Not to side track from this thread but 
this sounds familiar in the debate about “personality” score consistently lower for certain group in the holistic admission process.
Sure, not mutually exclusive but in different priority for practical reasons. Personally would never take a candidate with the combination of high charisma and low STEM related ability.
But you might end out working for one. The most successful (monetarily) of my college friends is one. He buys tech firms and runs them. He wasn’t very tech savvy in college. But he is very charismatic. He was the student body president. He has his name on a building at the university (in his 40’s). Technical talent is easy to buy.
I have seen the competitions continuing to the colleges space, especially competition for internship in major tech firms or investment banks. Similar to one of the thread here mentioning HS students/parents begging for intern opportunities in the lab… Have seen parents asking for intern opportunities for their college children as well.
Just curious if that’s one of the factors pushing kids to pursue elite school. (thought that’s only ticket to get into better career or employers?)
Sure. There are many ways to define success.
Technical talent is easy to buy.
Just like how IT outsourcing is done. If the mentality is any technical talent is disposable, it means a given company cares more about marketing than innovation. It just dies naturally by losing edges and becoming dependent.
This is the myth I am curious about.
Same with college - as everything in the US from food to healthcare, the quality is uneven, there is a lot of marketing and you need to do your research to make sure you are not eating garbage.
Elite Colleges = Better Education?
Rankings = Better Education?
Could this admission frenzy be another example of marketing?
To a certain extent, yes. But I have t think the caliber of students at a Top 30 university on an average is possibly better?
I was reading an old thread that was linked to a new one from 2012. A parent put it in a way I had not thought of before. I paraphrase: 99% of the population thinks elite colleges are better and since that 99% will do the hiring, elite colleges will be sought after by applicants.
Well maybe I’m part of the 1 percent but frankly when hiring I don’t care if the stars aligned in such a way to get a kid into a top 20 school. One of the worst hires of my career was from a top 20 school. The best 3 hires hands down in last five years were from a state school one state to the south of us, and one from a state school to the east of us, and one from a private school in our state.
Many many many talented top stats kids or other great students don’t bother applying because they are in the donut hole of not full pay, not low enough income to get need based aid–and true merit-only scholarships getting harder and harder to find let alone win. Parents not willing to mortgage their home equity. Have savings for college but no where near the EFC. Being a top student doesn’t get you too far in attending or paying for a T20 school without a hook or wealthy from a private feeder school…
Forget it unless you want a mountain of debt.
I truly think there is less and less connect between top 20 and being a good worker/great hire. U.S. school admissions and funding favors certain groups over others. I’ll take a smart, hardworking person with great skills in a Columbia jacket any day over someone with pink bottoms in their shoes or $1,200 winter coats. 
That last part is tongue in cheek. Sort of.
Those percentages certainly aren’t true around me where the “best” college, if asked, is often Penn St.
College A isn’t College B, but it’s not due to their spot in the rankings. It’s due to what classes are offered and in what depth, who the professors are, research that might be going on, and any connections that come with the school. Is the person hiring an alumni or from the rival school? Have they had good grads from there before or did that one jerk come from there? That sort of thing.
Many places just want to see the “college grad” box checked TBH.
Talent evaluations generally say more about the reviewer than the subject.
My loose interpretation of lie #6 - Marcus Buckingham’s 9 lies about work.
The difference between a job and a career.
Yes, most of them had to do very well in high school, in addition to being able to afford attendance.
In the absence of financial limitations, the name of your college often reflects how well you did in high school, and the name of your graduate or professional school often reflects how well you did in college.
I agree 100%. I was just stating reason # 12292 why applicants choose elite colleges.
I guess this exact way of thinking what is driving this Ivy or bust frenzy… Basically discarding kids who has no means to attend such establishments.
I’m sure a few people feel this way, but it’s closer to 1% than 99%. A quick google search shows so many successful career people didn’t have an elite education.
By definition, if everyone had one it wouldn’t be elite.
I think you’re undervaluing the top half of college degrees. I think that good public institutions should carry with them a mark of accomplishment beyond just the ability to “check a box”. Far beyond flagships, there are good schools with solid graduates who deserve consideration because they achieved something beyond “any ole diploma.”
My point was, if the employer just wants to check the box without any care as to the quality of the school, then it’s most likely a job. You can still have a career, but odds are it will be someplace else.
It depends on what is defined as success perhaps?
To put this in perspective eight of the nine sitting justices of SCOTUS have graduated from only two law schools — Harvard and Yale. The other one from Notre Dame.
Here is the exact excerpt from that old post:
We see variants of this cliche sentiment all the time on CC. Sadly for proponents of the cliche, 99.9% of the world does not think that the Ivies are “WAY overrated” and this 99.9% generally does the hiring. As for Knox being “better” than some top LACs, I would refer the OP to the same USNWR he uses as support for his “hidden gem” thesis; on USNWR, you find Knox buried somewhere on the third page . . .
I’m pretty sure a goal of being on SCOTUS puts one in the 1% of students/people out there.
For a rare handful of careers undergrad matters a lot (though you mentioned law school, so did they all go Ivy for undergrad too?).
For some careers it matters some. (Engineering is in this category IMO.)
For many careers it doesn’t matter hardly at all. (Teaching falls in this category, but so do Doctors.)
I don’t think that the makeup of SCOTUS says much about the 99 percent. That is one of the problems. Look at the Senate. Most of them completely out of touch with real people. Just my opinion, the Washington DC machine is largely representative of what is wrong. Division and extreme rhetoric and insincerity and extreme partisanship has made them unable to be sincere or very functional. Just my opinion but most meaningful positive change will come from businesses and hopefully some meaningful change driven by our kids’ generation, most (not all) of whom are more tolerant, more diverse, and more aware of the planet. SCOTUS has become very political in terms of who is appointed and they are a reflection of the out of touch politicians who put them there. Hopefully consumers and young people will drive some of the needed change.
Medicine – you have to be kidding me! There are many types of doctors but if you want to go to a competitive discipline and be successful, you better attend a top school and BTW, it does not hurt to know a few people on the inside.
Just for kicks, here is the leadership of Duke. Just look through where they went to school.
College admissions offices will pass judgement on our kids as will everyone else. Elite colleges cannot even accept the top 1% of applicants.
Over 50,000 kids score a 5 on Calculus AB and BC. Think about that for a second.
This is so not true… and if you actually look at where some of the folks on that page did their undergrad it didn’t always say - probably because it doesn’t matter. The fact that a few went to Duke or UNC isn’t really meaningful TBH. People who really like an area tend to stay there.