I think we can all agree that to some extent where you go DOES matter, in the sense that fit is a key consideration for many students. Students and parents alike are usually drawn to CC because they’re looking for a college beyond their local community college or directional state U.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the best fit for every student is an elite college (or even most students, for that matter).
Exactly. I’ve attended elite universities (both public and private) and one university that was, well, not so elite (19-25 middle 50% on the ACT, ~15% in the top 10% of their high school class, 19% 4 year graduation rate). There were HUGE differences between them – the preparedness and ambition of the students, the resources and advising, research funding and support, etc. Yes, there were bright, driven students who were successful at the latter, but relatively speaking the cards were stacked against them.
I’m always a bit surprised when posters note that one can be as successful at Ohio State or Pitt as at an elite private university (to pick two examples from this thread). Well, yes - those are very fine schools. Not every college in the US is as good.
To go with the Harvard vs. flagship public comparison, though, Harvard has produced 364 Rhodes scholars compared to 24 at Berkeley and 27 at Michigan. As a more extreme point of comparison, Berkeley has produced 5 Rhodes winners in the last 30 years, whereas Harvard recently (2012) produced six in a single year. This is not because students at Berkeley or Michigan are noticeably worse, but rather because Harvard pours a tremendous amount of money and resources into advising and mentoring to prepare students for post-graduate opportunities like the Rhodes.
What frustrates me is employers who will only hire interns and grads from certain schools. It’s pretty prevalent where I live especially for Engineering and CS where we are in easy commuting distance of several “top” schools. If you don’t attend one of these schools many employers won’t even look at your resume, regardless of how well you’re doing in your program and despite the fact that all the programs meet the same accreditation criteria. These schools are all very large and graduate a substantial number of students in these majors. These hiring biases can make finding internships or employment significantly more difficult for students who don’t attend these schools even if they are equally bright.
Or to go with a mundane example, I took first year German at Havard and then quite a few years later I took it again as a refresher course at a community college in CA. In the Harvard course we were reading a novel by the end of the year. In the CC course we covered approximately the same amount of grammar, but much less vocabulary. (On the plus side the vocabulary we learned was much more practical for being a tourist or living there, which is why I was taking the course.)
Agree. It was the same issue at the Big 4 accounting firm in LA where we recruited heavily at USC & UCLA, giving the majority of summer internships to students from those colleges and wouldn’t even do on campus recruiting at some CSUs. What college you were studying at either gave you an advantage or disadvantage, for gaining employment at top accounting firms.
Experienced recruiting was a different animal and once you had several years of tax and accounting experience where you went to college was not as important a factor. However, most of these experienced hires would have attained a masters in tax (MBT) or LLM.
One of the reasons why I am so vocal on these types of threads is because in the “real world” it sometimes can/does matter what college you go to.
Looking at number of Rhodes scholars has little relevance for whether where you go to school matters for a variety of reasons. To start with, the Rhodes scholars selection are based on districts. At many state schools, the overwhelming majority of students are in state and within a single Rhodes scholars district, limiting the number of potential winners per year. In contrast HYPSM… type private colleges admit students from a wider variety of states/countries and Rhodes scholars districts, increasing the number of potential winners. For example, the totals for the past 5 years in district 11 (Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin,…) have multiple Rhodes scholars from U Mich, Michigan State, and U Wisconsin, but no Rhodes scholars from Harvard; and no multiple winners from other HYPS… private colleges.
Ignoring that Rhodes scholars are by definition extreme outliers. I’d expect those few extreme outliers generally were especially impressive people long before college, and were far more likely to apply to attend HYP… than the average student, both due to self selection on the part of the student and due to the similarities between the criteria that HYP… admission values and Rhodes scholars values. In short a larger number of Rhodes scholars does not mean the college caused the students to be Rhodes scholars. Instead it may more relate to the college admitting a larger number of extreme outlier students who excel in the criteria Rhodes values at a national/international level.
A better theoretical test would be sending half of Harvard’s admitted class to Berkeley/Michigan/… or similar and seeing if there are significant difference in Rhodes scholars or other outcomes between the half that attended Harvard and half that attended other. Obviously such a study is not practical, but what is more practical is controlling for some metric of student quality, and comparing students with similar values on that metric who attend different colleges. Studies that have a control for quality of students like this usually find that the student is the driving force for measures of success after college, rather than college selectivity. The classic example is the Dale and Krueger studies, which found that a particular students who applied to were accepted to similar college generally had similar average earnings, regardless of whether they chose to attend a highly selective college or a less selective college. They also found that applying to highly selective colleges seemed to have more influence than being accepted to one.
The studies above are based on averages. Looking at individual students, there will often be more variation. Specific colleges are better choices for particular students for a variety of reasons including the students’ long term goals, personalities, interests, learning styles, and finances. There is no simple answer for which college is best for a particular student. Instead it depends. The best choice may be Harvard, it may be Berkeley/Michigan, or it may one of hundreds of other options.
Yes a Rhodes scholar from Harvard is a better baseline than a generic graduate of a great flagship, in general.
That’s not the argument or debate. Is the Rhodes scholar from xyz school “matter” less than the Harvard or Princeton or Stanford etc that is breathlessly debated here. No. Zero, none.
Is the generic graduate of elite vs generic xyz other better positioned yes.
Does the super high achiever from xyz have an edge over generic elite grad. Yes.
Generic to generic it’s probably helps a bit over time to have the elite pedigree.
The cross comparison of the small. Uber successful elite grads is not the point. It’s the thousands of others who graduate each year.
It’s just like saying that it’s better to go to MSU or Texas tech for business since they have more fortune 100 CEOs than any of the collegiate giants. That’s false too.
This anecdotal example sounds more like the exception than the rule. Tech companies do often recruit at specific colleges, which are often nearby and are not necessarily “top colleges.” However, I have yet to hear of a tech employer refusing to consider a resume of an otherwise seemingly highly qualified applicant because the applicant did not attend a “top college”. The tech employers I am familiar with certainly do not do this.
Surveys of larger number of employers show a similar pattern. For example, the survey at https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf found the following preferences among science & tech employers when evaluating the resume of new grads for hiring purposes, listed from most weight to least weight:
Internships
Employment During College
-- Huge Gap --
College Major (~tie)
Volunteer Work (~tie)
Extracurricular Activities
Relevance of Coursework (~tie)
College GPA (~tie)
-- Gap --
College Reputation
When asked what type of college was most desirable, the surveyed tech employers showed little preference between regionally known, flagship, or “elite”. The bigger preference appears to be attending a known college vs attending an unknown college. Specific numbers are below. 5 = Very Desirable, 1 = Very Undesirable
Public Flagship – 4.03
Elite College – 3.89
Nationally Known – 3.83
Regionally Known – 3.77
Local College – 3.63
Unknown College – 2.63
How large are the other schools (at least in terms of number of engineering graduates) compared to the “top schools” (in Canada, presumably the well known giant publics / provincial flagships like Toronto, UBC, McGill, etc.)?
What are the main reasons that students attend the other schools? Is it because the giant public “top schools” are selective enough that they are not admitted, or because they are too expensive or too far to commute to?
In the US, the “top schools” are much smaller, even though the US population is much larger, than in Canada, so an employer that only recruits at “top schools” would be one that needs only a small number of new graduate employees.
Re: hiring from certain schools. The placement rate of UIC engineering grads is excellent. They have extremely high placement rate for both internships and later for jobs (see @Data10’s list), despite being ranked fairly low in most popular ranking systems.
It is true, though, that they first had to work pretty hard to get name recognition in their set of employers (tech and engineering companies). So while they may be relatively unknown in the general public, they have a decent amount of name recognition in the tech and engineering communities.
Oh, their Urban Planning students also place extremely well, because the College is well known and regarded in the field, and therefore among the companies and municipalities which hire their grads.
There is no doubt that having Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc., on the resume WILL draw the attention of recruiters and potential employers.
Graduates from these schools often say they’d gotten interviews – and jobs – SOLELY based on the school name factor. I’ll never forget one of my bosses waving a resume of a Yale grad, saying “finally someone with brains.” (Said boss didn’t last long on the job.)
The great thing about America is that you don’t have to go to one of these schools to succeed, or, in fact to have an exceptional career. Does it matter where you go to school? It can. But most of the time, not much.
I am a graduate of one of the schools you listed. I’ve discussed job offers from quite a few persons from my class. None made any sort of claim suggesting that they received jobs “solely based on the school name factor.” It clearly hasn’t been my experience that graduates “often” make this claim. However, connections made with other students were certainly influential in some jobs. This is especially true with startups that were founded by other students that they had connections (often indirect) with. Networking can also be influential in more general hiring decisions at area companies, particularly when there is a direct connection. This type of networking is not limited to just HYPSM grads.
Whether there is a noteworthy preference for HYPSM over in state publics (or vice versa) depends on the specific company and specific job. For example, I mentioned tech jobs in my earlier post. Being a Yale grad probably isn’t going to offer much help for typical engineering positions. Yale’s engineering program hasn’t been historically strong. There was even discussion of eliminating engineering from Yale in the 90s. The school has put more money and effort in to engineering recently, but they still have a relatively weak alumni network in key tech areas, and are not considered a top tech school by the bulk of recruiters and employers. They also have a relatively small number of engineering grads. Both can influence recruiting efforts at the college. For example, rather than large numbers of engineering (non-CS engineering positions) recruiters making the trip out to Yale, Yale has a collaborative program where Yale engineers can take a 2-3 hour bus ride out to Boston and participate in an engineering fair for Boston area colleges – (MIT, BU, Harvard, Tufts).
However, there are other fields in which Yale’s name may have more positive influence, such as finance and consulting. With the stronger relative preference and likely stronger on campus presence in job fairs and such, these field probably attract a noteworthy portion of Yale engineering grads. In some years, the majority of Yale engineering majors’ first job was not at an engineering company, with many working in non-engineering fields. Grads from other colleges often form a similar pattern, favoring the employers who do recruit on campus. One can often find a list of such employers on the college’s website.
Agree that this only applies to a small subset of students at elite schools, but this is what they do best. NSF, Hertz, Goldwater, Rhodes, Churchill alum are all well represented at top institutions and they become great mentors.
My spouse, a senior engineering manager, disagrees that college reputation ranks last on the list of evaluation criteria for engineering hires. Until recently, he went on several recruiting trips a year. He recounts that he most certainly did some preliminary sorting based on school reputation. There were colleges where, in his experience with staff hires, the engineering classes were simply not as rigorous, and applicants from those schools were not viewed by the recruiters as competitive as those from more highly regarded schools. Excellent references from internships could make up for that, but there was a stigma to overcome.
For some, college doesn’t matter, they’re going to succeed (or fail) regardless. For others, it matters. It matters for those who
Need to be challenged to do their best. At top schools (not by rankings, not even necessarily private), they’re more likely to be surrounded by intellectual peers who can learn from and challenge each other. However, if they’re in the left tail (say, the bottom quartile) of the ability distribution, there may be an opposite effect (they may struggle and lose self-confidence).
Need to take a more advanced and rigorous set of courses. Top schools are more likely to offer an option for a more advanced and rigorous set of courses in the area of interest, as other schools may not have sufficient number of students interested in taking or ready to take such set of courses.
Want relatively easier access to the best professors, the best facilities, etc.
Want to have a chance to work for a few highest-paying employers (well beyond what Apple or Google typically pays).
I think it’s silly to say it doesn’t matter. I think it definitely “can” matter. This can apply to a school like Kettering, Rose Hulman or Michigan.
Once companies hire and sees the work ethic and skill set from school X, if happy with those probably want more students from those schools. We were told as much on campus tours.
I have seen this in action in various professional fields also. Again this can be regional or even global. But certain schools as a whole will produce a certain type of student. Good or bad. Then it’s the students job to shine in their own regard.
@1NJParent
re: advanced courses–This is an excellent question to ask before applying. My kids have inquired and based apps on answers to questions like these. They have been able to take grad level courses as UGs at their avg public Us when needng to pursue more advanced coursework. They eliminated LACs where they would have run out of appropriate courses very early on.
re: best professors and research: these are not restricted to elite colleges. Again, good questions to ask. Is research open to UGs? Are professors open to mentoring UGs? My kids have had this at their avg public Us. Their mentors have really cared about their goals and have offered excellent guidance toward achieving them (and my kids have.). In terms of research, find out. A lot of research is consortium based and students can end up working with researchers from around the world while at their home U. What kind of research UGs participate in will vary, but the info is available before students enroll.
Many of the specialized honors programs add additional opportunities in research and mentoring. These kids can be one of a small cohort receiving focused guidance/opportunities.
My daughter attended an excellent school that is brought up frequently on CC…but it was definitely not the highest ranking school she was accepted to. The higher ranking schools were not for her for a variety of reasons:
several were very Greek
some didn’t seem to have the economic diversity that she wanted (didn’t want to be surrounded by wealth)
one didn’t have the sports that she wanted and which gave her a strong sense of community
one school didn’t seem to have students who were fully engaged and committed to clubs on campus (she knew a lot of students there who she spoke with)
she perceived 2 schools as being hyper-competitive, and that was not for her (this was only her perception, but for her it was real)
for her...she felt better about herself, more confident etc being among the top ...as opposed to being an average kid at a higher ranked school where most were just like her (note: she was still very challenged, worked hard, and was in class with extremely intelligent, accomplished students and brilliant professors)
she graduated with a 4.0 in premed (whether she continues on this path is debatable). If she had attended a higher ranked school would she have had this gpa? TBH I have no idea...she didn’t attend...and has no regrets.
All of these schools, including the one she attended, allow undergraduate students to be involved in research. My daughter’s school encouraged all students.
The higher ranked schools are some of the best out there, but they were not for her. I do believe fit is important
@solcaldad After all the hype this year with wealthy parents willing to break the law to get into some of these schools, and the frenzy I saw happening around me with people panicking when their kids didn’t get into the coveted schools, yes, it IS telling. Frankly, knowing that it doesn’t really matter much in the long run helps. It was very painful for us not to be able to give our kids what WE though really mattered, too.
Size (of the department in question) may make a bigger difference here. Some very selective “top schools” have very small departments in some subjects, so that the course offerings are relatively limited (and those courses that are offered may be offered only infrequently, like once every two years or less often). On the other hand, a giant state flagship may have a much broader range of course offerings in the subject from a large department, as well as greater frequency of offering.
The usual tradeoff is class sizes, particularly for lower level courses.