Of course. There are far more highly talented students outside of the top N colleges than within them. They are just much more distributed, and therefore harder for a company to find and recruit. But if the student is doing the effort to show their strength, that’s awesome.
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In this market? Students, Mid-career and Senior folks are all sending incoming.
Of course, that means that your recruitability by employers who think as above when you are about to graduate from college can be heavily dependent on:
- Your parents’ finances and generosity with such regarding college funding, and
- Your own achievements while in high school.
Of course, that increases pressure on high school students and their parents.
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Yes, sorry, I was not intending to suggest every, or indeed many, hiring processes that use AI will first carefully train and test their AI. That was more intended to lay out how you could do it, not predict how they will do it.
That is an interesting question. Of course at a high level, everyone tries to pitch themselves in a way they think the employer wants to see. But I assume you are referring to techniques that would be specific to AIs.
And I do see a lot of people online who feel like it is easy to game AIs, and I can see them sharing tips and such. And they may be right if they have access to the same AI and can test their theories.
But to the extent an employer was using a proprietary AI, that strikes me as extremely risky. And indeed they could basically get caught trying to do this, although they would probably never know. They just would not progress.
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These are some of the more gameable stats. Hand out fee waivers, do away with supplementals, go test optional, go heavy on the marketing, and then admit most of the class ED so you can reject most students.
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cough…Northeastern…cough
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Dude, you stole my line!
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Oh yeah, I forgot the other tactic… spring semester admits that are invisible on admit stats. 
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And so the solution to various inequities in our K-12, higher ed, housing, tax policy etc.is the responsibility of the two handfuls of employers who care about undergrad pedigree?
Or you’d rather see stricter gatekeeping to higher ed via high stakes testing in 8th grade like in many parts of the world? It’s a snap to hire in those countries…the screening was done for you when the cohort was 12 or 13! Missing out on the late bloomers? Hey, they’re in apprenticeship programs and who doesn’t need a smart auto mechanic?
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Many kids want to go to a school where their classmates just “get them”. That’s the way my D describes it.
At top schools, the majority of kids graduated near the top of their class, took the most rigorous classes, and are overacheivers.
Every school has these students but the the most selective schools have a higher percentage than others.
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Not saying what the solution should be, or if there is even a solution in the current political and economic situation. But employers should be aware of this phenomenon, even if they may not be able to do much about it. Of course, some employers may be aware of this phenomenon and like it that way.
Nobody likes it. No organization likes Credential Creep, or the Paper Ceiling or any of the other phenomena which results in not knowing whether a HS graduate can do 8th grade math or a college graduate can write a grammatical, three paragraph summary of a longer non-technical work.
But this is where we are. We’ve got International Finance majors who can’t speak any other language but English, and Communications majors who don’t know what a topic sentence is because " it wasn’t on the final".
So employers ratchet up their expectations just to make sure that they don’t have to add “remedial curriculum” to their corporate training and learning responsibilities.
We can teach “mini MBA” to new hires if they already know how to learn and have a solid core. My company has not had success teaching fourth grade Language Arts to adults.
Then again, AI could repeat some regrettable human tendencies. This article is about school, not hiring, but the situations are comparable:
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Yes, there are tons of inequities in our society that need to be addressed. But that’s an awful lot of people gunning for Top X institutions if there’s only two handfuls of employers who care about undergrad pedigree.
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Is it your contention that the folks gunning for Top X institutions are behaving rationally?
Most state government roles are agnostic in terms of “prestige” of the undergrad institution. At the federal level, besides Justice Department, SCOTUS, SEC-- agnostic. Even the highly technical/scientific roles for the Los Alamos/Oak Ridge/NIH-- they care about prestige, but only “where did you get your doctorate”, not “did you go to Dartmouth”.
Many posters far more savvy than I have asserted that med schools don’t care. Many posters far more savvy than I have pointed out that by and large, Tech doesn’t care. The entire energy sector NEVER cared. Missouri S&T, all the public U’s in Texas, Mines… these were the U’s that mattered.
So all those people gunning for Top X are doing it to get hired by Citadel, Jane Street, DE Shaw and their ilk? Companies which hire- what- fewer than 1% of the output of universities in the US???
Not to mention the military. Where college grads from our own academies are going to have a leg up for virtually every role requiring a college degree.
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Your post was spot on!
As you know, what counts as prestige for technical positions requiring doctorates is the doctoral and post-doctoral research of the candidate. Certainly Caltech and MIT have their strengths, but depending on the area, the pinnacle might be Purdue, Wisconsin, A&M, Penn State, Iowa State, etc.
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Given the disdain shown by employers for non-“Top X” schools (like shown below), perhaps they are merely following what they believe their future employers believe.
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When applying to top engineering Ph.D. programs, where a student went for undergrad can matter a lot, especially if they hope to secure a research assistantship. They will be competing with students from Tsinghua, IIT-Madras, Seoul National U and the likes, who have all been “battle-tested” in cut-throat environments. It can be quite hard to get noticed with a B.S./M.S. from a New Mexico State or Kentucky or South Carolina, even when their GPA is near-perfect and they have some research experience. Research grants are hard to come by, and if a professor has two finalists for an RA opening with one from IIT-Kanpur and the other from U of Mississipi with all else being similar, the professor likely would pick the IIT student. The U of Mississippi student would need something extra to stand out, such as having first-authored an under-reviewed/published conference/journal paper, or having an M.S. advisor who is known and respected by the prospective Ph.D. advisor. Had they done their undergrad at a school with a “better” brand, they likely would have faced less of an uphill battle.
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You can compare that to experts who are not anonymous message board posters:
CollegeAdmissions_Nontech.pdf https://share.google/IzPPkqjMONR6dSuyY
I know many people here want the world to be equitable. It isn’t. All of the posts from all of the same posters here banging the same drum over and over and over and over won’t change that.
Attending an Ivy-Plus instead of a flagship public college
triples students’ chances of obtaining jobs at prestigious
firms and substantially increases their chances of
earning in the top 1%.
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I have not yet read through all of the posts that came after this one, but I just want to note something I haven’t seen yet in this thread. My understanding is that the studies re “prestigious” or “elite” schools not making a difference in outcomes, typically have a caveat that for certain groups of students of color (particularly black, and I believe Latino) student’s there is in fact a difference. A theory on why that may be, is that the prestige makes a difference for those populations because it is effectively seen as a certification or seal of approval that the individual is in fact smart or competent or whatever. I know plenty of upwardly mobile and ambitious black families who value the prestige of a school for this reason. That, it signals to people that they are competent in a world where they often are otherwise assumed to not be. For that population, I do see this as a “fit” factor. One of the things they are seeking in their college search, is an institution that will give them a reputational boost that will get the perception of their ability closer to the reality of their capability. And, they believe prestige of an institution can help do that, so it is a fit for what they are looking for in a college. For full disclosure, I believe I have experienced this effect of prestige. I went to prestigious schools, and there is a level of intellectual/professional trust I am afforded because of it that I do not see for some of my very talented black peers/friends who did not go to such schools. I know that my experience is anecdotal, but I believe it is connected to the caveat in those studies everyone always cites when they say essentially “where you go to school doesn’t matter” or “attending an elite school doesn’t matter for those who could get into one” or similar sentiments. That said, prestige is not a priority for my kid. But, that does not change my believe that prestige has a value for black students that some folks would prioritize as “an” important fit factor.
Second, I wrote “an” important fit factor because up until this point the posts in this thread have been discussing as if the topic was prestige/brand as “the” fit factor as opposed to as “an” important fit factor. One could have prestige as one of several fit factors that results in a list that has a range of highly prestigious schools a student would be happy with, but that list cuts out those prestigious schools where they think wouldn’t be happy for whatever reason. I think almost everyone would agree that having prestige as the only fit factor is foolish. But as one, alongside other important factors is a different thing which at least up to the point of the post I’m responding to, had not really been discussed.
Third, another thing that makes discussion on this thread challenging is that it has three distinct concepts in its premise - brand, prestige, and selectivity. There are schools that have a very identifiable and sometimes attractive (to some) brand, that are not what most here are thinking about when they talk about prestige. For example, Penn State’s brand is incredibly strong in large swaths of Pennsylvania, and hoards of students are dying to go to Penn State to be part of that and would never think of going anywhere else. But, that is not a school that would pop into most non-Pennsylvanian’s minds when you say “prestige” (though lots in PA do think of it as prestigious and it carries many of those markers locally). Or, more extreme, University of Alabama and their incredible football success. They have a serious brand for sure. But is that what folks are thinking about when they say prestige? Similarly, selectivity and brand or prestige (depending on how you define it) are really distinct. Pomona, Rice and CalTech for example have incredibly low acceptance rates, but most people have no clue what those schools are when their graduates tell people where they went to school. Or, Northeastern’s acceptance rate is really low compared to its relative prestige.
All that said, I do think prestige, and brand can be important “fit” factors for some students.
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