Skip an elite school, and doors will close

Parents Forum
581

"Students who attend that state college have more internship, networking, and recruiting opportunities at this company than would students who attended ivy league colleges since the ivy league is in a different section of the country. You see a similar pattern in hires at many tech companies that new grads think of as desirable. "

Which is precisely why there’s no need to gnash teeth about the oh-noes-the-doors-are-closed. Well, yes, some doors may be closed – and others are opened. And it all works out.

582

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/29/where-did-google-apple-college_n_1387567.html
Out of region I see UT Austin, CMU, MIT. Those look like elite programs…

If I was going to school out of region and I wanted to wind up at one of those places, would I be just as well off going to Clarkson as MIT?

I mean since it doesn’t matter where I go, since no doors would be closing and all?

583

In the engineering/CS field, there is a different list of “elite schools” which in the engineering/CS/technical centered firms is based mainly on perceptions of exceedingly strong technical chops of the graduates and whether they are “serious about being engineers/tech/CS as a career”. They’re also basing their hiring practices more on one’s demonstrated technical chops and perceived strength in technical education provided by the college concerned.

There’s a perception among engineering/tech employers, especially older generational ones that with the exception of Cornell, Columbia, and Princeton, the rest of the Ivies don’t have engineering programs comparable with those of the schools I listed that would not be considered elite overall by some even here on CC. While some like Harvard have been making serious efforts to improve their engineering schools, others like Yale are still having serious issues judging by some recent articles like this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/yale-computer-science-petition-2015-3

It’s not only the company one works for, but also what position.

For instance, working in the engineering/technical/computer core departments within such firms would be considered great whereas being hired/placed into what would be considered non-core departments such as the sales and marketing department means the candidate’s technical chops/school didn’t measure up to his/her core department counterparts.

This is especially considering sales and marketing is considered a “dumping ground” in many such firms for engineering/CS/tech grads who either is perceived at the hiring stage as not having technical chops or someone who was transitioned from a core department because his/her technical chops didn’t cut the mustard with the previous core department supervisor. The practice was widespread enough that it’s become a common topic of insider jokes among folks in the engineering/CS/tech field…including the engineers/CS folks in my extended family.

584

It’s pretty nuanced. IMO, for something like software, the key advantage of CS at Stanford/MIT/CMU/Waterloo/Cal/UIUC and various other schools (including Harvard now as well, BTW) is that you may make friends with talented folks, and you may hear of opportunities through the grapevine. Also recruiting opportunities (but top software companies are eager to seek out top talent where ever they are).

Now, I know nothing about the rigor of the CS education at Clarkson, but if the CS education there is as good as at the aforementioned schools, doors definitely won’t shut for you if you have the goods, but there isn’t a ready-made network for you; you’d have to create your own.

So, education aside, it may make sense to pay a premium in CS, but you’re not getting a lot tangible (unless the educational quality actually does differ), and the intangible part has a lot of “it depends” to it.

585

You linked to a news story from several years ago. More recent news stories mention that Google has moved away from their unique past policy of focusing on “brand name schools” after their internal studies found such practices are not effective, such as the story at http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-top-college-graduates/ . Instead the rate of hires of qualified applicants without a formal education has notably increased, making up as much as 1/7 of team members in some groups.

I don’t think anyone has said this. It’s not that no doors are closed. Instead different colleges provide different opportunities, so different colleges open and close different doors. I’m not familiar with Clarkson, so I’ll use UCSD instead. Suppose a prospective engineering major has a choice between UCSD and MIT. I’ve taken classes at UCSD in my field, and the first thing stood out to me were how they emphasized Qualcomm-tech far more than similar classes that I have taken at Stanford, which is understandable since UCSD and Qualcomm are located practically within walking distance of one another, and Qualcomm was founded by a former UCSD professor (the UCSD school of engineering is named after him). UCSD also has professors with unique connections at Qualcomm, such as consulting and past employment, has opportunities for students to get Qualcomm mentors, etc. If he wants to work in at Qualcomm or other similar San Diego company after graduating, UCSD is likely to put him in a better position in terms of networking, internship, and recruiting opportunities than MIT. However, if he wants to work in the northeast, MIT is more likely to put him in the better networking/internship/recruiting position.

586

If available, please read the original article from Professor Lauren Rivera.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-teitelman/elite-schools-job-recruiting_b_1145619.html?

587

http://robertreich.org/post/114356426465

588

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-world-works.html

589

Oh good lord. No one has claimed that certain companies don’t concentrate recruiting in certain schools. We are arguing against the conceit that that is meaningful as a marker of quality education and that those particular companies / professions are or should be all that important esp to kids who have no interest in those fields but are supposed to shudder anyway at the thought of not being able to access them.

590

Could we stop already trying to “prove” that GS only hires at a few schools? We KNOW they do. That is not the argument. The argument is why one should elevate GS to such a high pedestal when all it is is another job.

591

“…why one should elevate GS to such a high pedestal when all it is is another job.”
Because it is just another job that :
-pays humongous amounts of money. Much more than other jobs.
-one’s work has, relative to other jobs, huge financial impact to one’s clients and firm;
-offers an exciting fast paced working environment.
-working among some of the best minds in the country.

[You’re gonna keep repeating yourself, I guess I’ll repeat myself…]

That’s why so many of “the best and brightest”, who have access, pursue it disproportionally. As opposed to becoming salarymen in the aeronautics industry. Or whatever “another job” you cooked up before. Doesn’t mean everyone has to want it. Nobody said it did. But just because you happen not to want it does not make it just the same as every other job. I don’t want to be President, yet I, for one, can still recognize it’s a different tier of job, than say, clerk in an accounting firm.

But the point of the thread was broader than just finance. I don’t know who turned into a finance diatribe. Though I can make a guess.

592

A is true, but irrelevant to the people who don’t want it.

And I’m sorry, I think B and C are delusional. People in other jobs do things that are important to their enployers, and do fast-paced intellectually stimulating things working with other very smart people. This is the arrogance and self-referential nature we keep talking about. There is nothing particularly more stimulating about finance than lots of other jobs other than personal preference; don’t pretend it has the market cornered on “interesting stuff, smart coworkers, learn a lot.”

593

It must really upset you that I think GS (etc) is just another job. How DARE I not look at them as being Masters of the Universe! Awfully cheeky of me.

594

“But just because you happen not to want it does not make it just the same as every other job. I don’t want to be President, yet I, for one, can still recognize it’s a different tier of job, than say, clerk in an accounting firm.”

LOL! This is truly one of the funniest things I’ve ever read on CC. Finance is a different “tier” of job. You all are just oh-so-important to the universe. All the women want to date you and all the men want to be you.

Oh my goodness, truly get over yourselves. The only people your job “impresses” are you all.

595

“It must really upset you that I think GS (etc) is just another job. How DARE I not look at them as being Masters of the Universe! Awfully cheeky of me.”

PG, I agree that this is the subtext of this thread. There are all varieties of fields which value “the best and brightest.” What evidence is there, however, that GS employees are “brighter,” let alone “better” than great brains in the aeronautics industry, the medical field, or academia? That’s for the “bright” part.

Then, where is the empirical evidence that GS employees are possessed of greater moral worth (are “better”) than men and women in other fields? (Unless, of course, one’s definition of “good” = monied.) In my not-humble opinion, that’s taking a worship of capitalism to a whole new level. It’s a religion, now?

596

In virtually every field there is a top tier. In some, the parameters are understood. (Most people understand that clerking for a Supreme Court Justice if you are a young lawyer is a big deal, even if they don’t understand just what a big deal it is. Or why a job that has the word “clerk” in it is the tippy top “signal” for people who hire lawyers.)

In others, the parameters are not understood. I have a couple of academics in my family who have won somewhat obscure awards (i.e. the guy behind the counter at your dry cleaners hasn’t heard of them) which are considered highly prestigious-- and often the “signalers” that this is a young scientist on his/her way to a Nobel 30 years hence.

It doesn’t make the award less prestigious-- just means that few people really have the context to understand the difference between a young researcher who has been tagged as “someone to watch” in the field, vs. the run of the mill PhD struggling to find a post-doc. In real life, you may know of young PhD’s trying to gain a foothold, or working a series of adjunct jobs, and basically living a grad student existence at the age of 38, many years since completing a dissertation. And then you read about young PhD’s who are getting multiple offers, universities throwing money at them to finance a new lab, etc. and even if I don’t understand the difference- why does scholar/intellectual A have to teach at three colleges with no office and no benefits and no tenure track, vs. scholar B who is being sent to conferences all over the world-- the people in that field understand the difference.

So I think we can stop with the extolling of Goldman Sachs AND the bashing, and all the rest. In any field, there are going to be the signal type jobs, awards, achievements. The distinctions seem farcical to those on the outside (explain to me why law firms go nuts over someone who clerked at the appellate level in the 9th circuit vs. someone who clerked for a state judge in Massachusetts) but they are real and meaningful to those on the inside. And the fact is, a kid is unlikely (don’t bash me with your cousin’s happy story) to clerk at the Federal level coming out of Suffolk. Should your kid go to Suffolk? That depends on a lot of other things- but your kid shouldn’t go to Suffolk assuming that IF he/she makes law review, and IF he or she has top grades and works at all kinds of fabulous clinics for three years, and multiple professors write references that he/she is the greatest legal mind since Justice Brandeis that he/she has anything but a really long shot to make it to the 9th circuit. Is there a chance? absolutely, especially if indeed your kid is law review and all the other stuff (but there are zero guarantees for any of that). But is there a better chance coming out of UVA or Michigan or Duke or Columbia Law school? Only an idiot who doesn’t understand the legal field would deny that.

In some fields, it is hard to get back on track for these top rung types of jobs if you don’t have these markers. In others, it doesn’t matter. And in others- sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t. It is going to be very hard to compete for a job conducting a major symphony orchestra without a very well-trod path which includes education, WHO you studied with, not just the name of the institution, types of awards and prizes and competitions and fellowships early on, etc. Despite the fact that one could argue that in a talent based/audition based field it shouldn’t be that way… the jurors should be blindfolded and make a decision based on output. But someone rarely “breaks in” to the upper echelons of the classical music industry who has been a complete unknown for their early years.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that finance is the most important industry in the entire world. But at some upper levels of the financial industry, the patterns are similar to that of an orchestral conductor. Some- not all.

So can we put Goldman Sachs to bed???

597

And everything you described, blossom, requires education beyond UG.

598

Mom- of course. Nobody is getting a tenure track job in string theory with a BS; nobody is getting to the Supreme court without a JD, etc. The fact that you CAN get an upper tier job at an investment bank with just a BA doesn’t change the way the labor markets in other sectors operate. And the fact that a kid who studied philosophy at Swarthmore or Williams has a better chance (all things being equal) of getting a job (in certain departments/functions) at Goldman Sachs vs. a kid who studied finance at CUNY or Fordham- still doesn’t change the way THIS PARTICULAR segment of the labor market operates.

There are colleges which offer a BA in music performance (or a BFA). A kid going from a relatively obscure department (which mostly trains kids who want to become music teachers, coach a HS orchestra/band, kids who plan on a Master’s in music therapy) to first chair violin at the Cleveland orchestra without having made the typical stops along the way (even without a Master’s degree in music) would be unusual. Not impossible, but unusual. This doesn’t mean that if a kid has a choice between Curtis and the relatively obscure music department, the well meaning adults in his/her life would be correct in saying, “it doesn’t matter where you go”.

Of course it matters. the question is- for this PARTICULAR kid (who in fact, may want to teach music at the HS level) it may or may not matter. But as a rule- the way this particular brutally competitive industry operates- it matters. How much, and should YOUR kid care, is a different question.

599

No one is saying that elite schools don’t offer general advantages. They do. No argument here.

But “OMG they open doors at GS” – positioned as “and all of you should care because everyone with any sense or ambition wants that, even if you don’t know it” - leaves me cold. Coupled with “these are the best jobs to have because they alone involve important decisions and smart coworkers” is a true gag-me.

600

Pizza- agree 100%.

I recently counseled a kid thinking about Nurse Practitioner vs. MD. Her family is pushing NP very hard- “it’s the same” and “better ROI once costs of med school, opportunity costs, etc. are factored in”, “if you want to work in primary care you’ll get better experience as an NP than as a physician”, etc.

They’d have much more convincing arguments- in my humble opinion, if they weren’t leading with “it’s the same because you can prescribe”. It’s not the same. Which career path is better for this particular kid is a conversation worth having for lots of reasons- financial, intellectual, work life balance down the road, geographic mobility, etc.

But leading with “it doesn’t matter” as an argument has set them up as opposing teams. I don’t work in finance; you don’t work in finance- having the finance folks debate which is more prestigious, I Banking at Goldman or developing trading algorithms at DE Shaw (they hire very different profiles, for those of you who neither know nor care about either company) gets tedious. But you also have to concede that getting hired to manage employee communications at GS is not the same as getting hired in a front line banking role. You may think that bankers are immoral and crazy and shallow and god knows what. And you may be right. But the folks on the “Pizzagirls opposing team” are quite correct that in the pecking order (which you don’t care about) employee communications and banking are not on the same plane. And in general (ceterus paribus as the economists like to say), investment banking at a bunch of second tier institutions is not the same as Credit Suisse or Goldman Sachs. And in general, a back office accounting role neither pays as well or leads to the same advancement opportunities as the more “prestigious” jobs.

Is this right? I have no clue. Do I care? Not in the least. But you can’t argue with people who actually work in this field that they’ve got their facts wrong. Can a kid getting a BA at night from Pace get a job at Goldman Sachs when he graduates? absolutely. Is it likely to be “the same job” as the kid from Wharton? No. Can’t argue with the facts on the ground.

Don’t you get huffy when someone tells you that a NP is “the same” as your husband (am I delusional- but isn’t he a physician?) An optometrist or chiropracter may call him or herself “doctor”- as appropriate- but that doesn’t make him/her an opthalmologist or a neurologist.

Go to optometry school for many reasons- but not because you get to become a doctor (as is commonly understood in the US) without having to slog your way through med school, residency, fellowship, board certifications, etc.