<p>[Can</a> Google Grow Up? Google is one of the best things to happen to the Net. So will its IPO, expected this spring, be a must-buy? A look inside reveals a talented company facing trouble. - December 8, 2003](<a href=“http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/12/08/355116/index.htm]Can”>Can Google Grow Up? Google is one of the best things to happen to the Net. So will its IPO, expected this spring, be a must-buy? A look inside reveals a talented company facing trouble. - December 8, 2003)</p>
<p>Now, granted, this was some years ago. Google has changed since then and has become a less selective company. {Google has also become a far less desirable company to work for than in 2003, if for no other reason, because 2004 was when Google had its IPO which means that everybody who got in beforehand became filthy rich.} Other companies have become arguably just as selective, and selective on attributes such as education rather than experience, as Google used to be. Such as Facebook. {Similar to Google in 2003, Facebook hasn’t had its IPO yet, and so those who can get in now will become filthy rich whenever it does. }</p>
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<p>I think this depends strongly on which startups or small companies you’re talking about. As discussed above, many startups are actually among the most selective companies in the world, and certainly far more selective than almost any large company. Google in 2003 was arguably the most selective engineering company in the world, probably because everybody knew that Google was on the brink of its IPO which meant quick riches for everybody who had gotten into the company. One can also look at Google in its earliest days as a tiny firm when it was practically impossible to find anybody who worked at the company who didn’t come from Stanford - a perfectly logical outcome as Brin and Page were Stanford grad students, and upon dropping out to start their company, they did what all startup founders do to staff up, which is to hire their friends, most of which were naturally at the same school as they were. While Google now is less selective than it was before, Google remains one of the most selective firms in the world. Certainly more selective than the far larger HP or IBM, each of which has literally 15-20x the number of employees that Google does.</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that big firms don’t necessarily equate to ‘top’ firms, and certainly not to selectivity. General Motors is a huge company. Does any decent engineering student really want to work there right now? I think most existing GM engineers don’t really want to work at GM, what with all of the salary/benefit clawbacks and perpetual layoffs. They’re there because they can’t find anything better in this economy, and certainly not in the Rust Belt region where most of them live. Many of the best students from MIT or Stanford would rather work for cool startups, or even launch their own, than work for an established and mature large company. That’s a major reason for why so many startups are founded and staffed by MIT and Stanford graduates. </p>
<p>Now, to be fair, I can agree that there are also plenty of mediocre startups and small companies, and it is probably true that some people would rather work for a mediocre large company than a mediocre small company. But I don’t think that anybody with top engineering grades - even from a lower ranked school - really needs to worry about that.</p>