<p>of course where you graduate from matters. For example, I will be screwed because all Tufts seems to do is produce naive, optimistic people who don’t care about money and want to change the world.</p>
<p>Firms recruit more heavily in certain areas. also networks at higher teir schools tend to come in handy-“old boys”- but if you know what to do you could get in too</p>
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<p>One more thing–once you land that first job with them, where you went to undergrad doesn’t mean a thing. The only thing that matters is your performance. But its in landing that first analyst position that your Ivy degree will come in handy.</p>
<p>bigp9998 is absolutely correct. Just do yourselves a favor by going around and taking a survey of the degrees of those who work at Goldman Sachs.</p>
<p>But I must say that the quality of the individual programs of schools matters most. For example, my school’s journalism program is highly regarded. Recruiters in the Journalism industry would want to familiarize themselves more with the quality of the individual journalism programs within schools than the quality of the school overall. So of course students from Syracuse (Newhouse), Northwestern (Medill) or Columbia school of Journalism would be the most desirable to companies such as CNN or Time Warner magazines etc.</p>
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<p>You are spot-on correct in all of your points. I have an understanding, for example, that the University of Missouri Journalism school is one of the best in the country. In that situation, your internship and job opportunities would probably better than many higher ranked schools for that particular field.</p>
<p>To the degree that companies know where they can get smart students to work to death for a couple of years, they recruit heavily. There’s no question of that. But it is equally true, that like in any other business, the question then becomes “what have you done for me lately?” And, from what I have been able to ascertain, they have clearly learned that their future movers and shakers may not (and in these cases, do not) come from Ivies, AWS, etc. but from “overachievers” from other places. In other words, they know that they are going to find future stars from Georgia State, St. Cloud State, American, Montclair State, etc. </p>
<p>Among those cited, there was not a single one with either an undergraduate or graduate degree from Wharton, Stern, or Ross.</p>
<p>I interview folks as part of my job. For the last several, we’ve had candidates from Princeton, Dartmouth, and Reed. We’ve hired the folks with degrees from Western Washington University, Evergreen State College, and University of Oklahoma. I can also report that, in 38 years since graduation, having lived on the east coast, in the midwest, in California, and in the Pacific Northwest, I have never ever had a single interviewer/employer who knew what Williams College was. The closest was in Philadelphia, where the interviewer immediately assumed William & Mary, told me about the nice trip he took with his wife to Williamsburg. I didn’t correct him. I got the job.</p>
<p>^WOW–I am not calling you a liar mini, but that is hard to believe. I graduated (30+ years ago) from a tier 1, top 50 (USNews), low acceptance rate LAC. But it isn’t Williams!! It is a much lower ranked school than Williams and yet, plenty of folks have heard of it and been impressed. I, too, have lived around the country.</p>
<p>I didn’t say “no one” had heard of it. I said not a single one of my employers or interviewers had.</p>
<p>Still incredulous!!</p>
<p>Graduating from a prestigious school gives you easier access to great employers. But it still doesn’t mean you’re assured of a great job, unless you’re a stellar graduate, or one of the most competitive graduates. </p>
<p>Graduating from a lesser known school would not really give you access to great employers, but if you’d pursue it and you think you’re a very qualified candidate, I don’t see any reason why companies wouldn’t hire you.</p>
<p>Going back to the post about the CEOs without degrees from highly-selective universities…</p>
<p>There is, without a doubt, many successful people who were educated at state schools and other institutions that aren’t considered prestigious. However, there is a disproportionate representation of graduates of highly-selective universities at the executive level of companies. For example, of the 500 of Standard & Poor’s 500 CEOs in 2005, roughly 10% attended an Ivy-League school ([Yale</a> Daily News - Fewer CEOs are Ivy League grads](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/15874]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/15874)). Based off of the 2004 Census, there were 15.9 million students enrolled at universities, roughly 58,000 of which were from the Ivy League. From these numbers, we see that .0037% of college students in 2004-2005 were in the Ivy League. It’s quite amazing that .0037% of the collegiate student population represents 10% of CEOs - Ivy League students are 27 times more common at the executive level. Of course, these numbers are a very rough estimate. Obviously numbers have changed even in the past five years, and it’s hard to compare the number of CEOs in 2005 to college students in the SAME year, seeing that it takes many would-be CEOs 20-30 years after graduation to reach their peak.</p>
<p>And about Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase: Tufts is considered to be a top-50 university (and no, I’m not a Tufts student/alumna trying to defend my school).</p>
<p>Why do you find that amazing? Did you think Ivy or AWS students stupid? Or without wealth and family position or connections? (By the way, your 15.9 million number does indeed include ALL students - the average age of an American undergraduate enrollee is 24.5 years old; the largest university by far is the University of Phoenix. Care to guess how many 24.5 year olds are enrolled at Ivies, or AWS? Care to remove all students pursuing degrees in nursing and ancillary health professions?)</p>
<p>The question posed was about the financial services industry, or, to be precise “certain sectors of the financial services industry”.</p>
<p>As for Tufts, the question was about Ivies, and AWS; American’s undergraduate business school is ranked 28th (just below Georgetown’s), and its IR school in the top 20, ahead of several Ivies, but that’s neither here nor there, 'cause that’s not what was being explored.</p>
<p>Where you attend and become a alumni at will affect your internship oppurtunities and job positions in the future, explain? By how much?</p>
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<p>I’m reading across threads and it seems to appear that internship oppurtunities are only offered at certain schools, and job positions seem to only be offered to certain alumni(s). Could anyone explain all of this?
Thanks </p>
<p>^This question was about the financial services industry? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>But whatever; I’m glad I’m going to Wharton.</p>
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<p>And as for those numbers you gave at the top, I wonder what those percentages would look like if we expanded the sample beyond the Fortune 500.</p>
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<p>[Office</a> of the Secretary of The University: Vikram Pandit](<a href=“http://www.columbia.edu/cu/secretary/bios/pandit/index.html]Office”>http://www.columbia.edu/cu/secretary/bios/pandit/index.html)</p>
<p>CEOs/the upper echelons of big firms and companies whom are alumni from a certain school might recruit frequently from those schools, but it doesn’t mean they will be exclusive to that school. Internship and some job opportunities might be limited to certain schools, but no industry or company will be limited to a select number of schools. </p>
<p>For instance Bill Gates. Didn’t graduate from college, but attended Harvard. Don’t think he’s done alot with Harvard, but I know he has donated crap loads of money to UW Seattle. Funny thing? Microsoft hires the most employees from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.</p>
<p>Warren Buffet is an alumni of grinnel college, Berkshire hathaway is one of the largest companies in the world. Grinnel College is one of my top choices, but I doubt such a large scale company only hires from a small liberal arts college.</p>
<p>There should be some kind of Bill Gates Corollary to Godwin’s Law (that as a conversation grows the probability that someone will bring up Hitler increases to 1)</p>
<p>As any college/job thread grows, the probability that someone will bring up Bill Gates increases to 1.</p>
<p>Unless probability is being counted on a Windows PC, in which case it will crash while calculating.</p>
<p>Bottom line is Bill Gates is what we call an outlier. By a margin of a few billion.</p>
<p>So… bigp, I think we’ve concluded here that only certain sectors of a certain industry recruit heavily from elite schools. What about other jobs? I don’t think it’s fair to base our assumptions about the rest of the job market based on one industry that is abnormally cutthroat and competitive, Wall Street.</p>
<p>^^^Also an industry that almost ruined this country through greed.</p>