Classof2022 wrote:
souvik101990 - Do recruiters have an institutional bias against the 4 lower paying programs (i.e. thinking the schools aren't "prestigious" enough) mentioned above such that higher paying/more desirable jobs are less likely to go to them?
- Are students from these 4 schools just getting paid less for the exact same work (i.e. the recruiters think these schools aren't "prestigious" enough and therefore the students will accept less money)?
- Do the 4 schools have poorer connections to tech companies?
- Is the student body at the 4 schools just less desirable? (e.g. less experience, backgrounds are more often in non-tech industries, etc.)
Thank you for your previous reply. It's all helpful and there's lots more to figure out.
That <$10k delta is well within the amount of negotiating room on a lot offers in this space.
It's also very possible that depending on the specific companies schools are placing people into that there are different salary/bonus/RSU splits. The total comp picture could look different and we wouldn't really know.
I doubt that the same company would make a higher offer to a candidate because they went to a slightly higher ranked school, but I am very sure that a company would make a higher offer to a candidate who 1) was better prepared for the job, which could be a self-selectivity thing depending on the profiles of candidates top programs are accepting, or who 2) have multiple competing offers. As in, if a higher ranked school on someone's resume catches more recruiters' eyes and leads to more initial offers at the same number, or if a given school's career services team coaches peoples interview strategy differently, a candidate with more offers even at the same starting number will end up with a higher final number by virtue of their stronger negotiating position. The same is true if at one campus companies are just better for whatever reason at closing candidates quickly. Or maybe it's just that the top 10% of candidates at top programs skew the average up and the median offer at HBS and Ross are actually the same? Who knows.
TLDR: there's a whole bunch of selection, interviewing/negotiation, and comp structure factors that confound this picture, and I don't see much evidence to support the idea that companies are somehow "lowballing" candidates who "only" went to Ross.