. Fortunately, there are lots and lots of state school graduates out their making HR decisions, so life is not over for these kids."
No one ever said it was. You would think oldfort controlled 80 % of the hiring decisions in this country by the way everyone overreacted. So she prefers certain elite schools and has a soft spot for Colgate. So what? Someone else may have a soft spot for a different set of schools. Or not have a particular soft spot at all. It all works out.
"You can’t possibly know about all programs at all of the nearly 4,000 colleges. Going by arbitrary rankings helps, I’m sure, but I’d be willing to bet that you’ve tossed aside some perfectly capable potential employees for the sake of numbers. "
Yes. Just like any elite school doesn’t always admit students who could be hidden gems. Or I didn’t give that guy a chance in the bar and he could have been The One. This is how life works. There are elements of luck and elements of being in the right place at the right time.
Clue-anyone screening 1000 resumes for 5 jobs is going to “throw away perfectly capable potential employees” because, well, she only has 5 openings.
"But don’t kid yourself that every kid at a selective private school is automatically superior to even the average graduate of a state flagship. "
Oldfort didn’t say that. God, the defensiveness!
I’d get fired tomorrow (or later today) if my hiring strategy included interviewing every qualified candidate who applied for every job. My role is to make sure we meet our global talent requirements in the most efficient way possible.
I don’t run the Supreme Court and it’s not my job to engage in wide- scale social engineering- too many Yale grads on the Supreme Court? So elect a President who graduated from Southern CT State College and Suffolk Law school who thinks those networks are “where it’s at” for potential nominees. Don’t elect someone from Harvard or Yale and then whinge about elitism.
I obey the law in every jurisdiction where we hire people. In some countries, it is the practice to include a photograph and marital status at the top of the resume. I’d be violating the law in the US if I asked candidates to provide this information here.
You guys are incredibly naive if you think that companies are in business to engage in a state-by-state road show to interview a million candidates before hiring the 2500 or 5000 people they are going to hire that year. We’d be spending more on recruiting than on R&D- and our shareholders would put up that for about three days.
This doesn’t mean that I think that kids who go to U Maine are any less capable than a kid who goes to U Michigan. But if I get a talented cohort out of Michigan (and the other 15 or so schools which represent the primary recruiting targets) exactly what “diversity of opinion” am I missing out on???
Several companies ago I worked for a corporation that had a very desirable training/rotational program for new grads. We’d get buried in resumes every year. Highly regarded company, highly regarded program. Only problem was that after a 2 year stint in the US, the typical career progression involved a posting overseas. And of course, college kids LOVED that part of the program. Except they only wanted London, Paris, Sydney… nobody wanted to go to all the other places around the world that we needed them to.
We added BYU (and a couple of other universities) to the mix and voila- problem solved. BYU grads had already done a two year mission- sometimes in London or Paris, but more usually in a second tier or third tier city abroad, they spoke a language other than English with “close to fluency”, and best of all- they understood that even when your heart says London, sometimes practicality says Birmingham or Manchester (i.e. places where companies have facilities. Nobody needs you in Knightsbridge).
How to help your kid make a decision about where to go to college if your primary concern is employability afterwards? DON’T go to a college with a non-existent or weak career services team. Unless your kid is the most self-motivated person on the planet, it is hard to launch a job search with no support. DON’T let your kid wait until second semester of senior year to start making plans for post-graduate life. That’s too late-- the process takes time. DON’T let your kid think that “connections” are going to grease the wheels in every industry and in every part of the country. You may be Governor of Texas, but if I need new employees who know SAS, SPSS or similar to do big data analytics, and you don’t (and have never taken a college level statistics class) , you are not getting hired. Say hi to Daddy by the way.
We’ve hired elite school grads before (I’m in engineering BTW) and they tend to be the most obnoxious, egotistical, demanding employees in our group.
The best graduates we hire are usually the ones from seemingly normal schools, with a solid work ethic, reasonable intelligence, and willingness to go the extra mile to prove their capability.
I think some of you guys live in fantasy land if you believe everyone preferentially hires based on college prestige. Believe it or not, some companies actually see elite school grads as less desirable.
Good lord, way to set up a straw man!
NO ONE HAS SAID that everyone preferentially hires based on college prestige. That is important to SOME hiring managers and SOME companies / professions, and not important to others. Yes, some will screen based on college prestige. Others will screen based on what’s local and where it’s most convenient and where they don’t have to pay relocation. Still others will screen on their own “soft spot” colleges – which may or may not be prestigious ones. And some don’t care all that much at all. That’s why it all works out in the end.
Where on earth did you get the idea that anyone on this board “believed everyone preferentially hires based on elite colleges”? Maybe oldfort does that – great. Did she claim she spoke for every employer in the country?
considering the position the OP argued in this thread, prestige was the determining factor. Discussing hiring practices in light of the comments in this thread…that is the link.
I think there are certain professions where it behooves one to go to the most selective or prestigious colleges. If one desires to work in the NE, having a pedigree will come in handy and the networks there will be strong. For the millions of other people who plan to stay and work in their home states, it becomes far less important, and going to the State U will be more than sufficient, due to the strong local networks in place. For some people outside of the NE, that small prestigious LAC may not be well known and will be of absolutely no advantage. I have a friend who went to Williams. When he told me this, I said “wow, you must be really smart.” He grinned and said I was the first person he had ever met in Texas who had even heard of it. I think he was probably exaggerating, but he did say he would have had a lot better opportunities here had he gone to UT or SMU or maybe even Vanderbilt, which he had turned down in favor of Williams. DH went to a Texas state uni (NOT the flagship) and has had a wonderful career. Many people in the business here went to his school. Not going to Colgate didn’t hold him back one iota. But if he had wanted to work in Manhattan, Boston, Philly, who knows?
I worked for a CEO who was a Santa Clara grad and thought Santa Clara was the top college in the country. We didn’t argue with him- we added Santa Clara to the recruiting calendar and hired a couple of kids every year from there. He understood that we couldn’t get 30 hires from there (like you could at Binghamton or UIUC) but it kept everyone sane and happy.
The comment about “college prestige” is absurd- prestige is in the eyes of the beholder, AND a function of which colleges do a better job yielding X- and X can vary even in the same company.
Blossom is absolutely right. Which is why Colgate and South Carolina are apples to oranges - they will have prestige among different cohorts.
My sister is a HR VP in the same industry as oldfort, and she doesn’t look very much at school at all the way oldfort does. So what does that prove? Nothing. It just proves different people look at it different ways.
“For the millions of other people who plan to stay and work in their home states, it becomes far less important, and going to the State U will be more than sufficient, due to the strong local networks in place. For some people outside of the NE, that small prestigious LAC may not be well known and will be of absolutely no advantage”
Yes, everyone has their own priorities and strength of networking where you want to end up is important. My Ds never applied to Ivies or NE LACs or schools in California for that matter - not because they weren’t prestigious or because they couldn’t get in, but because they really didn’t care about living there. If my child had a burning desire to work in big city, then it would make sense to send him/her somewhere where that network would help.
Luckily, kids who go to USC don’t have to give up prestigious future jobs by not having an “in” with certain areas. SC has several international companies, including BMW. Charlotte, NC is right up the road and major banking is there. Friend at one of these says they actually have been very happy with USC business grads over even some nearby privates (work hard, not at much ego). And I do know friends of my D at USC who have gotten internships and jobs in top markets. I’m sure people around the country could say the same about their state and state schools.
First of all, I have hired people. And, believe me, nobody gets more excited upon seeing the resume of some recent graduate of an elite LAC than I do. But I wouldn’t necessarily go back and hire a grad from that same school for the next opening. Why? Because I’ve witnessed way too much group-think over the years. I’m not talking about sending recruiters across the country, BTW. I’m just talking about giving, for example, the Penn State and Temple grads the same consideration I’d give the Penn, Haverford and Swarthmore grads. I wouldn’t rule out the first two applicants just because they didn’t attend an elite school.
Exactly! The point I was trying to make was in the context of this thread, and that was that if I had two applications on my desk and one resume was from a Colgate grad and the other was from a USC grad, I wouldn’t automatically choose the former just because it’s an “elite LAC.”
And if I was relying on HR to screen candidates before sending the 100 best (or whatever) to me for review, I’d request that they not rule out candidates based solely on what school they attended. A lot would depend on the specifics of the job and the current staff that person would be joining.
Every job (especially entry-level ones) doesn’t require an elite school graduate any more than every road trip needs to be taken in a Mercedes S-Class.
@scottnew1. Wow. Way to make your first post obnoxious!!! Personally I think that weather SHOULD be a consideration. It is so important that through your college years you are well adjusted and as much as some don’t want to believe - being happy with your surroundings is VERY important! When you are happy you are going to perform better - no question. So, if you grew up in the cold weather and like it and having months of grey weather doesn’t make you sad and/or depressed - than go to Colgate by all means. But if that kind of weather really pulls you down - like it does my daughter - than finding a place with more sun than the Midwest or Northeast was very important to her.
It’s the pervasive attitude on here that one’s value is proportional to the ranking of the college s/he attended. It’s this notion of a universal “best school”. It’s the fact that we have ranking systems rather then rating systems. Let’s face it, the college prestige machine has gotten a little out of control, and I doubt I am the first one to notice this.
I agree that kids need a dose of reality, but it’s been my experience anyway that reality tends to differ from how it’s often portrayed on here. Given your own example, it’s not as if someone from USC is destined to a life of mediocrity while the guy from Colgate is living it up making millions of dollars. I would argue against the point about deciding which school is the better choice here… they are both fine schools.
Perhaps some kids want to have their cake and eat it? Why do we tend to think if you want a better education you need to attend a northeast college and live in the cold all winter long? What’s stopping a school like USC from offering an equally good education but in a warmer climate?
In many cases, the choices were limited or forced by parents or circumstances. How many threads have been started by students complaining that their parents won’t let them go to the colleges that they like (for various reasons), or that circumstances (often lack of money) eliminate most of their choices?
Unlike the OP in this thread, such parental or circumstantial limitations often result in students having to settle for a lower prestige college than they otherwise would have chosen (although whether that is actually worse overall depends on the circumstances).
"We’ve hired elite school grads before (I’m in engineering BTW) and they tend to be the most obnoxious, egotistical, demanding employees in our group.
The best graduates we hire are usually the ones from seemingly normal schools, with a solid work ethic, reasonable intelligence, and willingness to go the extra mile to prove their capability."
I think it’s very naive to believe that only elite colleges have spoiled and entitled students - there is a good share of them in every “seemingly normal” school (whatever this term means). Everyone has a bad hire once in awhile, but if several bad candidates have been hired, I would not blame it on colleges - this is clearly the fault of recruiters and hiring managers who screened and interviewed these candidates and collected references. There many professional hiring tools allowing companies to make good decisions, and they must be used properly.
Temple does some things well and some things not so well. U Penn does some things well and some things not so well. Do we really have to state this? And where on earth, Lucie, did you get the perception that employers discriminate against Penn State grads? Is there a dose of reality in that statement??? Universities like Indiana and Penn State often come in at the top of “preferred recruiting schools” whenever these surveys are done.
I think you WILL find discrimination against grads of Liberty et al (someone is asking this on another thread). If I ran recruiting at a pharmaceutical company, not sure I’d be heading off to Liberty or another college which has publicly stated an anti-science bias.
But Penn State?
People- facts much?
I totally agree. I went to Penn and spent decades educating people on the difference between Penn and Penn State (“have you ever watch Ivy fooball?”). It has nothing to do with the quality of the graduates. In my first job, I was the only northerner hired at a small firm in Atlanta. He usually hired Auburn grads and/or former military pilots. I would say he took a big leap into the unknown by hiring me.
Oh, no doubt there are exceptions in both cases. I completely agree.
This thread is a bit funny. @wallybrown - you don’t have to be a liberal parent to allow your child to make the final say. Parents should have a HUGE influence, and the COST of the school, if the parents are paying for it, gets to trump anything the kid wants, but aside from that, pretty much the decision should be left to the student. They should have SOME sort of ownership into their education…paying for part of it, electing the school, something.
Regarding Colgate, we actually looked at that for my daughter, and it just wasn’t a good fit. Several other state schools with a lower reputation would have been a better fit for her. I can see that being the case for a lot of people.
Regarding weather, some people have varying degrees of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), so a certain person just might actually do better in a warmer or sunnier climate.
Also, some kids like the big school, big sports atmosphere, and some don’t want the pressure that is there for most elite colleges. Just a ton of reasons to pick a seemingly lesser school over a seemingly better school.