DianeR

sakky,

We cross-posted. But as I said before, show me a different study or a way to tease out the self-selection problem you see with the one I mentioned.

Maybe I just live in a too affluent area. There are all these kids that want to go to prestige schools simply because they are prestigious. They don't seem to know what they want to study, how strong the academics are, or how easy or hard it is to graduate. It all comes down to the name. Mom and Dad can just take out a second mortgage ...

Wouldn't this indicate that people who want to end up with the most money should select a cheaper school -- they can still get marketable degrees that way, they will get out of school with less debt, their parents will have the funds to help them later on or will leave a bigger inheritance, etc.?

You haven't said what you think. Should a student go for the expensive prestige school if there is a cheaper alternative available with comparable academic quality?

AcceptedAlready

Comparable academic quality is relative. Are you comparing schools like Wharton to UVA? If so, then I guess where you go doesn't really matter but if you are comparing like Wharton to Penn State then yes there is a difference. You can check salaries 5 years out and obviously when Wharton is sending just about EVERYONE to prestigious firms and Penn State consistently only sends the top 5%, there is a HUGE difference.

This isn't just one data set, you can look at top firm recruitment from the last 5 years at Wharton and see such data differ from Penn State
data.




In summary: It depends on WHAT you are comparing such schools to. For example, I took a free ride to Carnegie Mellon's Tepper (I'm now a prospective computational finance major which is SCS/Business) over schools such as Stern and Columbia. I would say such schools are of COMPARABLE academic quality.

However if you are comparing schools like Stern/Columbia vs Penn State, I would pick Stern/Columbia.

DianeR

Again, you can't compare Wharton to Penn State because the people at Wharton start out with more ability on average, as shown by their high school statistics (an assumption on my part -- too lazy to look it up). If only the top 5% of Penn State's business program graduates (you didn't say business program -- but this is the only comparison that makes sense) go on to "prestigious firms," could this not be because only the top 5% have the same native ability as "just about EVERYONE" at Wharton?

But I don't know anything about the qualities of different business programs. It is conceivable that prestige is linked to actual academic quality in this and other fields where there are actual rankings of specific programs. I've only knowingly met one person from Wharton and he was an idiot, so I don't know that I'm the best one to ask LOL

I don't measure academic quality, in other words, by the university's ability to wow folks if you put it as a decal on your car or a parent's ability to arouse envy at cocktail parties. I would look at a variety of factors -- what people in the field say; the CVs of faculty; the course offerings; whether professors or TAs teach the classes; what students and alums say about the program; the library and other facilities relevant to the program; research, internships, or other special programs available at a school; etc.

Most undergraduate programs do not have rankings, though. I think people would do best to do their own research and see what they think.

I'll give you an example of where I'm coming from on all this. There was a thread on the parents board involving someone whose child wanted the more expensive, elite school but couldn't come up with any reasons for it beyond prestige. She couldn't even point to post-graduate statistics. The father was agonizing over whether it would be worth it to scrape together the extra $100,000 just to make her happy. The alternative would be the cheaper school (one the daughter admitted was little different academically) and the ability to help her financially later on with grad school, a house downpayment, etc.

With a free ride (congrats!) there is no reason not to pick the best. You can even opt for prestige I won't buy a luxury car because the added cost wouldn't be worth it to me. But if someone is going to GIVE me a car and I have a choice, well, that's another matter!

DianeR

Oh, I forgot two other examples I was going to give. I should have breakfast before I start talking ...

I don't think those discussions of relative prestige on CC make any sense at all. For instance, is it better to go to Cornell because more people have heard of it or to Brown because its admit rate is lower and so knowledgeable people will know that IT is more elite?

Last example, I promise. I know someone who wants her three kids in Ivy League schools. It doesn't matter which Ivy, the proposed fields, the atmosphere or location of the schools, etc. Ivy is best and the more selective, the better. She was very upset when her oldest "only" got into Cornell. The poor kid was certainly put through her paces; she took the right courses at the right school, with the right ECs, and literally took the ACT every time it was offered for years (ACT has score choice so only the top score would be reported). The mom is particularly worried about her youngest two now because they don't have the academic stats of the oldest. I gave up trying to tell her that there are good schools beyond the Ivies.

AcceptedAlready

You have basically proved one of my major points. You can be a bit of an idiot at Wharton and if you graduate at the top 50% of your class, you can still get Wall Street.

If you are at Penn State and SUPER SMART but you are top 50 or even top 20% of your class, you will probably not make it to that same firm on Wall Street.

My point?

You can go to Penn State and be SUPER SMART and have a greater risk because you MUST get that top 5% to go where you want to go while the "dumbass" wharton kid can just get top 50% and get in the same position as you.

That is what I am saying when I talking about GREATER CHANCES for success at top firms. It's a numbers game and you can be super smart but you are taking a risk (albeit small or large depending on the school) by attending less prestigious schools.

In fact, certain companies like Lazard and Blackstone do not even recruit at schools like say.. George Mason. If top companies do not even RECRUIT at your school, obviously there is an issue there to address. You can be super smart but will Blackstone hire you for 185k a year? NO.

read this: http://www.*******.com/thread.php?th...=50&forum_id=1

AcceptedAlready

Oh crap censored.. I'll pm it to you

DianeR

I don't know if the idiot I have in mind made it to Wall Street or not. He was an "expert" witness in a case that I had delight of cross-examining. Given the way his sponsoring attorney was overheard yelling at him during a break (the "idiot" part was his term, or more specifically, "[very bad word] idiot"), I don't think he ended up with a thriving career as a witness. I just googled him and got no hits at all.

Perhaps I shouldn't have shared my one anecdote about Wharton. It was sure memorable, though!


I won't repeat myself about the statistics. I think we will have to agree to disagree.

I will agree with you about something, though. If a student is interested in top companies and they don't recruit at a particular school, this would seem a good reason to look elsewhere. I suspect that companies would go to a particular school, though, because they view it as having brighter and better educated graduates

I got your private message, but the link doesn't work that way either. I've noticed if something is too old, CC doesn't want to bring it up. Could that be the problem?

sakky

For certain employers, namely those that are client-focused and sales-focused, I believe that the general prestige of the school is key. After all, for investment banking and consulting firms, what they're really selling are their people, and it's easier to obtain clients when you can brag that your employees came from big-name schools.

For other kinds of jobs, it is true that employers just want a competent employee. The problem is, how do you know if somebody is competent? After all, everybody is going to claim that they are competent. And some people are really really good at interviewing, but really bad at the job.

That's a general problem in all labor markets - nobody really knows how competent an employee is going to be until hired, and even after he is hired, it's still often times difficult to determine whether somebody is competent or not. There are many job functions in which it is quite difficult to determine who is competent and who isn't. Like marketing. Like business development. Some people are really bad workers but really good office politicians such that nobody really notices how bad their work is. In other words, to use econ-speak, labor markets are fraught with information asymmetries. You don't really know what you're getting until you get it, and even after you get it, you sometimes still don't really know what you got.

Hence, when faced with information asymmetries, people rely on information signals. When I go to a foreign country and have to decide to eat at either McDonalds or some small shop I have never heard of, I may choose to eat at McDonalds. Why? Because I don't know anything about that small shop. Is it clean? Will I like the food? Will I get sick after I eat there? Who knows? At least with McDonalds, while they may not serve me the best food in the world, at least I know what I am getting and I can be reasonably sure that it is going to be palatable and won't make me sick. In other words, McDonalds uses its brand name as an information signal. That small shop doesn't provide me with any signal which makes me wary to transact there.

The same is true of these high-prestige schools. Once again, it's about sending information signals to the market. Companies just want to get good employees, and if a school develops a reputation for graduating good employees, then that's the signal that the company is looking for. As to why that school produces good employees is unimportant. Whether that school's curricula is excellent or whether it just admits very high quality people in the first place is irrelevant - in the eyes of the company, the only thing that matters is the final product. For example, when I look for a highly reliable car, I shop for a Toyota. Whether it's because Toyota's workers are highly skilled, or their manufacturing processes are well run or they use excellent input components - I don't care. As a consumer, all I care about is that a Toyota car is highly reliable, and I don't care why.


Well, like I said, if you come from a super-rich family, another 100-200k here or there isn't going to matter in the long run. Honestly, what's the difference between inheriting 1 million and 1.2 million?

However, for those people who don't come from such families, I agree that it is important to look for bargains. However, I would point out that if you are really poor, then the high-prestige private schools may be the best deal of all. For example, Harvard guarantees full rides (in the form of 100% full grants) to anybody whose families make less than 40k. I distinctly remember 2 people I know who came from California, and found that it was actually cheaper for them to go to Harvard than to Berkeley, once financial aid was factored in, and despite the fact that they were in-state students. One of them drolly and mordantly said that he had always dreamed of going to Berkeley but he couldn't afford it, so now he had 'no choice' but to go to Harvard.

DianeR

I think we've pretty much talked out this issue. What I would say in response I realize I've already said.

I've also noticed this thread was supposed to be a poll of what people thought was most important ... I'm not sure anybody is listening to our debate.

AcceptedAlready

Hah. Yes I think most people here are prestige and thus ranking whores.

Many a times I shake my head when I see a post titled "Chances at ANY Ivy?" I wonder if sometimes such students choose the Ivy name and schools like Brown over say.. JHU even if they are doing pre-med.

DianeR

However, the ranking of medical schools puts JHU over Brown. So I'm not sure how that plays out. Would a pre-med obsessed with ranking therefore choose JHU instead?

Yesterday I happened to ask my daughter, who is at Brown, if she runs into many people who seemed to have picked the school because it is an Ivy. (She picked it because it is the only school in the US with an Eygptology major.) She said she basically finds people who like the school because of the lack of distribution requirements, those and her tight little cadre of Egyptophiles. Or perhaps it is not politically correct at Brown to admit to a concern about status ... it is supposed to be the "hippie Ivy" after all.

My understanding is that there is quite a difference in the level of competitiveness at Brown (little) and JHU (a lot). I imagine that pre-med at JHU would be particularly hellish. So maybe folks making the choice you hypothesize do so for reasons other than the name.

CantTouchThis

definetly the acadimic strength thats why my top schools all have a top ten engineering college

ilovecalifornia

its most important to learn and also location/reputation/students

mdb72

I think prestige is a cop-out.

It's placing the world's overall perception of the school above your own. College is supposed to be about INDIVIDUAL exploration of yourself and what kind of a person you want to be in the world.

People should stay true to themselves and disregard the pressures and opinions of popular thinking.

AcceptedAlready

People want jobs..prestige means something different to everyone and to me it means job opps and academic quality (such as having esteemed and prestigious professors in my field of study).