This was my suggestion, and I should have qualified it with “grad/professional school alumni.” If you go to a good school and continue to work in the area, your grad school cohort will likely be your most valuable professional network, and the extended alumni network can be very helpful.
Just last week, an alumnus from my program sent me a LinkedIn message asking about a position she is interviewing for with my organization. I was happy to talk to her, as I know the rigor of both the classes and admissions means she is most likely a strong candidate, and thanks to my work I know the program has a good reputation at my workplace. Selfishly, I also want alumni from my program to succeed, as it raises the value of my program on the whole within in the industry. I wouldn’t hand her the job or anything, but I gave her some insight into the organization and what they are looking for.
Tradition and school spirit are very, very important to Aggies, so much so that they have a term for students who don’t actively participate in Aggie traditions, the “2 percenters” for the supposed 1 out of 50 who don’t go in wholeheartedly for school spirit and all things Aggie. The terminology they use practically requires a glossary - graduates refer to themselves as “former student” rather than alumni on the principle that “once an Aggie, always an Aggie,” and their alumni organization is called the Association of Former Students. Aggies all over the world get together every year on April 21 to honor Aggie deceased in an event called Aggie Muster, as far away as Camp Leatherneck in Kandahar. To an outsider the Aggie devotion to tradition can seem a little extreme, even cultish, to which Aggies just smile and say if you’re not an Aggie you can’t understand. When two A&M grads meet they know that they have some shared experiences and commonalities right off of the bat, especially if they were both in the Corps.
The lab courses are never independent; they’re part of subject courses. The code for “fail in lab = behavioral problem” has been in place for almost 100 years, it’s unlikely to change. Minor issues (such as “did not present work in a timely fashion”) get corrected fast enough that they will not affect graduation dates; every case where the reason for not graduating is a fail in the lab part of a course is due to a serious issue which has gone uncorrected for years. My electronics labmate told me I had to redo the graphs because he’d decided we were going to lie about our results: turns out it was the 14th time he got flunked for cheating. That’s 14 years he had not learned the lesson of “when you try to cheat we fail your ass”. One of my classmates’ horseplaying in the lab caused accidents (including one which would have left me blind if I hadn’t been wearing my goggles: sulphuric acid showers are not my idea of fun); he eventually graduated but not before the teachers reckoned he could be let loose in a lab without adult supervision. Since this second one eventually graduated, that indicates the problem is considered corrected.
I wouldn’t reject someone for having round grades: 1/3 of the students do not pass the first year; of those who graduate and since 1914, only one never had to retake an exam (we refer to him as The Second Coming - dude’s “like God only younger”). But I do know which subjects were and are the “black beasts” where a round grade means one obtained in a retake and a non-round one means first-try. A round grade in, say, Chemistry I, doesn’t mean anything special. One in Electronics does (it’s been considered the hardest subject since 1954, in direct competition with Quantum Chemistry and Physical Chemistry II).
At my alma mater, school policy provided that your lab grades could make up only a small fraction of your final lecture+lab grade, around 20% in total iirc. What this meant was that one could skip a few lab reports with only a trivial hit to your total class average. If there were ten lab reports and no other lab grades, that equals 2% of your final grade per report. If you had a 93% average otherwise, a zero on a 2% assignment would have no effect on your GPA.
Some instructors found a loophole, though. There was as school policy permitting an instructor to issue an automatic failing grade based on violating class policy. So the rule was you had to turn in every lab report, or else you got a big fat stinking F for the entire thing, lecture and lab. You didn’t have to get an A in every lab report, you just had to turn something meaningful in for every one, even if it merited a low D.
I generally find rear-window decals, license plate frames etc. heralding the driver’s alma mater somewhere between pointless and irritating, especially when they read Wassamatta U Alumni. (What, they’re ALL in that itty bitty car?)
However, I was completely approving of one, the only one of its type I have ever seen: Smith Alumna.
(I think it serves best as an ice breaker kind of thing. You can go into a interview knowing that you have at least one thing in comon with the person you will be talking to.
Best to keep in mind, though, that the Validictorian of your class went to the same school as the person who finished dead last.
It’s not that it’s a “big deal”. But (assuming you went to a good school), it can provide you an edge over the competition.
Having gone to a “high SAT $40k school” I can tell that, at least with my school, there is a very strong alumni connection.
Keep in mind, certain companies or management programs within large companies only hire from certain colleges on their campus recruiting program.
Hey. Another Georgia Tech alum. We should have lunch!
If a Georgia Tech alum looked me up, I’d feel obliged. Not to let them have my spare bedroom or anything like that. But if they had a page full of questions about my agency, job openings, etc., I’d likely spend a little more time answering their questions than I would if they were someone else. Especially if we had the same professors and experience similar PTSD flashbacks.
I don’t come across fellow alums very often where I work. I work with plenty of Hokies and Rams and whatever the mascot is at UVA. But no Jackets. Although it wouldn’t be likely that some random caller would ever join my particular program, I still like the silly idea of having someone from my alma mater bumping around in the hallways. Perhaps they would join me in forming a support group for survivors.
Yes, I know. I was using the plural form, referring to “graduates” in the aggieregate, forgive the pun. I suppose I could have been clearer and said “graduates refer to themselves as ‘former students’ instead of alumni,” but the use of alumni instead of alumnus was intentional.
Same for most courses but with the caveat that labs and lecture must be passed independently before being averaged; the school’s information already spells out that attitude and behavior are part of lab grades, what they don’t spell in writing is that they can and will mean an automatic fail. I’ve met people from other disciplines who found this unacceptable; we think it’s fine, thank you (bad doctors kill people one by one; engineers work in larger scales).
Our graduating classes are up to 80-max nowadays; pictures of each last-year class hang on the school’s walls (note that reaching the last year does not equal graduating). You can check whether someone reached those not-so-lofty-yet heights just by going there, if you happen to be close enough to do so, and it’s a chance to catch up with agemates who are now teachers.
The one thing that is often not appreciated is how much even a little advantage can have a huge impact. When I got into a great law firm it was was an due to the old boy network. I had lunch with an old law school chum and he mentioned “oh BTW xyz is looking for a new junior”. I went and dropped my CV, the Head of Chambers (also an alum) interviewed me and I got in.
I was highly qualified. But, so were any others and I got in due to one advantage. I am sure there are several places where I lost out due to not having said advantage.
This sums it all up. In almost any job opening, there are many highly qualified people applying for the same job. But if someone has the ‘one advantage’— that’s what makes the difference, and can change his whole career.
It’s basically impossible to tell from an interview whether one highly qualified applicant is better than the other, equally qualified applicant . So having the human touch with the interviewer— a shared joke, a shared hobby, a shared experience of any kind, is what gets you hired.If your shared interest is golf, then your interviewer might give you a 2 minute, superficial, conversation about golf. But if your shared experience covers a good size chunk of your life (4 years is a long time!), then the interviewer will grant you more than 2 minutes of conversation, and not just about superficial subjects.
Education is important…but networking is more important.
