In general I agree. But when I am hiring, I value the skillsets more than school names. My personal experiences as a hiring manager, the name of colleges hasn’t reflected the ability 100%.
- I am in STEM field.
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Check out where Duke gets its med school students from and you’ll see a variety of schools. Florida International University, NC State, and University of Hawaii are studying right alongside Duke and Harvard. Then too, some don’t mention their undergrad… because it doesn’t matter.
Here’s U Rochester’s and if you google other years you can see what schools their class came from those years too:
"You’ve attended sixty-one different colleges and
universities as undergraduates and I’m listing all of them. In addition to the 16
students from Rochester; 5 attended Johns Hopkins, 4 each from Berkeley (GO
Bears!), Hunter, and Xavier of Louisiana; 3 from Rochester Institute of
Technology; 2 each from Amherst, Brandeis, BYU, Brown, Harvard, Middlebury,
Stanford, Buffalo, Connecticut, and Yale. Also represented are: Carleton,
Carnegie Mellon, Colgate, Cornish College of the Arts, Duke, Georgetown,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Hamilton, Haverford, Indiana-Bloomington, Indiana-Purdue, Juniata, Lipscomb, Metropolitan State of the University of
Denver, Michigan State, NYU, Northeastern, Oglethorpe, University of Oklahoma,
Christian University, Princeton, Rutgers, Smith, Spelman, SUNY Geneseo, SUNY
Maritime, SUNY Brockport, Swarthmore, Syracuse, The Glenn Gould School of
the Royal Conservatory, University of Scranton, United States Naval Academy,
New Hampshire, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, Colorado, Florida, University
of Maryland, University of Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina-Chapel Hill,
Notre Dame, Pennsylvania, University of Vermont, and Utah Valley."
There are probably others out there to be found too. I doubt any are elite or bust.
Even Harvard, while not listing specific schools, says there are 68 colleges represented. They can’t all be Top 20 or even Top 50.
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Look, you are absolutely correct. I recall reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell a while back and he had a list of Nobel laureates and where they went to school. They went everywhere! That’s the thing with brilliant people, the cream always will rise to the top. We all understand that.
However if you look at the average intake of students into top professional programs and 1% jobs, you will see that most of these people went to certain universities and colleges. The argument I am making is that it is the very reason we allow AOs to judge our kids because the most selective colleges have the right to choose who they want to admit and why. It is different for different schools. Some value equity and diversity, some value merit above all else.
If you (or your child) can get into a top medical program then that’s awesome. Good for you! But then you are the outlier.
I’m definitely not saying College A = College B. I’m just saying sometimes the degree name matters and many times it doesn’t. The journey to get from A to B differs with each college out there and the student/parents need to look at all sorts of pros and cons when deciding best fit for them.
My son and his close friend/peer chose two different undergrad colleges on their way to med school. Mine chose Top 30 National. Friend chose Top 30 Regional. Both are in their residencies now and thoroughly enjoying their lives and chosen career. Friend paid nothing for undergrad. We paid some for the difference between A and B because we wanted to (not full pay or even close to it). Others would say we’re crazy because both ended up with their careers. To each our own.
BUT, I’ve seen kids with lower stats than my guy and his friend also get into med school. They likely wouldn’t have if they’d been accepted at my guy’s school and chosen it. The competition is much fiercer. Since they chose elsewhere people still get to call them doctor. The end result likely wouldn’t have been the same if they’d gone higher caliber to begin.
Know your student, their goals, their abilities, and go from there. To become a doctor, the name on the undergrad diploma doesn’t matter. Getting high grades, MCAT scores, and terrific ECs do matter and those can happen anywhere.
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This is why I look at undergrad and medical schools when investigating new doctors. Not the primary factor, but one I consider.
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I ask a couple friends of mine who are doctors. More often they don’t tell me who to go to in terms of a doctor but who to avoid. And degrees (for both med school and undergrad) are sometimes surprising.
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You can look at schools if that’s your criteria. I ask people in the field for recommendations, and yes, they often say who to avoid. I prefer actual working/outcome criteria, but to each our own.
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Reading some of the posts on here gives me insight into why some employers put elite grads lower on their list to interview, not higher. People create their circles and elitism is rarely a plus, unless, of course, in that 1% where people judge each other based upon the name on a diploma (if it’s even 1%). Those folks likely create their own circle.
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One needs to separate cause and correlation before drawing conclusions. For example, consider a hypothetical example where law schools only admit by LSAT score (I realize that law schools do consider other factors in real life). There is a simple LSAT cutoff, and everyone above that score is accepted, and below rejected. In this hypothetical model undergrad school name is not considered, yet the admits to selective law schools would be extremely concentrated in among highly selective undergrad colleges and would be almost non-existent from less selective colleges.
Actual law school admissions show a similar effect. Kids who attend highly selective colleges for undergrad have a much higher rate of applying to highly selective law schools, as well as a much higher concentration of LSAT scores in the typical range of admission at highly selective law schools. So the effect is a high concentration of matriculation students from those undergrad colleges where many high LSAT students apply from. However, if you control for stats, then there no longer appears to be significant difference in admit rate. I’d expect medical schools to follow a similar pattern.
For example, in another thread, I looked up self-reported scattergrams for Chicago at University of Chicago Law School - Admissions Graph | Law School Numbers . When you exclude URMs, international, and non-traditional, there is a clear correlation with stats and decisions. At the time of the thread, acceptances were generally 3.8+ GPA and 170+ LSAT or 3.9+ GPA and 167+ LSAT. Rejections were generally <= 170 LSAT, particularly with lower GPA. Waitlists are typically borderline. These generalizations hold true regardless of undergrad ranking/prestige. Other T15 law schools I checked at the time formed a similar pattern. The outlier exceptions occurred at both highly selective undergrad colleges and less selective undergrad colleges. There didn’t appear to be a clear correlation with undergrad college name, after controlling for stats.
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Those admitted to med schools generally have to pass a baseline MCAT score and GPA to even get their app looked at. Then they need ECs, recommendations, and more to get an interview. Then they need to impress those folks to get accepted. It’s what one does in their college years (or after) that matters, not high school (with the exception of if one takes college classes while in high school, then those count).
It’s not like med schools are combing colleges looking for anyone under the bar to admit, just so they can say they have a diversity of undergrad institutions represented. The pool is that large and “winners” can come from anywhere in the pool.
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Sure, but the undergraduate school helps determine the stats.
This is fascinating to me. I don’t know any employers who put students at top schools lower on their lists to interview than students at less-top schools. I guess it just goes to show there’s a real range of things that go on in the world! I’d almost say these posts make me think there seems to be a bizarre/irrational/weird thing about anti-elitism rather than there is about elitism.
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However, there may be employers where a higher ranking of the college does not cause the employer to move them higher on the interview list than they would otherwise be. I.e. there may be employers where the name of the college one attended has a generally neutral effect.
There may also be employers whose preference rankings of colleges may not match that of the typical general prestige ranking average, perhaps because of employer-specific experiences, lack of contact with some generally highly ranked colleges, or focusing on specific majors or subjects where some generally highly ranked colleges do not have strong (or any) programs in.
There may also be preference rankings based on other aspects. For example, a University of Tennessee graduate may not favor a graduate of the sports rival Vanderbilt.
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Why do we allow college admissions offices to shape and pass judgment on our children’s character?
We don’t. Well, in our family, we don’t. I don’t really give a rip about Ivy League schools or even Top 20 schools. All of those are totally out of our price range. And, no offense to anyone, but I kind of feel like Ivy League-ers are too turbo and neurotic. Too many people believe that in order to ‘get ahead’ and be successful, get a decent job, etc., in the US, it means that you must graduate with a BA/BS from a Top 20 school.
In general, that belief is just not true. What matters more is that you get an education from SOMEWHERE. You want to advance in your career and get a promotion? The odds are a lot higher that you’ll get that promotion if you have ANY college degree compared to someone who only graduated from high school.
The parents & kids who are convinced that their kid is going to be wildly successful, rich, famous, whatever by majoring in Theater at Harvard, for example, will have a rude awakening when that kiddo ends up working at Starbucks after college while trying to land their big break on Broadway with the rest of the millions of other actors/actresses trying to make a cheap living in the theater business. In the meantime, Harvard will be happy to take your $250k-$300k of money that you get to pay for that Ivy League education.
I sort of look at the college search process like we’re shopping for a house to buy. We are the consumers and there are a lot of options to choose from. Some are super expensive, some are super cheap, some are middle of the road. Not a lot of the super expensive ones are “worth it,” but that’s very subjective and varies a lot from one person to another. Some of the “cheap” ones offer really great educations and really great job opportunities after graduation.
There’s something out there for everybody. Lots of different flavors of ice cream. Some people like chocolate, some like vanilla, some like fudge ripple. But the New Yorker article kind of assumes that EVERYBODY wants the same flavor of ice cream.
What every senior in high school needs to hear from their parents is that they are MORE than just where they go to college. And, in turn, the parents need to remember that life is more than just “where my kid got into college.”
Help your kid find the flavor of ice cream that tastes the best for them…the brand of ice cream that you can afford, too. Don’t spend yourself into the poor house paying for chocolate ice cream made out of goat’s milk from Outer Mongolia when regular Ben & Jerry’s or Dreyer’s works just as well. 
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Reading some of the posts on here gives me insight into why some employers put elite grads lower on their list to interview, not higher. People create their circles and elitism is rarely a plus, unless, of course, in that 1% where people judge each other based upon the name on a diploma (if it’s even 1%). Those folks likely create their own circle.
Yep. For example, I work in healthcare IT. A couple of years ago, we were interviewing people for an IT technical project manager position and interviewed a candidate who graduated from Harvard. Honestly, at first, we all thought that the guy maybe had lied on his resume, but we were wrong in that 1st impression. At the time, the guy was working as a PA (physician’s assistant) in the Navajo Nation in NE AZ-NW NM. And he talked about how if he got hired for this technical project manager job, he wanted to continue doing the PA gig on the side once in awhile, contracting occasionally as a PA.
We did not hire him. There were a few issues:
- He didn’t seem to know what he really wanted to be when he grew up.
- He was arrogant and cocky. Thought that his Harvard degree would get him in anywhere.
- Thought that being a physician’s assistant made him qualified to be a project manager on IT projects when he’d never managed a project before ever.
- Thought that because he USED healthcare applications as a PA, that meant that he’d just automatically know how to manage a project to implement them. LOL.
- He was more about tooting his own horn and bragging and it was clear that he would not really be a team player or get along with anybody on the IT team OR on the business side (healthcare insurance company).
It was sort of like just because he went to Harvard, he thought that the waters would part, the angels would sing, and we’d all throw him a welcoming party or something just for showing up.
By far, we’ve had MUCH better success with graduates from your regular “run-of-the-mill” public state school or from ‘lesser known’ (aka, not Top 20) colleges & universities.
From what I’m reading on here and what I hear from others, this is probably the common stereotype. I never really thought there was much to it, until reading the posts from some on CC.
Back in the dark ages when I was in high school, our school regularly sent kids to Ivies and similar and they were just fellow students in my class. They did just as well (or not) as students from my class who went elsewhere.
Where I live now, few try for Ivies, and when they do, it’s Cornell or U Penn (relatively local). When my top stat kid was looking at schools he was cautioned against going to one due to the elitism and opted not to apply to any, picking instead, schools that pretty much anyone respects (except probably that <1% circle). I didn’t quite understand, but supported him just like I supported my other kids. He’s been very happy with his choice and wouldn’t change it in hindsight. Several students at the school where I work have been quite happy with their choices and done well, one even going to Harvard med after graduating from a non-Ivy school on a free ride. I doubt she’s less of a doctor because she opted to go to undergrad where she did. Only folks in that small circle will pick doctors due to their undergrad! They don’t even trust the med school to select worthy students!
I see CC as a view into worlds I don’t experience at times. It can be fascinating.
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Did it get him to the interview for a job that was not a good match for him?
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I don’t know because I wasn’t the hiring manager (I didn’t select who got interviewed). I was one of a couple of team members who were asked to interview him in addition to the hiring manager interview.
I would congratulate the person doing the hiring for being open-minded and interviewing the candidate and then in being practical in rejecting him for not being the right fit.
As someone who has done lots of interviewing over the years, I am open to the "tangential " applicant. I ask everyone the same questions to assess both skills for the job and ability to learn. I might have interviewed this guy too – and not because he went to Harvard. The fact that he was wrong for the job is less about where he went to school than his experience and his desire to maintain that "moonlighting " gig which would not have made him fully available.
Fwiw, I just lost a great employee (degree from state flagship) who will be taking his first job managing a project and people. A company took that risk, and I suspect they will be happy they did.
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H and I just watched Episode 50 of Bob Hearts Abishola, Your Beans are Flatlining over lunch. It was hilarious. I thought of this thread and how well it fit in… If anyone wants a half hour of fun, feel free to watch it. The link was Episode 50 when I put it on, but I’ve no idea if they update it when new episodes come out. We tape shows on our DVR and watch at our pleasure fast forwarding commercials. I found the link just to share it.
You don’t really need the backstory to enjoy the episode.
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