Is there really a difference class wise? If there is, then it seems extremely unfair to what someone would get out of it. I understand they are all exclusive but the content and what is offered and taught between schools should all be similar right?.
How would a 3.5gpa student from a California state school vs a 2.5 student from cornel?
How would those two students compare*
Top schools aren’t top schools because they are exclusive, they are top schools because of the quality of their teachers, endowment, alumni network, professional recruitment opportunities, student body, etc. How would you recommend standardizing every school to the same criteria based on all of those variables?
There is definitely a difference in terms of quality between lower ranked and top ranked school. This separation isn’t made by state or ivy, UC Berkeley, Indiana U, UT Austin, UVA, UMich, and others are all state schools with top ranked business programs. This can be applied to any major, not just finance or business.
Even if you did assume that every school could offer the same opportunities and content to every student, which isn’t possible, what would that accomplish?
Schools in metropolitan areas would close because they wouldn’t provide any benefit to a lower cost education of the same quality in suburbs since those costs are passed down to students in the form of housing. From a university employee perspective, many top professors would likely quit their professions and return to industry or research work since their pay would be cut severely. From an employer recruitment standpoint it standardizes the entire pool of candidates yes, but it also makes it more difficult since the selectivity of schools is in itself a quality filter for their recruitment process.
A 2.5 Cornell student is still a 2.5. You can’t quantify the “GPA boost” to a candidate from a higher ranked school and compare an equivalent to a candidate from a lower ranked school, that is both short sighted and naive. Employers have GPA cutoffs in their recruitment process for that reason, to narrow the range of applicants and compare candidates with similar academic performance from different schools so that they can isolate on the other variables that would make them a good candidate.
Huge difference in almost every aspect.
There is no one answer but here is my experience from years (and years) ago. I transferred from a very good NY State university to Wharton. I did find a huge jump in quality between the two schools in every respect. While the schools offered the same classes, the quality and depth of teaching was markedly superior at Wharton. In addition, my peer students were stronger overall at Wharton (there were certainly strong students at State U - but the students were more consistently excellent at Wharton). For me, it was a better fit both academically and socially. In terms of opportunities after college I can only say that Wharton did give me a tremendous number of choices and the Wharton name has been helpful to have on my resume throughout my career.
For your comparison ,it woudl depend in large part on which CA state school you are talking about – ex. a school like Haas is very well respected (and I think even above Cornell for those into rankings). Other factors to be considered in every college decision would be personal fit and finances.
Read the New York Times article “Why you can’t catch up” from 8/1/14. Methodology problems, but those may not undermine the takeaway: the name on the degree matters even if the classroom experience is the same.
One more quick comment…@AoDay I do agree with your comment about GPA cutoffs, but (from when I did Big 4 recruiting) the cutoffs are different at different colleges.