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<p>And I attended a Midwest LAC where cornfields were less than a 15 minute walk from campus when I attended. :)</p>
<p>Well, we had cornfields *and cows * behind the dorms.</p>
<p>^ ^</p>
<p>That might have been the case several decades before I arrived at Oberlin in the mid-'90s.</p>
<p>Didn’t see any cows while I was there, though. I did see a rabbit skipping across the quad while I was heading to the library once. :)</p>
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<p>I don’t see the Ivy downside in CS that you describe. My son is an applied math/CS major at Brown; he turned down a $15k/year merit scholarship and various honors designations at UIUC to go there, in part because Brown was still quite a bit cheaper and in part because the UIUC 35,000-student campus was far too large for his taste.</p>
<p>We did, however, research both the classes and the job opportunities before he jumped to a decision. The classes at Brown are more interdisciplinary and more interesting (based on both course write-ups) than the ones at UIUC, which seem dry as dust. And, while both schools have excellent alumni networks, the bulk of Brown’s CS graduates end up working for a handful of top tech companies, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure why any competent job candidate wouldn’t just walk out of such an interview. Who wants to work for a jerk 40+ hours a week?</p>
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<p>Partially because such “third degree” interview tactics are part of the multi-part interview process in some firms/industries and some students may assume it’s part of the “test” in the interview process. It was part of the interview process for an in-law when she was interviewing at BCG. </p>
<p>I also encountered a version of this at one interview for a small financial firm from one interviewer who upon bringing up my undergrad, asked me if I was another “Radical pinko commie agitator/malcontent” that he heard was common on my campus. While I knew the interview was going to go south from that point on, I felt the need to see it to its conclusion. </p>
<p>Granted, part of that was my interest in observing and analyzing people in real time…especially those who act in bizarre ways like him. Immediately walking out of the interview would have deprived me of that anthropological/psychological learning opportunity. :D</p>
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<p>Cobrat, I love it! I’d like to hear more about these third-degree interview tactics. What’s the best approach? Smile, stay calm and attempt to irritate your interviewer in return to see if he backs off? “Tell me, do any nice people work at your company or are they all like you?”</p>
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<p>Staying calm, polite, and professional was my approach. Deliberately irritating the interviewer was not only unprofessional, but could also risk abruptly ending the interview before its natural civil conclusion. That would have been as counterproductive as abruptly walking out of the interview. </p>
<p>Incidentally, I wasn’t hired for that firm, but found more congenial opportunities with more reasonably sane supervisor and colleagues. </p>
<p>Nowadays…it just serves as a nice humorous story I can tell my friends…especially alums from my college. Especially considering the firm in question no longer exists. :)</p>
<p>Why has this turned into such a bashing of northeasterners, Ivy League universities and all high praise for state flagships? How is doing the exact opposite of what you don’t like any better than those in love wi the Ivies?</p>
<p>Maybe I see things more broadly than some, I’ve lived in Virginia, Kentucky, Texas, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New Jersey. There are some differences in customs, accents, politics and religious tendencies but at the core - people are people. Watching folks in Virginia going at each other over whether JMU grads or UVA grads are superior, UK basketball is the best in the world, SMU is the greatest college on earth, nothing is better than a catholic secondary education in parts of the northeast or a boarding or day school for the wealthy. </p>
<p>I’ve seen real estate brokers discourage a Yankee couple from moving to a certain neighborhood of Richmond, VA because they wouldn’t feel comfortable there although their southern born son would be welcome. I’ve had enjoyable dinners and beer with my rebel flag waving neighbor in Kentucky and again in Virginia and experienced racism in bastions of northeastern liberalism.</p>
<p>I’m just saying its not right to stereotype and caricature people in any parts of the country. New Jersey has more horse farms than Kentucky? Anybody know that? The garden state is absolutely beautiful and most of the state looks more like Kentucky than Newark where everyone flies into. </p>
<p>I got a kid at an Ivy and a kid that is not. To pretend there is no difference and that one is just as good as the other is laughable. But each school offers each of my kids what each needs to launch the beginnings of their adulthood. Everything else is up to them.</p>
<p>"It’s certainly not the case in engineering/CS oriented tech companies where someone from stronger engineering/CS programs such as ones at Berkeley, UMich, UW-Seattle, or UIUC will often be preferred over the Harvard or most other Ivies’ engineering/CS grads.’</p>
<p>My son graduated with a CS degree from Brown last May. He’s got a great job, making excellent money at a start up in Cambridge. We were blown away at graduation at the companies these students were going to work at in CS- all the big players. Brown has a wonderful name in CS.</p>
<p>People may want to research their facts before throwing these statements out there.</p>
<p>I live in one of those “Short Hills-type” towns where people think Ivy or nothing. I always thought the same when my kids were younger. If you don’t get into an elite, go to state since anything else is a waste.</p>
<p>When S1 started the search process, he started at the top since he had the stats. He figured his safety would be RIT, since they ran his engineering program at the high school and he would be a lock to get in. A good friend asked me where he was looking, and I mentioned a few schools including RIT. He said that’s where he went.</p>
<p>This got me thinking. This guy is very successful, and he “only” went to RIT. I thought about my other friends, all highly successful. For many, I didn’t even know what college they attended. Turns out, the list includes Ithaca, Bowling Green, Northern Illinois, Miami, Union, GW, and many SUNY schools. Very few elites. Even I went to a little known small college. At that time, I began to realize that many schools will get you where you want to go. </p>
<p>S1 ended up turning down some elites and choosing his other safety, Alabama, where he is thriving. His choice raised some eyebrows around this status-driven town, but so be it. For him, the pros vastly outweighed the cons, he made his own choice, and he loves it there. As an honors engineering student with a 4.0, I have no doubt he’s headed toward a successful future.</p>
<p>Thought I would throw in a plug for Bowling Green.</p>
<p>[Shantanu</a> Narayen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantanu_Narayen]Shantanu”>Shantanu Narayen - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>LoremIpsum, I respect you as one of the most reasonable posters on this site, but in this thread you keep throwing out speculation as fact and I feel I need to call you out on it.</p>
<p>Yesterday you said attending an “elite” school was an important hedge against not being able to find a job in a poor economy–but have not offered any evidence to support the position that graduates from Ivies and the like are faring better than graduates of “lesser” institutions. Now you are insinuating that even if some “lesser” schools have good programs in particular fields, the quality of the jobs their graduates get won’t be as good as those from the “elite” schools. In your post above you are implying, based on mere conjecture, that Brown CS graduates end up working for top tech companies while UIUC graduates do not. This is flat-out not true. In fact, Microsoft hires more from UIUC than anywhere else in the world, according to Bill Gates. </p>
<p>[Why</a> Illinois | Department of Computer Science at Illinois](<a href=“http://cs.illinois.edu/undergraduates/whyIllinois?quicktabs_4=1]Why”>http://cs.illinois.edu/undergraduates/whyIllinois?quicktabs_4=1)</p>
<p>Assumptions like yours just fuel the hysteria and elite-college arms race on this site and in competitive high schools around the country. It really doesn’t do anything except add stress to kids like the girl who wrote the article that this thread is describing.</p>
<p>The girl who wrote the article that started this thread sounded like she was in the middle of a nervous breakdown when she wrote it.</p>
<p>The article was way over the top and off base.</p>
<p>Brilliant! Thanks so much for sharing this. Got a good laugh.</p>
<p>“Even outside the engineering/CS fields, there are some companies/hiring managers who will make it a point to hold the Harvard or other Ivy/bigname elite college against an applicant and not hire them or give them the “third degree” during the interview process.”</p>
<p>@@. It makes no sense that a hiring manager will bother to go to a campus where they already (allegedly) think the students are entitled and/or not deserving, just to interview them, be rude, and then have the pleasure of rejecting them, or as you would say, “putting them in their place.” That’s a cobrat-world, not a significant real-world problem. companies dont waste resources like that. </p>
<p>And anyway, you are far overstating the impact of the college name. People react to the first impressions made by the actual person sitting in front of them at the interview.</p>
<p>On a different note ~ I am so tired of hearing that our country is encouraging more STEM professionals. At our state U - focused on engineering - they either weed-out or don’t even admit excellent students ~ HS students w/700+math SAT, AP Calc, AP Physics. Last year in one engineering specialty, this U graduated only 15 students.</p>
<p>^ How many started in that department? People normally drop out in tough programs for PhD, not undergrad engineering unless they are really big programs like Berkeley where weeding out seems to take place.</p>
<p>Sally305, very true. My state (Virginia) recently put out a list of starting salaries of recent grads from all the colleges, public and private, in the state. On average, graduates of more elite colleges did NOT have higher starting salaries than graduates of more average colleges, and the cost of tuition also had nothing to do with the value of the education as measured by starting salaries. Private college grads had no better, and in some cases worse, starting salaries than graduates of big state schools.</p>
<p>The hiring environment today is not the same as it was 20 or 30 years ago. So to look around and see where successful people in their 40’s and 50’s went to school and draw conclusions from that regarding the best or acceptable paths for students today is unwise. Students of CC parents’ generations tended to attend one of the schools that was closest to home, after submitting only 3 or 4 applications. Employers hired locally, not nationally or internationally as they often do today. The greater competition for positions now, combined with the increased complexity of the world and the skills required to operate in it, means one needs much more to acquire a job than he would have 30 years ago. As an example, my sister graduated from one of the “colleges that change lives” schools with a BS in chemistry (the college was a half an hour from home), and has risen to the level of senior director of a top pharm co. Nowadays, that same position would require a PhD and from a much better school, and chances are it would be an international holding that job. </p>
<p>Take a few moments and look at some of the job ads online. Since when I helped my older S scan them for internships 5 or 6 years ago to now, when I’ve been helping my D, I’ve seen an uptick in ads that mention the need for a work visa, which leads me to believe they’ve been getting more applications from internationals. I’ve also seen more ads specifying “top school,” or “name school.” Granted, that might mean different things to different companies, but the phrase is most definitely there. In addition, I am starting to see phrases in internship ads like “this is not a training program. The candidate must already possess all of the following skills:” It used to be that as long as you had a college degree in a relevant field, that was good enough for entry-level positions. The company would train you. Now you need prior experience just to get an internship. So when companies receive thousands of applications for every internship, the goal is to improve your chances of betting a second look. That’s where your elite school experiences and affiliation can better position you.</p>
<p>^^emphatically agree. Our children’s job market is definitely not what ours was. What is the current unemployment rate for new college grads?</p>
<p>It is changing so fast that some of the new graduates I know have been hired to positions with job titles that didn’t even exist last year.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about business at all. consulting, IB, and the rest. I do know my snowflakes’ friends from top rated MBA programs don’t necessarily have an easy time finding positions and there seems to be a whole lot more time between their jobs than I remember with friends of my generation who chose this route.</p>