<p>I’m not being unkind about the frame of reference for those newly arrived. I totally get why they truly believe the sun rises and sets on Berkeley and Harvard. I’m perplexed as to why their “elders” who are already here, have been here for (say) 20 years, and who have figured it out don’t seem to ever try to coach the “newer” ones. It’s like they all expect all the “newer” ones to pick it up on their own. I don’t know why you wouldn’t “pass it on” to newer people coming from your country.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In businesses where the company has to constantly sell itself and its qualifications to prospective clients by bidding on projects, such as any form of consulting or government contracting, the resumes of employees who are slated to work on a particular project are an important part of the bid for that project. And those resumes indicate where the employees got their degrees, both undergraduate and graduate.</p>
<p>Does the presence of “name” schools on those resumes matter? You bet it does.</p>
<p>Back to OP’s original question:</p>
<p>Trophy spouse?</p>
<p>
I don’t know what industries you are talking about, but the massive engineering contractors and manufacturing companies performing contract work in my industry - Bechtel, Jacobs, Parson, Fluor, GE, Alstom, Siemens - etc, these companies are far too large to exclusively hire elite college grads. It may help selling a prject, I don’t know. And it may help getting a foot in the door. But project experience matters far more than degree. </p>
<p>But they hire lots of people from lots of schools. I know that for a fact from my personal experience, but even if I didn’t the number of employees these companies hire and the small number of elite grads who could possibly be seeking these jobs makes it illogical to think otherwise. THat doesn’t mean the hiring isn’t competitive.</p>
<p>I think many Americans do know better, especially the ones who made it on their own. I do find many of those self made people are the ones who push to get their kids to top tier schools. </p>
<p>One comes to mind is Bob Diamond, head of Barclay. He got his MBA from UConn, worked in a back office, got his first trading job by bugging the crap out of people on the floor. All of his children went to HYPS, two of them are working at a competitor firm. I think his kids could certainly have the luxury of going to any kind of school they want or any career they want without having worry of money. But he made sure his kids got into those schools (I heard they have good enough stats to get in on their own).</p>
<p>There are a lot of parents like Bob Diamond out there. They know no matter how much money they pass on to their kids, it could be gone tomorrow, but education is something their kids could always have.</p>
<p>On many company sites, they do list their founders (or top executives), and with it where they went to school and their past experience.</p>
<p>Just popped over here from another thread where folks are losing layer upon layer of stomach lining discussing whether or not 50K+/year is worth it for an elite university. There, as here, fear seems to be a driving factor in the discussion. </p>
<p>I am not in the lawyer/IB banker/consultant track of life so my view on that lifestyle is from the outside looking in. Frankly, the thought of having my kids spend their 20’s and 30’s in 80+ hour work weeks, only vaguely knowing what daylight and time with friends/family is all about is not a scenario we’ve pushed on them.</p>
<p>And the point made regarding the west vs. east coast view of the ‘elite’ degree is spot on! Does anyone know the percentage of east vs. west coast posters on CC.?</p>
<p>oldfort,
Please bring me up to date. When I worked on Wall St in the dino (super early for women) days of late 70’s, the traders and back office types basically “never” came from elite schools, and “some” of the I Bankers did. Post Reagan, I-banking became very hot, and trading moved up a bit in popularity, attracting a few elite college grads. Today, I think of the traders as being nerds, as do wonder of the sales traders even exist anymore- I expect they went the way of the buggy whip due to automated trading and decimalization…</p>
<p>What backgrounds do the IT and Trading employees on Wall St have these days?</p>
<p>They recruit S&T, IB, ops, even IT from target schools now. When a firm goes to a school to recruit they would send few teams there to recruit. They still hire IT from non target schools, but many banks now do recruit directly from those target schools for Ops. D1 was hired into S&T program, and most analysts came from target schools. D1 with her math background will probably do more structuring (use a bit of brain).</p>
<p>Yes I remember one govie trader was a gardener to head of FI, and that´s how he got the job. He was very good. Not sure if he even got his college degree.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But the PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS – the ones who actually make the things and have the money to hire others as subcontractors, vendors and / or consultants – may or may not have elite degrees themselves. The extent to which they will be swayed by “gosh, our vendor’s senior staff all have elite degrees! let’s hire them over the other firm which doesn’t!” is going to differ from person to person, situation to situation, job to job.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Total, utter, complete nonsense.</p>
<p>I was in the consulting game for 25 years, working as an independent and as an employee of small consulting firms, where I and/or my company “has to constantly sell itself and its qualifications to prospective clients by bidding on projects,” and never once was the issue of where anybody completed their undergraduate degree an issue.</p>
<p>I worked for four years with a group of seven other people in a very successful consulting practice. There was one Northwestern grad, two from UIUC. The rest of us? Roosevelt University, Northern Illinois, DePaul, Michigan Tech, and Valparaiso. What was important on our resumes was the work we had done, our client lists, our recommendations - never where we had gone to school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe because those communities understand through bitter experience that what may apply to multi-generation/assimilated Americans does not always apply to them, especially in the recent past when recent immigrants and their kids and racial/ethnic/religious minorities were held to much more blatant double standards than they are now…and they have little/no social/cultural capital to gain the remotely same level of acceptance from the larger American society as their multi-generation/more assimilated counterparts. </p>
<p>Back when some older teachers/HS classmate parents were growing up as immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe…including those from the Jewish communities…they had the same experiences and felt having a perceived "superior education’ was the only way to break into American society due to their abject lack of acceptable social capital and in their era…more blatant racial/ethnic/religious prejudices. </p>
<p>Except instead of obsessing over Ivies and many elite private universities/LACs(Religious/ethnic discriminatory admissions policies and expense effectively curtailed this route.)…it was obsessing about gaining admission to CCNY and CUNYs which were the “Harvard and Ivy league of the proletariat” back in the day ('30s - late '60s). </p>
<p>Even nowadays…unless you’re one of those superrich immigrants with wads of cash to facilitate easier acceptance…and even they feel the need to go elite/Ivy whenever possible. </p>
<p>This is still an issue with many immigrant communities…including the ones I’m familiar with. It is also much toned down compared to those of my older teachers/HS classmate parents’ generations. </p>
<p>In short…it’s the social capital…or the lack thereof…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree completely with annasdad on this. I don’t know who these people are who think that all “consulting decisions” are made by looking at where people go to school and being suitably impressed by some schools and not others, but they are horribly out of touch with reality. I bid on multi million dollar projects all the time, domestically and internationally. Where I or other senior staffers went to school NEVER comes up. Never. Unless for some reason it gets brought up afterwards in the context of getting to know people, and even then, only rarely. No one really cares. It’s what you can do for me now, not where you were from ages 18 - 21.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But the kind of people who obsess over Ivies and a handful of other elite schools aren’t the people who will ever HAVE social capital in the US, because such an attitude isn’t really “elite” at all. It’s wannabe, and nothing will get you banned from social-capital situations more than being a wannabe.</p>
<p>Let’s not forget this is CC. Top tier vs. the rest.</p>
<p>Of course, if you work in 99% of the consulting world, it does not matter what degrees you have but a lot of posters just assume consulting means the top 1%.
Top 1% consulting companies require “elite” degrees.
The rest, no.</p>
<p>Ditto for law firms, investment banks etc.</p>
<p>Ha, McKinsey just bought a small consulting firm whose principals and senior staff I am extremely familiar with, in order to get into a particular part of the consulting market. Some have fancy degrees, some don’t. McKinsey sure paid a heck of a lot of money to “buy” some of those non-fancy degrees, because those people have outstanding client relationship, smart analytical thinking and proven results. The thought that they are sitting there worried about whether these people have elite degrees is laughable. They want business acumen.</p>
<p>For a period of eight years from the mid-80s through the mid-90s, I developed and taught a three-day course in the fundamentals of mainframe (IBM S/390 and DEC VAX) architecture to newly hired technology consultants for one of the (at the time) Big Eight firms. I have no statistics, but I can assure you that most of these new hires were not from Ivy-and-near-Ivy prestigious schools. The three partners I worked with over the years as the course evolved - one was a Texas A&M grad, one was an Ohio State alum, and the third was from Iowa State. (Do you have any idea how tiresome it is for someone with no interest in college football to listen to endless arguments about Southwest vs. Big 8 vs. Big 10?)</p>
<p>Nephew (age 20) story for a very up-to the minute perspective:
Good student, lives in MW. Opted not to go to USC to save $$ for B-school. Doing very well as UG biz major at local state school (not one of the top ones TBH, more famous for football!)
Just got summer internship at top Silicon Valley social network and search firm… I think the is on his way to having LOTS of choices all over the country for B-school, and ultimately jobs/firms. </p>
<p>Bottom line: You do have to do WELL, be opportunistic, wherever you go UG!</p>
<p>There is a difference between IT consulting vs management consulting. I work with a lot of IT consulting firms, and we do not worry about where they went to school. On the other hand, when my firm hired a consulting firm to help us do a firm wide re-organization, I was impressed by some of their educational background.</p>
<p>I agree with most of what has been said here but I did come across a case where it appears that where the applicant went to school matters. I’m an adjunct professor in the engineering department at a local university. The area where it is located is well known for hedge funds. I got an email from the largest hedge fund in the world which is in the next town, asking me if I could recommend any graduating students for their training program. I didn’t have any students that I thought fit the bill. I was surprised when I looked at their internet site which they forwarded me. Of the 20+ hires in the last few years, all were from ivy league schools with most from HYP.</p>
<p>We struggle with this issue in the legal profession when we hire expert witnesses. It really depends on what you think your jury will be like. Sometimes you want someone with a prestigious degree (if you think your jury will have heard of the place), but the expert has to be able to explain things clearly and be personable so the jury doesn’t hate him or her. Sometimes you want the local degree- that can REALLY go a long way with the jury. In Texas, you can’t do much better than A&M in front of a jury if you are trying to explain why your product couldn’t possibly have hurt the plaintiff!</p>