Do college rankings matter to employers?

College Search & Lists
1

<p>Right now, I’m going to George Mason. It’s not in the league of some other schools, but it’s not on the list of Playboy party schools.</p>

<p>My parents want me to go to Virginia Tech. Why? I’m an Information Technology/Computer Science major so Tech sounds better and it’s ranked #77 according to US News.</p>

<p>The thing is, I like it at GMU. Sure there are some things that I might want to change, but I love the location, I love being able to live at home (and no community bathrooms)…I just love it here. Am I making a right choice (going where I like and not based purely on prestige) or should I follow my parents’ advice? Would getting a VT Diploma instead of GMU really get me further?</p>

2

<p>jtoc06: A couple of issues. First, I also attended George Mason (several years ago). I majored in engineering but had to transfer (in my case UVA) to complete my degree (also accepted at VaTech at the time). My experience was that I didn’t suffer at all academically as compared to my fellow students who started at UVA as freshmen. And, among my George Mason classmates, it was in general the weaker students who transferred to VaTech. So academically I doubt you are getting short-changed at Mason.
As for prestige and job prospects: 1) Yes, overall Mason doesn’t have the name recognition of VaTech but I thought IT/CS was an exception! Back when I was a student anyway Mason was singled out for IT programs that were unique nationally and they were getting very good press, maybe Mason doesn’t hold that distinction anymore but I would think the reputation would still be very positive with employers. and 2) even if Mason is considered “just another program” now, I believe your individual achievement (Grades, work experience, independent projects, faculty recommendations) and performance in interviews should count much more with employers than the name on the diploma. VaTech is a great school, but it is not MIT, and Mason is not chopped liver either! If you like Mason, and you have a good thing going there, particularly if you are on good terms with professors and have good relations within the department, there is no reason in my view why you shouldn’t finish up there.</p>

3

<p>jtoc06: so far it doesn’t look like you are getting many suggestions for solving your problem, but I was thinking about it some more and I was wondering about the matter of convincing your parents. Up above I asked you about relationships with faculty and within your department. If there are faculty members you feel comfortable talking to, even your adviser, it would be appropriate to bring up this topic with him/her. Granted this is a somewhat personal issue but primarily it is a question of your academic/professional future. If (as I believe) you have no reason to doubt your decision to stay at Mason, that professor should be able to give you plenty of good reasons to stay. And if that isn’t enough to convince your parents at least you will be reassured.</p>

4

<p>Speaking as an employer – NO. Once the preliminaries are out of the way – have you graduated with a solid record of achievement from a reputable college or university – we are far more interested in the personal qualities that are demonstrated through the interview and by following up with the referrals provided to us. Do you demonstrate the maturity, interpersonal skills and techical knowledge essential to predict success in the position to which you are applying? I know of no one who consults with USNWR when making hiring decisions, but am not naive enough to believe it doesn’t happen.</p>

5

<p>The things that will matter most are your skills and experience. Not the name of your school.</p>

6

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<p>This is absolutely true, but completely irrelavant. The OP asked whether college rankings matter to employers, and while the specific ranking may not matter, the general perception of the school does matter.</p>

<p>For instance, two comparably engaging and qualified applicants apply for a job, and one went to Stanford, while the other went to Delaware State. The former’s academic background will push him/her further.</p>

7

<p>But in this case we are not talking about Stanford and Delaware State. The OP has a specific pair of alternatives to deal with, and that is part of the argument. I don’t really know much about Delaware State but I know George Mason and Tech are both reputable schools, and if one is really considered better than the other it is not enough of a difference in my opinion to tip the balance against a strong candidate.</p>

8

<p>It really depends on what type of job and where you want to live. If you’re planning to work in the area where your college is, stay. School seems to matter less in engineering but there’s no doubt that top schools turn heads. In other fields like finance, schools matters much more.</p>

9

<p>They don’t care about actual exact rankings, but there’s a certain hierarchy of schools they tend to follow.

  1. Ivies, MIT, Stanford
  2. Other Top 20 Schools
  3. Well Known State Schools
  4. Other 4 Year Universities
  5. Community College</p>
10

<p>I believe that the rankings may matter depending on where you live. For NYC and parts of the Northeast, I would say that s snack’s listing above is very accurate as this is how they measure the prestige of the schools nationally. The Northeast, by far, cares most about the prestige issue and they use your college as a way to peg you both professionally and socially. Meet someone new in a bar or restaurant in NYC and you’re likely to use college affiliation as a way to make connections and, by some people, as a personal assessment. That’s not to say that these assessments are accurate, but it is a fact of life. Meet someone who went to Princeton and you immediately make assumptions about this person. The same happens when you meet someone who went to U Vermont. </p>

<p>Only a handful of schools truly have a national reputation that has power in the employment process. Surely HYPS are in this category and perhaps a few others as it relates to a particular field, eg, MIT/Caltech in engineering circles. The other Ivies may some name recognition (particularly the Wharton brand at U Penn), but their power dwindles the further you go from the Northeast. </p>

<p>For the rest of the country, the list of prestige colleges is much shorter. Among national universities, in the South, a few schools hold good levels of prestige (Duke, Vanderbilt, U Virginia, U North Carolina, Emory). In the Southwest, Rice is the gold standard, but U Texas is also very well regarded. In the Midwest, and particularly around Chicago, there are six schools with the strongest reputations (Northwestern, U Chicago, Notre Dame, U Michigan, U Wisconsin, U Illinois). In the West, Stanford, Caltech, UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, transcend all the others. </p>

<p>Of course, there are also LACs in each of these regions that are also well respected and certainly at the same or sometimes better level than some of the colleges listed above. These connections can sometimes be very powerful for some employers.</p>

<p>The fact is that the school’s label matters in so far as it puts you in position to interview for a job, but then it is up to the individual. In the case of a close competition for a job, the label might put you over the top, but probably a stronger factor is the number of alumni from that school who are in that company or that industry. Alumni can have a very strong influence on hiring patterns. However, there are truly exceptional students at many, many schools and employers also know that those coming from the high prestige schools often come with baggage, ie, unrealistic expectations and an overinflated sense of their worth (particularly at their stage of developments as 22-23 year olds).</p>

11

<p>As a former IT staffing company recruiter, I can tell you that nobody cares what college you went to. A degree is a degree. They care about your experience applying what you learned.</p>

12

<p>In finance and business the school you went to matters a great deal.</p>

13

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<p>Consider this Fortune article about the hiring practices at Google:</p>

<p>*…For the most part, it takes a degree from an Ivy League school, or MIT, Stanford, CalTech, or Carnegie Mellon–America’s top engineering schools–even to get invited to interview. Brin and Page still keep a hand in all the hiring, from executives to administrative assistants. And to them, work experience counts far less than where you went to school, how you did on your SATs, and your grade-point average. “If you’ve been at Cisco for 20 years, they don’t want you,” says an employee. *</p>

<p><a href=“http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/12/08/355116/index.htm[/url]”>http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/12/08/355116/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;