<p>I believe opportunities surround us. You just have to find them or see them when they cross your path. I think that all this college ranking business is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You believe it is and it will be. Believe in yourself.</p>
<p>the people that hire you actually care about which colleges you went to. rankings do matter.</p>
<p>"But higher ranked schools give you more opportunities to be successful. Some careers pretty much require one to attend to a top-ranked school, such as consulting and i-banking...etc"</p>
<p>Well, if it's important to work for companies that care about rankings... Wonder what's happening to a lot of those people now.</p>
<p>Well... companies that do care about rankings are the ones that provide the most compensation and prestige. Even with horrible market conditions right now, with bonus cuts...etc 1st year consultants and "bankers" still get compensated much more than the most other professions.
So, yes, rankings do matter if you want to get into that kind of stuff.</p>
<p>they matter very much for the first two years of your career, then nobody cares where you went to college.</p>
<p>I have been in a position to hire many people into very well paying corporate sales and marketing positions. I can guage their intelligence from the interview itself. I also look for character. My order of priority:</p>
<p>1a. Actual results in a similar job -or-
1b. Actual results in a sales job for a different type of product/service
2. Character/likeability
3. Intelligence/creativity shown in the interview
4. Inteligence (can't guage creativity) attested to by rank of school and gpa. I don't see a lot of difference between attested intelligence from Stanford, or UCLA, as they are both relatively highly rated. I went to both.</p>
<p>So you see, where a person graduated is 4th on my list.</p>
<p>
<p>I have been in a position to hire many people into very well paying corporate sales and marketing positions. I can guage their intelligence from the interview itself. I also look for character. My order of priority:</p>
<p>1a. Actual results in a similar job -or- 1b. Actual results in a sales job for a different type of product/service 2. Character/likeability 3. Intelligence/creativity shown in the interview 4. Inteligence (can't guage creativity) attested to by rank of school and gpa. I don't see a lot of difference between attested intelligence from Stanford, or UCLA, as they are both relatively highly rated. I went to both.</p>
<p>So you see, where a person graduated is 4th on my list.
Word. Only stupid people think that "educational pedigree" is the be all & end when trying to land a job. The concept of "equal opportunity employer" is lost on some individuals on this board.</p>
<p>But first two years of your career matter a lot - Entry into the market has got to be the hardest part. </p>
<p>Bottom line, students from top schools are much, much more likely to be hired than someone who's not.
Ofcourse, individually, you can do as well as any "good school" student if you have the brains and perseverance. But that doesn't gaurantee to close the gap for everyone.</p>
<p>What do the Big Four (insert noun) think of university rankings, hmmm? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Why bother going to college if you don't get into a top rated school? What number is considered top rated? Top 25? Top 10?</p>
<p>rankings can sometimes matter in a funny way... if you're applying (with a USC degree) to a place owned and run by UCLA grads, chances are you won't get the job if another UCLA grad is applying.</p>
<p>This may not be so true in the business/financial world, but in the engineering world you want to have a degree from the school where everybody else working in that company has a degree from.</p>