Does Ivy League Really matter?????

[steppinthrax]

Essentially this is the deal. I think a degree is more/less what you make of it when you go out into the real world. Experience is also a key player for job interviews and if you get the job or not. But, I'm essentially working on my Masters right now in IT. My B.S. is in Computer Science.

I went to the same school for my B.S. as well as my M.S.

The obvious answer is when you go to interview people see prestige in a degree from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, etc..... But is that it. Are the student's supposedly put though more work essentially?

Statistics show Ivy League students make more when they come out. But can you rely on them. Because in reality there are generally less Ivy League students produced per annum vs. non-ivy league. So you?re talking about almost a special sect of the graduating population. In a non-ivy league school you of course have lower acceptance requirements therefore when you calculate success rates of these students you?re including the one?s who come in there to mess around.

So I guess if you could find a way to look at income levels of students from non ivy-league schools that have a desire to make something of themselves vs. Ivy League schools you might find stats to be pretty similar.

I don?t really know what to say.

Any thoughts

 

[Deeko]

I can't really figure out what you're asking....

Yes, it looks better to employers (coming out of college with limited experience, anyway), to have gone to an Ivy League school. No, the schools aren't shown to be that much more difficult, just harder to get in.

 

[imported_LoKe]

On a resume.

 

[steppinthrax]

This sums up what I?m trying to say. Essentially the Reason why I think Ivy League students show up as doing better then non-ivy league.

1. Ivy leagues generally have done well or strived to do well most of their life and especially to get into that particular school. That same group of people can be represented in a non Ivy League school as well. There is a large portion of non ivy league students who want to do well.

2. Ivy League students generally have more resources than non. Most of their parents for example are affluent and have the resources to MAKE their kids do well.

3. Ivy League graduates are a small population and a special population based on the reasons I mentioned above. Since Ivy League schools have strict to very strict acceptance rules. There are significantly more non ivy league schools then there are ivy league.

 

[LongCoolMother]

what you're saying is true. Most ivy league students would probably be just as successful had they gone somewhere else. This is pretty much true for most students in most schools. this is not to say an ivy league reputation is worthless. On the contrary, an ivy league (or any other big name university) name on a resume is often impressive and is sometimes what's needed to get one foot in the door. But it ends pretty much after that. The rest is up to other aspects of the individual.

The bottom line is that I agree with you. Ivy league students are successful largely based on their own skills rather than the education they receive. In accordance, an ivy league badge is useful as an indicator of talent-- and thus can be often used by employers to gauge prospective employees, but among other, more important factors.

 

[Nerva]

yes it matters, unless you go to the likes of mit, stanford.

 

[LS20]

if youre <middle class, you go to college for a degree to get a job, it doesnt matter

if youre upper class, its part of the kit and kaboodle. you send your priviledged kid there so he/she can mingle/socialize/network with the other priviledged kids, before you groom them into a cush place in the organization where youre president

 

[RagingBITCH]

Chances are, if you graduate from an Ivy League School, you're not going to be fighting for some crap position that Joe Bob from Dillhole State University is also shooting to get.

 

[moshquerade]

yeh, it matters. should it? probably not, but that's the way it is.

 

[Funyuns101]

Originally posted by: steppinthrax
This sums up what I?m trying to say. Essentially the Reason why I think Ivy League students show up as doing better then non-ivy league.

1. Ivy leagues generally have done well or strived to do well most of their life and especially to get into that particular school. That same group of people can be represented in a non Ivy League school as well. There is a large portion of non ivy league students who want to do well.

2. Ivy League students generally have more resources than non. Most of their parents for example are affluent and have the resources to MAKE their kids do well.

3. Ivy League graduates are a small population and a special population based on the reasons I mentioned above. Since Ivy League schools have strict to very strict acceptance rules. There are significantly more non ivy league schools then there are ivy league.

1) I think what you're saying is that an Ivy League-er would do very well in a non-Ivy school. I agree. There are tons of people who just didn't get accepted, but they work just as hard in outstanding schools such as MIT, CalTech, or Stanford. Some students even get accepted but cannot afford it and will end up graduating with honors in a state school. They'll still end up doing pretty well.

2) Public schools might have less than private schools. I wouldn't necessarily say that only the Ivy are raking in big bucks.
As a note, not all students' parents are super-rich. In fact, a lot of students do receive big financial aid packages. You'd be surprised. However, you'll always have rich kids to be jealous of any decent college.
Just because one's parents are affluent doesn't mean that they'll do well (ie Paris Hilton).

3) One really should not feel at a disadvantage because they didn't attend one. It's not that big of a deal. Yes it looks nice on a resume, but one would think that work experience would entail more about a person's abilities. Not all of them are all that great, and definitely not held up to such a high pedestal like Harvard, Yale, UPenn, and Princeton.

One could easily do just as well, if not better, by attending one of the above mentioned colleges or even Duke, Michigan, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins - the list goes on... depending on what they study and how hard they study. Basically, it's just an extra little boost - but having internships and social skills are qualities that also help.

 

[ElFenix]

yes and no. yes because it's a signal to employers that you're a motivated self starter who knows how to work hard and does so. and no because most of those people would come out on top of the economic system anyway for the very traits that got them into IV league schools to begin with.

 

[BrownTown]

Also please note that different schools are good at different things, the Ivy league school are usually considered many of the all around best schools. but if you know what you want to do in life then look at what specific school are best in that one area. For example if you were to major in an engineering discipline you would be shooting for the likes of MIT and CalTech, not ivies.

EDIT: and oh yeah, you don't need an Ivy league education to make money, the people where I was working this summer all went SEC schools or Tennessee Tech, and they were making 80,000$ a year 5 years out of college. Thats pretty good so far as I am concerned, but of course a better college will get you there sooner. My brother goes to MIT and most of his friends are getting 80,000$ jobs on graduation. If you graduation from Harvard's business school the starting salaries are more like 125,000$, so yeah it DOES matter where you graduate from, but in the end pretty much anyone can make good money so long as they work hard. Also, 10 years out you could easily be on the upper management track no matter where you went to school. After that long nobody is even gonna remember where you went to college all they are gonna care about is what you did in your job.

 

[Gibson486]

the networking at some of those ivy league schools is amazing. That said, the barrier between non ivy leage and ivy league schools is getting weaker.

 

[esun]

It really depends on your field. Most importantly, you need to go somewhere with a reputation good enough in your field that recruiters actively seek students from your school (if a job is what you're looking for). For example, at UC Berkeley, we are pretty well known for our EE and CS majors (and all engineering in general). That means that we have recruiters on campus all the time (career fairs, infosessions, etc.) that are looking to interview and hire good students. You still need to do well in classes and such, but I personally find it easy to find job opportunities here, whereas having to seek companies (rather than having them seek me) would be a longer and more difficult process.

 

[LS20]

Originally posted by: Gibson486
the networking at some of those ivy league schools is amazing. That said, the barrier between non ivy leage and ivy league schools is getting weaker.

Most of the time, the networking is already there (mroe true for places like Wellesley, Tufts, Amherst, etc, than the BIG ivies) and schooling is just a formality

 

[greatfool66]

I've just been reading some economics papers on the effect of college selectivity on earnings. It wasn't about ivys so I don't know if you can apply it to them but in the paper they compared students who got into the same schools (Ie you got into Harvard, MIT, and X generic state school), your income would not change depending on where you went, so that the common sense notion that it depends on ability, not school prestige is correct in this case.

Interestingly, this result is not true for students from disadvantaged backgrounds (black in this study). So if you are black then statistically you will earn more by going to a selective school vs an unselective one.

 

[daniel1113]

In my own experience, the only people that care about Ivy League are the students that go there. Most Ivy Leaguers that I meet think they are better, smarter, etc. than everyone else.

Having said that, the real benefit of any prestigious school is the networking and alumni support.

 

[erub]

I'm a Georgia Tech masters' student. The interview rush has become kinda ridculous (I'm graduating in December). I need a spreadsheet to keep track of all of the different interview rounds I'm undergoing, haha. One company did tell me that for a program I'm interviewing for, they are only taking M.S./Ph.D. students from: MIT, CalTech, Carneighe Mellon and GT-->so in this case, going to Ivy league does matter..it won't get you in

BTW, I'm a B.S. product of Texas A&M, another state school <ego stroke>(graduated magna cum laude) </ego>, so I'm now the product of two free educations ..I hope in the end I'm getting much better job offers than my two Ivy-bound friends, one with an art degree from Brown, and another who is struggling in San Diego with a finance degree from UPenn (granted it is SD)..

 

[LS20]

^^ To be specific, for our company, we do have a list of targeted, preferential universities. Of the 12, GT and A&M are both on there. There is 1 Ivy on the list: princeton

 

[senseamp]

Having gone to both Ivy and top notch non-Ivy schools, Ivy League doesn't matter, the fact that Ivies happen to be very good schools on their own merits does.
Networking is nice, but it is more school specific than Ivy league. You can do same type of networking at Stanford, for example.