<p>hoedown,
Probably one of the greatest problems in college admissions today is the seemingly overwhelming preoccupation with a concentrated group of excellent colleges and the stress and the frenzy that surrounds their annual undergraduate admissions decisions. IMO this unfortunately creates an incorrect impression among applicants that they absolutely, positively must go to one of these “elites” or their futures will be bleak. While elite colleges can certainly deliver a wonderful undergraduate education, they are not alone in this and they certainly do not have a monopoly on the brains and the talents of the students that enter the work force every year. It is my belief that an employer survey would help students better understand that attending ABC elite university is not the key to life or success and that one can certainly have a fabulous experience and life coming from XYZ less heralded college. I would guess that you and I and many others (particularly parents) see this as pretty much common sense, but I think we also see many, many examples of students (and families) whose attitudes personify this preoccupation with acceptance to the elite colleges. </p>
<p>I have posted elsewhere something of an initial approach to an employer survey involving sampling of top employers from a wide variety of cities, regions and industries. Clearly, there are a number of large companies that recruit nationally and they could provide better perspectives on the quality of students coming from different regions. It is my strong expectation that such a survey would show that companies don’t differentiate nearly as much for UNDERGRADUATE hiring as the hype would have us believe. Furthermore, I suspect that such a survey would show that only a handful of colleges have true national recruiting appeal and then the regional private powers and state universities play a much stronger role. I would include Wall Street in my comments, despite much commentary here on CC to the contrary. Wall Street (and maybe consulting) is probably more brand conscious than nearly any other industry, but even there I believe that there is a broader hiring universe than typically believed and this is especially so for undergraduate hiring. </p>
<p>As for your comments about differentiation, I would envision the results being delivered both nationally and regionally. You may be right if the results of a survey are put into a national context as only a handful of schools would dominate and then the other colleges measure out somewhat more evenly. However, in a regional context, I would expect that the results would be much more telling and differentiated, even including those nationally recruiting companies. For example, Georgia Tech is a wonderful engineering school with an excellent reputation in several disciplines, eg, civil engineering. Likewise, colleges like UC Berkeley, U Texas, U Illinois and Carnegie Mellon have outstanding reputations and graduates. While all of their graduates would likely have some level of brand power to allow them to interview all over the country, the reality is that most of the Georgia Tech folks end up in the Southeast, the UCB folks end up in the West, the U Texas folks end up in the Southwest, the U Illinois folks end up in the Midwest and the Carnegie Mellon folks in the Northeast and/or Midwest. Employers, national and local, understand this and would likely rank their “regional” college ahead of the others because of their familiarity and good experience with these schools. The same pattern is repeated for company after company, region by region, for colleges all across the country. Unfortunately, this is not well appreciated by many aspiring college students and thus their lack of perspective inspires the furious efforts to gain admittance to a relative handful of colleges.</p>