<p>For folks with English-sounding names, the choice of university did not seem to matter very much. For resumes submitted under non-European names, the choice of university seems to matter more:</p>
<p>If this is in fact true, we are doing ORM a disservice in suggesting otherwise. I also think it hypocritical to do so while we try to get ours into an elite.</p>
I suspect this is true in the US, too–and that you would find that it not only may be true for those with “foreign” names, but also those with names that suggest something about race and socioeconomic status (i.e., William Johnson vs. Antwan Johnson). </p>
<p>This brings up something I’ve been thinking about–the choice of college may matter much more to certain subsets of people than to others. I believe, for example, that it matters a lot for certain majors, especially if the person wants to go into academia. It’s not so much about what they learn, but whether they will have a credential that will open the right doors. For other fields, it may matter less.</p>
<p>That’s more or less what the data shows. For law and medicine or Wall Street-level finance, graduating from the top 1% or 2% of colleges in the United States (as ranked by student selectivity) confers a long-term career advantage. As you move down the selectivity scale and into other fields, it doesn’t matter at all.</p>
<p>So if you want to be a corporate lawyer and have a choice between, say, Yale and Mississippi State, it may well be a rational choice to go to Yale. If you want to be an engineer, there’s probably no advantage.</p>
<p>A large piece missing from the discussion is the alum network and the seriousness with which alums help out. In Texas, one with Texas A&M connections can go a lot further in finding a job because the alums help out a lot. The involvement is not as deep for other schools as far as I know. </p>
<p>Anecdotally, I hear similar stories about some Ivies. One senior guy in oil industry told me about his Yale alum President boss forwarding resumes and asking him to talk to several Yale grads irrespective of whether he had a job to offer or whether they were relevant. This guy graduated 30 years ago and had no connection to these recent grads who threw in a resume to an Yale alum as part of their job search other than going to the same school.</p>
<p>Law and WS-level finance, absolutely. Medicine? No way. No one who is actually familiar with or in the field of medicine would make that statement. Medical schools are “flat” insofar as they all offer a good and reasonably equal education; it’s not like law school or b-school where there are “stars” that are advanced well beyond the others. What matters in medical school is getting into your particular residency, and the residencies themselves are “flat” insofar as the kid from Harvard Med is going to be right there on day one with the kid from U of Arkansas Med. Then, at the back end, assuming your goal is to be in private practice, there really aren’t major advantages of going to a fancier or more “name” med school. Blue Cross Blue Shield doesn’t pay more you more for procedure if you went to Harvard Med or U of Arkansas Med. Partners in practice are going to share equitably in the proceeds regardless of where they all went to school. Medicine is an incredibly “flat” field from a prestige situation - indeed, the most “prestigious” people associated with certain disciplines are at places like U of Cincinnati, etc. Now, academic medicine is different - but everyday practicing medicine? No, that’s definitely a field in which it really doesn’t matter too much where you got your degree. Whoever tries to say otherwise just isn’t familiar with reality. It’s not at all comparable to the prestige-driven situation in law and in Wall Street finance.</p>
<p>Sure - which could have equally happened if the guy went to Texas A&M. There’s nothing magical about the Ivies or similar elite schools that would make their grads more likely to “go to bat for their brethren,” for lack of a better term.</p>
<p>^ The point is not all schools have similar alum networks where people bend over backwards to help a fellow alum. It is the unquantifiable attachment factor to the school that makes the difference.</p>
<p>One can go to University of Texas and the fellow alum will go as far as saying “it is nice you went to the same school as me” but not lift a finger to help.</p>
– Pascarella and Terenzini, p. 469 [emphasis added]</p>
<p>I realize that statistically significant results from tightly controlled research studies are unlikely to impress some people. For those that care, there it is.</p>
The quote doesn’t make it clear if that’s true for each of those degrees, or is simply true collectively. Also, I have to think that more people attend such schools with the intention of going on for more advanced degrees than the typical college as well.</p>
<p>This brings up another point worth thinking about–could it be that students are good about picking the kind of school to attend? That is, those who want to be around a lot of accomplished peers go somewhere where that can happen (a selective school or an honors program), and those who’d rather be big fish in a small pond do that. If their long-term results are the same, that’s OK by me.</p>
<p>I always have the same question in regard to statistical research. Who funded it, who conducted it and what their relationship to various organizations / agencies.
Statistics just like software, GIGO, you know what that means, correct? Example of some tree circles come to mind right away when I read about any study. The studies that I trust are hisotrical data collected preferrably over few centuries / thousands of years. Shorter period might be OK in some cases but might not be true in others.
It is very hard for me to trust any as I constantly operate under GIGO assumption, I have to, it is my job.</p>
<p>If that indeed is happening, fine. But at least from reading the various forums around here, it’s apparent that a lot of students crave admission to very selective schools mainly because (a) that’s what their peers (or wanna-be peers!) are striving for, (b) that’s where their parents want them to go, or (c) they believe, against all evidence, that they will really get a better education there.</p>
<p>annasdad - Is the point being made that one should attend a top 1-2% medical school or top 1-2% undergrad school?</p>
<p>The study you are showing seems to point to people moving into a professional school after attending the undergrad school. </p>
<p>It does help going to Yale for law in the law profession more than going to Yale med in the medical profession. OTOH, it does seem to help a lot getting into a medical school if one went to Yale undergrad.</p>
<p>If attending Yale helps you get into medical school–even after correcting for other factors (including, presumably, precollege qualifications), what does that mean? Does it mean that Yale’s pre-med education really is superior, or that medical schools are impressed by prestige?</p>
<p>The reference being perseveratively posted is OLD data, published 7 years ago, and probably collected several years before that. Its possible that the methodology was to review applications from students admitted to different professional/grad schools who applied in, say for example, 1995. I believe the study reviewed “30 years of literature” so the data might in fact be even older. It may be extremely stale and not very relevant to today’s professional/grad admission procedures.</p>
<p>I don’t know that the two are inconsistent - without digging into the studies, for which I have neither the time nor the interest. In the link in 117, there is a link to the Mitchell study.</p>