<p>tsdad, fear not 
I didn’t confuse you with the OP - in fact I hadn’t even read your post. I was referring mainly to the OP part stating:
which seems to be inferring that at an elite school, you have a lesser chance of gaining these interpersonal skills.</p>
<p>I think the singling out of the U of C for criticism in the OP is the real problem for me. A few things I’ll say at the bat:</p>
<p>1) I agree that intellectual know-how and people skills don’t always work together, and at times the people skills will trump the actual knowledge. Sometimes, though, it won’t.</p>
<p>2) I have been in a work environment where I felt that the secretary (who probably has no college degree, or perhaps a junior college degree) was doing a better job than graduates of super-elite schools. What made the difference? While the super-elite grads obviously had the intellectual advantage, they did not have the personal interaction skills. ** I think you can find graduates of ANY college ANYWHERE who are more brain than they are handshake, and, as such, don’t necessarily make the best employees.** If I were the boss at this office, I would have fired the super-elite grads for not being people-friendly enough and I would have kept the ones who went to state school or barely passed through college.</p>
<p>3) U of C students and other students who have liberal arts degrees have not been training to write resumes, but rather five-page papers on Plato or solve problems on quantum physics. While I think the skills employed in both are very transferable (be clear, concise, logical, and speak to your audience), perhaps some will tend to “overintellectualize” or “overanalyze” in an interview. Just because Plato has been bludgeoned to death in hum class, or the problem set requires a lot of background information doesn’t mean the reason you want X job should be bludgeoned to death in an interview.</p>
<p>4) I’m a little bit unclear what the subsidiary take-home message is here. Certainly one message is that brains won’t get you everything, but is another message that all U of C students are socially inept and not ready for real-world skills? That part of the argument simply doesn’t hold, because U of C students go into fields that require people skills and teamwork all the time (i.e. business, teaching, lawyering, doctors, etc.), and considering I hang out with them all day, I can testify that the majority have the people skills down. I would tend to agree that some have a bit of a problem talking to the “layman,” but I think that’s something that is an issue across all of the elite colleges and is probably a function of the economic background of the person before they graduated from the college rather than the college itself.</p>
<p>Along the lines of unalove, I wonder how many of these awkward U of C grads will grow down the line and learn how to deal with all the job market BS in the long run?</p>
<p>I mean, I had a resume when I was an undergrad. I wouldn’t call it a good resume, but I had one. It’s grown, and will definitely continue to grow. I’m sure these “dumb-puppy” U of C grads will also grow-- painfully at times.</p>
<p>I also wonder how many “dumb-puppy” grads shy away from the prospect of working for “the man” and how many of the job-awkward ones would want a job in PR particularly.</p>
<p>No kidding. I’ve worked for “the man” already, and while I’ll probably go back to that sort of job again, it’s not exactly for everyone. There’s no shame in not wanting a job that requires you to deal with people face-to-face every hour of every day. It’s just not for everyone.</p>
<p>Too bad that the OP began with the U of C as a description using ABC College could have made the same points. Having interpersonal skills count…a lot… when you get to the real world. You can be super smart, but if you’re hard to work with or just a ***** to be around, then it’s going to be tough out there. There are many talented, smart people from all sorts of undergraduate colleges, elite and not, and many are far more successful in the real world than in the academic one. A quick scan of almost any workplace in America will show this to be true.</p>
<p>hawkette,</p>
<p>Sure. But plenty of people are still forming their skills in their late teens and early 20s. Nobody comes out of college knowing exactly what is required of them when it comes to interviews, job protocols, etc. I do think that a lot of “real world ugly ducklings” can grow quite a bit.</p>
<p>If not, there are plenty of jobs for people who don’t like a lot of interpersonal contact.</p>
<p>True, but it’s rare that the people running the show don’t also have the personal skills. The exceptions would be the tech folks who have the proprietary knowledge that gives the business its competitive advantage. But in more mature organizations, people skills are pretty darn important.</p>
<p>thought the op was stating college name not as important as interpersonal skills in most cases–as someone who works in HR of large high tech corp–w very bright engineers–obviously the best educated who also are strongest in interpersonal skills are at a clear advantage–however many w/o top college name, but strong interpersonal skills make for best team players, leaders/communicators, and innovators…</p>
<p>hawkette,</p>
<p>Your position reminds me of this article from the New Yorker:</p>
<p>[Getting</a> In: The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge]Getting”>Getting In | The New Yorker)</p>
<p>I think the fact is that different schools look for different skill sets. However, it doesn’t make one “better” than the other. The “real world” isn’t always the end game for all college grads. Plenty of people are happy in the insulated world of research, and that should be their prerogative.</p>
<p>I don’t doubt this post, but there is one problem here: I’d never let a public relations hr person decide the quality of a person, nor would I listen to a generalization made by one. Candidly speaking, I’ve very seldom met a pr person at big firms who wasn’t kind of vapid and anti-intellectual. It happens, but not often. If you were going to rate professions on high feeling, low iq combinations, I’d put pr right there. Massive generalization I realize, but this post started with a massive generalization – and I’ve met A LOT of pr people.</p>
<p>Having said that, people who come from intense environments like U of C probably take awhile to transition out of the ivory tower…</p>
<p>Resume writing and interview practicing are available resources that the U of C offers. And you can’t get a degree in social sciences in Chicago.</p>
<p>^ Isn’t economics a social science?</p>
<p>from the OP:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, ilovebagels, economics is a social science, but one’s major at U of C is in economics, not “social science”. That should tell any employer quite a bit.</p>