Am I the only middle aged person here who knows grads from Stanford, Harvard, Yale etc. doing pretty much the same types of work that grads from Wake Forest and so-called “lesser” universities do? They are doctors, lawyers, teachers, professors, filmmakers, producers, scientists, businessmen, journalists, etc. They aren’t masters of the universe nor are they Nobel prize-winners. They have happy, successful lives and their self-worth is not defined by their degree. If they did attend a prestigious university like Harvard or Stanford, it is likely their children do not. And they are perfectly fine with that, and if one of their kids does go to Harvard or Stanford, they are happy with that, too. It doesn’t make them love that child more and often they recognize that their child that got into prestigious university x is no smarter than their child that did not get in. And they also see that the students going to those universities are not necessarily the smartest but sometimes the most connected.
If your goal is investment banking and Goldman Sachs seems like nirvana, then yes, going to Harvard or Princeton is it. If you believe your degree from Stanford guarantees you a fantastic position at some silicon valley firm, then yes, go to Stanford. (Although I find that ironic given that it seems likely that if you are actually brilliant enough, you don’t even need college at all for tech jobs).
If you are a few years out of college and you still have to count on your “prestigious” college degree to make people accept you or respect you, then you are hanging out with the wrong people. Or you are on a career path that the majority of graduates from those schools do not want and do not value. If your goal is to be on that career path - like investment banking - then choose prestige. But if your goal is to have a happy life, then it is highly unlikely that the people you choose to surround yourself will care about whether your college degree is from Wake Forest or Stanford. They will like and respect you for who you are, for what kind of person you are, not your degree. And students choosing a school for prestige may find themselves disappointed that most people will judge them by their character and what they do in their workplace and their life, not the name of the college they attended.
Google search revealed that Stanford has the first or second most alumni of any school at Google, Facebook & Apple.(San Jose State was ahead of Google at one of the three companies.)
Could not find any support for a poster’s earlier statement that 247 WFU grads worked at Goldman Sachs. But GS has almost 37,000 employees worldwide and several divisions. Most GS placement discussion revolves around IB (investment bank division).
What is interesting is that there is a list, now 3 years old, of the top ten feeder schools to Goldman Sachs IB and school #10 had 248 alumni at Goldman Sachs–so it is possible that #11 could be a school with 247 alumni.
P.S. JP Morgan has the most interesting list of employees by school affiliation. While Ohio State was at number one with 1,811 JP Morgan employees, number two was the University of Phoenix with 1,081 employees at JP Morgan.
Of course, number of employees is not meaningful unless their positions & pay are known. That is why most discussion focuses on the high paying IB positions when referring to “feeder schools”.
“If you are a few years out of college and you still have to count on your “prestigious” college degree to make people accept you or respect you, then you are hanging out with the wrong people.”
I look at this a little differently, I don’t think most students only choose to go to Stanford, Harvard, or MIT because it’s “prestigious” but because it’s a world class institution that will shape them for four (4) very important years of their life and is an education that will stay with them long after they receive their college diploma. Is it a fluke that Stanford is one of the best educational institutions in the world, or, as I think, maybe they do things a little better than their peers.
Well, I can tell that I’ve never met anyone from WF here in the SF Bay Area or anywhere yet. I know many/most of folks in my peer network that did attend prestigious universities, but I didn’t.
Regarding the children and where they attended, as I said up-thread, the Stanford doctor across the street will likely have all 3 of their children attend Stanford. One is in middle school, but the other two are there. The Stanford professor in the School of Medicine. His two children graduated Stanford. They do get reduced tuition though, so that helps.
Someone I work with went Yale. His oldest child went to Yale. Another person at work went to Stanford. His child went to Stanford.
The 8-9 +/- brilliant students that graduated our local HS and now attend Stanford Class of 2022, yep, most of their parents went to Stanford. I know one of those Stanford students, whose parents didn’t attend Stanford. She actually chose Stanford over MIT and Harvard. Not that its relevant here. All really smart kids though.
It sounds as if Stanford admits a lot of students whose parents have a connection to Stanford. While I am sure the 8-9+ students who graduated your local HS and now attend Stanford are brilliant, I suspect all of them are not more brilliant than 200 unconnected students (maybe more!) who applied from high schools all over the country and got rejected. Some of those will end up at schools like Wake Forest – especially if they are students whose families don’t qualify for financial aid and decide that merit money at Wake Forest is better than full pay at Dartmouth or Northwestern or even Duke.
You must live in very rarefied community. Outside of incredibly affluent communities or expensive private schools, most graduates from those schools don’t send all their kids there. At least, I certainly don’t see it (anecdotally, of course).
The bottom line for me is that I see incredibly successful people, many of whom attended Stanford. And some of their children do too. With or without connections. The 8-9 +/- kids from the HS Class of 2018 were from the same class as my kid and they all attended an extremely diverse local SV public school of 2,400-ish kids.
As far as I can tell, WF graduates aren’t well represented in my community, which isn’t “rarefied.” I’ve just not run across any WF graduates. Or Ole Miss for that matter. I do know someone very well from the State of Alabama, but he’s the Dartmouth graduate I mentioned earlier. He drives me nuts though, because he’s a big Bama football fan.
“And they also see that the students going to those universities are not necessarily the smartest but sometimes the most connected.”
As the recent scandal has shown, there may be more than one way into a high-end university. However, rightly or wrongly, it still remains that in many cases attending one of the HYPSM or peer colleges BY ITSELF is taken as a mark of achievement - apart from the courses you took or the grades you earned. When a Hollywood movie wants to signal to the audience that a given character is a very smart high-achiever, it often writes them into the script as a Harvard graduate. And everyone in the audience gets the point.
I think employers know that there are many wonderful and very smart kids coming out of schools other than the very top, but the percentage of the graduating class that is comprised of really bright kids coming out of Harvard, Stanford, etc. is going to be higher than out of lesser schools such as say, my alma mater, UC Davis.
But by focusing solely on internship, employment opportunities, and career success perhaps misses an important component of motivation of whether to choose Stanford even when it costs more money. Namely, for some individuals, part of the goal they are seeking may be Stanford itself, rather than better opportunities later that it may or may not provide. If attending Stanford is a significant part of the goal, then saving all that money by going to “lesser” school may not be worth it to them.
@socaldad2002 When you say people shouldn’t need to rely on their education after a few years out of school, you are missing an entire set of people who work for themselves/consult/are knowledge workers/ or own businesses. Their education is essential to getting them work ( putting food on the table). In some industries clients care about your education because they are paying you for knowledge and that is one component. Granted for someone who works in government or some job with very little change, it doesn’t matter all that much. But for a large segment of the population in particular knowledge workers of various types it can mean tens of thousands of dollars every year or more for a lifetime. That is money in the bank. BTW, I know entire classes of people who rely on their education in this manner.
This is likely to continue given that very few people work for the same corporation for a lifetime.
@socaldad2002 Sorry I just realized you were citing someone else’s quote. Didn’t mean to take you out of context. My point was with the first sentence ( which obviously was not yours)
Sushiritto likely lives near Silicon Valley, so of course there is disproportionate attendance at Stanford. The same is true at Princeton for NJ, Harvard for Massachusetts, Emory for Georgia, etc. If one is just judging from one’s hometown, the results are both narrow and skewed.
On another thread choosing between Princeton and Pomona, an astute poster brought up a great point.
She referenced the foremost scientist in molecular biology, Bonnie Bassler, who is a noted professor at Princeton.
And she stated it’s a great reason to look at studying that major there instead of Pomona. Reinforcing how important it is to have access to quality of the profs. Don’t disagree.
Worth mentioning she is a graduate of UC Davis. She obviously survived without the like minded and equally brilliant students to make it bearable . And the unique access and research opportunities that seem to be the exclusive domain of five or six schools.
But funny to me that the reason to reasonably select Princeton over equally elite Pomona in 2019 may be access to a lowly UCD grad (sarcasm) . Not even a state flagship.
Side note. If saying that Stanford grads dominate in Palo Alto and greater SF tech goes without saying. Hopkins in Baltimore. CMU and Pitt in Pittsburgh. UCLA’s and usc is LA. Harvard and MIT in Cambridge. NYU and Columbia in NYC. Etc etc can say the same thing.
Where i live it would be intersesting to meet a Stanford grad. I know a few and they are b school grads. But Brown and the state school dominates. And who cares?
I have family and friends from all parts of the Bay Area, including SF, Oakland, Berkeley, etc. I haven’t lived in SV all my life and I also don’t work in SV.
There’s plenty of other universities around here too, including Cal, Santa Clara, USF, St. Mary’s, GGU, CSU East Bay, UCSC, SJSU, etc. I have quite a few of my immediate relatives that went to Cal, including one who graduated in 2018-2019.
Edit: Nope, I don’t live in Palo Alto or Stanford, CA. My two best buds? Penn State alum and the other is from India. But we can keep playing 20 questions or get back on topic.
@Rivet2000 And then everyone complains about rich kids getting in because of huge donations. Until it supports the argument why it makes them better.
Princeton is a better school in nearly all categories than UCD.
But for the right set of circumstances like a Stamps scholarship and a full ride it’s more than good enough.
If someone wants to spend their money on a school that is super elite. I have no problem with that at all. In the absence of competitive alternatives I would and currently am doing this personally. But that’s not the question being asked.
And no one is saying that wf or ole miss have the same reputation or super elite composition.
It’s just the “no brainer” commentary among some. It’s funny that the least open minded responses to a dialogue around this and to differing opinion seem to be grads of these super elites or their ardent supporters. You would think open minded exploration is what these fine schools would encourage. Not close mindedness. And they would be the least insecure about how the world viewed them. There’s room at the top for a few more people and doesn’t disparage or reduce your great schools in any way.
1 University of California, Berkeley
2 Stanford University
3 Carnegie Mellon University
4 University of Southern California
5 The University of Texas at Austin
6 Georgia Institute of Technology
7 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
8 San Jose State University
9 University of California, San Diego
10 Arizona State University
11 University of Michigan
12 University of California, Los Angeles
13 North Carolina State University
14 California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
15 Cornell University
16 University of Waterloo (Canada)
17 Texas A&M University
18 University of Washington
19 Purdue University
20 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
21 Santa Clara University
22 University of Phoenix
23 University of California, Santa Barbara
24 University of California, Davis
25 Penn State University
Many CA universities, but # 3 is Pittsburgh, PA, #5 is Austin, TX, #6 is Atlanta, GA, #7 is UIUC and so on. WF didn’t make the Top 25.
The point is the SF Bay Area is a melting pot of people from everywhere.
@privatebanker If you remove money from the equation (which I think OP has) what is the value of Wake (and any non-monetary Stamps benefits) over Stanford? Isn’t that the question?
@sushiritto This supports exactly what’s been said. Look at the list of schools. 11 of the top 15 are state schools.
And if you did these same surveys in other areas stanford or other great schools won’t make the top 10 either.
But, I thought you’ve been saying that Stanford is so dominating where you live it’s hard to imagine choosing somewhere else for school? What about Cal grads. Do they fly in on Monday’s ?
And I recall earlier posts where it was nearly mocked for suggesting Cal vs. Stanford. UCB is only for Stanford rejects. Seems the employers like them.
