<p>A thought occurred to me today. It's not uncommon to see the old argument on this website of whether a 4.0 (or PhD) will help you or hurt you. the typical argument is that companies will think they can't afford to hire you, or that you're only good at theoretical, not practical, stuff like that. </p>
<p>"companies will be afraid to hire you, blah blah blah"</p>
<p>"no, it shows that you're a hard worker, blah blah blah". </p>
<p>Whatever. Not trying to restart that argument here, just giving an example. </p>
<p>But the thought occurred to me, could the same thing happen with super high ranked schools? Can a school be TOO prestigious, and scare off potential employers?</p>
<p>"they graduated from MIT (Stanford, Caltech, whatever), we can't hire them for our little engineering company blah blah blah"</p>
<p>I'm not in this situation, I was just curious</p>
<p>I’m guessing it depends on your personality. If you graduated from a elite school such as MIT and still are humble enough and not arrogant, they probably will hire you.</p>
<p>I have prejudisms towards specific schools. This doesn’t stop me from screening them, but I do screen different schools differently. I have done a lot of interviewing though, so I have a good feel of the strengths and weaknesses of the education from the schools I have prejudisms towards… Still, the job needs to the match the specific candidate, and I have found that there are many “diamonds in the rough”.</p>
<p>To answer your question; the “too much” will depend on the job you are trying to land more so than the employer</p>
<p>Could it be that sometimes the elite schools are not targeted for recruitment because (a) the number of engineering students is too small, and/or (b) there is too much competition from investment banking and management consulting companies, so that the yield from recruiting there is is very poor compared to the yield from recruiting at the nearby big state university with a large number of engineering students?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that elite schools “scare off” anyone but some firms probably do prefer to hire graduates of some lower-ranked programs based on the perceived practical relevance of the curricula.</p>
<p>The thing is, most engineering jobs are pretty simple and straightforward and only require a semi-decent engineer. Even a mediocre one would probably do, but no one likes to think that they need a mediocre engineer.
As such, having better qualifications can really make it harder to find these jobs because they believe (with good reason) that they won’t be getting an engineer that can do a menial task for many years. Better qualifications are best if you’re looking for the more desirable and difficult jobs in engineering.</p>
<p>How good could the worst (or say, bottom 20%) of students at MIT or Caltech be? I’d be surprised if a company’s thought process was “Students from there are too smart for us so we won’t recruit there.” Something more sensible might be “Students from there reject our offers” or “Students from there leave our company after a very short amount of time.” Given, I don’t really know.</p>
<p>Caltech graduates about 100 engineering majors per year at the bachelor’s degree level. A big state school may graduate about 800 engineering majors per year at the bachelor’s degree level. If the top 100 engineering majors at the big state school are as good as the 100 engineering majors at Caltech, then the big state school may be a more attractive place to visit to recruit, since you can recruit both the superstars (the top 100) and the merely good ones in one visit. Note that the yield for the superstars (whether at Caltech or the big state school) will be lower, due to increased competition from other employers and graduate schools.</p>
<p>You’re gonna get the same answers for the PhD, 4.0, and prestige question because it’s the same question and people answer it the same ignorant way. Goldman Sachs and Google hire people with some of the above (among other) credentials. If a firm isn’t prestigious enough to retain those people, they aren’t going to be trying to hire them. </p>
<p>McDonald’s isn’t looking for master chefs to cook their hamburgers. Your Dad isn’t looking for a tractor to cut his grass.</p>
<p>I think every average person has some experience with someone who had one really great credential but some personal flaw or a lack of other complementary credentials. What good is a Ferrari without wheels? If you’re average and work for an average firm, chances are someone working with you who went to MIT wasn’t the greatest MIT grad who ever lived and you probably shouldn’t conclude that he represents all MIT grads.</p>