Nice bit of information-thanks. I got more out of that than the last several months of the WSJ!
Its really simple. People who are well-connected and going to be very successful anyway, have the connections to go to the ‘elite’ schools, and that’s where they go.
They would be in Davos no matter where they would have gone to schools, but the had the wealth and connections to get into the Ivies.
If, on the other hand, you are Joe Schmuck from Possum Holler, and you are able to get into an Ivy, it doesn’t matter; you are almost certainly not going anywhere in life that a state wouldn’t have gotten you to anyway.
In other words, no, Ivy attendance is no assurance that you will be more successful in life; those who are, would have been anyway, Ivy or not.
@Jimkingwood, very fatalistic and not true.
For someone from a connected family, if they are smart and driven, any school would be fine. For someone from a disadvantaged background, an elite school can definitely open up more possibilities.
When I worked at the top software firm I actually did quite a bit of interviewing and hiring. I remember coming across a rare history major from Harvard once who wanted a job in software testing. He was roundly rejected by all interviewers as wholly unimpressive and clearly out of his depth in software. Sometimes having a big name school on your resume can actually hurt you as people expect a lot more out of you. If you don’t knock their socks off, they’ll assume you got in through some hook (legacy, athletes, URM etc.) and dismiss you outright in favor of a state U grad.
@PurpleTitan gets it.
Of course it’s possible to be successful in business or life in general with a non-elite diploma.
Of course there are slews of very successful people who went to non-elite schools.
My original point- which is the only point I’ve wanted to make- is that as per the article in the first post, there are simply some doors that will close to you if you don’t have an elite diploma.
For the posts above that appear to claim that a smart person who goes to a state law school will have the same opportunities as someone who goes to Yale Law School: not so.
And for the posts above that state, “I’m smart and I went to No-Name U and I had the same opportunities or better than I’d have had at an elite school”: how do you know, since you didn’t go to the elite school?
And how do you know the Yale alum wouldn’t have done just as well from Podunk U? How do they know it was the SCHOOL and not them that got them in x, y, and z doors?
(This is rhetorical, btw)
(1) plenty of Yale Law School students went to non-elite schools for undergrad and are pretty familiar with outcomes from their undergraduate schools (even though I know college and law school aren’t the same thing, at least those people can see general differences among schools), and
(2) just look at the rosters of junior associates at the US’s most prestigious law firm, Wachtell Lipton, and Supreme Court clerks: those rosters are pretty much off-limits to people who didn’t go to elite law schools.
@HappyAlumnus, can you point out the posts where people recommended a generic law school over YLS? Because the way I read it, “college” means undergrad.
I keep pointing out that you conflate undergrad with grad school and still you keep doing it. It’s rather bizarre.
I give up 8-|
Again, could be very true in certain areas but not applicable across the board. It depends on what you want to do and where you want to live. If you wanted to live and work in Dallas or Houston, you don’t NEED a degree from Yale. You just don’t. You can become incredibly successful and quite wealthy if you have your law degree from UT or SMU or any number of state schools and are intelligent, ambitious, and hard working. These successful lawyers in my state are not experiencing closed doors or bemoaning their lack of connections. In fact, they are far more likely to find connections by virtue of attending their own state schools than a Yale educated lawyer looking to make it here. Go to any other number of states and find out who the movers and shakers are, and a whole hell of a lot of them stayed in state and went the public route.
quote just look at the rosters of junior associates at the US’s most prestigious law firm, Wachtell Lipton, and Supreme Court clerks: those rosters are pretty much off-limits to people who didn’t go to elite law schools.
[/quote]
So few people actually want to work on Wall Street or be on the SCOTUS. I would venture to guess that most people who want to be lawyers are like most other people: they would like to make good money, be fulfilled professionally, and live close to family and places that are familiar. Making it to the “most prestigious law firm” isn’t on most people’s radar.
Re-read post #21. And is the chance to bill 3000 hours a year at Wachtell supposed to be a bug or a feature?
“(2) just look at the rosters of junior associates at the US’s most prestigious law firm, Wachtell Lipton, and Supreme Court clerks: those rosters are pretty much off-limits to people who didn’t go to elite law schools”
But again, so what? The vast majority of people don’t have any interest in working for Wachtell and don’t aspire to the SCOTUS.
The roster of the Olympic team for skiing is likely off limits to me, too, since I haven’t trained since I was a child and didn’t live near a mountain. And?
This is only a problem if your world consists of caring about very specific career paths that are irrelevant and of no interest to most people.
"If you wanted to live and work in Dallas or Houston, you don’t NEED a degree from Yale. You just don’t. You can become incredibly successful and quite wealthy if you have your law degree from UT or SMU or any number of state schools and are intelligent, ambitious, and hard working. These successful lawyers in my state are not experiencing closed doors or bemoaning their lack of connections. In fact, they are far more likely to find connections by virtue of attending their own state schools than a Yale educated lawyer looking to make it here. "
There’s so much provincialism on this site! There are truly people on this site who think that the sun rises and sets on the world of Wall Street, and that there’s no money to be made elsewhere, and they cannot even possibly conceptualize that the UT/SMU guy in Dallas lives pretty much the same kind of life as his counterpart on the East Coast, even without a fancy degree. I don’t see what the point is of being “sophisticated” if you don’t get how the rest of the country lives. Doesn’t seem very sophisticated to me.
it’s like people who are surprised that there are very wealthy families who send their kids to Ole Miss, Alabama, etc. Well, duh - of course there are!! And their family tradition of sending their kids there is no different from East Coast bluebloods who send the kids to Ivies!
No, because they want the bragging rights. They are terrified that their parenting will be called into question if their child does not “achieve” admission into the same level of schools that their peers’ kids did…but that is another thread. 
Anyway it all comes back to what others have said on this thread: it MIGHT be important to attend an elite school if you want certain jobs in certain parts of the country but it is VERY regional and if your goal is not that certain job, or that location, no door is opened, or closed, at all.
I know of attorneys in my neighborhood who went to law schools like Seattle University and became extremely successful in their careers, some became partners in major national law firms, others went to work for major IT firms. Unless you want to be a supreme court judge, law school prestige is not as big of a deal as most people think. Your work experience, personality, local connections through your school/family and interviews are probably much more important.
I also know of Harvard grads who were among the first to get the axe when the layoffs came.
Well said purple.
Happy Alum, I agree. The unfortunate reality is that you could be a dual major with a 4.0, but so happened go to a regional institution like Cal-State Long Beach out of undergrad, but you are not getting one foot in the door at a place like Blackstone PE. Now, that could change say you go to Stanford or Wharton for b-school, but they would not even have a conversation with you for the most basic of positions like a junior analyst.
But, again, that is only relevant if you’re the kind of narrow-thinking person for whom Blackstone PE is the Meaning of Life.
Let’s try this analogy.
Here are all the really good jobs one might go after.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Oh no, the door to W and X are closed if you don’t attend a handful of schools. That’s terrible!
Who died and made these jobs so much more important than any other jobs? I continue to find this just weird beyond belief.
It may be hard for some to believe, but there are millions of people who really, really, wouldn’t ever want to live in NYC or even in the northeast for that matter. Just look at the trends of where people are moving. The northeast is losing population. I think that much if not most of the obsession for going to an Ivy is centered on the east coast.