How much does the competitiveness of a college matter?

[Provost Harrison]

A ticket to lots of money and no time to spend it - plus lots and lots of stress...yeah, I may not be earning a fortune now, but I reached that crossroads many years ago where I had the option of getting a job in The City and going down that road, after all, my university is a well known recruiting ground for that kind of sector. But I chose against it...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
A ticket to lots of money and no time to spend it - plus lots and lots of stress...yeah, I may not be earning a fortune now, but I reached that crossroads many years ago where I had the option of getting a job in The City and going down that road, after all, my university is a well known recruiting ground for that kind of sector. But I chose against it...

A wise choice, PH.

[Provost Harrison]

Sometimes I kick myself, but just have to remind myself why I made that decision...

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by JohnT
But not all - Nixon

Nixon went to Duke Law. Hardly a no-name college. Reagan did go to a no-name college, though. He was also a professional actor. Could it be that he was just a mouthpiece and a front man? Hmmm...

Stop bolding my post, OTBOT!

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Agathon
It depends on how much you personally care about what it can get you.

If you're one of those people who wants to be really rich or "successful", then it probably matters a lot.

On the other hand, if you basically don't give a **** about all that **** and just want to learn about interesting stuff, any respectable college will suffice.

IMHO the people who want the former are insane. It seems a one way ticket to not enjoying your life.

on the other hand there are quite a few people that are insane and like it.

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
I've seen studies that indicate that there's almost no correlation between the quality of a school and a person's success later in life. Really. People from Northern Illinois University can rise; people from Harvard can fail.

Our daughter will head off to school in a couple of years, and is applying almost exclusively to "elite" schools. I don't think she'll get farther in life going to my alma mater (an Ivy) instead of her mother's (a huge state school); but I think her college experience itself will be better. What she makes of that experience is up to her.

The Washington Post had an excellent article on this today confirming that, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...032801333.html

There really isn't an established benefit to going to an elite university. Unless you are wealthy and money isn't much of an objecet, you're much better off going to a quality public university. I don't think it's necessarily the case that your college experience will be better at an ivy either. There are plenty of very smart student at public universities who go there for price reasons, and at a public university you're likely to be around a much more diverse student body.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Wycoff
Nixon went to Duke Law. Hardly a no-name college.

I didn't realize that Duke Law School was an undergraduate college!

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
I didn't realize that Duke Law School was an undergraduate college!

Oh noes! I've been PWNED

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Wycoff


Nixon went to Duke Law. Hardly a no-name college. Reagan did go to a no-name college, though. He was also a professional actor. Could it be that he was just a mouthpiece and a front man? Hmmm...

Stop bolding my post, OTBOT!

Didn't know that about Duke Law. I was thinking Whittier College when I wrote that.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by JohnT


I disagree.

It's not just the connections, it's the access to them combined with the willingness of the student to exploit that access, that matters as well. If you want a career at McKinsey Consulting, you'd better go to Harvard/Yale, because that's where all the McKinsey recruiters are at.

However, the connections alone won't do a thing for ya, true. A lazy student at Harvard will get a far worse education than a dedicated overachiever at Michigan State.

Oh, agreed. In fact, I got my first job of college, as well as another job offer I didn't take, from employers who recruited exclusively at Ivies. But that's really what I mean. The value of a college is limited to being at the college itself. At some colleges, that means you'll have more famous professors, bigger libraries, high-powered recruiters, etc. But the value of all of that, once you leave campus, is very, very small.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi


The Washington Post had an excellent article on this today confirming that, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...032801333.html

There really isn't an established benefit to going to an elite university. Unless you are wealthy and money isn't much of an objecet, you're much better off going to a quality public university. I don't think it's necessarily the case that your college experience will be better at an ivy either. There are plenty of very smart student at public universities who go there for price reasons, and at a public university you're likely to be around a much more diverse student body.

I should have made clear that by "better," I meant "better for my daughter." She wants, and is likely to thrive in, a smaller school (<6000 undergrad) in which she is surrounded by people of a similar intellectual calibar; thus, Brown, Wesleyan, or Sarah Lawrence (examples of her stretch, likely, and safety schools, respectively) are all better choices for her than, say, Cornell, Penn, or the University of Michigan. She'll probably apply to one or two bigger schools (Berkeley, Northwestern), but that's because of specific interests she has.

edit: BTW, the Krueger/Dale study mentioned in the Post article is the one I was alluding to earlier.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by JohnT
If you want to live in LA, try to get into UCLA or Pepperdine or USC.

USC? Isn't that an expensive, good for nothing party school, except for aspiring directors? At least that's what I heard.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Spoken like someone in Asia

Ivy connections are quite useless here, unfortunately. Connections with high ranking CCP members or at least their children, OTOH...

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Ivy-league connections are way, way, way overrated, generally by folks who don't have them.

Most of the time they are useless. Though when the times you make use of them, they are really powerful.

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
In my experience, the connections that matter are not established in college; they're the connections you and your family already have (or don't). The notion of a nobody getting admitted to an elite school and suddly having connections is the stuff of bad novels, not life.

True, most of the time it is nigh impossible to break into the inner circle, but having a chance is better than none.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Ivy connections are quite useless here, unfortunately. Connections with high ranking CCP members or at least their children, OTOH...

That's all I meant. My ongoing experience of Asia is that connections mean almost everything here, whether we're talking about powers like China and Japan or backwaters like the Philippines. The kinds of connections vary from place to place, but, for now, "Asian meritocracy" sems to be contradiction in terms.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
That's all I meant. My ongoing experience of Asia is that connections mean almost everything here, whether we're talking about powers like China and Japan or backwaters like the Philippines. The kinds of connections vary from place to place, but "Asian meritocracy" sems to be contradiction in terms.

From I have have seen, knowing the right people beats being talented (or at least competent) any day. Although, unless you are directly related, such as a son or a daughter, knowing the right people doesn't guarantee you not getting sacked (or worse).

OTOH, Richard Li and the likes can snafu and not have a thing happen to them.