<p>I know nobody's going to agree with me when I say this, but it's definitely one of those "wish-I-had-known-then-what-I-know-now" moments, and I wish somebody had told me this when I was in high school, :</p>
<p>In general, businesses don't look at what college you went to.</p>
<p>They want to see that you went, and that you distinguished yourself wherever you ended up. In general, hiring managers fall into three groups: the first doesn't know anything about colleges at all and just thinks it's great you finished; the second may actually dislike college experience because it tends to make people think they know more than they actually do; the third knows a decent amount about colleges, which means he knows that the admissions process is inherently irrational and means nothing in the working world.</p>
<p>You may think I'm being ridiculous. I would have thought so too, once upon a time. Let me prove my point with some anecdotal evidence, though . . . </p>
<p>My second summer in college I had an internship at the Merrill Lynch headquarters in Jacksonville. My first day as an intern was also the first day for two new analysts. One had graduated from UF (my alma mater) and the other from an Ivy--I wanna say Yale, but I don't know. I watched them sit in adjacent cubicles and receive exactly the same training from exactly the same person, then set about learning exactly the same software. Four years at institutions that are supposed to be night-and-day had landed them both in the same position, literally within stapling distance of each other (except, perhaps, that one was in serious debt and the other wasn't). I mentioned this to the contact I had originally interviewed with, who has since become a good friend, because I thought it was interesting. He actually said that he and several other hiring managers preferred not to hire Ivy league types because they tended to look down on their co-workers. So that's at least one instance (and one office environment) where going to a less prestigious school might work in someone's favor.</p>
<p>Here's further proof that experience and acumen beat pedigree: distance education and night classes are very popular options for working professionals, who often are required by their companies to have a particular degree before they can get promoted or receive raises. The schools that provide these alternatives are, generally speaking, anything but prestigious. But working adults with mortgages and mouths to feed keep registering with them, because they know that their employers know that a masters from one program is the same as a masters from any other program. These people wouldn't put in the time and money to get useless degrees--the fact that they DO put in the time and money shows the degree isn't useless just because it came from an online campus nobody ever heard of.</p>
<p>Finally, a very stupid but readily accessible example--did anybody watch the episodes of "the apprentice" where trump put all the "book smart" people against the "street smart" people? Two things are instructive about that classification. First, the "book smart" players were people who had graduated from ANY college with ANY degree, which shows you what the working world thinks of college. Second, the "book smart" players almost always lost, because they didn't actually know anything that would be useful to a business.</p>
<p>Of course, there are exceptions. Certain law firms, especially, are likely to recruit only from select schools. But when it comes to the vast majority of employers, a college degree today is little more than a high school degree was a long time ago: an indication that you could be serious and dedicated enough to do something challenging but not particularly relevant to the problem of earning a living and contributing to an organization.</p>
<p>Now, I'm not saying there aren't plenty of good reasons to have a dream school and to work hard to get admitted. There are. But they have little to do with your career. If you want a good job after college, the important thing is to distinguish yourself from the pack, no matter where you go. Imagine you're an employer, and your hiring decisions might affect the livelihoods of thousands, not to mention your own--are you more impressed by the word "harvard" or by the fact that someone worked several summer jobs in a variety of industries and is able to get along with people?</p>
<p>Anyway, I know nobody's gonna take this to heart, but like I said--I wish somebody had told me. It would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.</p>