In my experience, this has been true. I think that one of the biggest perks of my (elite) college’s name was the benefit of the doubt when I was younger and trying out a few different career paths (most of which ended up being not connected to my undergraduate studies). I can think of a couple of jobs where the person hiring seemed to assume my expertise based on my education instead of my pretty thin resume. I am sure that if I had been lousy at the jobs, that benefit of the doubt might have dissipated quickly, but I suspect that it helped get my foot in the door each time I changed careers.
In any case, I mostly agree with posters who value the intangibles, making it really hard to generalize. The answer is always going to be different for everyone; plus so much is unpredictable so maybe the least risky path is to spend as little as possible on an undergraduate school. Still I think this conversation may have it backwards. Maybe, the college name is the least relevant for students who plan to stick to a singe career area, particularly when it is engineering or another pre-professional field. In my experience attending a college with a well-known name can give a little more flexibility to students who don’t actually know what they want to do or who anticipate that they play around in different fields after graduation.
It might be interesting to consider if the ROI is actually better for kids who aren’t at the top of their class at an elite institution? The top kids could thrive anywhere and still have the opportunity to go to an elite grad school.
I’ve worked in corporate recruiting for 35+ years and have never worked for a company whose primary strategy was “local and regional”.
Large multinational corporations can’t depend on JUST the local university. If you have a leadership rotational program which leads to general management roles on a fast track- and language fluency is one of the key components-- you are likely recruiting at BYU at some point even if you don’t have a single facility in the State of Utah.
Coolguy, how many people have you hired in your career and how many different functions? I’ve hired everything from actuaries to zoologists; Bachelor’s to PhD, with certifications ranging from CFA/CPA/CMA to bar admission in multiple states simultaneously and everything in between. I’ve worked for zero companies whose talent strategy was “hire local”. Yes- minimum wage jobs. Office support roles. Anything below the level where relocating someone made no sense- either strategically or financially. But your lack of experience across any functions besides the technical is showing.
Companies move people across the country and around the world every single day (even during Covid, although NOT to Canada, China, or New Zealand during the shutdowns). Why do you think they bother if they can get everything they need locally?
I am sorry that I posted about the social cachet of attending an elite educational institution. It is not something I drop at cocktail parties, good lord. Apparently some don’t want to believe it’s a thing. But it is.
I will give my most recent example. I am a farmer in a small town. (That conjures certain assumptions). I met a former Inspector General recently. He will be teaching at the law school I attended. It was appropriate, I thought, to tell him that’s where I went, and how enjoyable the area was. I could see his perception of me visibly change. Now – should he have pigeonholed me a certain way initially? And change his opinion of me? Probably not. But in the real world, this happens all the time.
I am not going to belabor the point. But you don’t have to be an insecure jerk to see the social capital one gets from attending an elite school.
PS And why was I dining with a former Inspector General, who was frequently in the news? Because it was at my husband’s (elite) college reunion and they were college friends.
Agreed. I had a colleague many years ago who was a socially awkward nerd. Not an outstanding employee or someone you’d want to spend time with. But his previous job had been as Stephen Hawking’s PhD student which got him enormous amounts of attention from strangers when it came up at social events and I suspect was instrumental in him getting hired at the company in the first place.
I actually don’t agree with this. The top kids, like everyone else, need challenges to excel and move beyond their comport zones. It’s harder (but not impossible) for the top kids to find challenges if they aren’t surrounded by their academic peers.
I think some difference in opinions about the intangible benefits of education at “elites” come from previous experience of private vs public schooling. Several people here had put their kids in private high schools, and value the quality of private education.
When we had to choose between an expensive house in a good public school district and a less expensive house with money left over for private education, we chose the former. It made sense to us financially with two kids, especially when the LPS is considered outstanding.
My husband and I come from a small European country nowhere near as rich as the US where there are no private schools. However, we went to national magnet schools with entrance exams at 13, and received EXCELLENT public education. My husband got medals in a
couple of international STEM olympiads and is teaching at a T-5. He was a smart kid from humble background, and the HS transformed his life.
Little did we know that the public education here is different, at least in California. There were incompetent teachers, shallow curriculums and confusing teaching methods. Problem solving was deemphasized, and busy work was king. The school district put more effort and resources into things like ECs, mental health (not that it is not important but why should the school take care of it), etc than actual teaching. This is one of the most desirable schools in one of the richest parts of the US.
I don’t know how things progress in college, but, when the time came for my kids to apply to college, I encourage them to apply to the best private institutions for the potential opportunity to receive the best possible education. I did not even know about the management consulting and the I-banking routes. So, just a personal story of a clueless immigrant mother who grew up elsewhere.
ETA: Education improved in HS vs middle school, and my kids did have several excellent teachers who ended up their personal (and my) heroes.
In the first you are basing your argument on the validity of consolidating third party sources and dismissing anecdotal experience and views as “myth and magic”. While in the second you base your views on the personal experiences of family members (mythology) and dismiss those sighting third parties such as USNWR ad “parroting”.
I am neither agreeing or disagreeing just pointing out that I find it confusing.
Perhaps the real question is, if a student who got admitted to MIT, or had the college admission credentials to get admitted to MIT if they applied, instead attends a school like Missouri University of Science and Technology (perhaps because of financial limitations or other parent imposed restrictions) in the same major that they would have chosen at MIT, would post-graduation paths and opportunities be significantly different?
How did those kids excel in high school? An ordinary high school that is not huge may not have much of a top-end peer group. Even an elite high school may not have that many students who get into the most elite colleges (and they typically do not all have the same academic strengths and interests, and some of them may get into those colleges more through hooks than off-the-scale academic strength).
I enjoyed reading this thread, the back and forth between different schools of thoughts by folks from different walks of life. The more I think about it, though, the more I find this whole debate resembles that of buying a car (that someone on CC, probably not this thread, pointed out). It is true that a Ferrari/Porsche offers its buyer unparalleled capabilities, cool features, and social cachet not available with “everyday” cars — just like an MIT/Harvard degree allows one to go places likely not achievable with non-elite schools, at least upon graduation. It is also true that the everyday cars could comfortably take one from any point A to any point B, and who cares about those fancy features — just like a state school degree could get one hired at a regular company, and nobody cares where one went to school after a few years; it’s what one could do that counts. Any debate on which car to buy will likely never have one party ever convincing the other, because people want/value different things. Same with colleges. And as said earlier, the debate is going to flare up every three months or so, with no foreseeable end to it. I enjoyed the discussions though
I agree that top kids will benefit from surrounded by those who will push them, but also agree that they will thrive anywhere - there are opportunities to be pushed to be found at every college, and there are “top kids” at every college. The myth that the kids at the elite schools are somehow “better” or more fit than kids from University X is just that - a myth. I have 2 kids at “elite” schools. They are amazing kids - strong students, absolutely “top” - so are their peers at their institutions, and so are their peers from high school who go to University X. The elite schools do offer more support, more mentoring and more opportunities. My kids are benefiting from that, and appreciate it. They are getting “extra help” - I think that is the bottom line that we are discussing - the elite schools offer a variety of possible advantages and we all want our kids to have every advantage. However, if our kids do not attend “elite” schools, for whatever reason - there are MANY other great schools and opportunities for wonderful successful careers - the college one attends is one factor among many. I think that some of the “pretentious” vibe of some of these schools comes from the opinion that the students are somewhat academically superior, and therefore “better” - when, in fact, there is not great evidence that that belief is true.
Scroll through any ED and RD admission thread on this site and you’ll see countless stories of outstanding kids who got rejected from elite schools – schools that state (probably accurately) that they could fill two or three classes with applicants they rejected without seeing overall student quality decline. We all know that students today have to do so much more to get into these schools than they did a generation ago. And the applicants to these schools don’t include the students who don’t have the funds, the savvy, the family traditions, or the college counselors to guide them anywhere but in-state publics (not even flagships).
The consequence? There are brilliant students everywhere. And, while we’re at it, brilliant professors everywhere, given the state of academic job market today. So there are challenging environments everywhere. Schools are not evenly resourced, of course, and opportunities are not equal across the board. But the top students will find their peers/mentors/challenges and the support they need to achieve. Maybe they have to work a little harder to find these things, but maybe there’s a payoff for that in the long run.
That’s not to say that MIT and Directional State U are equal – just that the best students can succeed (and find their peers) anywhere.
I can’t remember if you’ve ever told us where you are from but this kind of thing happens to rural people and people from the South all the frickin’ time. I see it here on CC all the time where people say they want suggestions for colleges, but not in the South.
I find this whole debate tiresome. My answer is absolutely elite colleges are not “worth it” because I don’t place my or my kids’ worth in how much money or how many connections they can make to climb the ladder. I want them to be able to support themselves, have friends, have joy in their lives, and lots of love and health, and enjoy themselves and give back to others.
I think opportunities between schools are different. That doesn’t mean they’re better. For example, my son’s first company had a founder with degrees from Cal and Stanford, yet he didn’t recruit at either. I’m certain that there are companies that recruit at Cal and Stanford, that don’t recruit at my son’s alma mater. The issue is, are they substantially equivalent.
At many schools there are students that were competitive for or might have been accepted at MIT. At MIT every kid was both competitive and accepted at MIT.
