ap663 wrote:
johnnyx9 wrote:
I've never really thought of undergraduate schools as being similar to business schools in terms of diminishing prestige and opportunities as you move down from the top.
If you could assign some sort of value to attending a given school for instance, let's say the value of attending an ultra-elite business school is X. Then maybe the value of an elite b-school is .6X, and then maybe the next cluster down it's .4X, and then the next couple of clusters are probably also about .4x. Whereas with undergrad I would think it would be a much smoother decrease, like top 10 schools the value is X, schools 11-20 the value is .9X, schools 21-50 the value is .8X, schools 51-70 the value is .7X and so on.
I suppose one reason is that the opportunity cost is so low for undergrads, and the difference in jobs available to someone from a top undergrad and a low-ranked undergrad is not as disparate as comparative opportunities for a top b-school and a low-ranked b-school.
So I guess this is why the article suprises me, do parents really care that much about getting their kids into Harvard? I would think even super-snobby over-bearing parents would be psyched if their kids got into any of the top 30 or so schools.
I disagree. Opportunities for students at top undergrads and lower-ranked ones are in fact quite disparate. Top tier I-banks only recruit at about 20-30 schools, top MCs recruit at even less, etc. I graduated from a US News top 10 undergrad b-school at a top 50 university and had much greater recruiting opportunities in a bad year than kids I know at 3rd tiers now in a good year.
I disagree with you disagreeing.
Yes i-banking and some other industries are not available to people outside of top undergrad schools. But those are such a small percentage of the jobs that undergrads go on to fill. B-school students funnel into a much narrower set of industries.
So for the .05% of undergrads who want to go into i-banking, then it is probably important to go to a top school. But for the 20% or whatever the number is, of b-school studetns who want to go into i-banking, the choice of school is very important. And for the majority of the balance of b-school students, school name will be very important because many jobs studetns take coming out of b-school care about brand.
But for undergrads, where students go on to be teachers, musicians, engineers, chemists, writers, accountants, travel agents, policewomen, real estate agents, event planners, etc....they will all do very well for themselves going to a school like the University of Kentucky or Florida State or wherever. They can even have a decent shot at getting into a top business school if down the road they want to change paths.
I just don't see undergrad as being that important in the grand scheme of things such that parents should be freaking out if their kid doesn't get into a top 10 school.
I disagree with your disagreement with my original disagreement. The tougher a job is to get, the more where you go to school matters. One of my best friends was an English major and wanted to do publishing, she was able to work in many of the top firms as an intern and finally went to a boutique firm full time, all of her co-workers were from top tier schools. I know lots of people who have graduated from tier 3 or tier 4 schools and the kinds of places that recruit at the better schools just don't go there and if they do it's usually not for the most desireable positions. Most Hollywood studios and agencies hire kids from USC, UCLA, NYU and the Ivies for their top undergrad positions. My cousin graduated from a 3rd tier school and was going for marketing & advertising jobs that paid almost half of and were less coveted than the jobs people I knew at my school were going for. The L'Oreal's, P&G's, and J&J's of the world simply don't target 3rd tier institutions unless it's for the hiring needs of a local office. This is not to say that someone at a less prestigious school can't get a great job at any of those places, but they're not going to find that job posted to their career center with on campus interview slots for the taking. It's doable but requires more legwork than for a kid at an Ivy or equivalent undergrad whose career fair is like a candy shop of opportunity. Elitism is by no means restricted to banking and consulting. Certain industries are not that elitist like teaching, nursing, and social work but it's because the jobs are less coveted as there's a higher supply/demand ratio, but I do imagine that a teaching post at an elite private school that offers a higher salary than the local public school would be more likely to get posted at an elite college or university.
I never disagreed that the circle of elite institutions has more members on the undergrad level. That is simple supply and demand. What makes a school elite? The quality of students that go there. Converging average test scores are evidence of that. After the top 15 or so schools there is a drop off in GMAT, the same goes for undergrad schools and SATs. As there are more and more elite level students the circle of eliteness expands to include more schools as each school's number of available seats is a constant. That's why some schools which are considered elite today were not even on the radar 15 or so years ago. Because graduate schools are specialized and not every person worthy of a seat at an elite school wants an MBA in the first place, the number of elite schools has remained pretty constant, however, look back to a data point where far fewer people were applying and the average GMATs were lower and you'll find less programs that were giving HBS a run for their money.
01 May 2007, 15:24
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