Ohmom, my post was in response to 110 and wasn’t directed at you at all.
OK I’ll let Worryhurry be offended then 
"I think it’s s little naive to assume “employers” are one big monolith who have all memorized the USNWR rankings. Obviously some employers care and some don’t. " - in my very long experience working in many industries, while currently employed by one of the largest international companies in its field, as well as experiences all around me, working primarily for the small and very large engineering firms that are prominently represented on the international markets, I say that NOBODY cares about the name of the college and all the places that I am familiar with recruit from the local unknown low ranked college. In regard to Grad. schools, I know for the fact that medical schools do not care where applicant is coming from and heard here on CC that law schools do not care either, but I do not have a personal experience with the law school, with exception of maybe couple of friend’s kids. And based on these couple of examples, law school does not care either. I do not know about other graduate degrees, but again know few kids who attended Harvard for their MBA after graduating from in-state public schools with non-business degrees, so it seems that for the top MBA programs, name of college / major does not matter either.
It is not to say that the companies that draw specifically from Harvard and such do not exist. And, I am sure that the graduate programs that prefer Yale graduates also exist . Of course they do, but they are very small minority and not a majority. Is it worth to spend a fortune on such education? It is up to each family to decide and what we say here will change their mind. As far as our family is concerned, we decided that Harvard and such was not worth our resources. But it was very easy decision for us as our kids ruled out Ivy’s, were not interested and even withstood all the pressure from the GC at HS. They knew exactly what they wanted and looking back, it has worked perfectly for them. Just discussed this with my D. yesterday who is finishing her first year of residency. She continue praising her in-state public and not only for her academic success but also for all other numerous non-academic opportunities that were available to her there. The key was that SHE took advantage of them, while others were passing by. The fact is that the student is at the wheel of her fortune is largely overlooked in all discussions on CC. No place and no person will do it for the student, it is in her own hands. And my D. is very proud to mention the name of the college that she graduated from and highly recommend it to anybody.
Again, you want Harvard, go for it!!! But think twice before looking down at others who choose a different way, it does not reflect well on you as a person at all.
I’m sure it’s true that some employers don’t care. Some clearly do, such as in my field, journalism.A lot of the young reporters covering the presidential campaign right now, for example, are Ivy grads. Many of my co-workers over the years have been Ivy grads. Many aren’t, of course, but I do think the editors making hiring decisions are impressed by a fancy degree.
On the other hand, if lots of other employers are recruiting new graduates at Stanford, a given employer’s yield there may be lower due to competition (of course, this can be good for the students there).
Also, in terms of employer convenience, the size of the school can matter. An employer choosing to make a recruiting trip to the Los Angeles area may rationally choose to visit UCLA and USC over Caltech and Harvey Mudd if it wants to recruit from a large pool of good students (with a few elite students mixed in) versus a tiny pool of elite students.
I think you overestimate how much employers value convenience when it comes to recruiting.
If they really cared about convenience, they wouldn’t bother to recruit at Cornell (five-hour drive from NYC or inconvenient flight schedule), but hundreds do.
Five hours is “local” for a lot of places. Clarkson, Michigan Tech, New Mexico Tech, etc all get interest in their students. MTU is something like 8 hours from Chicago… there’s a point here somewhere, I’m sure.
From what I know, more employers have a shot at a particular candidate because they have tried them out as an intern and in a lot of cases give them a standing offer to return as a fulltime employee. I assume the employers also have a good idea how many offers they have to make in order to get the number they need just like colleges do.
In reality, this is not specific to one school. Most top school candidates are doing summer internships which result in fulltime offers. I have heard this from many other schools’ students.
From the perspective of sitting in the Midwest, 5 hours is no big deal, Marian. I’m quite sure companies in Indianapolus recruit in Chicago area schools - that’s a good 4 hour drive. Michigan companies would recruit here at schools too and that’s a few hours drive as well.
Anyway, it’s not just the convenience, it’s the need (or lack of need) to pay relocation fees.
A Midwest company that hires a Midwestern grad for a job in the Midwest runs a little lower risk of having that new employee bolt for “home” before the ROI is positive. Same for an East Coast, Deep South or Pacific Northwest grad.
It isn’t universal, but some people like to be near their families and the culture they grew up in.
The guy in Socorro NM (9000 people in a county the size of Connecticut more or less) often wouldn’t move to NYC for any amount of money - and that’s no more parochial or provincial than the person from Ann Arbor who’d never consider living in Biloxi Mississippi. (Full disclosure, I’ve lived in all these places at one time or another - except NYC. Not even the Magraheans could afford what that would take.)
While engineering recruiters don’t emphasize educational pedigree as much as many other professions which do, they can still be swayed by it.
However, the types of schools considered to have the “magic dust” can differ drastically from the “Ivy or bust” crowd’s usual suspects.
With the exception of Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia, the Ivies…especially Brown, Harvard and Yale aren’t viewed as having elite/respectable engineering departments above and beyond those at an average respectable public engineering school. Worse, there is a feeling among many engineering hiring managers that the potential hires may try coasting on the Ivy pedigree without having the degree of technical chops and strong work ethic they’d associate with top engineering schools such as UMich, GTech, UIUC, UW-Seattle, etc.
And none of the Ivies are considered by them to hold a candle to the tippy-top engineering/CS schools such as MIT, Caltech, CMU, Stanford, and Berkeley. One of those hiring managers who feel this way and was somewhat happily surprised when I mentioned this line of thinking is shared by most HS classmates who were aspiring engineering/CS majors is himself an Ivy engineering grad from Columbia with several decades of experience as a PE and an engineering technical manager.
From having many family members in the engineering/CS field and attending a public magnet full of aspiring engineering/CS majors…it’s actually a bit puzzling to see some here on CC and elsewhere wonder why someone with engineering/CS aspirations would be puzzled with someone turning down admission to Harvard or any other Ivy for schools in the tippy-top engineering/CS category such as CMU.
For the engineers in my family and aspiring engineering/CS aspirant classmates…that decision would have been considered a no-brainer…after they finished wondering why such a student would apply to Harvard in the first place considering its engineering/CS departments can’t hold a flicker of a candle to CMU and its engineering/CS peers.
You could have the same dynamic of feeling you’re not matching the level of your peers not only at elite colleges, but at any institution…and that could even extend to HS.
One of my HS classmates from an older class which overlapped with mine for a year or few is now a senator(Grace Meng), two HS friends are now professors…one a full Prof in Math at respectable/elite colleges, several dozen tech/ibanking/corporate execs, a few field/senior military officers, etc…etc…etc
Incidentally, the cousin-in-law who was part of the same class as Senator Cruz and a HS friend who graduated from the same Ivy some years later don’t view Sen. Cruz as a yardstick to measure themselves against. Quite the contrary…they’re embarrassed* and try to steer the conversation to other Princeton alums they feel are much more worthy of respectable attention.
- Not only for political reasons...but also for how he ended up getting pounded into tiny specks by another Ivy graduate with no previous political experience who took his political playbook and "out-Cruzed" him.
Can anyone who chose the latter over the former comment on the benefit of doing so especially from those who are not recent graduates?
^ @mathmom may be aware of someone.
While it’s not CMU, I had a HS classmate who graduated with me in the mid-'90s who was an aspiring engineering major who turned down MIT for Harvard which puzzled most classmates and some wondered whether she was chasing the Harvard pedigree or whether she had “momentary insanity”.
She ended up regretting her choice as she recounted how Harvard’s DEAS was treated as “the neglected stepchild of FAS” during her undergrad years in the mid-late '90s and there wasn’t as much support for engineering as other topflight engineering schools…especially schools at the MIT/Caltech/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley tier.
This was only further confirmed for her when she went to Stanford for her engineering masters and felt in retrospect, she’d have been much better off MIT or one of its academic peers.
Also, need to make a correction to my previous post. My older classmate is a congresswoman, not a senator.
@cobrat I was referring to CC posters that, in other threads, have berated anyone that believes that engineering graduates from MIT, Caltech, HMC, CMU, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. are generally better prepared, academically, and hence potentially better employees, than engineering graduates from hundreds of other colleges in the U.S. (Utah State keeps getting mentioned as an example, in those threads). You seem to be agreeing with me that the highly-regarded universities listed above do indeed provide the most rigorous engineering education.
I also agree with you about engineering in the Ivy league. Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell stand out, but not the other five. However, if we expand the discussion to STEM in general, several of the Ivy colleges have outstanding programs in math and science.
mathmom knows kids who majored in science degrees, but not CS or engineering specifically recently. (Half my friends were in CS when I attended as were both my brothers - they are all doing fine.) I do know we looked at Harvard’s placement and their CS majors do fine if you are aiming for the big guys (Google, Apple, Facebook, Wall Street all represented.) I think the house system at a place like Harvard or Yale and the fact that nearly everyone spends all four years on campus results in an enhanced experience where there is a lot of cross pollination. Clubs and sports provide that same sort of thing on other campuses, but I think the fact that you have a smaller stable group with lots of activities in house - concerts, lectures, film series, basements filled with amenities (ours had squash courts, pinball and foosball, ping pong, a pottery studio, a dark room, music practice rooms and a student run cafe,) makes it easier to be friends with people different from you. I was much better friends with people in my House than people in my major. And since my major involved quite a few studio courses it was actually easier than most to get to know people.
My older son spent most of his accepted students weekend with a club that played board games, and watched sci fi movies - which was part of what made Harvard so tempting. He realized that there were actually quite a lot of people just like him. But there were even more at Carnegie Mellon, and they had hangouts in the computer science building - it was more intense. (And there were more professors and more CS courses.)
I think for a kid who is well-rounded and who will take advantage of the extras - the house system and the extra-curriculars, Harvard and its ilk are perfectly reasonable choices - even in CS.
Yes, they do offer a more rigorous and in-depth engineering education partially because they devote far more resources and support for the engineering/CS departments and supporting a hardcore engineering/CS community.
This was something my Harvard engineering undergrad/Stanford engineering MS HS classmate found lacking in her undergrad compared with what she saw while later visiting her HS friends at MIT and moreso when she went to Stanford for engineering grad school in the mid-late '90s and early '00s.
To be far, Harvard has recently poured a lot of resources and greatly increased the level and prioritization of their engineering/CS programs so it’s likely much better now than it was in my HS classmate’s time there.
Even so, it may take some time before the perceptions of Harvard being outstanding in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences while being much weaker and not as supportive of the technical sciences are eliminated. Especially considering the PE/engineering technical manager Ivy engineering graduate uncle with several decades of experience in engineering and hiring/managing engineers has passed down his perspectives on Ivy engineering programs* to his children some of whom have kids who are about to/already started attending college.
One of the oldest kids was considering my Uncle’s Ivy alma mater before earning admission to Berkeley with a Drake scholarship as an in-stater.
- He was even wary of encouraging his kids to apply to Ivies with strong engineering programs(Princeton, Cornell, Columbia)...much less the rest.
He was also adamant that if one of his kids applies to Harvard for engineering/CS, they are on their own regarding paying for it as he was personally burned by a Harvard engineering grad who was so incompetent he was not only tossed out of a past firm’s engineering AND sales and marketing departments, but was completely inept as my uncle’s secretary for 10 years. Unfortunately, this Harvard engineering grad was hired and remained employed for ~2 decades because he was an idiot nephew of a senior engineering executive with great influence within the firm. As the uncle was the juniormost recently promoted junior engineering executive in the firm, the firm’s senior execs felt placing the idiot nephew as my uncle’s secretary was the best way to please that influential senior engineering exec while ensuring that idiot nephew does the least amount of damage. It was only after that senior engineering executive was forced out that the remaining executives and my uncle finally got the chance to can him permanently.
To be fair, Harvard is starting to catch up considering the greater prioritization of support/resources poured into their engineering/DEAS within the last few years.
However, it may take a while before attitudes from some competitive engineering hiring managers…especially those from the older generation change so they are taken more seriously as hardcore engineers and not viewed as potential hires for the hardcore engineering/tech firm’s sales and marketing departments which tend to be regarded as dumping grounds for engineers whose technical chops didn’t measure up to the standards of the firm or their perceptions of graduates from topflight engineering programs like GTech, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, UMich, UW-Seattle, HMC…or moreso graduates from the tippy-top MIT/Caltech/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley tier.
up until I was in 10th grade I knew harvard, brown (because some kids older sister went there) duke (friends older brother) the school my parents went to and the state flagship. in 10th grade I was friends with a girl who was a senior who talked about college all the time…I remember her mom asking me my GPA and where I wanted to go… I said U of Washington…she asked why… I said because it is far away from home. she told me I probably would not get it in. I got nervous/panicked and started right after that to talk to my parents about colleges… my mom helped me zero in on a type of school setting i would want and cast a wide net. (I started to worry I would wind up in community college and struggling even there)
I think harvard,yale,princeton are a prize among a small set of hyper competitive high school students. the average high school student just knows the name but have zero interest. harvard’s value is that it gives validation to those kids who need some elitist status. the classes, professors etc… are not any better…yes many people who come out of harvard are very successful but that is because many of them are hyper motivated/ driven people anyway so they are more likely to succeed. not because harvard bestows some secret knowledge into their brains. so many students would benefit from living less stressful time in high school not worrying about a shot at the ivy/stanford,u of chicago etc… and just do really well in 9-12 grade…and apply to dare I say a school like hendrix,muhlenberg,lafayette or butler. go to one of those schools …have an awesome 4 years undergrad learn and grow in a supportive environment.
ok enough of my rambling!
I think we have a natural inclination to compare ourselves with others and “Ivy Fever” is a way to validate how we measure up.