<p>"Kids whose “learning differences” were accomodated in K-12 don’t understand that they won’t get a private secretary on day one “Because I have difficulty with Executive Functioning and can’t keep a calendar”. "</p>
<p>A. it is not easy to get accommodations in K-12, esp if you are also GT</p>
<p>B. I know of no school that offers a private secretary in K-12</p>
<p>C. It would be nice if as an accommodation the schools would give a little bit of training on time management. Good luck getting that, unless the kid is flunking out</p>
<p>D. Much of what is done in K-12 schools bears little relationship to anything that happens in most workplaces, such as time tests, drill and repetition, etc. </p>
<p>Executive functioning disorder is real, and is incredibly painful for those who suffer from it. Its not narcissism.</p>
<p>"It only asks which schools the recruiters prefer to recruit at, and says NOTHING about the implications for students</p>
<p>Hmmm…that doesn’t quite reflect what was posted regarding the survey methodology:</p>
<p>“In all, 479 recruiters completed the survey, a response rate of 57%. Total, those recruiters reported hiring more than 43,000 new grads in the prior year. We asked recruiters to identify, based on their experience, the schools on our list of 100 top colleges and universities whose bachelor degree graduates were the best-trained and educated, and best able to succeed once hired. Companies could also write-in schools not on our list. We also asked recruiters to identify how many new graduates they hired in the prior year—and from which majors—and then to rate which school’s grads were best in each major…”</p>
<p>Hey, honestly, we could all make arguments one way or another. But to me, it makes sense that the top kids in practical majors from well regarded state schools are doing well. There’s plenty of them at each of the schools listed so I can see why recruiters flock there. But it’s silly to say that the prestige of a Penn or Harvard doesn’t carry weight. Of course it does. The connections help too as someone pointed out. </p>
<p>For parents and students who are weighing the options (and costs), I would just hope that this study encourages them not to automatically EXCLUDE a public school option. No it’s not the prestigious route but it can sometimes be the practical route…especially if the fit is OK. </p>
<p>Actually, blame the WS debacle on those MIT “ivy league” quants, not the Dartmouth sociology majors.</p>
<p>It is simple, elite college grads have historically been after different jobs than state school grads. State school grads, on the whole, have not historically had access to the jobs a majority of ivy grads have taken post undergrad. This is comparing apples and oranges. There are few engineers, accountants, marketing majors to be found at elite colleges and that’s who these companies are after.</p>
<p>From what I can ascertain, the poll did not just “ask which schools the recruiters prefer to recruit at”:</p>
<p>We asked recruiters to identify, based on their experience, the schools on our list of 100 top colleges and universities whose bachelor degree graduates were the best-trained and educated, and best able to succeed once hired. Companies could also write-in schools not on our list. We also asked recruiters to identify how many new graduates they hired in the prior year—and from which majors—and then to rate which school’s grads were best in each major. Recruiters were asked to name, in rank order, their top schools overall and their top schools by major. Respondents could only rank schools and majors from which they actively recruit.</p>
<p>if Acme Widget recruits at PSU, and never hires a Dartmouth grad, they arent going to rate Dartmouth in this survey IIUC. If they recruit at PSU, and hire an occasional Dartmouth grad outside their on campus recruiting process, its not clear to me if they will rate Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Brooklyn, were you a Philosophy major? just don’t get your ergo logic sometimes. </p>
<p>I’m not saying they are faulty-I am just saying what they are measuring-in my mind prestige-is not what I am looking for in a school, and I don’t believe it is what should be important. What should be important is how it prepares someone for what they will be doing for the remainder of their life-one very important aspect of which is making a living.</p>
<p>I really don’t care that a school has a high-priced professor who seems to spend little time in the classroom and most of their time writing pedestrian op-eds in the NYTimes or appearing on network TV. I don’t see how that is relevant to my kid’s education but USNews seems to really value that.</p>
<p>"Respondents could only rank schools and majors from which they actively recruit. "</p>
<p>Ah.</p>
<p>So Acme widget recruits at PSU. They also occasionally hire a Dartmouth grad, who sends his resume over the transom. They CANNOT rank Dartmouth, even IF they find that the occasional Dartmouth grad is far superior to the PSU grads. </p>
<p>And from the comments on the schools, some of which are along the lines of “I love this store, because its never crowded and the stuff is on sale” it seems at least some of the recruiters did NOT rate solely based on the quality of the hires.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how relevant this bickering is, from a prospective student’s point of view. If they get into an ivy, and can afford to attend, the majority of the time that is going to be their preference. But what about the kid who’s considering one of these public schools or an LAC (maybe not the mot selective)?</p>
you may interested to know how one medical school did things this year. I offer it solely as a data point but will tell you that it is commonly accepted that top UG schools (as ranked by USNews) are over-represented at the top research med schools (as ranked by USNews). </p>
<p>I looked at my kid’s highly rated (as ranked by USNews) medical school for this last cycle (info provided at orientation) and was pretty stunned at what admissions data showed. (I’ll assume admissions data is the best metric to see how this med school “ranks” UG’s. ;))</p>
<p>Over 50% of the class came from Ivy League schools + Stanford, Hopkins, Duke, and MIT. LAC’s did very poorly at this one school, this one cycle (and my kid went to an LAC) with edit: 4 and despite their massive numerical advantage state schools had only 18 (with only 6 of those coming from non-state flagship U’s).</p>
<p>There are a number of reasons for recruiting at big state schools:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Many graduates want to get in to the work place since they don’t plan on graduate school or don’t have placement through the school good old boy/gal network.</p></li>
<li><p>Since the number of graduates in a discipline are fewer at the private college, and they may already have placement, why bother.</p></li>
<li><p>The private college grad will demand higher pay because of the prestige factor and/or they have more debt to pay off.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There is something called a labor market. It is not 100% efficient (meaning that you could probably find someone who does your exact job at a competitor of yours, with the same amount of experience and expertise who makes plus or minus 10% of what you make), but in the early stages of one’s career it is reasonably efficient. Nursery school teachers in Tulsa Oklahoma don’t make more than surgeons in Boston, MA even if they have loads of school loans to pay off and even if they’ve got prestige out the wazoo. That’s what makes the market efficient- if it weren’t, everyone would be flocking to teach nursery school in Oklahoma and all those teaching hospitals in Boston would have jobs that go begging.</p>
<p>People who earn more money right out of college than others do so because of the labor market, not because of their own personal circumstances. The market moves up and down based on complex factors- the amount of training and education required to do a particular job (which is why airline pilots make more money than the waitress at your local diner, all things considered); the location (it would be impossible to find anyone to work in the city of Los Angeles if a company paid its workers the same there as it does in Richmond Virgina just because it costs more); the “barriers to entry” in a particular field (i.e. union membership, licensing, certification, etc.) and a bunch of other factors.</p>
<p>I have never seen an analysis which suggests that employers care about the amount of debt that a kid has coming from Swarthmore or Haverford vs. a similar kid coming from Penn State or U Delaware. The fact that under some circumstances a kid who graduates from Swarthmore may make more (or less) than a kid coming from a less expensive institution has nothing to do with the kid and everything to do with the job, the market, the industry, etc. That’s why it’s a labor market. A kid from Swarthmore may decide that he wants to teach nursery school and earn 100K (that’s the price point at which he’s willing to work) but until he finds an employer willing to pay that price for that job he may be unemployed for quite a while.</p>
<p>"I suspect, for example, that the recruiter who says the Princeton grad is too “full of himself” is not a graduate of a highly selective school himself. "</p>
<p>She was a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley. Most top-level management and most recruiters are state school graduates. </p>
<p>But, that’s not really relevant to the point I was making, which is that inaccurate stereotypes persist on both sides of the argument. For every person that is so “wowed” by the name Harvard that he/she chooses that person over an equally qualified candidate from a less prestigious school, there is the person that is more "wow"ed by a different kind of name/story.</p>
<p>Secondly, many, many prestigious privates offer engineering and other “practical” majors. Business at Penn? Engineering at Stanford/MIT? I don’t quite follow arguments made that “practical” majors aren’t found at top-rated schools. Mmm, they are. And, for the record, a lot of recruiters have a huge range of majors from which they recruit from. At a career fair I was at recently, the majors listed at each booth were quite numerous. Consulting firms listed that they recruited from liberal arts majors. Engineering firms were recruiting math/comp sci majors. Etc. So I don’t buy this argument that prestigious schools or even liberal arts majors at state schools were “left out,” not by a long shot.</p>
<p>UMCP- I have spent over 25 years in recruiting and would love to see a statistic that shows that most recruiters are state school graduates. I have hired engineers, actuaries, MBA’s, BA’s, PhD’s and lawyers for a variety of firms and my guess if I were to map out my colleagues, supervisors, and the folks I’ve managed in recruiting roles the split would be about 30% public U 70% private, and of that, an overwhelming majority graduated from top 50 universities (both public and private.). I do not know why this is so- but I can tell you that if you work for a company which recruits new grads from JHU and U Chicago and Rice, it is likely that your recruiters also come from these and peer institutions (however broadly defined.) Frequently the recruiting staff (especially at senior levels) come straight out of the businesses; often junior recruiters are “picked up” during regular recruiting rounds if they are deemed strong on the people skills but not technical enough or whatnot to be hired into a more analytical function. So it stands to reason that if my company is recruiting at U Chicago anyway, we will end up hiring some U Chicago grads for entry level recruiting roles by the time it’s all said and done.</p>
<p>“left out”? Not explicitly perhaps. But look back at the quote. The WSJ study excluded liberal arts majors. So some schools that excel in the liberal arts may have been “left out” by design. </p>
<p>The WSJ is a real master at surveys that show controversial results. They achieve this by careful design of the survey itself, maybe even with an eye toward what they want to show. </p>
<p>A notable example of this was their survey from about 8 years ago regarding which colleges were feeders for elite med law and business schools. They chose an handful of elite professional schools, then studied their first year face books (back when these were hard copy! times have changed…) to see where folks went as undergraduates. Their study showed strong over-representation from elite east coast colleges. Stanford was curiously underrepresented. But if you looked at the professional schools chosen, you found a strong northeast bias. And the winners, no surprise, were the schools that sent their own undergrads to their own professional schools. To understand this, one had to read some footnotes carefully. </p>
<p>My point is that again, the WSJ has designed a “survey” with some curious biases. And note that it did curious results. </p>
<p>should we wonder that it comes to some curious conclusions?</p>
<p>This is the typical “man bites dog” article spin that is calculated to capture readers but doesn’t actually mean much. The numbers are largely based upon the number of recruiters and career fair participants that each school receives. On-campus visits and fairs are basically PR efforts - they’re not how companies actually manage their human resources needs. Obviously, there’s an economy of scale in sending a representative of your company to a school with 40,000 students over a school with 5,000. And the large state Us are the ones turning out the most candidates who are looking for entry-level jobs after their baccalaureate degrees - their counterparts at more selective colleges are going on in greater proportions to graduate and professional schools. The latter are likely to be better positioned for career success ten to twenty years later than the student with a bachelor’s degree who took an entry-level job after learning about a company from an on-campus recruiter. It’s like ranking the financial value of a college degree by the average income of graduates a year or two out of of college. Those who took entry-level jobs will have some income while those who are in med school, law school, and pursuing Ph.D.s will not. The resulting numbers may be accurate, but they’re very misleading when used to calculate long-term career prospects.</p>