@websensation Very good point, and brings me to another thought. Based on my son’s comments about students in his higher level engineering/physics/math classes at UIUC, here is a hypothesis. Is it plausible that say the top 10% or so of students at top public flagships may be as qualified and have similar opportunities as those at private elites, but that there is a much larger dropoff in selectivity for the middle 50 percentiles? Perhaps solid academically, but just not nearly as accomplished in terms of extracurriculars, leadership, references, ambition or pure talent as what you might see in the middle 50 percentiles of accepted students at a Princeton, MIT or Stanford? Prestige is not only in the perceived quality of the education and research available, but also in the caliber of the students from top to bottom.
If so, perhaps this is recognized by hiring managers at high profile companies and by elite college professors who decide on grad school admissions. Perhaps these people themselves attended a state flagship and a private elite in their education and saw the differences first hand. Now, they are looking at applicants with an eye to who might become future deans, lead researchers, CEOs or be the next startup success story and represent their institutions. Suppose they are evaluating finalists in the middle of the pack in their classes say from a highly selective Cal Tech or Chicago and also some average grads from highly regarded (but much less selective) state research universities like Maryland, Washington, Ohio State, etc. Still doesn’t matter?
@illinoisx3 I personally believe top 20% at decent public schools can do well or compete comfortably at HYPSM. No doubt for me. I also believe 70% of STEM kids at Berkeley can do just as well at Stanford or MIT. I got no data but based on my experience. One kid out of 10 kids at Stanford are really freaking off the chart smart but most of them are smart with high talent in one area. I am sure people will disagree but it’s based on my observations. But at state schools, it’s like one in 30 or 50 are freaking off the chart smart, except for few top state schools.
I had two friends in HS where one was freaking off the chart smart whereas the other was hard working smart. They roomed together at MIT, and first kid ended up with almost all As with decent effort whereas the second kid ended up with C+s and B-s no matter how hard he tried. He told me later this used to drive him nuts and eventually to their falling out as friends. The hard working guy would probably have done top 30% at University of Kansas but instead ended up in bottom 20% at MIT with his ego damaged.
Right- Cal is one exception in terms of selectivity compared to the majority of state flagships. Whether it’s the top 10% or 20%, I think there is a much steeper falloff in caliber of students after that at many public STEM research universities compared to private elites. No proof here, either, just a topic for discussion.
This is an incredibly important point. Kids need to know themselves and parents need to know their kids. Its very clear which are natural talents and which are highly motivated hard workers. Beyond that, some kids are neither, but are achieving high stats because of the extra help they are receiving from tutors, extra classes and parental involvment. If your kids is achieving straight As because you are on top of every homework assignment, chances are that isn’t going to continue in college. Many kids should not automatically go to the most selective schools that accept them. They should go where their hard work and motivation can continue to propel them towards success.
My hard working friend told me he used to wonder around the campus at midnight thinking how the hell our talented friend managed to get As with just decent amount of studying, whereas he could bang his head against the wall and couldn’t get A- or even B+s. The talented friend told me later there were some kids who aced tests without studying at all or very little while working on their projects. He said these guys were really, really smart. That blew me away.
The hard working guy who went to MIT working as a “lower” valued patent attorney for a law firm where a guy who went to a state school is a head partner making the most money.
I would re-focus this discussion a little. Depending on your goal, it absolutely does matter where you go to college. I don’t think any one could seriously say that attending Western Kentucky generally offers the same opportunities as MIT, both in terms of the practical (job search) or educational (research or other learning opportunity). To say otherwise is to defy common sense. If you had a serious illness and had the chance to see a doctor who studied at Stanford and Harvard, that might not be the only reason to see that physician, but you would certainly give that “prestige” factor weight on such a life or death decision. I also believe that, whether one likes it or not, the wealth of a school is important, not only for measurable matters such as financial aid and academic opportunity, but also for day to day quality of life issues.
On the other hand, I do agree that much of this site is devoted to the type of reputational hair splitting that is meaningless in a practical sense. Too see questions such as “Dartmouth v. Vanderbilt” on this site with regard to professional opportunities as though any graduate school or employer would draw a distinction shows the same lack of common sense. Fit within a broad range should be given much higher priority than prestige. Virtually no undergraduate can exhaust the resources of a well funded private or state flagship university. Four happy years are going to be productive years. Four unhappy years are not going to be nearly as productive.
So, telling your kid that where they go to college doesn’t matter at all is unfair to them and inaccurate. I see that as part of a national trend that suggests that expertise is always an illusion. But making a race for the purported best school a life or death goal is unfair and counter productive. Instead, and I think that all kids should find a range of schools that they like, with particular emphasis on fit and the quality of their safety school, and be comfortable in knowing that anywhere in that range will lead to the same opportunities.
You know, but the hard worker now doesn’t regret going to MIT because he got to study with really talented kids and he managed to make a comfortable living by doing what untalented people do: push papers as attorneys. Lol. Just kidding. No, I am not kidding. Lol. That’s what I did too but I had a better marketing skills than my hard working MIT friend.
I probably managed to offend all attorneys except those with a sense of humor.
@websensation The other X-factor is not just whether any top student could excel at HYPSM, many certainly could graduate with honors in terms of coursework only. I believe what sets the majority apart at these highest selectivity colleges is leadership. You know, they also try to admit those who are more likely to bring some renown back to the university in one form or another. Senior research physicist or tenured professor is a success story for many, but for HYPSM I think they are also seeking out those more likely to become Senator, Dean, Executive VP, bring in tens of millions in research grants, win Nobel prizes and awards, create the next facebook and send back $$$ in donations to put their name new buildings. Stuff that may not be reflected in GPA/ACT/SAT only. Of course, that senior researcher from Garden Variety State may be a lot happier in life than the executive VP from Elitist University who is pushing papers two levels up on the corporate ladder at twice the salary, but that’s a different story;-)
Well, here is to me who’s sending my kid to Stanford hoping he just enjoys his 4 years at his first choice and improves his writing skills while meeting many talented people and learn to work with them.
I took a greyhound bus to Cornell as a kid from a poor immigrant family, not knowing anything about Cornell except it was cold and that I would be receiving free education. Now in 5 months, my wife and I will be driving our fuzzy kid to a warm techie feely campus as a full paying kid.
My biggest accomplishment in college was graduating in 4 years after changing my major 5 times and also sitting on the same chair as Christopher Reeves used to sit in English Lit class. I am hoping my kid will do slightly better than me.
@illinoisx3 I don’t think it is as simple as looking at data like you posted and then saying that lack of a school being listed is an indication of lack of selecting students from those schools as candidates. It is a far more complicated of an issue than students at school x attend school y for grad school.
A big part of the over all picture is the goals of students within a dept. Bama’s physics dept is tiny in terms of actual students focusing on physics as a goal vs. an additional major or just a job. I think my ds is the only current physics major who focused on physics with grad school as a goal. I don’t think there are any other seniors who applied to grad school for physics. The last time they had a serious physics student with goals toward grad school was the yr he was a high school sr. That student went to Stanford for grad school. I think there are currently 3 sophomores who are serious physics students with grad school objectives.
I don’t think it is at all surprising that more students at certain schools are more grad school focused than at other schools. Because of that, you will see a skew toward those schools. But if you look at the link you posted, there was a student listed from Middle TN State, a dreaded directional, not even a flagship.
Consider the fact that it is a small list of students listed in the link you posted and then consider the number of extremely top physics students at competitive Us.The flip question is why are students from schools like Middle TN or Western MI ever even a possibility when compared to the number of strong applicants from the top schools? There are way more applicants than spots every single yr. So, statistically, if school name ranked that high in level of importance, then there would never be room for a spot from a school like Middle TN.
Fwiw, schools like Rice and UVA are only listed once. Does that make a statement that students at Rice are as likely to be accepted as students at Middle TN? Not the way I would interpret it. But, I would equally say that, no, I don’t think UIUC is going to put your student’s application above a student from a much lower ranked school. It is going to depend on the whole application, not the UG name.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek - like I said, hardly scientific proof, but still interesting. Maybe the panel is weighted with Stanford and Princeton grads, but that would still be an opportunity with better odds for Stanford or Princeton grads than the other schools you mentioned. I’m just not subscribing to all colleges are the same or provide the same opportunities (or even quality or rigor of education) for the majority of their grads, outside of some exceptions in the top few percent of students that might excel anywhere. And no, I don’t think the name of any school alone is going to put one student above another unless there’s a real bias from the person making the decision. But all all else equal, some schools do have a reputation for producing higher quality applicants in the academic and corporate world. Many such decisions come down not just to what you know or how well you did, but also on who you know and what connections you have. I do think the top research institutions open more doors in this manner, especially when a stack of applications otherwise look similar in terms of GPA, GRE and other objective measures. Otherwise, we’d be seeing the typical state colleges producing an equal per capita share of high profile politicians, executives, provosts, nobel laureates and internet billionaires as the Harvards of the world.
Many top physics programs are sending a larger percentage of students right into the job market instead of grad school. Who can blame them with 6 figure salaries at high tech and financial companies trying to lure anyone with computational and database skills. Professors at Vanderbilt and Cornell told us the number of students going on to grad school has dropped considerably in the last decade or two for this reason.
@illinoisx3 I think you hit on something that that makes me wonder. My S is STEM at Stanford and his assessment is that there is no “steep drop off” there - basically there are the awesome and the freaking awesome. However, he knows several students at other colleges and feels they would fit in well. So, my thought is that these students will do just as good as the Stanford students because they would be the most logical picks for the top research spots and internships out of their schools. There is competition at Stanford for these research spots and internships but the number of available spots is seems to be pretty high. The question I have is if this transfers to disciplines outside of STEM? Not sure.
I don’t think applicants look all that similar. Maybe that is one reason we have different perspectives. I think grad school applications are far more than GPAs and test scores. A major factor in their applications is commitment to research: UG on-campus research, REUs, poster presentations, conferences, etc.
FWIW, I wonder if students who want to pursue high tech or finance are committed to research? Are they spending their summers working finance jobs or are they spending their summers doing REUs? I have no idea. My ds personally wouldn’t thank you for a finance job. He loves research and that is his goal.
@Rivet2000 Given the selectivity of Stanford and its peers, I’d say this is probably typical of most majors. My spouse is a Stanford alum and says the same thing about the students top to bottom. My S is not all that impressed by the majority of the competition so far at UIUC. Maybe that will change in higher level classes, or maybe it’s a sign schools like UIUC are losing more top students to Alabama and other colleges who are offering more $$$ to attract the best? I agree that exceptional students will be exceptional anywhere and get excellent opportunities. I also believe it’s the rest of the pack at a private elite that is a step ahead of the rest of the field at most state universities when it comes to talent, education and opportunity. Prestige is from the top down, these schools hire top educators, top researchers, top recruiters and select top students. Maybe it doesn’t really mater where your kid goes to college after all, but it would be interesting to see some relevant data.
I do know this, if my S is evaluating physics grad school offers and one is from Stanford and one is from Central XYZ State, I’m almost certainly advising him to take the Stanford offer unless there’s some top researcher and program at the other one;-)
@Mom2aphysicsgeek It’s definitely not theorizing fundamental particle physics or designing experiments for measuring gravity waves, but artificial intelligence and machine learning are THE thing right now in technology. Not just at the usual hi-tech suspects like Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Facebook, but also in startups and in every big investment company that has research in this area to beat the other guys by responding quicker in the markets. It’s mostly computer science related, but they recruit talent from many fields like engineering and physics that have computational backgrounds. I don’t think my S will be interested in that route either, but I can see where money talks for a lot of undergrads and takes some of the top talent who might otherwise become distinguished university researchers or faculty. He’s got a few years to figure it all out.
@illinoisx3 makes an excellent point in post #260. I think we likely all agree that the right student can and will do well anywhere. It’s also likely that the top 10% (or maybe 5%) of typical quality state U would be competitive at elite schools. And yes, we all know kids from these schools that have gone on to do great things.
That said, from a future opportunity (grad school) and hiring perspective, there is a certain advantage to students coming form the top schools because the opportunity knows what it’s getting. The average 50% is going to be very strong, so they don’t have to count on the student being an outlier from state U. Maybe it was easier to be top 10% at state U than middle 50% at Harvard (or Duke, Vandy, Chicago, etc.)
Anecdotedly, a friend of mine who has hired MANY (hundreds) kids into banking (I realize this is a unique field but the scenario lends itself to lots of situations) would only look at resumes from certain schools (think top 20). I asked him if he thought he might be missing out on some diamonds in the rough. Without hesitation explained his and most major banks let the system do the work. “The top schools have vetted the top students. We only look at the top students from those top schools. Is it possible that someone form a lesser school would have been a strong candidate? Sure, but who cares? We know we are getting the top of the top so why would we do anything to change that”. Of course there are exceptions and IB is a very exclusive community but I think the point resonates. Frankly, kids from the top schools don’t have to justify themselves to get launched. The assumption is they’re pretty strong.
Most people on this site will also say that only matters for the first job and then it’s about effort and quality of work.
Yes AND No. Yes you have to be very good and do a great job regardless, but that first job creates a certain trajectory. And don’t think the network doesn’t matter. It does!
@rickle1 analysis mirrors my son’s experience. Last month he was sent the names of the individuals who he will be interning with this summer. Every one of them is attending either an Ivy, top 5 LAC or MIT.
@shuttlebus, well, that would have been one of my two guesses - the other being investment banking. I think there are a few situations where your undergrad makes a tremendous difference. I could not, with a straight face, tell a kid who had her heart set on IB that it didn’t matter where she went to college. That doesn’t mean that a kid who can’t attend Harvard or Wharton has no chance in the field, but clearly it will be a difficult path.
But, I would equally say that, no, I don’t think UIUC is going to put your student’s application above a student from a much lower ranked school. It is going to depend on the whole application, not the UG name.