<p>I know it's super important for investment banking/consulting but is there anything else?</p>
<p>Just wondering how badly my life/future career is ruined without a degree from a top 10 school.</p>
<p>Oh good grief, bingo tingo. Open your eyes. Look around you. Do you seriously think that the small group of people who went to a top 10 school are the only people doing well in life, either financially or in their private lives? You KNOW the answer to this.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, bingotingo has correctly identified two industries in which companies recruit at only a very limited number of colleges. </p>
<p>I don’t know whether there are other industries that recruit at as few schools as investment banking and consulting do, but it’s a legitimate question.</p>
<p>I know they aren’t the only ones but are they doing a lot better then everyone else?</p>
<p>It’s hard to explain. I just feel like by not having an elite degree I’ve caused myself a major life setback or missed out on a lot of opportunities. My parents keep telling me it’s ridiculous but I can’t stop crying over it.</p>
<p>I’m obssesive I know. I can’t help it.</p>
<p>No, they aren’t “doing a lot better than everyone else” necessarily. As with anything, some do well and others don’t. While elite degrees do open some doors that cannot be easily opened without them, a smart, motivated, hardworking person with good interpersonal skills will do just fine in life. Even if it’s not OMG-Wall-Street-or-McKinsey. Those jobs are just … jobs. Really. They loom large here on CC, but in the real world, they are just several of many, many career paths one can take.</p>
<p>Listen to your parents; they are correct. Did you try your best? </p>
<p>A smart person creates his own opportunities, btw.</p>
<p>Your initial premise is totally incorrect! If you are interested in working in investment banking/consulting then do you homework and you will work in those areas even without a degree from what you call an “elite” college. Yes, it may take a bit more work on your own to get there but it is very, very possible. My husband built a firm like one you are looking for and his people come from all different colleges - Ohio State, SUNY, etc. He actually often prefers these kids because they do not think they are entitled to the position. I have a friend who went to Alleghany College in PA and she broke into the investment banking field and wound up after a few years as the top person in her specific area according to whatever (very respected) trade journal quantifies this every year.</p>
<p>As pizzagirl said, “A smart person creates his own opportunities, btw.” No truer words were ever spoken. Your statement, “Just wondering how badly my life/future career is ruined without a degree from a top 10 school.” tells me you’re already looking for an excuse to not succeed. I don’t know where you are in your education but I would suggest you research summer internships now for next summer (it’s mostly too late for this summer) and begin your contacts and communication NOW. Do your career homework, work hard towards attaining your goal, and it will happen. Don’t come up with a cheap, easy excuse.</p>
<p>The premise that i-banking and mgt consulting are the only jobs worth having is the incorrect premise. Sometimes, the people on CC amaze me with their narrow-minded provincialism and naivete. There are TONS of fascinating career fields out there. Nothing wrong with being an i-banker or mgt consultant – I’m a consultant myself! – but why be so stupid as to assume those are the only paths to great riches and / or eternal happiness? It’s a big world out there.</p>
<p>As someone who worked in finance all my life, I am advising younger people to explore other opportunities. It has been good for me, but with more and more regulations coming our way, there are less opportunities for creative arbitrages. We are beginning to make money the old fashion way.
That being said, for anyone without connections, it is very hard to break into the business without going to the right school. I get friends´kid resumes all the time asking me to help them get interviews, and these are kids from CMU and JHU kind of schools.</p>
<p>amtc - I am sure your H is hiring people with experience. Once they have work experience, with good track record, it doesn´t matter where they went to school, especially if they are not client facing.</p>
<p>In today´s economic environment, it is employer´s market. They often use a school´s selectivity to weed out applicants. It saves them time and money in having to recruit from every school. On the other hand, if you want to be an engineer at a manufacturing company, it maybe better to go to a local large U rather than an elite LAC outside of the region.</p>
<p>Oldfort, his people are hiring directly from college and/or their junior summer internship. He himself went to a state school and appreciates the extra effort the “less entitled” kids put in. Are there kids who went to “elite” schools? Sure, but it’s far from a requirement. It may be an employer’s market but employers are still looking for hard working, pay my dues, start at the bottom types of kids. If you’re one of them, you will find a good job. </p>
<p>But it’s also important to not wait until senior year, internships are a great entry into the business (any business) and most in the financial area do pay interns. Looking for an internship should start towards the end of sophomore year so that come September of junior year you can begin your contact with companies.</p>
<p>Supreme Court justice. Those are 9 positions you probably shouldn’t count on if you went to the local state U.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl is correct. Statistically, there are just very few grads from these schools. Somebody else has to fill the remaining millions of positions.</p>
<p>A few months ago I was involved in some meetings with executives from a local utility. So I decided to look up their bios. </p>
<p><a href=“http://sdge.com/management-team[/url]”>http://sdge.com/management-team</a></p>
<p>I also think that where you live matters. On the west coast, an elite east coast education is completely unnecessary for almost any industry. There are just too few people with this kind of background, and the networks of people from the local schools like UCLA and USC are very strong. On the east coast, it’s much more important. I imagine in the mid-west, many people running the companies are from mid-western schools. Bovertine’s example is a good one. The CEO in that Southern California company went to Long Beach and San Diego State. </p>
<p>This may change a lot in the future, as more students are going out of state for their educations, but for now it seems that local connections are very important, and those are often made by going to schools within that region.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court Justice choice is wrong. Obviously, there is a very restricted list of law schools that the Justices attended (two of them, although Columbia probably takes some credit for Ruth Ginsburg). But there is at least a modicum of diversity in their undergraduate institutions, including Holy Cross, Georgetown, and Cornell. And if you expand the sample to include Justices who have sat in the past 20 years, you will find a few state schools in there.</p>
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Aren’t those elite schools? Some posters here will be shocked. Especially about Cornell.</p>
<p>Because that’s what the poster asked about in the thread’s question, not HYPS. He did later mention top ten, but that was in regard to his life being ruined.</p>
<p>I guess it depends on your definition of elite school.</p>
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<p>Yeah, that’s about the only job I can think of where it’s de facto requirement. Every current justice went to a top law school and usually a top college as well.</p>
<p>There are other professions where having a fancy degree might help but is certainly not a requirement - college professor, high government post, and Wall Street. But you can think of exceptions all day long - people who achieved great success despite having degrees from ordinary colleges or sometimes even no degree at all.</p>
<p>I don’t get how young adults get to be 18, 19, 20 years old and not get that there are plenty of people who achieve great success despite having degrees from “ordinary” colleges, unless their parents failed abysmally in explaining the basics of life to them. I mean, do these parents actually act as though in business meetings, everyone wears his/her alma mater’s name on a nametag, and everyone waits breathlessly for the pearls of wisdom that will come out of the mouths of those at the “better” schools, while scorning or ignoring the others?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I think there is a misconception among some immigrant parents that only the top 5-10 or so schools will bring success. Their attitude may come from their own country where there may be a few really excellent universities, and most of the people who do well in life have attended one of them. It’s a different mindset, but I’ve seen it from certain parents who were not born here themselves. Sometimes they do transfer these attitudes to their children. It’s not stupidity as much as ignorance.
I realize that the OP’s parents are not in this bucket and he has somehow come to this conclusion himself, but part of this race to the top few colleges comes from the competition from around the world. I think that’s part of what has changed over the last 20 years.</p>
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<p>USNews ranks Cornell and Georgetown #15 and #22, respectively among national universities and Holy Cross #29 among LACs. I’m not quite sure what the OP considers “elite,” but elite-wise I wouldn’t lump those three schools in the same category as your local state teachers college or agricultural school (and I say this as the proud alum of a state ag school).</p>
<p>My father is an investment banker/consultant who has written a book, has been written up in a NY Times article featuring only him and goes around the world teaching courses. He owns his own firm and he occasionally hires Ivy league graduates (though he will tell you he tends to steer clear of them. With the occasional exception he finds that they are often not that impressive. He says he will take a William and Mary liberal arts grad over an Ivy grad any day).</p>
<p>Guess what? He had a 2 year degree because back then CPAs weren’t required to have 4 and 5 year degrees.</p>
<p>What matters is motivation, intelligence and hard work, not where you went to school. Not sure why people can’t get that through their heads. Yes, if you wish to work for Goldman Sachs then you had better go to an elite school, otherwise it really doesn’t make that big of a difference.</p>
<p>Moonchild - I’m not talking about immigrant parents. I’m talking about people who grew up here. Who should know better. </p>
<p>But it does beg the question why immigrant parents never seem to second guess their own assumptions about how life works, and how the communities in the US never seem to actually do any work to correct those misperceptions to the brand-new arrivals. As an American, if I were to go elsewhere, there are all kinds of expat communities that will teach me lessons that I wouldn’t otherwise know about how to maneuver and negotiate in the new country. Undoubtedly there are similar networks for immigrants who come here. But the “hey, I recognize it’s like this back in our homeland, but here, the world doesn’t spin on attending one of only 10 schools” never seems to be a part of it.</p>
<p>Pizza, you are being unduly harsh- and you and I usually agree that most folks here don’t understand the mindset of the “not advantaged” when it comes to college admissions.</p>
<p>Many (but not all) immigrants come from countries where there are two or three universities which literally define the ruling class. Only a small proportion of the country has attended college; only a small proportion of kids will ever hope to attend college; there may be a larger number of Ag/teacher’s colleges/technical type places spread out across the country and some of the civil servant/mercantile type jobs will go to those graduates.</p>
<p>A lot of these immigrants do understand that things are different in the US. So now they understand that instead of 2-3 elite universities we have 20. But you would really need years of acculturation to understand that Clemson and Ole Miss and Texas A&M are not just regional colleges (akin to the second and very much inferior tier that they know from their own countries) but are also fully accredited universities. And frankly, given that so many Americans know nothing about colleges that aren’t in their own backyard or aren’t playing in the Rose Bowl or the “game of the week”, I can’t be too critical about the frame of reference of new immigrants.</p>
<p>You are being both unkind and somewhat dismissive. Given that there are countries where a kid’s future is quite literally determined at age 11 or 12 with a matriculation exam which will determine if he or she gets to even dream about university at all, I think that most immigrant groups in the US actively seek out information to maneuver and negotiate (your terms) here. Why else would virtually every article about Charter schools and Magnet schools and other educational innovations here in the US feature the obligatory interviews with the parents from Ghana or Viet Nam or Uganda who waited on line all night to get a low number so they could enter the lottery for one of these placements (for middle school!) These parents have actively sought out information which suggests that getting your kid into a “better than my neighborhood school” is a great way to get your kid into one of the top 20 universities in the country (18 more universities than even exist in their own country.)</p>
<p>By next generation their offspring will be complaining about their helicopter parents to their therapists and attending “Occupy” protests instead of going to class like their native born peers!</p>