I was wondering about the fight many parents/high schoolers have to get into elite schools, usually private schools. In the long run, how much does your career prospects and education depend on which college you go to? For people who did go to Ivy League or similar schools, was the education worth the effort you put to get in?
I put zero effort into my education - either in high school or in college. I coasted along and ended up with an ivy league education almost despite myself, so yes the education was worth the effort I put into it. Worth far more than the effort I put into it, actually.
For most people a name brand college matters most when looking for your first few professional jobs. It can spark some additional interest in your candidacy and occasionally put you over the edge for being called for an interview. It’s not really going to get you the job - you still have to do that yourself - but it can get you into the “interesting” pile. After the first 5 years or 2-3 jobs, it’s your professional experience that matters most.
I went to a very expensive small liberal arts school, one that has recently made it into a lot of lists of “schools that aren’t worth the price”. It was worth it for me, but only because they gave me enough grants to be comparable in price to the big state schools I considered. I started as a music performance major, burned out, flailed around for a few semesters, and eventually landed successfully in a biology major that has served me very well. Essentially the best thing it gave me was an environment to try out lots of stuff until I finally found something that I was good at and enjoyed doing. Once I made my way to biology, there were plenty of other advantages: a strong department, lots of undergraduate research opportunities, and a chance to network my way into my first job and grad school.
Was it worth the price? Probably, but only since grants kept it affordable. I still ended up with $50k in student loans which was manageable after I graduated. However it would not have been worth the sticker price, which would have added another ~80k to my debt.
At a big state school, or a pure conservatory, I probably wouldn’t have had the time or options to figure out what to do next after burning out.
Why not?
A big state university has everything, including a biology department. And it usually has a lot of other burned-out students just hanging around, working minimum wage jobs off campus, and maybe taking a course, just biding time till they re-enroll in a different major
Now, one thing that a big state university does not have is personal attention for burned-out people who need a little guidance. But that’s a different problem.
Sixty years ago, when I finished HS, it was trivial to get into a 2nd tier Ivy (Penn) and wasn’t that all expensive either ($700/year, going up $100 every year), although I didn’t have the money and had to work full time and go part time. Since I put little effort into it, it was certainly worth it. How things have changed! I could not get into Penn today with my HS record (around 13th percentile) and SATs (around 1300).
Nowadays, I doubt these schools are worth it.
But that professional experience is a result of the quality of your education–more than branding matters here. If you walk into your first job with a group of entry level people, and you are the one that is the most capable, either because you already have a more diverse skill set or because you are the most capable of learning new skills, you end up with more opportunities to develop those professional skills that matter down the line. If you get a weak education, even if you get lucky and land the same first job as some others, you won’t be able to make as much of it.
I went to second-tier state schools because my family was very much of the “go where it’s easy to get a full scholarship: it’s all the same otherwise” mindset. I didn’t even apply anywhere once I saw I would get an automatic full scholarship based on test scores. I think this was a mistake and I would have benefited from going to a more challenging school.
Of course, “highly prestigious and expensive” is not the same as “offers better education”. But I really feel there is a correlation, and it behooves everyone to put getting a solid education–an education where they come out smarter, more skilled, and more confident–ahead of almost any other priority. There are state schools that offer this. There are state schools that do not. People need to be careful.
Right, the “personal attention” is what I needed, along with flexibility and a low barrier for switching degree programs (not just majors!). The particular big state university that was my best option did have an excellent conservatory, and top notch biology and engineering programs as well. But each is a separate giant bureaucracy, and I doubt the would have let me basically stop taking music classes while still enrolled in that degree, and then spend a few semesters taking mid-level classes in a bunch of other subjects until I found something I could switch to. I could have achieved the same thing eventually at Big State School, but it would have been at a greater cost in time, debt, and/or the horror of moving back in with my parents.
I don’t know how anyone would begin to answer this question. It’s kind of like asking “Does your physical appearance make a difference?” For us to know the answer, we’d have relive our life several times over, picking a different college each time. That would be a cool experiment (one I wouldn’t sign up for a million bucks), but one that hasn’t been performed yet.
That said, I’m employed in a good job, so I guess my college picks were “good enough”. However, it’s not like I work alongside people who went to similarly ranked schools. We span a spectrum, from schools you’ve never heard of all the way up to the Ivy League. What that tells me is that–at least for people who are 35 and over–there isn’t a whole lot of value added by worrying about the name brand of a school.
Does that advice continue to hold? I don’t know. Seems to be more kids going to college than ever before, vying for a dwindling number of jobs. So the competition is a lot fiercer than it was even when I graduated from college in the 90s. Maybe name brand does matter more now, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if it does, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t.
I read an article recently (my google-fu isn’t working, sorry) that summarized a study showing the prestige of a university doesn’t benefit middle-class white people all that much in terms of hiring and promotion, but it does benefit poor whites and black/Latino persons. This makes a lot of sense to me. The truth is when you are from a stigmitized group, you have to prove your worth above and beyond whatever the “average” is. If you’re average, you’ll be seen as below-average. If you’re above-average, you’ll be seen as average. So you can’t afford to have any mediocrity in your record.
When I was in high school, I wanted to become a foreign language teacher, and a local private women’s college had a great language department with many instructors who were native speakers. It was more expensive than the state schools, but I really, really wanted to go there, and I got a teensy scholarship that helped out, plus it was 1972, so tuition hadn’t started getting stupidly expensive yet.
It took 2 months or so for me to discover that I hated being there and I didn’t want to be a teacher any longer and I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I stuck it out for 2 semesters, then dropped out and joined the Navy. I had a tiny loan for a couple hundred dollars that I paid off pretty quickly, and that was that.
Fast forward to 1976 - the Navy gave me an opportunity to got back to school and get an engineering degree. I was accepted at Purdue and I used my GI Bill to pay my tuition, tho books were on me. The education was worth it, but in some ways I wish I hadn’t gone to a school that was well-known in engineering circles. People assumed I was a super brain or some such, so I quit saying where I studied unless specifically asked. In the grand scheme of things, I’m sure any accredited engineering school would have served me just as well and Purdue.
I did have a coworker who went to a state school for mechanical engineering, and he was so embarrassed about it, he would wear his father’s college ring from a better-known institution. There was nothing wrong with his education, but a lot wrong with his ego…
The greatest benefit for any law school is it’s prestige and network. The prestige you can take advantage of simply by getting in. To take advantage of the network you’ll have to put in some effort.
There is only so much you can learn about practicing law in a classroom, and therefore even the best professors will be limited in what they can teach you. A class on torts in Harvard is not going to make you a better personal injury attorney than a torts class from a state law school.
The real value is in the network. Law is a field where you can only gain valuable experience if someone hires you to do work. A programmer can code at home, but a lawyer can’t practice law without clients or a courtroom. Law School will only be valuable if you can find someone who will support your career or get you a job with a decent law firm who will invest in training you.
What makes me a little bitter is that you’d think that for $40,000 a year they would do something to help students who aren’t naturally good at networking. But the system is only set up to help students who are already good at making connections.
To sum up, schools pretend they make a difference by teaching, but they don’t. Their only value is their network, if you can take advantage of it.
Tuition was less than $1000 a year at UCLA when I went. Room and board where inexpensive too. It was worth it to my parents just to get my ass out of the house for four years. I got a good education (as much as a degree in political science is worth) and had a wonderful time. I understand that tuition is now $30k plus a year. What I got was not worth that.
I went to a terrific private college. It was much harder than the Ivy where I did my first graduate degree. Well worth it, and a pleasure.
I went to a somewhat prestigious private school (Tulane) on a full scholarship. It was well worth it because the experience and surroundings were great. You can’t beat the free price either. I went to an Ivy for graduate school (Dartmouth) and never finished my PhD but even that seemed to open up some doors.
It isn’t typical but I was sitting at home, unemployed five years ago wondering what I was going to do when I ran out of money and became homeless (that was my thought process at the time). A famous consulting company called me and said they had an IMMEDIATE need for a great position with a world-famous company that everyone has heard of. This was on a Thursday morning and the job started on Monday. I asked them if they wanted me to go through interviews or do something else to qualify because I was used to dealing with minor players that made people jump through hoops just to get a receptionist job. No they said, I was already pre-screened and hired if I was interested. I took it and it has worked out quite well. I never even had to fill out an application or go through any interviews. It was simply one and done.
Going to good schools doesn’t get you a free pass on life but it can open doors.
College only matters if you are specialized and you went to one of the top schools in your field (John Hopkins, Harvard Law, MIT sciences, etc.) An undergraduate degree in English Lit from MIT probably doesn’t help much.
In some countries that have the practice, people often try to get into a school that already has lots of graduates in a chosen company. It’s similar in practice to nepotism, where your only qualification is going to that particular school. In Japan, for example, it’s highly competitive to get into college, but once there, it’s almost effortless to graduate. Students learn next to nothing, but are guaranteed a job in a good company. In the US, my guess would be this is the main attraction for going to an Ivy League school.
What I usually tell college students is that it doesn’t matter what college you go to or what you major in. The mere fact that you finished is all employers are looking for. College is about jumping through hoops. You jumped through all the hoops at a 70% success rate or better for 4-6 years. They want you to jump through a different set of hoops for the next 40 years. If you picked up some awards along the way, great. If you had an A average, great.
Yes, my college made a difference. I’m not even going to talk about my own experience there. I’m just going to link to some websites about what a great place it is:
http://www.bradenton.com/2014/01/29/4960983/new-college-of-florida-again-rated.html
The only way to answer this question is to look at the careers of my co-workers who went to different (and better known) colleges. In my world, it seems to matter some, but a relatively unknown college isn’t very limiting.
In my case, I started by trying to narrow down what companies I wanted to work for, and find out which colleges they hired from. I think engineering companies often have a few obscure colleges they favor as well as the big names, and I went to one of those (for $$ reasons, mainly). My co-workers are from A&M, Stanford, Michigan Tech, MIT and the like. But I’ve found at least a dozen from my small backwoods college, and it hasn’t been limiting their advancement.
I became a contract engineer, so my resume has most of the big names (Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Sperry, McDonell-Douglas, Halliburton/KBR, Honeywell, etc.). I don’t recall the college mattering much to any of the above for actual engineering work, but I think it plays some when choosing management candidates. One of the companies sent me to an expensive private grad school and covered all expenses (including meals), which is the only way I could afford it*. I think having *that *on my resume is why I got a few feelers about whether I’d be interested in mgmt. (Still rank and file, though).
*Had to agree to work for 'em for at least a year afterwards.
I graduated with a BBA degree in 1977 from a state university. I retired from the computer world at the end of last year. In that entire time, nobody gave a damn where the degree was from, they simply cared that I had a degree. Most times, they didn’t even care if the degree was in my field as long as I had the experience.
Nobody cares except for a few snobs. The Ivy League likes to pretend that such distinctions matter so that they can charge more, but in the long run, your degree in Underwater Basketweaving from Podunk U. will be just as valuable as the same degree from Hahvahd.
I went to one of the 3 best colleges in the world for my major. It’s made a major difference. I graduated last in my class and still had job offers without interviews. Now that I’m a decade into my career I run into alumni all of the time who want to help me move my career along and I know that the initial on the job training I received due to my college is what gets me moving along my career path faster then most of my peers.
On the other hand I know people had my same major from the state school to the north and the south of mine and despite being good to great engineers their careers have stalled. In most of their cases it’s due to the lack of network but early out of school there were definite gaps in their understanding that they had to fill with career experience while I was able to fill those gaps with school and move to more prestigious career placements.
The company I worked for out of college was a small firm which only hired from MIT and a couple Ivies. They hired me in part because I spent my undergrad years as a research assistant for a well known professor. Myself and a few other people from that company invented something that most of you are using today and made us all a lot of money.
If I’d gone to a less well known school I may have worked for a similar company and invented something else, but the fact is where I went gave me a unique opportunity and had a huge affect on myself and others and there is no question to me it was worth the effort and I suspect my parents would agree.
I went to a top flight West Coast university. The name recognition of that university absolutely helped me in getting interviews. It also helped in their initial impression of me – the first impression. I still needed to perform in the later interview stages and in the actual position.
It also helped me when I was changing jobs. Casually 
mentioning “I have a Master’s from <top flight school>” helped me get more interviews.
Also, it helped me get first and second jobs from top flight companies. So being able to say “I have a Master’s from <top flight school>” and X number of years at < top flight company1> and Y number of years at <top flight company2> helped me in my future job hunting.
So overall, I’d have to say that it did pay off for me for many years. And there is no doubt: I had to put in A LOT of effort in my undergraduate and graduate education.
But here is something else to consider: I went to a mid-range undergraduate university and worked my butt off. This gave me the credentials to get into the Master’s program at the aforementioned graduate program. And the Master’s degree was the more important one as far as professional advancement.
J.