<p>Very true and good post. Also nice to finally find out about a graduate student on this board :)</p>
<p>I think CC (given its partiality to Ivys and other East-centric schools) has a narrow focus on the notable industries proximal to NY/Wall Street. Like you mentioned, Californians do have a different picture in terms of “prestige” because many students upon graduating do tend to stay (more or less) in the same geographic region, so we see mainly other Californians. The UCs/Stanford do send a lot of people into Media/Marketing in Hollywood, and I’m sure that’s not just a function of a good education–but also proximity; much like Wall Street may draw those students in the Northeast. If we were to only look at some notable Midwest corp/consulting firms like P&G or McKinsey&Co, we’d see a large proportion of NU and UoC kids going there for those jobs–these placements tend to be overlooked by CCers generally, who knows why.</p>
<p>I guess my underlining final point is that I honestly couldn’t care about ranking. I never really let it determine where I’d be headed for my career/post-graduate education, and just made the best of my situation. I wish UCSD had a better brand name at times, but the school doesn’t determine my success–likewise to those at NU. Prestige has some advantages which help students sometimes succeed with less effort (once again, OCIs), but it isn’t a make-or-break, especially for a school with a caliber of that of this school. I definitely didn’t want to generalize to anything outside of the financial market since my original “long” post was directed at this statement:</p>
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<p>…which I still isn’t true, at least today. NU is great for many things, but there are other schools that will hold your hand escorting you into Wall Street.</p>