@CU123 No.
@uskoolfish This article is a really interesting read. On my first read through, I was incensed for the poor kid who couldnât get into Wharton from a lower tier school like Johns Hopkins. But reading it through again, I was a bit more hopeful. I also noticed some journalistic trickery going on.
The article starts by saying that the kid got a tremendous score on the GMAT without studying. It suggests that his natural ability should have made him a shoe in. That is irrelevant. Wharton doesnât know or care whether he studied for the test. Also, its no shame to study hard for something like the GMAT. Just like its no shame to need to study hard for the ACTs. It mentions that his GPA is 3.6, a whole tenth of a percent about their average. But we all know how poorly the averages predict admittance to the ultra elite schools. He should not have been shocked to be rejected with a 3.6. Just like I wouldnât be shocked to be rejected at Princeton with a 33 ACT, even though 33 is their âaverage.â
Then it talks about his long experience in finance and suggests that because it was in China, that should have opened the doors for him. His experience is certainly interesting, but an unknown firm in China is not the well known pathway to Wharton. The article points out that students from âlesserâ schools, like Rutgers were accepted if they worked for large companies that have cache for Wharton. I donât know this particular studentâs story, but if I were a someone with my heart set on a very specific graduate school, I would do all I could to pick up the credentials that school actually looks for. If I were a Rutgars student, for example, I would do everything I could to get a job with one of the Wharton feeder companies. Even if that meant working in the mail room. If I had the GPA to seriously consider Wharton, I bet a job or internship could be managed. Finally, its no surprise that they take a lot of Penn undergrads. Many graduate schools show a preference for their own.
Iâm not at all saying that the prestige of the undergrad is unimportant in finance. I agree that it is. Iâm only saying that this article is a little bit hyperbole and in some ways, a little bit more encouraging then it at first appearsâŠ
@ccprofandmomof2 I think any list would be subjective and I know it varies slightly from bank to bank. I agree it heavily favors the coast though. The two schools Iâve seen the most from the middle of the country are Notre Dame and to a lesser extent Michigan. I think Chicago places okay as well.
Iâve worked at a couple PE/HF firms, and out of undergrad they only look at Harvard, Wharton, MIT, and Stanford (with an emphasis on the former two just because thereâs more interest in finance at those schools).
â@theloniusmonk I totally disagree that undergrad matters little at top business schools. What are you basing this on?â
It seems to at least be somewhat correlated. I have read, for example, that HBC, SBC and Penn all accept the most MBA applicants from their own undergrad program, so that would seem to be an advantage. Also, that they each admit the second and third most applicants from the other two schools. An elite undergrad degree is certainly not required, but it does seem to be helpful.
The most important advantage of prestige is in opening doors. For many people, âopening doorsâ is HUGE. Often, it is all it takes to set a person on the path to career success. Prestige also helps open doors when, several years out of college, you want to switch to another field in which you have little experience. People are more willing to take a chance on you if you went to a prestige college. Life is long, a lot of people switch careers. Having the right prestige makes this difficult process easier.
The second most important advantage of prestige is its alumni network. People who went to HYPSM+ are keenly aware of how âspecial and luckyâ they are and are often keen on helping each other.
âRutgers, UCONN, Pitt, just to name a few I believe would be considered elite if they happened to be located elsewhere other than the northeast.â
Doubtful
Why doubt about it? @rjkofnovi
Happenstance or serendipity plays major roles in the history of these âprestigiousâ universities.
From the web â
In 1792, the President of the College of New Jersey (the future Princeton University), John Witherspoon, proposed a union of that college with Queenâs College of New Brunswick, NJ. (future Rutgers University). A committee of Princeton Trustees was formed to meet with the Trustees of Queenâs College.
At the Princeton Trustees Meeting of December 18th, 1793, it was reported that the Trustees of Queenâs College rejected the offer (pp. 319-320).
The original Minutes of the Princeton Trustees may be viewed here:
http://pudl.princeton.edu/objects/7w62f826z
The problem with focusing on the âprestigeâ of these schools is that youâre ignoring everything else they have to offer.
Frankly, you canât compare a âtop tenâ to a âbelow 100â university in terms of the opportunities offered. And imagine the people there. Imagine being surrounded by 2000 students who have all worked there butts off their entire lives to get amazing results and are interesting enough to be selected to go to a top university. It can seem like a crap shoot sometimes but universities chose that group because they fit into a specific atmosphere of hard work or interdisciplinary study or extreme focus or creativityâŠwhatever that school values most.
And beyond that, a lot of these schools offer amazing financial aid. They also have plenty of scholarship programs that offer to cover your entire tuition!!
These schools are prestigious for a reason, and having enough determination to find one that fits you doesnât only reward you with its ânameâ, but a four-year experience for YOURSELF. You should never discourage someone from aiming high in life.
This is just not true. HYP have excellent aid, but beyond that the aid starts to disappear and there is no merit aid.
âYou should never discourage someone from aiming high in lifeâ - no one is disputing this, @FourYearsornot, I believe the question is whether these âtop 10â (put aside the discussions of which 10 to begin with) are the âbe all and end allâ for most students. Or whether most students should apply to all of them (which could be one of the many reasons that the colleges have become so much more selective). There are definitely benefits/advantages of going to these schools, but those benefits can and have been found in flagship state Us, in honors programs, in many LACs outside of the two coasts.
Aiming high in life should be about acquiring knowledge and skills that are important for personal development, whether or not that acquisition is done through a âprestigiousâ university is kind of irrelevant.
Thatâs true, I was thinking of schools more like Duke or JHU. They have a lot of full-ride merit scholarships @gallentjill
If you want to look at undergrad feeders to top b-schools, you really should look at a range of top b-schools rather than a specific school (each would have their idiosyncratic biases and overrepresentation of schools in their region). Luckily, someone already put together the list for us (total of Harvard+Wharton+Columbia+Chicago Booth+Dartmouth Tuck):
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/business-school-mba/1224650-top-feeder-colleges-to-americas-elite-b-schools.html
See post #63.
In sheer numbers, the top are dominated by Ivies, equivalents, and top state schools (and NYU and the IITs of India).
You do see some representation from good state schools that generally arenât IB/MC targets (semi-targets at best), however, including UIUC, UW-Madison, MSU(!), and GTech. (Iâm not including âWashingtonâ because that could be WashU combined with UW-Seattle).
A few surprises: The U of C represents pretty badly; way below the other Ivies/equivalents (that arenât small and tech-oriented like Caltech and Rice), on par with UMich on a per capita basis, and well below Cal on a per capita basis.
For some reason, JHU also represents very badly, tied with tiny Bowdoin, Wellesley, and Amherst in raw numbers and roughly equal to UT-Austin on a per capita basis.
@FourYearsornot, uh, pretty much no one I know says a handful (out of thousands of admits) is âa lotâ.
And those scholarships are incredibly difficult to get. Probably less than 50 and certainly less than 100 full-ride merit scholarships across all the Ivy-equivalents (to put that number in perspective, HYPSM matriculate roughly 7K students a year).
Even if you include Near-Ivies (and have a fairly expansive definition of what is a ânear-Ivyâ), the number of full-rides only goes up to 200-300.
Does prestige matter when it comes to Chemistry PhD programs? I am currently trying to decide between Clarkson University (ranked #124) and RPI (ranked #42). At Clarkson University I am part of the honors program and I would graduate with money to spare (about 30,000). While at RPI I would have about 10,000 in debt. Is RPI worth the difference? I know that obviously RPI is not as prestigious as somewhere like the Ivyâs or equivalent, but how much more is a top #50 school worth from a top #150? And what are the main differences in resources?
I think you have to be very careful when you use % accepted at a graduate/professional school as evidence that âPrestigeâ plays a huge part.
Could be that most of those âPrestige Universitiesâ (CHYMPS) are only accepting the tippy-top of students to begin with, and if all of those would have went to a good non-CHYMPS school, they would have made it into the graduate/professional school also. Is it prestige or the ability of the student? A combination? I would argue that it is more the student than the prestige playing a role. Of course I have no way of proving it. I also know that if I have two students, I can only accept one, and everything else is equal, including social/racial/economic/gender of applicant, I would give the prestige an edge over the non-prestige.
Another angle is does the prestige make the applicant, or the program at the prestigious university make the applicant? I would expect that a CHYMPS student would be exposed to better faculty and in an environment of tippy top undergrads to work with during their 4 years, then they would be better prepared for GRE/GMAT/LSAT/MCAT and therefore perform better on the test. So, indirectly prestige may play a role. If the school wasnât prestigious the tippy top undergrads would have went elsewhere, the faculty would have went elsewhere and therefore, the student wouldnât have been prepared as well.
@physicsfuture, prestige generally doesnât matter for STEM PhD programs.
Research opportunities matter.
"A few surprises: The U of C represents pretty badly; way below the other Ivies/equivalents (that arenât small and tech-oriented like Caltech and Rice), on par with UMich on a per capita basis, and well below Cal on a per capita basis.
For some reason, JHU also represents very badly, tied with tiny Bowdoin, Wellesley, and Amherst in raw numbers and roughly equal to UT-Austin on a per capita basis."
Itâs possible, actually very probable that the Chicago and JHU graduates do not need a MBA to reach their career goals. As was noted in that thread, an Econ major from Chicago will end up in a good paying job and not need the MBA credential to get more money. Same for JHU, their undergrads probably apply to medical school or attend PHd programs.
People get MBAs for a lot of reasons but one of them is dissatisfaction with their current career, either the actual work or the money prospects. And an econ or bme degree from UC and JHU respectively are more prestigious than an MBA from most schools, including some considered top-10. I would only put five b-schools ahead of them, HBS, Stanford GSB, Booth, Kellogg, Wharton. So elite schools at the bottom of this list is a good thing.
@physicsfuture
For phds, you really want to find the right PI (with fundings) and everything would be highly depended on the research you (and your advisor) do and the resulting peer-reviewed papers (both numbers and quality) you are able to publish.
Another poster ( b@r!um ) in the past has stated that some math PhD programs have definite preferences with respect undergraduate math department origins of math PhD students, though their preferences do not necessarily match up to the common prestige rankings. However, such preferences of PhD programs regarding undergraduate department origins are not really transparent enough to be very useful to high school seniors picking colleges.
@ucbalumnus, fair. Maybe only for STE, then.
For math, I doubt you could go wrong by going to a uni that is top-ranked in (grad) math (which may include some unis that arenât so prestigious if you simply go by USNews rankings).