So graduate school at Harvard and Stanford are prestigious but their undergrad programs are not? Is there some invisible filter that makes sure their undergrad classes are of lesser quality? Is there no overlap of profs that teach both undergrads and grads? Don’t some undergrads take grad classes?
I’ve never subscribed to the notion that undergrad doesn’t matter. For students who are not planning on grad school their undergrad school surly matters.
Harvard and Stanford are prestigious undergrad and grad, don’t want you to bent out of shape on that given you’re a Stanford devotee. The question is payoff and yes grad school at Harvard and Stanford would be worth it over the undergrad. If you have a choice of just Stanford undergrad with loans or some other college undergrad without loans and Stanford GSB, you take GSB. That would be worth it, is anyone saying it’s not?
You seem to be suggesting the disproportionate elite representation at grad level proves a failure at the undergrad level. I respectfully suggest that such an opinion is a flawed understanding of why people pursue graduate degrees and the reality that the elite undergrad pedigree is providing a disproportionate advantage in pursuing elite grad degrees and admissions.
In spite of your personal stated experience most students pursuing an MBA are not looking for a change but instead burnishing their knowledge and credentials so they can advance their careers. The fact is that students who attend elite schools on an undergrad level seem to gain access to these opportunities at rates 50-75 times greater then their statistical representation. In my opinion it is a bit of a reach trying to use a Dartmouth, Duke or Brown students attendance at Stanford or Harvard business school (versus “running the world” as you suggest) as evidence that the elite undergrads didn’t provide an advantage. I would suspect the gateway provided by those elite undergrads to super elite B schools would by most informed people be viewed as a long term positive.
So if I understand your position elite schools in spite of their low acceptance rates aren’t really picking and choosing the tippy top. If Harvard/ Stanford (other low single digit acceptance rate) are not being the most selective who is? Please be specific as to who is the most selective given your Harvard “not to selective” comment.
First off, define “tippy top” again not in the circular reasoning that they’re at Harvard, we get that.
And a Dartmouth to Harvard MBA has a lot of wealth and privilege associated with it. Not many can afford that path. You make it sound like anybody can afford or know how to do the Dartmouth to Harvard and that’s not the case. That’s closed to off to 99.9% of the country. Privilege is by definition exclusionary.
Actually rather then asking me for further definition what did you mean when you said “not too selective is it” referencing Harvard. Who is more selective?
“And a Dartmouth to Harvard MBA has a lot of wealth and privilege associated with it. Not many can afford that path. You make it sound like anybody can afford or know how to do the Dartmouth to Harvard and that’s not the case. That’s closed to off to 99.9% of the country. Privilege is by definition exclusionary.”
Is this now about privilege? So I guess you concede there is an advantage/opportunity to prestige undergrad but now it is a matter of privilege?
I never suggested all could afford it or that it was fair. The discussion was regarding whether the advantage of elites existed not whether or not access was equitable.
Students go to GSB, HBS and other top business schools typically to change careers (pivot as they say). They also go for networking reasons. Getting in doesn’t require an elite undergrad degree. Score a 730+ on the GMAT, have a high undergrad GPA, and have excellent work experience with strong leadership achievement or potential, and a well-articulated reason for getting an MBA and your chances of acceptance are pretty good regardless of undergrad. The payoff is quite high, a significant percentage of attendees are already wealthy, some students attend on firm sponsorship, and they offer generous financial aid.
This thread is about undergrad. Very different calculus.
The fact it’s closed off means you’re get the best and the brightest of a smaller pool, and in fact may not be getting the best and the brightest, only the best and brightest of the wealthy and connected.
Not selective - 80% is not selective, how can that be interpreted any other way? Yes they’re athletes and have strong academics and maybe other places like Berkeley and Michigan accept 90% of athletes with that profile. Whatever you want to believe to feel better, go for it. Maybe UCB and UM accept 99% of legacies to Harvard’s 60%, again making Harvard the most selective. When you have such a confirmation bias, you’re going to make up whatever you want. I do the same.
“ Students go to GSB, HBS and other top business schools typically to change careers (pivot as they say).”
And then…
“ students attend on firm sponsorship, and they offer generous financial aid.”
This is simply factually wrong and contradicted by your citation that MBAs are often funded by employers. Employers don’t pay to have employees pivot.
Most students who attend top business schools aren’t pivoting or leaving a prior career but using the MBA experience as an opportunity to improve their knowledge and accelerate their careers. Any attempt to describe a top business school as a land of broken toys has never attended a top business school. The students tend to be in pursuit of a specific skill to advance their careers, not responding to a professional mid life crisis.
To be specific, Boston Consulting doesn’t pay for your MBA so you can “find yourself” nor does a 3rd year analyst (asspiring associate) leave $400k+ at Goldman Sachs to contemplate their existence. They go not to pivot but to learn and progress.
I know you are trying to win an argument but diminishing graduate business education as a “pivoting” mechanism is simply not accurate.
Are you now acknowledging that Ivy+ over representation at top business schools exists but using it as supposed “proof” that Ivy+ students aren’t professionally successful. I would respectfully suggest that is a flawed conclusion.
Minor question here and not disagreeing with your main point. Where do you get the 60% legacy admit rate at Harvard? I thought it was more like 30% plus based on the Harvard lawsuit. The recruited athlete admit rate which you cite seems accurate
“The fact it’s closed off means you’re get the best and the brightest of a smaller pool, and in fact may not be getting the best and the brightest, only the best and brightest of the wealthy and connected.
Not selective - 80% is not selective, how can that be interpreted any other way? Yes they’re athletes and have strong academics and maybe other places like Berkeley and Michigan accept 90% of athletes with that profile. Whatever you want to believe to feel better, go for it. Maybe UCB and UM accept 99% of legacies to Harvard’s 60%, again making Harvard the most selective. When you have such a confirmation bias, you’re going to make up whatever you want. I do the same.”
I am so confused so who is the most selective?
The 60% is for those with academic rating of 2 or higher, I think the overall legacy is around 33%, there’s also some overlap of legacies with the Development or what’s called z-list, I think everyone on the z-list gets in (Malia Obama e.g. and for political balance, Jared Kushner). Malia Obama is also a legacy so you have some overlap.
The most recent survey on this and it was in 2018 I think said changing careers is the #2 reason behind acquiring new skills, networking was 3’rd, accelerating career was 4th. You could select more than one.
Citation please and was it top 10 business schools? Yes at peripheral schools people may be looking to pivot, but at the top schools the students are more purposeful.
Also please respond what school has the most selective admissions process and draws the most qualified, proven students. While you seem to retry and discredit Harvard’s selectivity (z lists, Kushners, Obama’s, etc) I couldn’t identify which schools you thought were more selective.
You’ve said correlation does not equal causation many times, yet you continue to repeat the same overrpreresentation figures, which does not provide any evidence that the college name/attendance was a factor, rather than other things that are correlated with college name/attendacne.
As a simple example, nearly all of the “elite” colleges we have been discussing show a dramatic overrpresentation of Asian students. For example, Harvard’s class profile page at Admissions Statistics mentions 26% of admitted students were Asian. However, the most recent census says 5.6% of the US population is Asian. Admitted Harvard students are many times more likely to be Asian than suggested by the US population distribution. Does this prove that Harvard favors Asian applicants over applicants from other races?
It’s theoretically possible that the extreme overrpresentation of Asian students occurs because Harvard favors Asian applicants over other races. However, the lawsuit analysis did not show this. Instead an internal Harvard analysis from the lawsuit (see http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-145-Admissions-Part-II-Report.pdf ) found that if admission was purely based on “academics” (mostly stats) without hooks or holistic criteria, then an even higher 43% of admits would be Asian. Instead the analysis found that this incredibly high overrpresentation of 43% of top “academic” admits being Asian when ~5.6% of population is Asian primarily occurred for 2 other reasons:
To prove that overrpresentation is due to the undergrad college attended and not other correlated factors, you need to have some control or consideration for the 2 reasons stated above. For example, an overrpresentation of attended Ivy for undergrad at Harvard Business School was mentioned recently. Considering the 2 possible other reasons above:
I think the answer to both is a resounding yes. So even if HBS does not consider the undergrad college name at all in the admission decision process, I’d expect Ivy League colleges are going to be severely overrepresented among kids martriculating to HBS. It’s certainly possible that HBS directly favors Ivy League undergrad name, or there is a indirect correlation like HBS favors Goldman Sachs employees and GS favors Ivy grads, but just stating that there is an overrpresentation of kids who attended an Ivy+ college for undergrad does not prove or often even suggest that a particular student would be more likely have that positive outcome, if he/she attended an Ivy college for undergrad rather than elsewhere.
Harvard, namely Harvard College, is a bit more discriminating than that. Malia wouldn’t be considered a legacy at Harvard because neither of her parents graduated from Harvard College (Harvard Law, or HBS for that matter, doesn’t count). She did belong to the other list, however.
“Citation please and was it top 10 business schools?”
At this point I don’t think it makes much sense to give more sources and information as you seem to explain everything away.
So the study you based your argument upon does exist but you won’t provide it. Fair enough I believe you. Thanks.
Here is a study that does bolster some of my observations. I provide it in its entirety.
As a state school undergrad, Top 5 MBA program grad, I have some perspective on the graduate school vs. undergraduate school debate.
Generally, undergrad is to prepare you for your first job, both technically and from a maturity standpoint. I think the experience of living on your own for the first time is hugely formative, and the partying is a lot of fun too. Those things can be achieved at a lot of schools. As a high school senior, I was not going to ask my single mom to pay private school prices for me to attend classes between keg parties, which was my primary focus between the ages of 18 and 22. I had a great time in college, made a lot of lifetime friends, and along the way I got a fantastic education for my first job in finance.
MBA programs are partially to fill out business and finance skills for non business undergrads, but more importantly, the better schools are excellent at teaching applied strategy in business settings. They teach you how to think. I am sure the undergrad schools argue they are teaching kids how to think, but a 21 year old kid’s thoughts on business strategy are significantly less valuable without the context of work experience. A top MBA program brings in adults, typically in their late 20’s, from a broad diversity of work backgrounds into a setting where they can discuss and learn strategy from top professors and a self-selected group of intellectually curious business professionals that have already been successful and are looking to be leaders in their field.
I would recommend that anyone that wants to reach a high level in a corporate environment strongly consider getting an MBA, whether from a T5-10 school full time, or part-time from whatever the strongest program in their area is. Part time won’t be as rewarding an experience, but it is really hard to learn the theoretical underpinnings of a lot of business activities without some form of additional classroom education.
Back to this discussion, I still struggle with the benefit of paying $75k a year for a “prestige” private when viewed within this context. Before the HYPSM crew in this thread responds with “but Harvard…”, I would like someone to make the same argument for a non-Top 10 “prestige private” vs. a state school ranked #30-70.
She is:
Vanderbilt University - Law School; IZA Institute of Labor Economics; Vanderbilt University - Owen Graduate School of Management; Vanderbilt University - College of Arts and Science - Department of Economics
Catching Up Is Hard to Do: Undergraduate Prestige, Elite Graduate Programs, and the Earnings Premium
Sorry @Catcherinthetoast - posted when I read the comment and just got to your post.
Could one not say the same about the value of a prestigious college degree? 
In practice, the value of an Ivy League degree does appear to be more stable than the stock market. But a family that goes all in on getting their kid into a college they can barely afford is making a speculative investment. We see examples where it pays off big and other examples where the burden exceeds any benefit, and in hindsight, a top public university would have been a wise choice… or depending on the individual, community college and a professional certification, with the difference in cost used as a down payment on a house. I mean, there are many options in life and nobody can see the future.
I don’t think investing $100k in a mutual fund when your kid is born and sitting on it till their 40th birthday is a great plan, but it doesn’t mean that getting a second mortgage on your house to send them to an expensive college is a much better idea. As I’ve said, I understand why nearly anyone would go to HYPSM (or some others like Caltech) if they possibly could.
Other private universities may be better than most public flagships, but it is hard to justify the cost (if you’re rich enough, you can justify it the same way you justify a 50 foot sailing yacht). For normal people, I think it is very reasonable to look at the whole picture.
When can you begin saving money ostensibly earmarked for college? (ideally as early as possible) What kind of financial ROI can you get from it? How does that compare to your projected return from your university of choice? Again, I emphasize “projected” because nobody knows. What you make of your degree depends on both the economy and individual factors.