Prestige of the undergraduate degree does not mean much for entry-level actuarial recruiting. All you need is strong math/economics curriculum, couple of passed exams (to show that you are serious about this field) and a relevant internship. It helps to be in the area with large presence of insurance companies that recruit from your school. High SAT scores help too as evidence that you can test well. Internships you get based on the same criteria. Be personable and interview well means much more than prestige of your college. Basically they are looking for math nerds who you can actually put in front of the client:)
@TheGFG, yes, but less than a third of the US population had a bachelors, so the percentage of those who have a bachelors who have a grad degree is much higher than 8%.
Then when you consider that those kids who have a reasonable shot at an elite are almost certainly in the top 5-10% of the population, it’s not unreasonable to assume that those who actually have the choice of an elite vs. a lesser undergrad also possess the potential to pick up a master degree from a top school if they keep working hard and don’t make bad decisions (and an elite undergrad won’t save you if you make bad decisions anyway).
@blossom, I agree that there are benefits to going to certain programs/schools vs. others and that you really need to do your research. For example, the quality, rigor, breadth, and focus of CS departments at various elites can vary quite a bit (even between schools on the same tier). That’s obviously true with state flagships as well. An interesting observation is that even among giant state flagships, departments at different schools focus different amounts of energy on the success of their students. One department may actually care about their students’ post-graduate success. Another could give an ish about that with faculty mostly focused on research. I attribute that to culture. It’s very interesting.
I have known exactly one executive of Goldman Sachs, and was only a peripheral acquaintance. His daughter went to the same private elementary school as my D in Dallas. He was the head guy in Dallas and went on to run the Singapore division and became a managing director at GS, which is pretty darn near the top of the heap from what I understand. He went to Bowdoin College and his highest degree was a BA. Not too shabby.
Let me clarify that when I say that the selectivity/prestige/rank of the college provides more options, I was not really thinking about options to make more money, although that could be true. What I was thinking about was that going to a school like that (on AVERAGE and NOT FOR EVERY SINGLE STUDENT, for cryin’ out loud) provides a student more options in terms of career paths. Again, I think this is particularly true for students who aren’t sure what they want to do.
I question the premise. One characteristic of an “elite” institution is elite students. Nearly all students who attend elite schools are above average in intelligence and have already demonstrated the ability and desire to be involved, show leadership, curiosity and seek out opportunity. I question whether doors are closed to students in lesser universities or are they merely not opened as frequently. if your first contact with someone who might have or be connected to someone who has the authority to hire you is in the last semester of your senior year your chances of finding good employment will be greatly compromised. The person who is making connections, seeking internships, helping professors and involving themselves in activities related to their study will be further ahead regardless of their school.
I don’t know how to say this without being obnoxious, but the fact is that at more elite schools, students get certain goodies. They include well-connected visiting profs who can help them, creative writing teachers who are famous writers, good internship opportunities, grants and fellowships, opportunities to work in labs, and so on. My point is just that the more “elite” (and rich) your university is, the more of these goodies will be available, and the less you’ll have to compete or stand out to get them. As somebody suggested upthread, it can be the difference between simply signing up on a piece of paper to get an interview with some desirable entity, and having to really work to finagle that interview (and travel to do the interview). I’m not saying that less selective schools have no goodies like this; they just have fewer, and maybe they aren’t as sparkly. Again, it’s a continuum, and there’s not a steep dropoff in this characteristic.
And let me add this: not all of these goodies necessarily have much to do with future success, but they can enhance the college experience. For example, how often does the college Concert Band go on tour, and where does it go? How much do students have to pay for the tour? What kinds of outside speakers come to campus, and how many of them are there? What kind of financial support is there for student dramatic productions?
I guess I’m just saying that when you are comparing two colleges, this kinds of considerations are reasonable to take into accoutnt.
“Let me clarify that when I say that the selectivity/prestige/rank of the college provides more options, I was not really thinking about options to make more money, although that could be true. What I was thinking about was that going to a school like that (on AVERAGE and NOT FOR EVERY SINGLE STUDENT, for cryin’ out loud) provides a student more options in terms of career paths. Again, I think this is particularly true for students who aren’t sure what they want to do.”
I think this is undoubtedly true. I think there are 2 mentalities out there - an abundance mentality and a scarcity mentality. The abundant mentality says - life is full of opportunities, and if you go to an elite school, you may have even more doors open – isn’t that great? The scarcity mentality says – there are only a few “good” jobs (however one defines good), and so gosh, let’s build them up into the Second Coming of Christ, and if this particular college isn’t a target of Blackstone or McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or whoever – oh my goodness, look at that HUGE door that just slammed shut, how awful is that.
I think the other part of the scarcity mentality is a naive mentality that “good money” is only or primarily made in a certain few companies in a certain few industries. I have to be honest - the people who I know who are stunningly wealthy are overwhelmingly people in privately-held companies, in fields / industries that may not be as allegedly sexy as Wall Street and may or may not require elite degrees (but requires a whole other set of skills), the name of their company is largely unknown and doesn’t impress people at cocktail parties – but so what? They live comparably affluent lifestyles and if we’re calling money the determiner of success, their money is just as green as the GS guy’s money.
The US Census reports that as of 2014, 3.2 million Americans highest level of educational attainment was “Professional Degree” and 3.7 million for “Doctoral Degree”. 18 million reported Master’s Degrees and 45 million reported it was a Bachelor’s.
If you want to make those into percentages, you can use either 320 million as the total population of the US, or 240 million as the adult (over 18) population.
Actually, this was part of the consideration for D when she decided which college to apply to (she only applied to one). She wanted a good school with lots of opportunities and an accomplished student body. But she also knew money would be an issue and she realizes that she wanted to be in the position to be at the top of the class instead of the middle.
So, when it came time to decide where to apply ED, she decided her first choice college was not the Ivy she had wanted to go to since she was six, the southern elite university that captured her heart, or the local elite that was too close to home for her tastes. Instead she chose a school that she felt would match her needs (in terms of major, research opportunities, and likelihood of merit aid) and her personality best.
For her, the opportunities seemed most promising at a school that may not be on the “elite” lists but is clearly an exciting and challenging place to go to as an undergraduate.
@Hunt, I think you really have to research based off of interests and goals as well as personal attributes (so fit comes in to play) and can’t just generalize off of selectivity/eliteness.
As some examples:
-Some selective privates aren’t Street targets while other schools of the same or even lower selectivity are.
-A few elite privates make sense only if you have certain interests and are a certain type of person.
-PSU and OSU attract a ton of recruiters because they’re gigantic schools (PSU’s alum network isn’t shabby either; OSU alums would say the same). One kid may get to take advantage of more opportunities if they went to PSU than if they went to Williams or even Dartmouth. A different kid may get to take advantage of more opportunities at Williams/Dartmouth than at PSU.
Are they conflating within that PhD total, MDs and JDs?
Very likely. Ironic considering what is known as a J.D. here in the US is a Bachelor of Laws(LL.B) in most other parts of the world and in the US prior to the '60s.
Also, in most other parts of the world, one can take an LL.B straight from HS and start off as a lawyer 3-4 years later.
To further riff on opportunities, I think most people only consider the opportunities that they see available to them and fail to see others that other folks may value highly.
For instance, one kid may think that the opportunity to tour Europe with an orchestra is great. But another kid may think that the opportunity to go and participate in major bowl games is even better. Yet if their school offers only one but not the other (there are a few who would offer both), they may not even consider the possibility of the other opportunity, much less value it.
How about the premise that some people close the doors themselves bc they have no desire to go where that door leads. Believe it or not, there are kids who are incredibly strong students that want to major in CS but don’t want to part of the next major start-up or live in the Silicon Valley. They want to stay in their local area and work for a local company living a quiet completely avg lifestyle. That is probably far more the norm than not.
I think sometimes we tend to exaggerate how specific the interests and goals of a lot of high school students are, even very accomplished ones. I suspect we all know students who have changed majors in college, and who have picked up completely new activities. This issue, in fact, is one reason why I wasn’t sure a LAC would be the best situation for my own kids, because while the opportunities available can be first-rate, there aren’t as many of them.
Here’s how I’d put it: if you aren’t sure what you want to major in, and you don’t have a specific interest that is offered at one college over the other, and there isn’t a significant financial factor, and there isn’t some other significant personal reason that makes you prefer one school over the other, then you will probably benefit from going to the more selective school, because the range of opportunities will be somewhat better there. Thus, for example, if you are deciding between Harvard, and, say, William and Mary, then it probably makes sense to go to Harvard unless you have some specific reason not to do so. Were there enough caveats in that?
Wait—the range of opportunities is greater at Williams than at Ohio State??
(Unless @Hunt meant something different by “opportunities” than things like breadth of curricular options, I suppose, but that’s what it sounded like in the post.)
No, and I think that was one of the caveats I mentioned. Still, I would suspect that the quality of the “goodies” at Williams is higher than the similar goodies at Ohio State, even though those at Ohio State would be broader.
I should also add that money can provide a lot of nice goodies, even if the school may not be the most selective. UT comes to mind in this respect.
Here’s a thought experiment for you: imagine that Joe Blank Slate comes to ask you if he should go to Williams or to Ohio State. He’s a smart kid, but he has no preferences, no specific interests, doesn’t know what he wants to study or what career he wants or where he wants to live, etc. Which of those schools would you advise him to pick? Is it possible to make any kind of meaningful statement about which would likely to be “better” for Joe?
@Hunt The fact is that a more specialized, less selective/elite (but better fitting) school may actually be the better choice for many students. You can’t simply dismiss these students as outliers in your argument. The problem some of us are having with your viewpoint is that you are implying the more selective/elite schools are the “best” schools because they offer more opportunities all-around, but that for some students a less selective/non-elite school might actually be a better choice. This is a contradictory viewpoint… In essence, you’re ranking both choices using one scale, but making it appear as if both choices are equally viable (depending on the student). To put it another way, if student A benefits more (has more opportunities he/she is interested in) at less selective/non-elite U, wouldn’t that school be the “best” school for this student?
You know, in all this discussion, I hadn’t thought of the fact that the majority (a large majority, I strongly suspect) of college students would probably be ill-served by highly selective institutions (even though I work at an eminently nonselective college myself), if only because the level of preparation is well below what’s assumed at most such schools.
Really, the issue we should be debating isn’t the postsecondary level, it’s the secondary level.