I’m not sure how you’re disagreeing with me.
You’ve talked about prestige but what you seem to be referring to is prestige among elite employers, not among the general world public.
That’s pretty much what I said. And as someone who does work at a firm that someone would probably say is prestige-obsessed (buyside investing), I never said prestige among ‘those who know’ is not important.
The point I was making is there’s a difference between prestige among the general public and those who know. And what you’ve said supports exactly what I’m saying. I was making the point that prestige among the public is less important than prestige among employers.
The average person worldwide isn’t going to be that familiar with Princeton. But elite employers like Investment Banks and Management Consultancy firms will be.
But let me bring this back to my original point as well. The point is, rankings really aren’t that useful. Employers know what is and isn’t a good school based on their workforce.
Beyond that, I too will punt but the idea that employers will be looking deeply at rankings is slightly laughable. HR will have a few schools that they flag at my firm (Harvard, Yale etc.) but when you get down the list, it really doesn’t make a difference.
And it’s been the case at other firms I’ve worked at too. And my employer isn’t flagging those schools based on ranking but because those are the schools that disproportionately make up our work force already and we’re familiar with them. If Harvard were to rank 10th, it wouldn’t mean we stop flagging Harvard kids.