Well, if the measure of success is amount of salary, then there are no successful teachers, nurses, non profit directors, police officers, etc. The word “successful” only applies to a certain percentage of I Bankers, specific financial investors, the very tippy top of the law profession, select few actors and actresses, and star athletes.
To answer the question, yes some doors will close but other doors will open also.
@ucbalumnus, I actually made the mistake of reading “New York Law School” as NYU.
We get it, your a provincial mom from the South, who could give a hoot about what they do on either coast–great, enjoy your life and your region of the world. The major thrust of the thread was thoroughly explored, and if I have the latitude to paraphrase, what most people said, was not that doors are closed, but that for some careers, the door was opened much wider, at least in the beginning–coming out of some undergraduate school.
I actually am a provincial mom from the South, though I’ve lived on the east coast and overseas and am only just back home in the south in recent years. My local lawyer is in a three generation family firm where they all graduated from a law school of which I’d never heard. They are excellent. A young friend, a Harvard Law grad from a different part of the country, with lots of important honors and experiences on his CV, who relocated here for his wife to take a job, has been unable to find a local job commiserate with his qualifications. This is not necessarily discrimination. There are just enough local, home town guys to do all the necessary legal work in the state. All things being equal, why not hire a friend? Or someone with local connections? However, his education is such that he was able to find an excellent job to do online where a physical presence isn’t necessary. Since they probably won’t stay here long term, his education probably provides him appropriate opportunities for his needs. It did open wider doors for him. But it would have been unnecessary for my local lawyer and perhaps a hindrance.
So it all depends. Oh wait… did someone already post that?
Has working in investment banking changed to become the stressful unhealthy situation described in http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204062704577223623824944472 ?
Note that New York Law School made news because some graduates sued the school claiming that it misled them about post-graduation job prospects (the plaintiffs lost).
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/9-graduates-lose-case-against-new-york-law-school/
Back on Page 2. (Yes, haven’t read the whole thread yet.)
"I’m not projecting my own desires on people; I’m simply stating the truth: that notwithstanding the numerous people on this board who claim that where you go to school doesn’t matter, to the contrary, for some things, where you go to school most certainly does matter, and that doors may be closed to you without an elite school degree, no matter how smart you are. The Supreme Court example just shows the point.
College applicants need to be aware."
Um, the vast majority of CC seekers (and non-CC-seekers) of elite schools are not interested in the fields being discussed in the OP. They’re not interested in the Seats of (political or economic) power. They’re just interested in making lots of money, even if they influence no one outside of their families. And when articles like this are posted, it gives them more fuel for the MYTH that it is not possible to be disgustingly rich in the United States of America unless you graduate from one of 10 schools.
And THAT is a lie.
"I will add a couple more reasons.
-Routine employees work on matters that have more financial consequence to the parties/companies involved than they likely would be if they were working elsewhere.
As an example, gabbing to a fellow former engineer regarding why he headed to investment banking, his take was something like: “as an engineer I spent a lot ot time designing part of a particular system within a particular plant. As a banker, I am involved in decisions that affect the actual existence and financial well-being of the company that was building that plant, as a whole.”
This is completely ludicrous. The brand manager at a consumer packaged goods company makes decisions that have major financial consequence to his or her company, just like the banker makes decisions that have major financial consequences to the company that he is advising. You seriously, honestly think bankers are the only ones making big, important, million dollar decisions that affect their companies? I don’t think you have a full view of the world of business.
That’s a powerful message… And very well said BTW! Couldn’t agree more.
“Well, if the measure of success is amount of salary, then there are no successful teachers, nurses, non profit directors, police officers, etc. The word “successful” only applies to a certain percentage of I Bankers, specific financial investors, the very tippy top of the law profession, select few actors and actresses, and star athletes.”
Sadly, that’s exactly how some people think. On this very thread. Success = money. It’s a very juvenile way of thinking. Loving what you do is what’s most important, not slavishly following the masses to whoever-dangles-the-most-money. I say that as someone who, when I graduated college, had the highest non-engineer salary that year. But I loved what I did, chose it for that reason, and turned down more “prestigious” jobs for it, and have had a great career. So it’s all good.
"I was addressing why certain employers might be considered to be “top companies”.
I will add a couple more reasons.
-Routine employees work on matters that have more financial consequence to the parties/companies involved than they likely would be if they were working elsewhere."
I worked in finance as a summer intern for several years before heading in a different direction. I found it mind-numbingly boring and wanted to be part of the action, not second-guessing other people’s decisions.
@ucbalumnus, that is a sobering article. The only thing I really know about I banking came from a book I read about the murder of Robert Kissel by his wife Nancy Kissel. Mr. Kissel worked for Goldman Sachs in their Asian bureau, and then was hired by Merril Lynch to head its “distressed assets” division in Hong Kong. The book described in great detail the life of a successful young I banker. The money they make, and their bonuses in particular, were staggering, but I just could not get over the amount of hours these people were required to work. 80-120 hours a week seemed to be the standard. That’s just not compatible with my version of a happy life. It’s not that surprising that Mr. Kissel’s wife felt lonely and unhappy in her marriage. Of course, rather than divorce her husband or attempt to heal the marriage somehow, she had an affair, drugged her husband’s strawberry shake to incapacitate him (she even had their daughter serve him the milkshake), bludgeoned him to death, wrapped him in a $10,000 rug, and had maintenance workers transport the rug to her storage unit inside their luxury high rise. Not nice. 
The problem with the OP is that it self selects to create a ‘truth’ that doesn’t really exist. HappyAlum is basically saying that the only jobs that matter are those jobs that require an ‘elite’ education, things like working for a top law firm, working for Mckimsey, clerking for a supreme court judge, etc, that this is what everyone aspires to or should…but these are such rarified jobs, even a small percent of people who go the elite school route ever get near these jobs (it is kind of like sports, in basketball and football less then 2% of the kids playing these sports get to the pros at all). If your goal is to be one of these small minority of jobs, sure, you better have an elite degree (though interestingly, when called on it, Happy Alum suddenly started talking grad degrees, when Bruni’s original article was about UG admissions and all the furor there of getting into ‘the right school’).
What HappyAlum also leaves out is even at a place like Goldman, you are talking rarified air of being a banker, who make up a minority of jobs there. If you are a trader, for example, Ivy league degrees are not needed, in NYC in the trading field a lot of the people working as traders are not from elite colleges, lot of them are from second and third tier schools, many of them often are from modest backgrounds and may be the first generation to even go to college.With ‘regular’ jobs like accountants, support staff, IT, admins, middle level managers, while they have elite graduates there, there are also a lot of people from ‘ordinary positions’. And while Goldman et al are known for their bonuses (or rather, once were, they aren’t quite as generous these days), the days of an admin doubling their salary with a bonus isn’t true any more for the most part, and the pay is typical for the financial industry, Goldman for example actually pays a lot less in base than many places on the street for non banking positions. And as others have pointed out, Goldman in particular takes their pound of flesh for working there, and I am not just talking bankers. Goldman has what is infamous as the “Goldman day”, which is basically 8-8, and if you leave let’s say at 7pm instead of 8, that is considered underpeforming, and while other firms are not quite that bad, there is still a culture of ‘getting their dollars worth’ so to speak (in a lot of places, there also simply is a lot going on and the extra hours come with the territory). A lot of the things that say Goldman and other places like that are great companies to work for look at the benefits and the programs the company claims to have, like vacation time, supporting working parents and so forth, that look great on paper, but the people who work at those places laugh when they read those articles, that they are brilliant PR but even if you get X weeks of vacation, watch how you are treated if you take it…
As others have pointed out, it all depends on what you mean by success. Is the person who goes to Harvard and finds their muse in being a chef a ‘wastral?’. Is the kid who may not have had stellar stats, who didn’t go to an elite university, who starts a company located in a small city in the midwest that does very well a ‘failure’, or have they found their own piece of life?
And working in the industry, you want to know something about investment banking and what happens to those ‘best and brightest’? Some are in it for the long haul, they find the hours, the thrill of the chase, the money great, but there also are a lot who end up realizing it was fool’s gold and do other things, and worse, those who because of the pressures of the job burn out, things like drug and alcohol abuse are not exactly unknown, the divorce rate among bankers and the like is way up there (not surprising), and with other ‘elite’ jobs it often is the same thing, and they end up in jobs that otherwise would not have required them to have an elite degree, for the ones who make it at that elite level, a multiple reject that and do other things shrug.
Getting back to the OP, it is always very easy to define the scope of an answer to prove your point, it is known as cherry picking, and that is what the OP did, he cherry picked a very small group of jobs/careers to show how if you don’t go to an elite school, you are ‘locked out’, and implied quite frankly that somehow this meant this was true of a lot of jobs. Even assuming such positions make up 5% of the workforce (which I doubt, but I’ll be generous), that means 95% of the jobs out there don’t require it…and I will add that being in that 5% of the workforce doesn’t imply that the person is in the top 5% of all earners, either, if you look at the well off in this country, a lot of them inherited wealth to start with, and among those who didn’t, many of them got wealthy building up businesses and many of them didn’t go to elite schools, so if being among the wealthiest people is a goal, then going to an elite school is even less of an issue…
My real problem with the whole elite school mania is that quite honestly it has perverted the meaning of what those colleges or any school is. Foreign students see the elite US institutions with a cultural lens, where in their countries where you go to school is more important than what you do there or afterwords, in China and Korea where you go to school can totally limit what you achieve, but in the US that isn’t true. Worse, what you are seeing at the elite schools is them becoming a training ground for lucrative careers (since many of those going to those schools are driven with that focus, even more so then in past times) and you see, for example, kids majoring in only a tiny fraction of areas, if not STEM/pre med, finance and economics…and if the elite universities become in effect elite job training programs, will their graduates be all that great, compared to kids who dared to learn things outside the ‘practical’? The sad part is the elite schools (and especially the Ivies) always attracted some really bright kids (along with the rich but dumb kids who got in as legacies) and in so many fields turned out creative people, but if these days the elite schools are turning out kids who only are thinking of the golden goose of elite law, banking and power, how elite will they remain?
I agree totally with the posters who question the wisdom of the original post. Sure, not going to an ivy may slam some doors shut, but the old statement also applies, for every door that slams shut, others open> The kid who doesn’t go to an ivy, doesn’t major in finance, might go to a state school with a diverse group of students, and discover a passion for evolutionary biology and end up a cancer researcher who ends up helping cure the disease…a kid might major in english, and then get a passion for education and figure out a better way to teach, you don’t know…this defining success for others is ridiculous, and what I fear quite honestly is that we create a system like they have in Asia, where where you go to college is the be all and end all of what you do, where all that matters is getting the scores and grades to get into the top school and where universities, instead of being about opening kids eyes, turn into what you see at the elite schools, a whole system based on bragging about how elite their kids grades are.
Was she tried and convicted?
@epiphany, yes, she was, but it was overturned and she was re-tried. She was convicted a second time and was sentenced to life in prison, but has appealed over and over. She recently lost her last appeal.
But see, I don’t see what’s so “elite” about these worlds. I know a fair amount of McKinsey mgt consultants through my work life, and a few hot shot managing partners of law firms through my personal life. Great for them! Are they any happier or unhappier with their lives and their work worlds than I am? We all just have different jobs, that’s all. Are we supposed to sneer if the kindergarten teacher walks into the room because she’s not as “important” as we all are? If so, we would need to get over ourselves, and quick.
I have a friend who runs a celebrity talent agency and places various celebrities with various companies for commercial endorsements, etc. He gets to meet lots of interesting people and he’s got the “hot” job, not someone working for GS.
“Let’s face it, most of the people who graduate from “elite” schools live lives that are not much more spectacular than those that we pleasant peasants enjoy. At least I’m not feeling like a failure because I’m not working at a “top company.” I hope they aren’t either.”
Of course not. Most of the people who graduate from elite schools live nice, pleasant upper middle class lives. That is all. They aren’t running the country or the world or making millions hand over fist.
From the article:
I find it interesting that the author regards UNC-CH as an “elite” school, yet the idea of a state flagship being considered “elite” has been disputed by several posters here.
We had a deposit down at a very elite private (not Ivy) usually ranked in the top 15 schools nationally, and D1 had already picked a roommate when she learned she had come off the wait list at UNC-CH. She immediately changed course and hasn’t looked back. So far her education seems to have served her very well in spite of not making the lists posted on this thread of “elites.”
D2 is very bright and did fine at a private K-12 school which sends many of its graduates to Ivies and other top schools. However, she did not have the stats to go to the very top elite schools and wasn’t interested in attending a small private LAC. So she remains fairly close to home, attending a large state school which wouldn’t make anyone’s top 50 list at CC. But she will probably out earn her sister with the Ph.D because of her chosen field, her drive, her particular talents, and local connections. Both girls will be happy and “successful” in their professions, however; or at least I hope so.
You should see what the teachers earn at many districts on Long Island. Six figures are not unusual (plus summers off), with generous pension and zero-premium health insurance for life. Lots of BMW’s in the teachers’ parking lot. Same for police. They are very well paid, including double overtime for holidays like Flag Day.
But I digress. Resume discussion.
At one point DH was being recruited by a management consulting firm that had opened a new branch in our city. They were offering him insane money, so even though DH was happy at his current firm we went to dinner at the home of the managing partner. We had a lovely dinner with him and his wife in his enormous estate home overlooking the water in one of the most expensive towns in New England. I glanced casually at the packing boxes around us and, wondering how they would choose to decorate their new home, I asked our hosts how long they’d been in the house. “Just under a year.” was the reply, “With [partner’s] schedule we have not had time to properly unpack yet.” DH did not take the job.
There’s more to life than money. I learned later in the evening that this was the first time the partner had been home for the weekend in 6 months. The couple had two small children who almost never saw their dad.
After a summer internship with them DH turned down a full-time job abroad with McKinsey because it would have meant giving our dog away and moving away from family. He quit consulting for good after the week our toddler pursued the limo taking him to the airport on his trike calling “Daddy, don’t go!” and I called to leave him a voicemail of the baby saying her first word, “dada.”
The majority of jobs come with tradeoffs. In some it’s the salary. In others it’s the hours. In others it’s the location or general working conditions. The key is to have options. An “elite” (how I hate that word) education can open doors but it’s certainly not a magic ticket to happiness.