<p>I’ve worked with brilliant scientists and engineers who got their undergrad degree at academic powerhouses like Oswego State, Western Michigan, Montana State, St. John Fisher College and Southern Illinois. Two of these folks are R&D Directors of major companies.</p>
<p>They then went on to Big 10 schools for their PhDs (one went to MIT).</p>
<p>I didn’t see any differences among them and other scientists and engineers who went to Ivy League schools for undergrad.</p>
<p>*I manage a team of 100+ engineers from universities all over the world. It is interesting to see the correlation between the “quality” of the university they attended and on-the-job performance. There isn’t one, laziness seems to be the common denominator for bad engineers. Every few years we recruit high-tier university engineer graduates and they rarely do very well, certainly not any better than engineers from traditional universities. Interesting…</p>
<p>I had dinner last night with one of my geologists that attended Colby College in Maine. He said he went there because his parents could afford it and they would be “laughed at” if they had sent their child to a public university. He said he was raised (in Vermont) to believe that ALL public universities are party schools and to be avoided at all costs…ridiculous*
*</p>
<p>I graduated from a non-descript Jesuit college in Upstate NY. When I changed jobs within my company, I had to train my replacement - a ChemE who graduated from MIT. I was a product engineer and was on-site for at least the beginning of all manufacturing events, often going in in the middle of the night. This lazy sacks main concern was how to avoid having to come in.</p>
<p>I completely agree that the prestigious universities are not worth the extra money especially when you have to borrow to attend them. They have one overriding advantage over the other institutions, they have a plethora of accomplished and motivated high school graduates. That’s it. But everyone gets a do over on the first day of class. Remember accredited schools mean that there is little if any difference across the board in the material. I bet you the books that the prestigious institutions are using are no different from the non prestigious ones.</p>
<p>I think the issue about being with other accomplished and motivated high school graduates is mitigated by participation in honors colleges.</p>
<p>My S was accepted at a couple of prestigious public universities, but was not accepted into their honors colleges. I advised him to consider less prestigious public universities where he was accepted into the honors colleges.</p>
<p>Time will tell if that was the right decision.</p>
<p>I chose a bad title. Maybe a mod can change it to “can you succeed as an engineer without graduating a presigious school”, or somethinh like that.</p>
<p>The answer to your question may be different for scientists vs. engineers.</p>
<p>Scientists generally have PhDs. It’s the quality of their graduate program that matters the most, not where they got their undergraduate degree.</p>
<p>Engineers usually do not have PhDs. Some may have master’s degrees, but many start their careers with only a bachelor’s degree. If you have only a bachelor’s degree, then the quality of that bachelor’s degree is crucial. You would want to get it from a school with a really good engineering program.</p>
<p>If the engineers from Oswego State are better than the ones from MIT, perhaps the best of all are those who learned engineering from a comic book.</p>
<p>This kind of discussion has taken place on CC many, many times. Lesser-known colleges can have very good programs in various disciplines, including engineering. Smart, hard-working students can get very good educations in all kinds of colleges. There are still some benefits to attending more selective institutions, but some of these benefits are intangible, and they are (at least in part) luxuries.</p>
<p>Never said Oswego State was better than MIT.</p>
<p>I worked with a guy who got a BS in Physics at Oswego State and his PhD in EE from Michigan. He’s a corporate R&D director, so Oswego State didn’t hurt him too badly.</p>
<p>There may be engineers from Oswego State who are better than engineers from MIT. That doesn’t really tell you all that much about which decision to make if you’re choosing between them.</p>
<p>I would argue that the statistical distribution (in terms of quality) of MIT graduates is different from that of Oswego State graduates. While there is overlap and there are always outliers, the general consecus is that the former lies to the right of the latter.</p>
<p>warblersrule - I read a bit of that thread, and it certainly appears to be thorough (it was actually 131 pages for me - different formatting?), but it is also from 2006. I think the analysis and decisions may be different in 2013, considering how much tuition at most of these schools has risen. </p>
<p>I’m starting to believe that colleges are approaching a “breaking point”, where the ridiculous cost starts to outweigh any possible benefit. Whatever one believes about the advantages of the prestigious universities, at some point I think these schools simply become too expensive to justify. Is an education from <em>any</em> undergraduate institution worth a quarter of a million dollars? Particularly with the skyrocketing costs of some graduate programs (i.e. med school), unless money is truly no object, I just don’t think it makes good financial sense to spend that kind of money on undergrad. (Full disclosure, Duke grad here, so I have no bias against prestigious universities).</p>
<p>I don’t have any familiarity with engineering hiring so I can’t address that aspect.</p>
<p>Engineering is a subject where school prestige is generally thought to matter much less in general employment after one gets the first job (which may be affected by the campus’ attractiveness to recruiters) than something like investment banking or management consulting.</p>
<p>This may be because most types of engineering have major specific accreditation with relatively high minimum standards, so the range is relatively narrow in terms of “quality” differences. That may also be why engineering has a high attrition rate at less selective schools.</p>
<p>Of course, student fit to the nature of the school can affect the student’s success in school and thereafter, although fit factors are not necessarily correlated to school prestige. (Fit factors include academic ones like what types of elective courses are available both in and out of major.)</p>
<p>There are fields that are definitely not prestige-sensitive, I think some healthcare professions and K-12 teaching are not. </p>
<p>But what field other than business consulting (I-banking and law are prestige-sensitive but these fields are more sensitive to the prestige of the business school and law school attended respectively) are prestige-sensitive enough to justify spending more to attend a prestigious school?</p>
<p>Yes, it can make a difference. If you look at average pays, over all in the engineering profession, really in most professions, those at the top schools tend to make more. Look at where most of the Supreme Court justices went to college, and law school, and our last several presidents. Yes, there are some who go to colleges that are not as well known, but a far higher percentage of those going to certain name schools do make it to upper level posiitons in any number of fields.</p>
<p>However, studies have shown that an individual who truly could have gone to Prestige College, was accepted, say, and went to State U, does just as well. The averages are just that, averages. There are very few who get accepted to HPY and don’t go there, but I daresay they probably do just as well as the average of those who did go. </p>
<p>Really, it makes sense that those who go to those schools that are not as highly rated, have students that are not as test savvy and as advanced, are not the academians that those at the highly selective schools are, are overall not going to be as successful as the preselected students at the top schools. It makes perfect sense that would be the case. But the kid who was just as good as those who went to the top schools, could have gone there,…well, that’s a whole other story. </p>
<p>In my opinion, those kids who slid into the most selective schools in the lower echolons, probably got a lot more benefit from the lustre of those schools than those who were top rate and would have done anywhere.</p>
<p>The way I see it, getting through college with as little debt as possible is the way to go. If that means a less prestigious college, so be it. It should not matter in the end for the great majority of people. There is simply too little of a differential between the typical Ivy League student and the typical smart State School student. </p>
<p>That being said, there are some people, albeit a much smaller number of people than are generally admitted to the very top schools, that are absolutely brilliant. We are talking about the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% here, i.e., one in ten thousand. These brilliant people should indeed go to the very top colleges. If you have the mind of an Albert Einstein, you should be attending MIT or Princeton, not Podunk U. And you are doing it not to be financially successful, but to become the very best in your field you can become. But most of us, elite schoolers or not, are not perfect SAT takers, and we are not Bill Gates or Thomas Edison. In that case, finances is everything and graduating with no debt or as little debt as possible should be a top priority. </p>
<p>If you are smart and motivated, you will do just as well anywhere you go to school. Even in Law, which is a very prestige conscious profession, the very top lawyers typically went to Podunk U and maybe even Podunk Law, but they are so good in trial, they leave everybody else, including big law lawyers and Judges, way behind.</p>