Do some firms favor "big name" schools?

[dukie87]

I have been strongly arguing to my D that she should not go for a "brand" school just because it is prestigious and well known in our area but yesterday I started to think that her excessive focus on selectivity was perhaps not so excessive...I just started a new job at a very large financial institution. The newbies (entry level and mid management) all go through the same first day training--benefits/culture of the institution....it turned out it was the start day for all of the new college graduates who had been hired in October/November of last year into entry level analyst positions. I was surprised and a bit sad that EVERYONE was from a name brand school....this place values the math whiz kids so most were exceptionally quantitative in their major and interests but...I met kids from MIT, all the ivies, WUSTL, UVA, Duke, etc. Not one from a local, less prestigious U, not even strong state schools, with exception of UVA. No Umichigan/OSU/UW-madison/ The new employees were uniformly bright and articulate but I thought it was odd that all had gone to top 20 schools. I am a Duke grad but I always felt that, while it was a good education, I could have done just as well at a good state school. I assume I was hired more for my experience than the name of my alma mater but this experience has made me wonder about the boost a new graduate gets from being from a selective school. For those of you working in large companies...do you see the same bias toward new grads?

[maidenMom]

My dad, uncle and grandfather were all corporate execs (NYC, Silicon Valley, NYC) and they almost always favored those top school grads - an exception would have been if someone came highly recommended by a prof they knew at a big state U or somewhere else - can only think of one in particular, but it did happen. This may be b/c they were Harvard, Princeton and Williams grads, but maybe that's how it mostly is up top in some cases. I work in the south for a fortune 500 company (not high up - analyst) and see many new hires (analysts) come from very generic schools so maybe it is regional - but frankly, these kids probably will never get too far out of this division - they won't have a chance to run the show, I don't think.

[vienneselights]

well, considering most job skills are learned on the job, surely it makes sense that a company would favor kids that work like horses to get into brand name schools, given there is a high chance that the same kids will work like horses to get the job/promotion/3rd maserati, therefore generating heaps of profit, for the rest of their employable lives.


also, my mom says this is true, so it must be true.

[lastminutemom196]

I am guessing YOU were hired on the basis of your experiences, because you aren't entry level. However, there are a handful of firms/career paths, where brand name is important, primarily in the investment banking and consulting. Also, geography may play a role as well. Employers in the NE may look more for those brand names than employers in other regions.

[SteveMA]

I think it is very regional and I would suppose that on the east coast, yes, you are going to run into a lot of grads from the "name brand" schools. In other parts of the country, no, you don't see that on a regular basis. Most of the CEO's I know are state school or local private school grads, none of them are Ivy grads. I know that my DH recruits at his alma matter on a regular basis because he knows the profs and the classes and can tell by a transcript who to interview and who not to interview based on which profs they took (won't interview anyone that took all the 'easy' profs). It just makes his job easier and my guess is that is what you are seeing.

[intparent]

I used to work at one of the largest consulting firms (not strategic, but the broader scope firms), and did quite a bit of recruiting with them. We had interview schedules at both types of schools in our area. I will be blunt... I HATED the trips to the small LAC that was about a 3 hour drive away that I was often assigned to. We had to stay overnight, and we would usually interview between 16-24 candidates across 2-3 interviewers. We were lucky to find one (in a great year 2) who were good enough to come in for an office visit, and we often had to kind of stretch the standards to do that. When we went to the state university, we typically would find 2-3 in a group of eight that were very good candidates. I wonder if that firm even recruits at the smaller, lower ranked schools any more given the poor yield and the current economy. I would guess this is a top 100 LAC (not top 50).

This is one reason that I do not go along with the "you can get a great education ANYWHERE" thinking. I think the quality of students around you makes a big difference in your education, driving class discussion and group projects to a higher level. This was also my experience in my own education (one degree from top university, one from a more regular "state school"). HUGE difference in the quality of my classmates. It isn't just about the professors and the text books.

That said, the state university we recruited at is not a top notch one. But it was the best we had, and we found some good people there. I think there are some firms (eg, strategic consulting firms, investment banks) that only recruit at big name schools (and some recruit a lot more MBAs than undergrads). Most companies will give a candidate a look from anywhere, but they do not necessarily send recruiters to non-big name schools.

[BCEagle91]

We only hire from certain schools for new undergrads.

But outside of that, anything goes - even for employees that don't have any degrees.

[SteveMA]

intparent--I think, again, that this is very regional. Around here the smaller LAC's are far better than the "name brand" schools (state flagships, etc.) and locally people know that, but probably not outside of the area as much. In our search for LAC's for the kids though, there are some regions of the country where the opposite is very true, the state schools are far better than the local LAC's.

[scout59]

Here we go again...

So much of this is regional. Where I live (midwest), a University of Michigan degree will trump practically everything. There's a lot of love among employers here for Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Michigan State. At my previous employer - a major pharmaceutical company, also located in the Midwest - we recruited science grads primarily from Big Ten schools and area universities. (My boss, who was one of the smartest men I ever knew, got his PhD from Wayne State.) For a long time, we also recruited from those name-brand east coast schools, but we found that many students did not want to relocate to the midwest. It was more cost-effective to recruit more locally, and we did not find any drop-off in available talent.

I have told this story ad nauseum and I know it's anecdotal: but DD landed a pretty great job in her field, making more than I do at my current job, and she graduated from a school you've probably never heard of (especially on the east coast!) Of course, she had killer grades and job experience, but still....

[BCEagle91]

There are many employers that recruit at my son's non-flagship state school - might be due to the location or that the school does very well in certain majors. They also provide coop and intern positions; perhaps because the students are local. The students themselves are generally helpful in trying to place grads from their school when they see openings at their companies.

I think that there are a variety of approaches to recruiting depending on the company, HR department and hiring manager. Those looking for a job would do well to contact folks in their networks (if possible) to get an idea as to the hiring philosophies of the companies that they are interested in.

One local employer is really big into team sports - they put it right on their recruiting page that they prefer candidates that have played a school team sport.

[maidenMom]

the varsity sport thing mixed with a top 20 school (I have read - think WSJ) is a great combo for getting hired east coast

[dadx]

This can be an important point for people.

Interviewing is "purchasing behavior" for adding employees. We all have our own routines for what we buy, and so do organizations. The best ones have established routines. That involves narrowing your recruiting efforts to a manageable number of schools that will reliably produce good candidates....those good enough to hire, and those you can hire with your location, pay, and job content.

No one is ever individually excluded because of their school, but if the company doesn't recruit there, it becomes difficult to get into the interview cycle at the right time and with the right people.

A corollary to this observation is that, if you do go to a school where firms recruit, it is imperative to get on their schedule when they set it up. Don't fool around and decide over Christmas that you'll have to call your family friend to see if he can arrange an interview. The best places to work all have "processes", and while they can violate their procedures an interview other people, they all are reluctant to go back after the fact and interview people who for some reason didn't show up on the normally schedule.

None of this is carved in stone, and no recruiters are going to pass on a great candidate just because he wasn't there at the right time, or because he went to Marshall instead of Yale. But it will be paddling upstream.

[Pizzagirl]

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding going on here - that employers favor top 20 schools / name brand schools because they are making some kind of value judgment that kids from other schools can't possibly be smart, blah blah blah. No. They are recruiting at certain schools because it is just an easy pre-selection method of finding kids that are bright - it's a certain level of shorthand and you can't interview everywhere so if you have to select, might as well select those schools where you've had good results in the past. Dadx is totally correct.

And I absolutely agree with the comment above that it's regional; U of Michigan would uniformly be seen as a "top school" everywhere around here (Chicago) - no questions asked. U VA would be much less known, and some of the Ivies wouldn't inspire the "shock and awe" that they might elsewhere.

[goldenboy8784]

Here in Washington D.C., pedigree trumps all and going to a name brand East Coast school is of vital importance.

Lets look at a couple of think tanks and research organizations here in the capital that list all of their employee bios.

Eurasia Group

Where the Researchers (Entry Level) went to school:
Penn: 3
Brown: 1
Duke: 1
Claremont McKenna: 1
Harvard: 2
Princeton: 1

Research Assistants | edCount LLC

Where the Research Assistants (Entry Level) went to school:

Baylor: 1
Duke: 2
Harvard: 2
GWU: 1

It might not in the Midwest, but on the Eastern Seaboard, prestige matters.

[rodney]

I think it is imperative to make the distinction here, if we are going to repeat this discussion (ad nauseum), that to mention "large multinational companies" without context of industry is futile......

There are plenty of industries, in the Northeast/Midatlantic corrider, that do not practice this type of recruting for new grads......

This thread is about first year analysts, investment banking and, possibly, consulting.....

all bets are off in other industries......don't feel like naming them....

Sure, it doesn't hurt to attend a top 20 school....but it is not necessarily the "golden ticket" for other industries.........