<p>OK, first, you’re conflating grad schools with undergrad.</p>
<p>Second, that may not be true for certain state flagships. For instance, on the MBA level, Haas, Ross, and Darden are on the same tier as Stern, Johnson, and Yale SOM. On the the undergraduate level, Haas, Ross, and McIntire are on the same level as Stern, AEM, and Duke.</p>
<p>Third, if you’re taking about law schools and b-schools (for MBA), people don’t refer to Ivies. Some Ivies are T6 or T14 or M7. Other privates are also in all 3 of those groupings. Some publics are T14 and in the top 15 among b-schools.</p>
<p>In short, you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Berkeley, Michigan, and Virginia have law schools in the top 14 (the most prestigious law schools in the country) and are all state flagships. And Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth do not have law schools; Princeton does not have a business school; Yale’s business school has only recently started to emerge as a top school in the rankings. You are mixing apples and oranges here.</p>
<p>JarJar, I’m not sure what you are talking about. </p>
<p>I’m completely convinced their are tiers of schools and tiers of opportunities these schools offer. I’m also convinced that there are tiers of students and tiers of what opportunities these students will be able to capitalize on over the years. At the same time, if a kid can get into a higher tier school but chooses for well considered reasons, financial, family obligations, etc…, to go to a “lesser” tier school, that kid will do just as well. It’s the kid, not the school, but that doesn’t mean that being at certain schools does not confer an advantage out of the gate.</p>
<p>That said, most studies indicate that those who benefit most from attendance at higher tier schools are those from lower SES backgrounds, in which it can make just a tremendous difference, moreso than for the higher SES kid, who will have other paths and avenues towards success.</p>
<p>Either way, it’s a balance. Go to the best school you can reasonably afford to attend. I think this maximizes your options.</p>
<p>I, like @oldfort, was hoping this might be a discussion about some kind of caste system within a certain college but now that I am here, see it is another yawner about high ranked colleges vs lower ranked colleges, with a dash of “let’s bash Cornell” thrown in for good measure. Oh well, it IS Sunday night.</p>
<p>Why can’t that be possible? If the latter list of schools is stronger in CS, it is an ADVANTAGE to earn your BS from one of them (and thus less of an advantage, or even a “disadvantage,” to obtain it from somewhere else).</p>
<p>In my community there is a respected state flagship and a community college. When I hire graphic designers, my strong preference is for graduates of the community college because they are better trained than students from the flagship. It doesn’t matter that the flagship is more prestigious. I know what I am getting with the CC grads, and they are able to hit the ground running right out of school. In fact, almost all of them have jobs waiting for them before they even graduate, because they have a portfolio show a month or so earlier and people recruit them from that.</p>
<p>Wow… the Cornell defenders are out in force. I have no beef with Cornell. One of my kids had it on her application list, but dropped it (due to size, not because of any academic reason). But to pretend it is considered at the same level as HYP just doesn’t seem accurate to me. The Ivy League is a sports league… .all schools in it are not academically equal. Cornell is a very fine school. But very few people would say all Ivies are academically equal.</p>
<p>Specifically, Cornell admitted 16% of their students in 2013. SAT 25-75% ranges: CR 640-740, M 680-780</p>
<p>Harvard: 6% admitted, CR 700-800, M 710-800</p>
<p>Yale: 7% admitted. CR 700 - 800, M 710-790</p>
<p>Sorry if the phrase “lesser” rankles Cornell grads. Maybe there is a nicer way to say it, let me know if there is some preferred politically correct phrase. You may notice in my other posts that I am not enamored of rankings — both my kids did not go to the highest ranked USNWR schools they got into, and were very happy with their choices. So I am also not of the opinion that “ranking” or “tiering” or “caste” or whatever you want to call it is the most important thing in choosing a college – I think fit is. But that doesn’t mean I think all colleges admit the same quality of students.</p>
<p>I think it really depends on both where a person comes from as well as what exactly we’re talking about.</p>
<p>When it comes to MBAs and JDs, where you get your degree matters to a significant degree.</p>
<p>With undergraduate education, it’s a bit more complicated.</p>
<p>An upper-middle-class kid who can get in to an Ivy/Ivy-equivalent will do well pretty much anywhere that’s a flagship or better. Yes, there are some industries that are easier to break in to from certain schools, but outside of the most elite management consulting firms (and even those companies use a screening process which is based strictly on individual performance), there are paths to success from many starting points.</p>
<p>For a kid who’s from a disadvantaged background, an elite school may be best, but second-best may actually be a directional (instead of an average flagship). I’ll try to find the research that drew that conclusion.</p>
<p>I’m afraid some misunderstand the “disadvantaged” kids. In general, many act as though these kids are hopeless without an elite degree. In fact, those who can get into an Ivy are already empowered, sometimes to a degree where, in fact, a local school can offer different advantages. The kids who are already active in their communities, breaking new grounds, may want to stay where they can continue that work and the very real impact. They may want to be big fish in a little pond, where they can have influence, not follow the prestige rush. Think about it.</p>
<p>Well of course. But the fact remains that the lower SES student benefits significantly more from.an elite school education than the upper mid to upper SES student does. Everything else is just irrelevant</p>
<p>Probably the same process for graduates from any school, which is technical questions in the interview.</p>
<p>Ivy League schools may not be the top recruiting targets by Silicon Valley computer companies, probably because of the relatively small number of CS majors and the relative inconvenience (distance). Yield might also be an issue, due to competition from Wall Street, consulting, and east coast computer companies. This does not mean that the Silicon Valley computer companies think that they are necessarily bad for CS, or that they will downgrade an applicant with a CS degree from such a school, but just that they believe that their limited recruiting trips are better spent at other schools with more CS majors to recruit (i.e. schools with big CS departments), or which are more convenient and lower cost to recruit (i.e. local).</p>
<p>Facebook’s target schools:
<a href=“https://www.facebook”>https://www.facebook</a>. com/careers/university
6 Ivies (but not Yale or Dartmouth), 9 publics, as well as MIT, Stanford, CalTech, CMU, and 2 Canadian schools.</p>
<p>Facebook may not be that representative of Silicon Valley computer companies, as it is larger than most.</p>
<p>It might also be more school-elitist than other large companies like Yahoo, which mentions schools like Northeastern, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, Rutgers, San Jose State, and UMass as well as some more usual suspects like MIT, CMU, Berkeley, Stanford, UIUC, Texas, Michigan, Georgia Tech, in its university recruiting blog. Apple is also apparently less school-elitist, getting large numbers of San Jose State graduates.</p>
<p>However, large or well known companies are far from the only companies that exist in Silicon Valley. A student at a distant school may not even know of the existence of many small startups, which would have neither the resources nor the need to recruit at distant schools.</p>
<p>Still in all, intparent, “lower Ivy” is a phrase / mindset used by naive high school students who have zero clue about the actual world and think that people ooh and aah over someone at cocktail parties and that the seas part for them on the mere mention of their school. Not grown-ups. </p>
<p>The thing with that Wired article is that I don’t believe they differentiate between software engineers and support positions. I would expect HR to be heavily local and full of folks from non-elite schools. Same with sales or support. Marketing would be more elitist but may not correspond to the schools known for CS.</p>
You are oversimplifying things. For example, when I applied to college, I was interested in engineering. I didn’t consider H and Y since they were relatively weak in my desired field, especially compared to Cornell. I think most would say Cornell has the strongest engineering program among the ivy league, but not as strong as several non-ivy colleges. Similar statements could be said for many other fields. </p>
<p>
You may be thinking of 2012. Cornell had a lower admit rate than you listed in 2013 and 2014. Cornell only had a higher admit rate than HYP because they have a larger class. Cornell consistently gets far more applications than any other ivy league school and has more high scoring students within their entering class.</p>
<p>I’m not saying Cornell is a greater ivy, only that the ivy league colleges have different strengths and weaknesses and cannot be well characterized by a simple “lesser” / “greater” label.</p>
<p>Same with non-Ivies as well. Most lay people would be more impressed with a degree from Duke that CMU or UIUC, but folks hiring CS grads understand that CMU/UIUC CS is better than Duke CS.</p>
<p>There’s still an elephant in the room. Some are thinking in ways that are too wide, as if, say, given a final choice between a kid from CMU and one from Duke or Rutgers, it’s “so obvious” who has the leg up. It’s that same hierarchical thinking that confuses some on other topics. As if there is some special gloss that overcomes the hard work and smarts required. Why does CC rarely compare actual programs, a kid’s particular experiences, the nature of the challenges he/she took on and mastered, how they drove themselves further and acquired co-skills, instead of broadly calling it CMU vs Duke vs an Ivy, eg? Or looking at where big names recruit, how many got hired from College X? Go to USC for film, sure- people will be impressed. But don’t assume it’s USC on the diploma that will ensure a career. </p>
<p>I don’t think that’s true. If you live in Illinois, you likely know all kinds of impressive, successful people from UIUC. All you might know of Duke is its basketball team.</p>
<p>Because it’s easier for some to accept the established order of things. It takes a lot more effort to look beneath the surface to uncover specific advantages of particular colleges, and to go against the grain and choose them over the more popular, layperson-accepted options.</p>