In any case, for IB and MC, it’s being at a target school that matters, not prestige per se.
BTW, a big change in IB recruiting is the rise of b-schools. And outside of Wharton and Stern (and Cornell AEM’s smallish program), the top b-schools tend to be publics. That’s how UMich and UT-Austin made the top 10 list in most recruitment slots. UVa and Cal (along with UMich) are in the top 10 list for boutiques/smaller banks. Blackstone’s two most recruited schools are Cal and UVa. And note that at many public b-schools, many of the slots are filled in 2nd or 3rd year of college with competitive entry, so it’s not only HS performance that matters.
Even at a target school, though, the applicant has to impress during rounds of interviews, and in the final round, everyone from all schools are thrown together.
My daughter (Duke grad) had job options she doubtfully would have seen with similar performance at our state flagship. But more importantly, in her opinion, the fact that she’d been captain of the fencing team opened doors very easily and from there (in my opinion) her sparkling personality took over.
My son attended Princeton. Though his internships were academic rather than business focused, he breezed through his consulting and finance interviews, with this explanation (roughly paraphrased):
I should note that son’s first employer recruited exclusively at Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, and possibly MIT. Daughter’s first employer recruited more broadly, but most initial hires were graduates of Duke, Northwestern, and other schools of similar prestige, including some well regarded State schools
Although it’s far from a general rule, my kids’ experiences confirm the hypothesis that many employers are initially attracted to graduates of elite colleges based on their simple acceptance by the school as much as their performance there, and further, that the “right” EC’s will opens doors much wider.
It’s funny; we like to think of ourselves as middle class. Until my kids stumbled onto it, I assumed fencing was a sport reserved for blue bloods. Since then I’ve learned that while it decidedly skews to the upper income, there are many kids of modest means enjoying the same ride my kids took.
I think some of you are not exactly answering the OP’s complicated question.
Let me see if I can frame it another way. Suppose you meet a couple that has been married for 15 years. They got married soon after graduating from college, when they were in their early 20s. They are very happy with each other. The guy is ordinary looking, comes from a lower-middle class background, & went to a 2nd-rate directional university. He is not particularly athletic. The wife is stunningly beautiful, witty, & charming. She comes from a wealthy background, and went to a top- ten college.
So the question is, are you more impressed by the husband’s skill as a boyfriend/suitor (getting the woman to marry him), or his skill as a husband ( keeping his wife happy)? These are 2 very different skill sets, I think you’d agree.
“So they would also be prioritizing the law school adcom’s judgement.”
"the LSAT tends to matter more "
If true, does that make more sense? There is no other environment where judges, big firms, etc. would give so much weight to some law school administrators. I’ve been a law school administrator; no one respects us. From an LSAT point of view, it isn’t logical to evaluate people by the test they took to predict their law school grades, rather than their ACTUAL law school grades (and even if you call them “honors” and “pass,” they are still grades).
I’m speaking as a beneficiary of this system. I got wonderful clerkships and job offers without Law Review or the kind of grades that would have been expected of me coming from Michigan or Berkeley. It’s silly.
Moop- I’ve been happily married for 35 years and I don’t agree that the skills that make a good “suitor” are different from the skills that make a good husband.
My husband was a respectful and attentive son to his parents and other family members while we were dating (and that translated to my own parents and siblings after we were married); generous with his time and money to anyone who needed it (and that has proven to be true for the long haul as well); hard-working and conscientious professionally. He was all of these things when we dated, and is all of these things 35+ years in.
What skills are you talking about- bringing flowers? Chocolates?
If I’m understanding @ucbalumnus’s question properly, in some areas of employment, is the deal sealed at birth? Meaning in order to be hired by a certain employer you must attend a specific post-secondary institution (and presumably excel there). In order to be able to attend that post-secondary institution, you have to have excelled in high school, and attending certain high schools can be even more advantageous. Excelling in high school, apart from having natural ability, requires nurturing and polish from parents and teachers. Those students who are fortunate to come from families who have the knowledge, time, and inclination to shape the diamond in the rough that are children, are most likely to make it to the ultimate goal of being hired by one of these firms. In other words, the cards are stacked at birth. Many things can go wrong along the way, but baring complications, the very nature of being born into privilege makes it more likely that you will be successful too. If that’s the question, then yes, what high school you go to can ultimately decide your future. Isn’t that the premise behind parents moving into certain neighbourhoods to be able to ensure their kids get to attend certain schools, or behind the tutoring to get into certain charter or private schools, or even in trying to get the highest SAT/ACT scores possible?
IB and MC are not the only types of companies that target their recruiting. It’s just that the targets are different depending on the company, location, long term talent needs, etc.
You can’t divorce the “prestige” of the school from the performance of the student. Many companies have gatekeeping tests of various sorts depending on the role- analytical thinking/quant skills, writing and editing tests, etc. I’ve administered editing tests which PhD’s in English have flunked, and have seen kids from colleges you’ve never heard of ace the math and critical thinking tests.
But a college with a median math SAT score in the 700’s is likely going to have a higher concentration of “mathy” kids than a college with median math SAT scores in the low 500’s. That’s just simple arithmetic. So I can send a recruiting team to a campus and reject 95% of the kids we interview because they can’t do college level math, for a role which is heavily numbers oriented, or I can send that team to a campus where only 5% of the kids we interview flunk the test.
Which of these strategies is a better use of resources?
@gwnorth:
Actually, it may be determined before birth. Genes matter.
But after birth, I think parents think they have more control in terms of nurturing/polish, etc. (which is why they change school districts, pay for tutoring, etc.) than they actually do.
Top American colleges cast a wide net. If you examine the data, other than exposure to different types of colleges, I don’t think you can say definitively that “attending certain high schools can be even more advantageous”.
There are things that companies look for, but something like competitiveness or being team-oriented isn’t restricted by SES and intelligence is influenced to a large extent by genes.
@PurpleTitan there is another thread on here about where students from the top prep schools matriculate. It certainly seems like some schools at least provide increased odds of being accepted to top colleges. Why else would parents pay so much for private education? I also certainly believe that there are many “average” students who if it weren’t for the opportunities provided by being born into privilege would never have been as successful. Mentoring and tutoring can push a child to perform at their peak which could be a higher level than that of someone with greater innate talent who has barriers to overcome, keeping them performing at a lower level. So certainly, to some degree, privilege can trump natural ability. There’s also the advantage of networking that certain social circles can provide.
I worked for a CEO once who loved to read. He had majored in Renaissance Studies, and truly was a renaissance man. But he was also the first in his family to go to college (courtesy of the GI Bill) and had a strong inclination to hire first gen kids for management level and management training program roles whenever he could. He encouraged the recruiting teams to find first Gen English majors (and was happy to invest heavily in a “mini MBA” program to teach them accounting and finance).
It is not hard or expensive for a family with a lower income to inculcate a love of reading. It IS hard if the parents are illiterate, don’t speak English and are not inclined to learn it, if the kid has an LD or vision problem, or attends an elementary school where the priority is on keeping guns and knives out of the school vs. keeping books inside.
But the notion that it requires fancy EC’s and “grooming” to produce kids who are academically oriented who then are employable by elite companies is sort of shallow. And for every company led by someone who wants to hire a large team of squash- playing, team sports preppies, there is a company led by someone who wants to hire military vets, kids from blue collar backgrounds who made it to and out of a four year college, or kids who grew up disadvantaged and still love Tolstoy and have read Pride and Prejudice.
@gwnorth: Ugh, you’re conflating a number of things. First off, those prep schools already take a disproportionate amount of kids who have a high potential of getting in to an elite college. Secondly, a good proportion of those prep school students come from families to whom even that pricy prep school tuition isn’t a lot of money and a good number also pay very little due to generous fin aid.
I went to a public magnet which charged zero tuition and our matriculation list matches any of those pricy prep schools.
My parents also paid for zero ECs. Mostly because they didn’t have the means to do so. Frickin Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts cost too much. My EC was reading a ton of books borrowed from the library. And I grew up in a school district where algebra wasn’t taught until HS (and the HS offered 3 years of science; 1 year each of bio, chem, and physics). My 8th grade math teacher tried to have us work on some algebra problems but it was too challenging for most of the class (and they tracked and this was the best group of students out of 5). I still got in to that magnet, went on to an Ivy-equivalent, M7 b-school, joined the buyside, etc., etc.
It still means that, for IB and MC, your high school performance and parental support that gets you into a target school is a major factor in getting to the interview, even though other factors take over after you get the interview. Someone who did not do well enough in high school to get into a target school faces a much steeper climb to get to the interview at such employers.
I think it really depends on the hiring manager. I have been hired based on my Ivies and I have been hired based on other factors (like languages). Some shallow people (who may be hiring managers) are really just gate keepers. Their job is to weed out or keep in people to send to higher management. Once you have risen to a high enough level ( Director, Senior Manager, pick a title) jobs are more often found via your network. I have had some really stupid ones try to place me into a neat little box. It didn’t work out well as I am not really that kind of person.
People who have gone to a specific type of school tend to hire the same. That is why in some industries and companies you will find concentrations of similar people. I once worked for a firm that only hired from three colleges ( think top three Ivies, one a math type, another for business and the third an obvious one). I thought it would be great. It wasn’t. At all. People thought too much alike and reinforced their own biases. It turned out to be a nightmare and in a competitive industry was tough. Likewise, some people think anyone who went to some Ivy is stuck up or from a wealthy family, etc, etc.
I certainly wouldn’t hinge hiring on a particular school. Wise people know that there are mathematicians who write well and English majors who love Physics. To pigeonhole someone based on their education is silly. Get to know the person and ask the right questions. You will understand if they have the appropriate skills for said job. Very few people are unidimensional.
@ucbalumnus: “Someone who did not do well enough in high school to get into a target school faces a much steeper climb to get to the interview at such employers.”
Again, that depends on how you define “much steeper”. A student at a non-target has to network. But they have to have those skills and drive to do well in IB as well.
Ross, Haas, and McIntire admit in to 2nd/3rd year, but they take CC applicants as well.
Columbia’s 3-2 engineering program has partnerships with a ton of LACs.
Columbia GS takes in adult learners.
And life doesn’t end after undergrad. Both IB and MC hire from MBA programs as well as other master’s programs. MC also take in PhD’s of all stripes.
And once you’re in an industry, it’s performance-based.
I’m trying to think of an example where someone is held back by how they did in HS (assuming that they are stellar after HS) and I can’t.
If you are in the industry, you probably never know the faces behind the applications/resumes that were rejected due to not having the right pedigree (target college).
@ucbalumnus, erm, if I am in the industry and have looked at resumes of candidates, I would like to think I know more about how the industry hires than someone who isn’t in the industry and relies on research done by a prof who also is completely clueless about the industries she wrote about.