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State schools are not crap. If you know your major, do some research as to the top schools that do it. In my field, the top 3 schools are Oklahoma, Penn State, and Millersville. ALL STATE SCHOOLS. Harvard and Yale are much lower on the list, under other state schools like UND, UNC, FSU, and even CU @ Boulder.
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<p>Well, first off, I don't think anybody here who has seriously thought about the issue is asserting that state schools are all crap. Berkeley, for example, is a darn fine school - clearly within the top 1-2% of all schools in the country for undergrad, and probably within the top 3 in the country for your PhD. Berkeley is clearly better than the vast majority of private schools out there. </p>
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The quality of education depends on the school's rank in the major, not the reputation of the school in its entirety.
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<p>But this, I am afraid that I can't agree with. You say that you want to avoid overgeneralizations. But this, right here, is an overgeneralization. Let's use Berkeley (Cal) as an example. I and many others have noticed that Cal football players generally tend to cluster in the same majors. For example, things like American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Sociology, Social Welfare, and so on. All of these departments at Berkeley are highly ranked. But come on, do you really think that all of these players are in those majors for the education? Seriously. Come on, Cal is a major football school, and like any other major football school, has players who are only interested in making it to the NFL. According to the Wall Street Journal, Cal is the 20th most successful school in sending players to the NFL.</p>
<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com:80/public/resources/documents/retro-collegefootball0608.html%5B/url%5D">http://online.wsj.com:80/public/resources/documents/retro-collegefootball0608.html</a></p>
<p>Furthermore, Cal football players almost never major in engineering or computer science, despite those being some of the most popular majors at Cal for non-football-players. I think most people who know Cal know what's really going on here. These players aren't really that interested in getting educated. They just want to major in something easy so that they can stay eligible to play without needing to study that much in order to maximize their shot at getting to the NFL. </p>
<p>Nor do I mean to single out Cal. You can look at other major football programs at top schools and see the same thing. Stanford is indisputably an elite school that is also a NFL factory (Stanford had a bad season, but they are #30 in producing NFL players according to the WSJ), but again, a lot of Stanford football players are prioritizing football over academics. Michigan, UCLA, Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Washington, Purdue, North Carolina, USC, Notre Dame, Penn State, Texas A&M, etc. - all fine schools whose football players are generally not all that dedicated to academics. </p>
<p>So what's the relevance of all this. Simple. Just because a school has a top-ranked program in some discipline doesn't mean that that program forces its students to study hard or learn much. A lot of players just skate by, doing the bare minimum, and they still manage to pass their classes and stay eligible anyway, simply because you can do very little work in these classes and still pass. It also means that YOU as an individual student may not learn that much in those programs. For example, even if a program is highly ranked, if a lot of students in the program are not motivated to learn, don't really want to be there, and are just there to pick up an easy passing grade without doing much work, then you are most likely not going to learn much either. This happens for sociological reasons. When you are surrounded by unmotivated students, you will tend to become unmotivated yourself. </p>
<p>To give you a case in point, I know a guy at Cal who took one of these classes in an "high-ranked" program. He never showed up to class. He also never did any of the reading. The course grading was based on 2 papers from the reading. But instead of actually doing the reading, all he did was go to Amazon.com and look up the user reviews of those books, and then stitched together 2 papers by restating those user reviews in his own words. He ended up with an A- in the class. He didn't learn anything, he didn't * want * to learn anything, and he was laughing at how easy it was for him to get a high grade for doing almost nothing. </p>
<p>The point of this is that I think it's an overgeneralization to say that the quality of the education depends on the school's ranking in the major, rather than the school's overall ranking. At least an overall highly ranked school provides the assurance to an employer that the guy was at least good enough to get admitted to the school. Low-ranked schools don't even provide that assurance. Graduating from a high-ranked program also does not always provide assurance that the guy actually learned much or studied much, as evidenced by the examples above. Like I said, in many of these programs, you can do very little work and know very little about your field, and still graduate. </p>
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In the "Job World" where you went to college means nothing. Sure, there are some cases where some 'elite brotherhood/sisterhood' might give preference to an Ivy school. Maybe some people would O_O when they see a degree from an Ivy. But what matters in this "Job World" is not where you went to school. Because once you are out the school means nothing. What you learned, and what you know is what matters.</p>
<p>In my field of study, it would not phase me to go up against someone from Yale in an interview process...why? because as long as I can show I can use what I learned to perform my job better I know I can get the job. The person from Yale may have not been so bold to learn as much.
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<p>While I sympathisize with this notion, the major issue with it is that you can't even get an interview with many of the top employers if you didn't go to certain schools (i.e., the schools at which they recruit). High finance jobs like investment banking, private equity, venture capital, LBO firms, hedge funds, and the like are notorious for this. So is management consulting. It's practically impossible to get into McKinsey or Goldman Sachs if you don't go to one of the schools that they recruit at, which invariably are only the very top schools, simply because you can't even get the interview. </p>
<p>Furthermore, these firms recruit from a wide range of disciplines, which further calls into question the utility of program ranking vs. school ranking. A guy who majored in Art History at Harvard is more likely to get an offer from Goldman Sachs than a guy who majored in finance at a no-name school, simply because the Harvard guy is far more likely to get the initial interview in the first place. Fair or not fair, that's the way it works. If you want to get these kinds of jobs, you basically have to go to one of the top schools. Whether that's the way it should be or not is irrelevant. What matters is that that is how it actually works, whether we like it or not. </p>
<p>I also agree that once you are on the job, the only thing that matters is your performance and your college background is irrelevant. But again, the key issue is, you have to get that job in the first place. </p>
<p>Look, I agree with the general sentiment that nobody should feel 'inferior' to others just because they go to a lesser-ranked school. On the other hand, we should recognize that there are important advantages in going to a top school.</p>