I’m from Kansas City on the Kansas side. When I ask people around here where they went to college, most say a midwest school such as in Kansas or Missouri with some from other neighboring states like Oklahoma, Iowa, and Nebraska. Its rare for example, to find a person who went to school in say California or Pennsylvania to settle down here. Its not that they cant, its just not common.
So I would like to ask, in your community, do you find most people come from local colleges or have alot of people come from farther away? So for example, if you are from Los Angeles did most people go to schools in California?
Also Ivy league schools such as Harvard and Yale. Around here for the most part, Ivy league schools are not an advantage and I only see them really in law and medicine. But in YOUR community, how often do you see persons having Ivy league degrees and in what areas are they working?
I’m from West Virginia and it’s a mixed bag. We have lots of people that went to school here, but we also have a large ex-pat community largely from places like Texas and Colorado where the natural gas industry is big. I live in Morgantown, so we have professors from all over the country and the pharmaceutical and medicine people can be from anywhere. We also get a fair number of people who are just sick of living in cities and want to live somewhere smaller but still has a decent number of amenities. I would say that most people who didn’t go to college are people that have always lived in this general area and people who did go to college are from lots of places with probably half of them being native West Virginians and the other half being from somewhere else.
I live in DC and see both a lot of ivy leaguers and people who came here to go to schools like Georgetown, American, or George Washington and then stayed, often because they pursued degrees in international affairs or government. Lots of lawyers and people in government or international development (my industry).
Some might say not having to live in Kansas City IS the advantage of an Ivy League degree.
I’m in Manhattan and obviously people come from all over the world to work here. All the Ivy League schools are within about 5 hours drive. Not to mention all the Patriot League schools for rich preppy jerks (Boston University, Colgate, Holy Cross, Lehigh, Lafayette, etc). State schools like Rutgers, UCONN, Penn State. NYU. All the SUNY and CUNY schools. I can probably rattle off a couple dozen more universities and colleges within a few hours drive before even getting into community colleges and other programs. Not to mention people who come from top schools in other parts of the country.
I tend to work in the investment banking / consulting / tech / fancy MBA people space, so my experience is somewhat skewed.
I live in Chicago, and we have graduates from all over the place, especially midwestern and/or Big Ten schools, although I don’t know many Ivy League graduates. Many of the bars here will pick a school to adopt, hoping to attract a loyal following of alumni. Just in my neighborhood alone, there is a Michigan State bar, a Michigan bar, an Iowa bar, and a Wisconsin bar. Those aren’t the names of the bars, just their adopted affiliation, and they make it obvious with their decor.
In Silicon Valley our local colleges are Stanford and Berkeley. Lots of people working here went there, but plenty have come from other good schools also.
Lots from IIT.
You are wrong. Dead wrong. Not just Ivy’s, but top schools provide real advantages. There is a substantial halo effect, where going to a great school convinces those who did not that you are smart, perhaps smarter than you are. There is also fantastic networking. I was active in the local alumni chapter for my school and I met a bunch of top people, some world famous. I didn’t need the connections, but they could have been useful.
Not to mention that my company recruited from only the top schools. People from good but not top schools weren’t even allowed to interview. I tried to get one in once, and got shot down by a top HR VP. I think it’s a stupid policy, but it exists.
Hmm. When I went to college, 45 or so years ago, BU students were neither very rich nor very preppy. I lived in Queens, and lots of people from my neighborhood went there. It was kind of Queens College north. Has it changed?
I think a large proportion of Montrealers went to school locally. My grandson graduated from Northwestern and has settled in Chicago. I went to Penn (as a commuter–I wonder if they still allow that) and didn’t stay in Philly. On the other hand an awful lot of the hi-tech industries in and around Boston were founded by MIT grads. But then Boston is generally a pretty pleasant area.
Probably not as preppy as students from Harvard, BC, Babson or Brandeis. But BU is part of the “Patriot League”, which is described by Wikipedia as “outside the Ivy League, it is among the most selective group of higher education institutions in NCAA Division I and has a very high student-athlete graduation rate for both the NCAA graduation success rate and the federal graduation rate.”
I just know when I went to a Patriot League school undergrad 20+ years ago, everyone automatically received subscriptions to J.Crew catalogs. And cocktail parties were big on weekends.
I’m in Colorado so lots of people move here for the lifestyle so lots of non colorado colleges are represented. When i was in oil and gas it was mostly from three colleges and it didnt matter where in the country i work if there was a fourth represented it was whatever the local petroleum engineering program was.
In general people settle where the network from there school is for most schools that local for a hand full of schools its major financial markets for others its oil and gas towns. Looking at the allumni network will tell you alot about where your degree can or will take you.
I’m in Chicago, and have worked in marketing and advertising throughout my career.
I’d estimate that 80-90% of my colleagues have been from colleges within 3-5 hours of Chicago. Lots of people from the more local schools (Northwestern, University of Chicago, Northern Illinois, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana), but there’s also seemed to be a ton of them from Michigan State and University of Michigan. Other schools in adjoining states (Wisconsin (my alma mater), Notre Dame, Ohio State, Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, etc.) seem to make up most of the rest.
If you’re going to work in the financial markets, you’re probably working in New York or Chicago. I’m in Chicago. Both me and my immediate coworker went to Florida State, we’ve got one from Texas Tech, one from University of Indiana, plus there’s a couple who started on trading floors the day they left high school.
When I was there more people wanted to stick around MIT than was good for them, and there were plenty of companies (like Draper Labs) who were happy to have them.
However there were somewhere around 200 MIT alumni in the Princeton area, and there are tons in the Bay Area.
My careers has been in Japan and Taiwan, but when I was working international business in an average sort of industry, you just didn’t see Ivy League people. You have to presume that they were mostly working in better paying industries.
While in Japan I worked for a company with its headquarters in Orange County, CA. Most of the people when to schools in California.
I’m from Kansas City and yes, I can see if you wanted to move “where the action is” the appeal would be places like New York and Washington. The guy in my graduating class who went to yale law went on to work for the federal government there and he had gotten to shake the hands of several presidents. You just dont get to do that in KC.
Also specialty schools that attract a lot of non-locals like UCSF( medicine )and little Mills College( only female undergraduates ). On the other hand still decent second-tier state schools like SFSU, SJSU and CSUEB are very significantly populated by local students. The Bay Area in general is chockablock with colleges.
