@websensation Yes!
@websensation “I have a very simple test for whether you lived a successful life, and that’s if your spouse and/or kids say you have been a good dad/mom after you are dead and gone. I realize that some may disagree on this but that’s been one of few life philosophies I have. If my kid one day misses or appreciates me as much as I miss and appreciate my mom who passed away last year, I will consider my life to have been a modest success.”
My goal has always been to be both successful in my career as well as in my family life. They are not always mutually exclusive goals. For example, I can be a mentor to one of work colleagues and still find time to coach my kid’s softball/baseball team.
Regarding the comments about formerly avg schools that are now supercompeitive, note when these kids start businesses and acend in existing companies, they will influence hiring. 5-10 years from now there will be more grads in decision making positions from a different variety of schools than in the past. Will they only hire “their own”, of course not, but they wont exclude them either !
I will say the person does matter more. As a BU grad in the 80s, one who turned down an Ivy,
I ended up working at my first job surrounded by Harvard grads. My hiring manager was a BU MBA. So tell me your school does not matter ? BU grad was open to interviewing other BU grads in a firm most staffed with Harvard grads. He found a top BU student. Today we would not be as hard to find.
This thread is really interesting to me, and it’s especially interesting that we’re on page 9 and no one has even mentioned what in many ways is the defining issue: social class. (Note: Not wealth, but class. There’s a lot of overlap, but they are far from identical) The traditionally prestigious colleges – which included plenty of public universities, especially in the Midwest and West Coast – were institutions of what, for want of a better word, I’ll call the Establishment. If you were part of the Establishment, you generally recognized more than a few of them, and you probably had opinions on their relative quality.
In my family (which was at some distance from New England), Harvard/Radcliffe, Wellesley, and Smith were especially revered. But there was no really limited geographical focus, and no Ivy League obsession. (Harvard and Yale were seen as big deals, but Amherst probably got more love than Columbia or Brown.) My siblings and I, and our cousins who were the same age as us went to college at: Harvard (x4), Dartmouth (x2), Amherst, Arizona, Bowdoin, CSU Northridge, Colby, Colorado, Duke, Pepperdine, Rice, Smith, Stanford, Swarthmore, UCLA, Vermont, Wesleyan, Wisconsin, Yale. (Only the three southern Californians were anywhere near where they grew up. But I had three older cousins who went to Pomona, two of them from Washington DC. And my mother had traveled thousands of miles each way to go to college at Mills.) Our children went to many of the same places, but also Brandeis, Chicago, Colby, Kent State, Michigan, Penn, Skidmore.
I don’t mean to brag (except maybe a little). I’m just trying to demonstrate that it was possible to grow up in an educational culture radically different from that described by most of the other posters.
My perception is that the real world (which I read to mean the average person on the street) obviously doesn’t know as much about colleges as participants on this board or care nearly as much. A lot of what people do know about universities comes through NCAA sports. They tend to have a regional view. A state’s public flagship university, for instance, is generally very favorably regarded by people in that state. But when those same people look outside of their state, they make much less distinction between University of XXX and University of YYY than you will see on this board. (e.g. not as much distinction is seen between state universities that are highly-regarded – like Michigan or Virginia – on this board and those that are not as highly regarded).
I have lived and worked on the west coast in high tech and have found not many people in my circles ask about or care about what college people attended. If you are in NYC and finance, that might be quite different.
Looking at the top universities, I think very few are truly widely recognized. Harvard has pretty good name recognition, for instance, but by the time you get to excellent schools like Wash U or Emory that are not big in sports, they are not generally very well known.
“I have lived and worked on the west coast in high tech and have found not many people in my circles ask about or care about what college people attended. If you are in NYC and finance, that might be quite different.”
Nope, not different.
yes, that information is in the biography data that i included in any portfolio review with clients (the biography data of the portfolio management team), but its not something anyone knows or asks about. Its just not. Once you have the job, all anyone cares is about who can provide the information they need, solve a problem, etc. Its not a thing in Finance Services firms like people outside the business may think. Are there snotty people that peruse through the biography data and secretly look down on you? Maybe. Do people at the bar during a social event talk about their alma mater who happens to be in the NCAA tournament or College football bowl game? Sure. But at actual work, no one knows or cares.
@Middleman68
Everyone in your circles may know the NY schools. Not everyone in the country with college age students knows of those schools. Colgate is outstanding, but many still know it only as a toothpaste. New York state in particular takes great pride in their schools (as does CA, as does MA, as does TX, as does…) and there are many fine schools to select from.
I don’t want to speak disparagingly about any schools, but schools looking to fill their classes are often very highly regarded in their locality. To many first generation college students, these local institutions are “Harvard.” I live in rural America where perspectives are very local. Many Americans cannot come close to even naming the Ivies. Usually they have heard of Harvard and Yale, but not Columbia, Harvey Mudd, Hamilton, Amherst, Oberlin, or even Rice University. There is a reason why many Universities spend a lot of money on Football and Basketball teams. They may not know about their respective academics, but they have heard of the schools. If they have heard of the school, “brand name” has been established.
To @retiredfarmer point, this discussion is really about only a few select colleges, maybe the “top” 50 or 100 where prestige, reputation, world view is important. There are over 5,000 colleges in the U.S. so we are really only talking about 1 or 2% of all colleges.
I always pause when I read things like “XYZ means nothing in my area.”
It depends on the crowd, wherever you are.
Generally, urban and affluent = more name familiarity, and suburban/rural and less affluence = less name familiarity.
Wesleyan, Williams and Vassar don’t ring a lot of bells in eastern Washington. They sure do in and around Seattle.
@PurpleTitan " I only knew Bates as a hotel, Colgate as toothpaste, Hamilton as a founding father, Smith as a common last name, and Colby as a type of cheese. I had no idea what a Vassar was or that it existed." Best comment I’ve read on CC by far!! :))
From the OP: “Now, when I hear that someone has been accepted to Grinnell or Pomona, I know enough to think “wow!”. But most of the world seems to have no idea.”
Even here in California most people do not share CC’s high opinion of Pomona College. Most will think think you are referring to Cal Poly Pomona, which for some reason is much better known in CA than Pomona College.
I have been a hiring manager for most of my career. Familiarity with the college’s reputation definitely influences my perception when I hire an entry-level worker. Although I am from the west coast, I’ve spent my entire career in the south and midwest so I have had to learn the reputation of schools I never heard of before. When I look at portfolios, I notice that alumni of well-reputed schools generally have more impressive work samples and richer work experience (internships). There is more polish to their answers (more coaching? more prep?) – which has worked for and against them, depending on how sincere they come across. I do find myself particularly impressed with applicants from lesser-known schools who have truly impressive work samples – that are on par with kids from the big name schools. If all things in the portfolio and writing test results are equal, I’d hire the no-name alum because he’s demonstrated that he can be resourceful and enterprising.
In my professional life, I am often called on to write executive bios which are used to promote public appearances or to secure media placements. Alma maters do matter at this level, for these purposes. Drafting bios for executives who didn’t go to college gets tricky. If you don’t list a college in the bio, it’s assumed you didn’t go. If you list a college no one’s heard of, people question how you got to where you are – especially if the peers you’re listed next to come from big name schools. It’s not the end of the world, but people will judge you for it. Same goes for corporate board members, whose bios are published in SEC documents like the 10K and other information targeted to investors. In some industries, corporate reputation is influenced by the bios of the executive team and the board. The strength of the management team and the credibility of the board can sway investors in certain industries, especially those with a start-up culture in need of capital. Many executives who went to schools no one has ever heard of very often get MBAs or management certifications at big name schools to reinforce their credentials.
^ Yep. But once they’re identified as promising, companies may pay for those degrees and certificates.