Are there doors outside of law, investment/international banking (or other WS jobs) or academia that require an elite degree to open?
Or doors that degrees from elite schools close?
Periwinkle, the majority of kids going off to college are not having the typical sleep-away experience that we discuss here in CC. They may be going to local community colleges, living at home and commuting, often while working at the same time (which explains low 4 year graduation rates - people can’t afford it).
Who wants to work on Wall St? Criminals
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You think living in Angola or another country without a properly functioning banking and capital markets system is preferable Kollegeguy? Fewer criminals (just a couple of corrupt dictators, oligarchs and their friends) and a starving populace?
Oh no, not criminals. I am sure there are many criminals on Wall Street, but I don’t think they all wanted to work there because they were already criminals.
My cousin, a Penn graduate, always had an fascination with business, economics and math. So, he graduated to a Wall Street investment banking job. For him, IB was a natural career decision that matched his interests. I am sure attending an Ivy League school helped him get that job. But beyond that, he’s been an ambitious person all of his life. If he didn’t get into Ivy League or IB, he would have succeeded in something else.
But by that same token, success in business and wealth is not based on IQ. So, a few billionaires kids get in to elite schools. Then the bright exceptional students of limited means can rub shoulders with them and get their family to invest in their next brilliant idea. Still a win-win for students lucky enough to get in. Plus the school gets a new building, which means more money for financial aid.
“This could also partly explain why med school admission does not favor those graduated from elite private college so much.” Actually not true at all. There is huge overrepresentation of elite private colleges at the medical school level. Elite private colleges make up less that 1% of medical school applicants but 50-70% of students at top 20 medical schools.
If you actually look at the data… He separates them out – undergrad and grad school. Read.
He separates the data if you look at the charts or the pdf references. People don’t read. And he makes no comment about causality, which is what you are implying. He is simply concluding that people (specifically parents) quite rationally are wanting their kids to attend these elite institutions and there is data to support that.
Re #46
That is because the elite colleges have selected stronger students to begin with, not because medical schools strongly favor them.
To the OP:
Do you have aspirations to entering any of those super elite clubs?
Do you have any realistic chance of entering any of them?
I am always amused at how these threads about the need to go to elite schools always bring out some of the most uninformed pronouncements.
Yes, the current Surgeon General attended Harvard College. Where did the ten previous Surgeons General go for undergrad? Univ of Puerto Rico, Philander Smith College, Morehouse, Bronx Community College (later transferred to UCSF), Xavier, Dartmouth, Univ of Illinois Urbana, Univ Pittsburgh, Univ Minnesota, Birmingham Southern Univ.
That list of schools provides information about the position of Surgeon General.
@Kilbeez012,
Not to be argumentative, but can you help us find where the author separates elite undergrad from elite graduate school attendance? I’ve looked at both the Business Insider and Psychology Today pieces and I’m not seeing it.
I notice that the top 10 students (not top 10% since this is a public high school, not an elite prep school) graduated from DS’s high school mostly do not have a problem in getting into a med school after college if they choose that career path.
However, the majority of these top 10 students did choose to attend an Ivy or Ivy-comparable college for their UG education.
In other words, the rank from a relatively competitive high school is a good predictor for getting into such a school if (this is a big if) the student chooses to be on this path. After all, some good SAT takers are not necessarily good enough at the kind of basic sciences needed to get through the premed track. (BTW, It is more often than not that a student is good at (high school or early college level) math (so good at SAT math) but not good at sciences, and it is rarely the case it is the other way around.)
Wei’s list had only private schools with smaller class size. That skews the averages on SAT scores.
46 where did you get those facts?
I would venture that if you took the top !% of SAT scorers from the public universities and looked at success (measured in dollars or positions 30 years later), minusing out those who were already wealthy or born into connected families, and the success would look about the same.
“My cousin, a Penn graduate, always had an fascination with business, economics and math. So, he graduated to a Wall Street investment banking job.”
One could have a fascination with (and aptitude for) business, economics and math and do a THOUSAND different things in business. I really don’t get why it’s assumed that “business” - investment banking. It’s such a minor component of what makes up the business world.
In his career, he is constantly evaluating trends, metrics of companies, and financing. It is a very numerical way of assessing businesses, sectors, and opportunities. IB may be a minor component of the business world, but it was the only one out of thousands that he loved. Some people are just wired differently.
Investment bankers make the super bucks for a reason: they don’t shoot from the hip. They have analytics to back up every decision. In other words, they know how to make money for their employer.
If you don’t want your kid to go into investment banking or if your kid doesn’t want it – perfectly fine. But the issue is re doors that close without an elite undergrad and that is one of them. It is a door that is considered very important on the east coast and in the business world – even if you don’t want to be a lifelong banker, many other employers look very favorably on 2-4 yrs of investment banking experience because it proves to them that you have the quantitative skills and training from a major, well respected financial services employer and that you have the work ethic. Are there other things you can do in business that aren’t IB? Of course. Does that make IB any less attractive to a future employer – whether in financial services or at an operating company – no, it doesn’t despite the arguments otherwise. To some extent the bigger management consulting doors also close without an elite undergrad.
You can argue until you’re blue in the face that those things aren’t important and most people don’t want those jobs and there’s a thousand other options – and you’re right – but that doesn’t change the fact that doors do close and it’s false to say that you can create any opportunities you want coming from any school.