I think we are all influenced by the anecdotes in our life. My son is at a good school, and it has been an effort for us to pay. The opportunities he has seem difficult to get outside of that school in quite so effortless a manner. Effortless not from the point of view that he is not working for it. Effortless from the point of view that as a sophomore, he started in December and got a high quality internship (the best in that industry for a Junior, that would normally result in a full time return offer) by March. He was offered interviews at GS (not being a Finance kid; did not take up on it) by April of 2021 for the summer 2022 â i.e., first dibs etc ⊠The tail outcomes of extreme wealth is very random. But the regular outcomes for a regular kid that works hard are very good.
100% that we are influenced by the anecdotes! My D has had similar outcomes at Purdue in her field, just a year sooner than your son. She was hired at the beginning of her second semester freshman year. All her friends have been successful in obtaining internships and coops, and all have job offers, most of which were before the start of their senior year.
We also see the hiring outcomes in industry, and my H has hired people from U of Alabama over Harvard. Itâs the student that makes the resume, not the school.
So far, weâve been seeing that networking with LAC alums does not disappoint. I think that niche is a little different that elite universities. Many top LACs have alums who are ready and willing to give back and are in positions to help graduates.
When considering whether it was âworth itâ to be full pay at the LACs our kids fit best, we spent a lot of time learning about the career centers and how they leverage alums to get the students internships and jobs. Dug deep on that. For us, it was both âfitâ in terms of the experience they would have on campus and very solid outcomes for graduates. Many of those outcomes helped along by alums.
But the Ivy League is literally an athletic conference! 
I keed
The hypothetical I answered removed wall street and tech jobs, but there is definitely a bias on Wall Street for elite schools in the NE like Brown. Which brings up another thing we found in our research. Hiring is still very regional.
Contrast the big consulting firms with Wall Street jobs for example. Consulting and the number of jobs has exploded in the last few decades, and the big firms have spread out to regional hubs. My nephew is a current junior at UGA Terry and has multiple offers for summer internships including the tippy top ones. Has the prestige if UGA drawn Bain to Athens? Nope. Atlanta is a natural hub for consultants because of the businesses and airport, so Bain hired some UGA grads, they worked out, and now they hire more.
Someone mentioned earlier the high salaries of CS grads from Brown, and thatâs because a lot of them end up on Wall Street or consulting instead of a traditional CS job. I think thatâs because of the regional bias, and Brownâs open curriculum, environment, and the grads are smart. Itâs really a great place to find top talent.
Yeah, I think itâs more about the fit. Finding the right place to bloom. I know your oldest is doing great at a LAC, but would he have done the same at UofM? Maybe, but I think the small classes, mentoring, and social bonds at his LAC are adding a lot.
We saw a lot of alumni support for internships, but it felt like that replaced how other schools had massive job/internship fairs. Where we didnât see the bump from alumni relationships was 5-10 years down the road. We asked A LOT of people if they found a job or found someone else a job through the alumni network and it was very rare to hear yes. This is a good place to add Wall Street is the exception.
Wall Street seems to be more focused on prestige because many in the so-called âfront officeâ came from the prestigious colleges. People in position to hire like to hire from their own (or similar to their own) colleges. Everything is relative. Thereâre some groups within some âprestigiousâ firms that would only look at resumes from a few colleges (Brown isnât even on their list). Thereâre a variety of different kinds of jobs on Wall Street, though.
Thankfully for those students attending Brown, Goldman Sachsâ Global Head of Investment Banking Jim Esposito and Bank of Americas CEO Brian Moynihan and or Barry Sternlicht the founder of private equity fund Starwood Capital all graduated from Brown. Of course there are many more examples of Browns network but prestige is a matter of perception so I am sure for some the likes of Goldman Sachs or BOA donât rank.
Bowdoin and Colgate each have âBowdoin preferredâ and âColgate preferredâ listings on their private Handshake pages. Students can start there looking for internships and jobs. Nice to have a starting point.
S19 just searched âBowdoin math majorâ in Linked In and got a very long list of matches. On this break alone, I think heâs talked to close to 25 of those alums and many were able to point him to open internships and either give a wink to HR or offered for S to give their name as a contact. Every alum he contacted responded and offered to talk to him. Itâs very time consuming to look for jobs but a pointed search via alums seems to be the way to go for kids at smaller schools where big firms donât visit necessarily. Those firms definitely still hire from these schools and it helps to have an âinâ.
It has been worth it for our family. Although D19âs school is well-known for its business school, she chose it for the groundbreaking work they are doing in the natural sciences. We have not been disappointed. The lab equipment and financial resources available to undergrads are amazing; a $21B endowment buys a lot of nice things. Alumni also regularly commission research studies from the university thereby giving students ample and exclusive opportunities to work on complex problems.
What has been most surprising are the casual job offers from the parents of her friends. D19 is not at all interested in working in banking or consulting but, through her friends, she already has a couple of offers in those industries should she change her mind.
I realize that you said you really researched this for your D. Having said that, youâre making that incredibly bold and sweeping statement among a sea of people who eat, live and breathe this topic and are fairly well convinced that theyâve researched the heck out of every aspect of college choice that there is to discuss or consider.
With that said, itâs hard for me to support this statement as actionable advice. You talked to some people and, based on their narrow experience as individuals you concluded, very specifically I might add, that only Princeton, Stanford and USC are the networks worth considering. Not Yale, not Harvard, not MIT, not Vanderbilt, not Duke, not Rice, not Amherst, not Pomona, not Columbia. Just those three schools.
I would suggest that your research was very incomplete. Yes, I know USC has a reputation for having a very tight alumni network, which I donât doubt for a second. But so does Notre Dame. This kind of sweeping conclusion doesnât even pass the reasonableness test.
I realize that you didnât say your assessment was the result of a valid scientific inquiry. But with all of the many great institutions in the US and all of the very enthusiastic alumni bases which support them, narrowing it down to only three schools makes it sound that way.
The LACs alone would call that limited list into question. As a group, they are notorious for looking out for one another. 3,000 + miles away from where they gathered, there is a pack of Hollywood heavy hitting Wes film alumni who are so loyal to their alma mater that theyâve earned the nickname âthe Wesleyan Mafiaâ in Hollywood, a town nearby where film titans USC and UCLA reside. No, there are very strong alumi networks at many schools. Dartmouth is another one that carries that rep.
As long as weâre doing anecdotes, neither of my kids have ever, once, experienced a no-reply from a fellow alumnus. They talk about it and itâs noticeable. The Wes kid had a senior guy from one of the big iBanks call her after submitting her resume - a resume that indicated no serious interest or fit in the business or finance world. He talked to her anyway for an hour, said he would get her in if she seriously wanted banking. She decided no, and he followed up with her to see how she was getting on and had a hand in helping her decide to go to grad school. My other D, also from a LAC, has about as choice a clinical position as youâre going to get with a BA to set herself up for PhD applications. This also was a direct result of alumni networking. And donât get me started on Brown. The opportunities my D has had thrown her way has been astounding, and sheâs not exactly the âgo getterâ amongst my kids.
Excellent post. And there is not only the Wesleyan mafia- Williams has one too but it dominates the Fine Art/Museum/Auction world, not entertainment. Talk about punching above its weight given the size of its graduating classes. But they take care of each other- not just for the first job, but down the line as well.
There are actual studies done on the strength of alumni networks. The ones Iâve seen are proprietary (with paid access) but the most recent one I recall had USC, Notre Dame, West Point and Smith at the top. SMU sitting one notch below.
I will also point out that an alumni network is not a passive thing. Itâs not a tap which you turn on or off. If you want to be part of an active network, you need to BE active. I now volunteer as an alumna mentor to give back to the alums who were helpful to me at different stages of my career.
Finally, industry and the state of the economy are not trivial considerations. When you are graduating with a degree in petroleum engineering and the market is tight, you donât need the alumni network to help you get a job. A few years later during one of the periodic busts? It sure helps. I remember a few years ago when everyone and their brother were writing about the critical nursing shortages, nurses being flown in from the Phillipines, etc. That was a national story. But in my city? A hospital had just closed, and two large regional hospitals had merged and they were letting experienced nurses go, or cutting back their hours and comp. So we had a glut of nurses. Did some of them want to move to Omaha or Minneapolis or Sacramento where there were shortages? Not immediately, no. Over time it evens out. But you can bet that the graduates of the âtopâ nursing program in our state- which is where the head of nursing at the newly merged hospital system had gone- were getting some sort of finger on the scale.
But kids need to learn how to make their own luck. Even with the strongest networks, career development department, etc. you canât wake up in May of senior year and wonder âWhereâs my job?â
Yes, those are good call outs. I have heard about the Williams fine arts alumni base and Iâm not even close to that world. And letting us know how Smith ranks is helpful too. My D spent a year at that school in their (relatively) well known post bacc math program. From that one year, we were all disabused about many of the generalizations made about Smith, this is another one. Lots of very serious people with serious ambition graduate from there every year, and it seems they reach back to their school. Good story. And calling it out makes me think about all of the all womenâs colleges. I would guess that every one of them excels in this category when thinking about many of the reasons why a kid would want to attend one of those schools in the first place. Iâll bet they all have a healthy, enthusiastic and loyal alumni base. And God knows theyâve all produced many successful women in all kinds of career and academic pursuits.
Yes, SMU has long had a rep of being another tight place. Itâs also by reputation one of those schools outside of the super elite that sends people to Wall Street, and they tend to reach back. Like a Boston College type university in Texas. A colleagueâs son went there and wanted a career in politics in DC, and apparently SMU does that well too.
And in the case of Vassar a few modestly successful men as wellđ
Just a few though. 
A good story on the âWest Point Mafiaâ:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/magazine/2019/11/17/west-point-alumni-pompeo-esper-state-department-071212
My S21 was accepted to Stanford and a top UC for engineering/CS. It was a no-brainer for myself and him, not so for my H but he is now a freshman at Stanford. I did not research all these career and networking opportunities and they werenât the deciding factor. The opportunity to get a good liberal art foundation, the diversity of his future classmates, the ease to explore different subjects, and the better work-life balance tipped the scale. As people said, itâs about fit and his happiness the next four years.
The difference in tuition came to $100k due to some scholarships. These are serious money but I doubt they will break the retirement plans of anybody on this forum. With the rate of inflation, they will be much less if you need them.
Also, Stanford offers coterminal masters degree that can be done in one year. Most kids get TAs so tuition is basically covered.
So far, the experience in and out of the classroom has exceeded our expectations
Timely article from the Wesleyan career center:
I think âpayoffâ depends on your major, personality, interests, drive, and what the student takes advantage of. I am not suggesting that Harvard wonât open doors for some.
I know 3 recent Harvard grads, and 2 of them are teachers (alternate route). The 3rd works from home (Dâs roommate) for a small healthcare company. She was working from her bedroom even before Covid.
The Yale grad I know is also a teacher (alternate route) and was the roommate of my daughter during their gap year program orientation. She is teaching middle school biology in an urban district and loves it. Will she remain in teaching, or will she eventually move on to something else within the field of education, such as policy or administration? Right now she is not interested, but time will tell I suppose.
I know Cornell gradsâŠone worked locally and is now back in school for school psych, one is an engineer (got the job through my friend), and one teaches AP English (alternate route).
The Penn grad I know has a good job (from the same friend ^)
I have 5 family members graduating from top LACs: one is an engineer, one is in medical school, one works in finance, one attended law school, and one has not left the couch (it has been 2 years and she is still figuring it out).
My friendâs kid attended a top 10 LAC. Worked for 3 years as a paralegal, is contemplating grad school, and currently works for a local organization.
My own daughter attended a top public and has accomplished a lot so far. Would she have accomplished more if she attended a top private? Actually, noâŠshe would not have.
I think we have to remember that there are many young adults graduating from VERY prestigious schools (Ivy League, top LACs, etc)
What is the âpayoffâ?
Some of them become wildly successful, some of them work at Starbucks for a few years while figuring it out (yes, that happens more than we think), and manyâŠmanyâŠhave good careers, make decent (but not over the top) incomes, and lead ordinary lives doing necessary work that keeps the country moving on a day-to-day basis. One of my top LAC relatives took a huge pay cut recently to do something that he feels very strongly about (his parents are not supporting him financially). He has what I consider to be a good âpayoff,â and is very successfulâŠbut not measured by salary.
Itâs a big world out there once they are out in it. My Dâs friend from undergrad was a CS major and earned a six figure income straight out of school (public).
Prestigious schools can open some doorsâŠbut not all doors.
I must be missing something here- when I look up CS grads salary and schools- there is a mix. I see prestigious schools, and I also see grads from âregularâ strong schools earning top salaries.
Personally, I agree with @AlwaysMoving that Stanford is one of the few colleges that is worth paying some extra for, especially if the studentâs intended major is CS. But how much extra is highly dependent on the student and her/his family, on whether s/he can take advantage of the extra opportunities, how much the âbetter experienceâ is worth to them and whether they can comfortably afford it. Iâd love to be able to quantify it, but I canât. And I donât believe anyone can for others. Moreover, if Stanford were substituted with another âeliteâ college, say Brown, how much extra over the cost of a âtop UCâ, if any, would you (or anyone) be willing to pay? The answer is likely to vary a great deal.
@1NJParent I agree in principle that it all comes down to the kid and that there is elite and then uber elite but your seemingly relentless desire to single out Brown is contradicted by both the near term and long term numbers.
Freeop University ROI for CS
- CMU $4,125,963
- Rice $3,781,869
- Brown $3,535,080
- Stanford $3,305,484
- Yale $3,296,380
- Harvard $3,268,145
- Caltech $3,102,888
- Cornell $2,966,699
- Cal Poly $2,920,317
- MIT $2,909,266
- UCLA $2,853,535
- UC Berkeley $2,843,321
- Duke $2,546,552
- Johns Hopkins $2,515,869
- Vanderbilt $2,461,053
- UIUC $2,417,724
- U Michigan $2,258,080
- Columbia $2,130,692
- GeorgiaTech $1,966,139
- UW Seattle $1,943,759
- University of Chicago $1,759,496
- USC $1,746,446
- UT Austin $1,701,149
- UC Davis $1,683,705
- UC San Diego $1,595
Even the WSJ ranking which consider outcomes doesnât seem to diminish Brown the way you doâŠ
