<p>Why does a school's prestige matter? Yes, it's important to go to a top tier school but why is the NAME so important? Why don't we look at the schools with the largest/best alumni network, 4-6 year graduation rate, and most important of all starting salaries of graduates? Aren't the factors listed above more important than how prestigious a school is?</p>
<p>Who cares about name? (Says the parent whose youngest is at Harvey Mudd). 
Feel free to search as you suggested above, the playing field should be clearer for you if lots of other people hound after prestige and don’t bother to apply to the many other excellent schools that aren’t household names.</p>
<p>If you’re going into a field like finance, prestige makes a ton of difference because Goldman Sachs isn’t going to come recruiting everywhere. Prestige also matters if you’re going to work abroad- at places like Hong Kong (heavy British influence, so UK colleges are much better known than US ones), Rice is just a type of food and a Carnegie Mellon tastes better than honeydew but doesn’t quite have the satisfying feel of a watermelon.</p>
<p>Name also attracts top students- look at how Ivy-crazed a good portion of College Confidential’s top applicants are. The “insane” stats profiles almost always seem to be aiming for HYPMS. You get the smartest kids in your class and your alumni network doesn’t go untouched by this. Their name and funding also helps them draw some of the best professors- and bring in some of the highest quality education out there. Starting salaries? Yeah, employers do tend to pay higher for, say, Berkeley/CMU/MIT/Stanford CS graduates (medians are around $94k-100k), than for programs that purport to be of equal quality but just don’t have the same reputation. Hell, even those programs acknowledge the superior reputation of big “names”- when I went to UT for Pre-VIP, one of the first things they mentioned about their top professors were things like: “S/he graduated from [top-brand school].”</p>
<p>Yes, people let the name get in the way a lot of the time- or just shoot for the Ivies when they aren’t the best in their field- but it does have a massive impact on both employers, fellow applicants, and the general public. Big name schools also tend to have nice endowments which translate into solid financial aid. It’s more than just a “name”- it’s a good indicator of how good the student body, professors, research, and employment opportunities are- and this is more pronounced for certain fields (finance if you wanna go into hedge funds) and not important at all for others (pre-med).</p>
<p>Cuz everyone should aspire to be a hedge fund manager (yuck).</p>
<p>@intparent that’s not what I’m saying. Read the bottom. It depends on your major but prestige translates into tangible benefits for people with certain goals.</p>
<p>Further clarification: I’m going into CE and look at people weird if they’re applying to/attending an Ivy CS/CE program that isn’t Cornell, especially if they chose it over one of the Big Four. Ivies are definitely not the best at everything.</p>
<p>That’s funny, you mention finance as a field where it matters twice in your post. </p>
<p>@intparent Because it’s the field where (IMHO) Ivy/Stanford prestige makes the biggest difference, especially if you’re going for a certain employer. I mentioned pre-med as a counterexample, btw, and also brought up CS/CE in my latest post.</p>
<p>I’m just pointing out that you shouldn’t entirely overlook the name- except in cases where two schools have similar employer/peer/researcher reputations but different reputations in the eyes of the common man picked off the street.</p>
<p>(Beware the wall of text)</p>
<p>Because the tippity-top tier schools (I’m talking HYSPM and any peer institutions) have established themselves as schools that consistently produce the creme-de-la-creme of the adult world. Also, these schools have everything that you mentioned and so much more too. Pretty much anyone can name some respectable, famous person who graduated from one of these schools, but I doubt anyone could name someone of the same influence who graduated from their local CC. The name lends itself to some of the things that dividerofzero mentioned: recognition in other places in the globe, opportunities, insanely smart students and professors, etc. It’s a chain reaction really; one thing leads to another to provide all of the things students/parents want from a college. </p>
<p>Now it’s time to play the devil’s advocate. Name shouldn’t matter that much. Colleges should be looked at for factors like job placement (not where, but how many students actually get jobs after graduation), student body and all the other things you mentioned. I believe that the opportunities available at a school should be the most important factor in a college search, because the opportunities are a true measure of a school. </p>
<p>I can understand why the words ‘Harvard’, ‘MIT’ and ‘Yale’ can cause a lot of excitement, but I can also understand the other side of the argument. As a senior who’s going to graduate HS in two weeks, I have come to finally believe that it is the person, not the school, that can succeed. If a community college had produced 52 billionaires instead of Harvard, then it would be the community college that was attracting all the attention, and not Harvard. </p>
<p>The 21st century is a crazy place. People are trying to get some sort of security in a world that is subject to change more than ever before. </p>
<p>Another thing my friend brought up: these colleges are basically self-perpetuating cycles:</p>
<p>Prestige brings in good applicants. Good applicants become a good student body. Good student body graduates, does well in the real world. Good alumni body brings in good endowment and good reputation. Good endowment leads to solid research, other initiatives, and well-paid, qualified professors. Solid research, professors, initiative, and reputation lead to even more prestige.</p>
<p>But as @Violet1996 brought up, success depends on the individual rather than the school. It’s just that the best individuals tend to be attracted to the best programs- although the schools that offer ridiculous financial aid for National Merit Scholars end up having good student bodies in their Honors programs as well.</p>
<p>It’s not just that these schools produce successful people, successful people latch on to these schools (all the politicians who get MBA’s from Harvard later.)</p>
<p>@Violet1996</p>
<p>May I ask…what school are you gonna attend?</p>
<p>I understand and agree with the frustration of some of the big name schools, so I won’t harp there. I will offer one possible solution.</p>
<p>If you do your research, it isn’t impossible to find the undervalued/ranked schools by prestige. In fact, CC and its members promotes many of these schools. One way to change the cycle is to talk about the school, challenge its previous opinions and bring the research you found to show why it is a school that should be considered at the same level as the ivies. Personally, I have done this on CC with the schools I researched, found, and liked. Even the ones that may not have been perfect for me. It’s not easy, and it’s not ideal, but it is one way to change the cycle.</p>
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<p>Funny I just saw a US congresswoman on PBS who said she was from CC and I just finish writing about my dear friend Robert who was a top and famus NASA scientist went to CC as well. Robert ended up in Stanford Phd program, A Belgium Uni just gave him a honorable Phd.</p>
<p>There are actually many famous people did attend a local CC, but because the percentage of success people are so low and the number of graduates are so large, the schools are not being recognized. </p>
<p>@cnikroo check yo PM</p>
<p>The schools have the best instructors, small class sizes, and lots of opportunities, so when you go out into the world, you will know your field better than graduates from other schools. </p>
<p>The schools are also the hardest to get into, so people automatically know you’re intelligent with [insert top school’s name here] on your diploma.</p>
<p>You look at people weird out of ignorance @dividerofzero Harvard has the second most undergraduate origins of CS professors at top 50 CS grad programs, after MIT. So clearly Harvard undergrads are doing well enough to get into the top grad schools that produce the most CS professors. Don’t confuse going to the undergraduate school with going to the grad school. Sure some are tops for both.</p>
<p>US universities where the most top 50 ranked CS grad school Profs got their undergrad degrees, in order: MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Cornell, CMU, Stanford, Brown, Rice, Michigan, Cal Tech, Georgia Tech. And Harvard produces twice as many as CMU, with Harvard’s smaller dept. </p>
<p>This is just some data available and all I mean by posting it is that these listed are very good places to get an undergrad CS degree from, assuming you agree that getting admission to a CS professor producing grad school is one measure of a good CS undergrad education.</p>
<p>@BrownParent I stand corrected. I had Yale in mind when making that comment, though.</p>
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<p>Schools that are prestigious tend to have better alumni networks and better graduation rates than those from non-prestigious schools. Data on starting salaries is a bit skewed though. Schools with more engineering / CS majors are going to have higher average starting salaries than ones that don’t. However, many from prestigious schools go on to graduate school where they can earn quite a bit of money. </p>
<p>School names are brands like anything else. They’re associated with a certain level of quality. That level is attractive to the students and families who decide to attend the institution, and to the employers who hire its graduates.</p>
<p>FWIW, there are plenty of schools that do well that I think most (on CC) wouldn’t exactly call prestigious. This list is filled with both prestigious and non-prestigious schools:</p>
<p><a href=“http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703897204575488632505796848?mod=WSJ_PathToProfessions_MiddleTopHeadSumm&mg=reno64-wsj”>http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703897204575488632505796848?mod=WSJ_PathToProfessions_MiddleTopHeadSumm&mg=reno64-wsj</a></p>
<p>^ And your school name is an acronym with a plagiarized fight song. </p>
<p>It is a form of quality control. Filtering. Branding. Not that you can’t get an incredible education elsewhere and not that you can’t be a genius regardless of where you attend, it is that the consistency of the peer group tends to be superior. Our firm tends to recruit and hire from the tippy-top. On-campus at elite institutions, instead of seeking a needle in the haystack, we are presented with a pincushion stocked with needles from which to choose. Our productivity is much better. Even then it is a challenge for what we seek. </p>
<p>So the NAME is the brand. Consistency. Quality. You generally know what you can expect from Apple, Polo, Lexus, Starbucks, etc. It doesn’t guarentee that you don’t get a bad circuit, loose thread, faulty transmission, or poor brew, but it tends to lower the odds based upon years of universal experience with the name. </p>