<p>He began at Wharton though...</p>
<p>I think prestige is important because prestige develops over time from consistent educational excellence. Prestige is based on real quality. It isn't imaginary.</p>
<p>Exactly!! It was not important to him to graduate from a top name college. He must of started out in the "wrong" college. Last I checked, he is doing ok...</p>
<p>No there is not that much diff. BTW Columbia and HArvard on the Street at the undergrad level....HBS vs. Columbia B-school may be more of a diff, but marginal as far as student intellegence. There is no denying, however, that the HBS network is peerless in many industries. It sounds like Silver has a bit of "buyers remorse" what a shame....there's always grad school at HYP... if you feel your alumni network at COlumbia is not good.</p>
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[quote]
Tell that to my parents Xanatos...That's a bunch of bull.
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<p>Hear that? That's the world's smallest violin</p>
<p>Funny you should mention Warren Buffett, he did get his MBA from Columbia in case you forgot. More importantly if you think Wall St. today is anything like Wall St. from 50 years ago you're going to be sadly disappointed. Even just 20 years ago your college mattered a lot less, ask any trader at a big bank what colleges made up the new hires back in the 1980s, you'll find a lot of them went to community colleges. Nowadays forget about it, the business has changed, the trading floor is now full of Harvard, MIT, etc. alums. </p>
<p>Listen if you're dead set on believing this isn't true no one is going to change your mind. But the fact of the matter is that for places like Wall St. where you have literally hundreds of people applying for a single position this is the reality. No one has anything to gain by "lying" to you.</p>
<p>I'm not on board with SilverSpy. I went to Dartmouth undergrad, have an MBA from a top Ivy, and I thought my friends at Duke, Dartmouth, Williams, Penn, Amherst, Brown, and Columbia have had just as many opportunities as the HYP grads.</p>
<p>Those are all highly ranked and prestigious schools you are talking about so I don't see where you disagree with me. I didn't say just Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are the only prestigious schools, I said in answer to the oringinal question that YES, prestige does matter. In general people who went to prestigious schools (such as the ones you listed) will have more opportunities than people who don't. Sure I would've loved to go to Harvard instead of Columbia, if I could do it again I would've tried harder, but I didn't mean to imply that only Harvard had prestige and Columbia didn't. </p>
<p>I'm happy as hell a dummy like me got to go to Columbia, if I had to apply in this day and age I would've never gotten in. You guys who are starting to apply to college now have way more competition than I had just 10 years ago.</p>
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but I didn't mean to imply that only Harvard had prestige and Columbia didn't.
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<p>I don't know what you intended or didn't intend to imply, but if you go back and reread your post that is exactly what it implies.</p>
<p>"If I could go back to your ages (I'm presuming high school) I would have worked hard to get into a place like Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Prestige matters if you're going into certain fast-track careers like law, banking/trading, or consulting."</p>
<p>Basically, this just sounds like you regret going to Columbia because it wasn't prestigious enough to help you in these "fast-track" careers like one of the HYPs would have.</p>
<p>"As your career advances a degree from a Harvard, Yale, Princeton actually becomes more valuable in my opinion. I see it now with their strong alumni network on Wall Street."</p>
<p>This one speaks for itself.</p>
<p>So that's why slipper is disagreeing with you. And with good cause.</p>
<p>wow those are some pretty dumb assumptions you're making, or you're way too sensitive about this topic. I'm not going to list out every school that I think has a strong prestige factor when I write a sentence, listing 3 of the top ones keeps things short. While I loved my college and have stated numerous times it does have a strong prestige factor if you think people who go to Columbia or equivalent schools wouldn't have rather gotten into places like Harvard and Yale you need a reality check. If you also think places like Columbia are as prestigious as Harvard and Yale the first course you should take in college is Reality 101. "Prestige" is not a binary thing, you do understand that one college can be more prestigious than another one, even though they are both prestigious right?</p>
<p>
if you think people who go to Columbia or equivalent schools wouldn't have rather gotten into places like Harvard and Yale you need a reality check.
I'm only a high school senior, and you may discount me completely, but I chose not to apply to Harvard or Yale despite being (if I can say so myself) a reasonably compelling applicant, and if offered the option I would choose my school, Dartmouth, over either of them. They simply didn't offer the experience I was looking for. Not everyone considers "prestige" the most important quality in a college-- is that really so unreasonable?</p>
<p>Even though in reality you get a comparable education...it's like both degrees are big ice cream sundaes but harvard gets an extra cherry on top (horrible analogy). I do know what you mean in a way. Even though we know the actual education stacks up the same (or better for undergraduates at some Ivies), If you asked someone from Mars what's the best school on earth...they'd say "Harvard/Yale/Princeton." Those schools have most definitely been ingrained in the academic world and American mind as THE absolute power houses...it's about tradition.</p>
<p>^^my post in reference to silverspy...</p>
<p>While HYP might be "slightly" better than the non-HYP Ivies, I guess I just don't understand why someone who is successful (Silverspy) would want to go to a different school for prestige when clearly it didn't matter (working at a hedge fund is as impressive in the financial world as you can get). Once you get into a top school (HYP, Stanford, Duke, Dartmouth, Penn, Amherst, Williams, Columbia, etc) who YOU are matters much more than the school. After the top 20ish schools there is a pretty big drop off, at least in terms of business recruiting.</p>
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Hear that? That's the world's smallest violin
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<p>Ok....What does having a father who's successful have to do with where I go not mattering? Sounds like jealousy to me Mr. Dartmouth.</p>
<p>So what's the point of going to an Ivy League or a Top 50 school if it doesn't mean jack *****? Some schools are better than other and that's a fact. If it were true then everyone should go to their local college, university, or JUCO and see how they fare.</p>
<p>
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- It's very helpful with future job opportunities esp. if you want to go into a competitive high-paying field i.e. medical, law, business (IB), etc. Not so much if you want to be an elementary school teacher or something like that.
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<p>Okay lets settle this once and for all. Basically, the way I see it, going to a prestigious school opens more doors for you. When you choose to go to a state school for whatever reason, you've already closed some doors regardless of whether or not you want to walk through them, or if you are even concious of them in the first place. Everyone here so far has been arguing about business, and as the stats have shown, its a lot harder to get a job in I-banking or something from a "loser" state school. But state schools do have other advantages:</p>
<ol>
<li>For top students, there is MUCH less competition, and you will likely be at the top.</li>
<li>Its cheaper for these same top students.</li>
<li>You can still be successful in non business-related careers by going to a state school. I know someone that got into Dartmouth Medical School, Emory Medical, etc. from a state school here. So its definately possible, which is why I quoted that post since its absolute garbage for its statement about medical school. And in any career, after you get in, its your reputation and how hard you work that will push you to success. I'd wager that a Wharton graduate who stops working as hard once he/she gets into a I-banking job will fare much worse than the state school person who clawed his or her way to the top and continues to work hard.</li>
</ol>
<p>So yeah it can help, but it all depends on you in the end. Remember that smart people are successful anywhere, and an education is what you make of it.</p>
<p>Hope that helps :)</p>
<p>You need to go to a top 25 to have access to opportunities. The higher up the top 25, the better your options are...</p>
<p>slipper, can you explain all the Wisconsin MBAs in top spots in the corporate world to me? I mean they didn't have access to any opportunities, right? I mean, they went to Wisconsin! HA! What a joke! What losers, right? They definitely don't care about success; isn't that true?
.....
Then why is it that there are more Wisconsin MBAs among Fortune 500 Company CEOs than there are HBS MBAs? hmm...</p>
<p>What an idiotic thing to say (suze, slipper). Do you even realize that guys at the top of Goldman Sachs went to a small LAC ranked in the 30s (Trinity College)?</p>
<p>Anyone who tells you that you MUST go to a certain level of school to succeed is myopic and elitist.
You went to Columbia? Great. That and 50 cents will get you on the subway.
A person has to create his or her own success - he or she alone can dictate that, not his or her UNDERGRADUATE UNIVERSITY. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably some pedantic schmuck who went to a top-notch school and now feels the need to brag about it (over the internet, no less).</p>
<p>Most of Wisconsin's success within industry, most Ivy league grads heavily skew into finance or consulting. So given that there is a much larger pool of people from wisconsin entering fortune 500 jobs it makes sense that they top that list. You won't find too many Princeton students wanting to work within indutry. Also, you have to take into account the fact that Wisconsin undergrad is about the size of all the Ivies combined (minus Cornell).</p>