Degrees where college prestige matters

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wherever a grad degree is isn't a necessity and entry level income is high, prestige matters but likely reason is not the colleges but because they admit high achieving students to begin with.

Accounting & engineering?

[Anonymous]

Law, business and medicine. Social work, no one cares.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I will play:

Nursing-absolutely not, same salaries for Ivy or CC trained nurses, same options for NP/PA school(many which are online).

Lawyers--seems this one is the most important to land high paying jobs, though still think being connected(through family or friends) and good social skills come a long way

Medicine-absolutely not, MD/DO the same, i guess if you are a cash pay derm/psych r plastic surgeon and Ivy will get you more customers but charisma. how you do your work and patient referrals do more for you.

Social work--not really-cash pay patients seeing online degree therapists also a thing here, more about your marketing skills than therapy skills.

Nursing -- correctish. You can get higher paying jobs from top programs in specialties that are not open to most.

Lawyers -- connected not a help at all in biglaw. They have taken that all out of the process. If a partner came and said take a look at kid X he is a family friend, most firms would not look at or would and dismiss. Law school and law school grades most important. Undergrad secondary but still counts when interviewing.

Medicine -- agree

Social work ---- agree but when it comes to running non-profits, donors are still impressed with a Harvard or Stanford.

+1. True about law firms - if you have ever worked for the biggest (and also the top, BTW) law firms in the metropolitan areas, you know that they only hire from certain schools - but you know know that before you even step foot in law school.

This statement is quickly refuted by looking at the bios of the attorneys at any law firm. Nobody hires 'only from certain schools'.

I worked at Davis Polk. The list of law schools was longer than I would have thought, but the firm did prefer certain schools. Going to a top law school clearly is an advantage at a firm of that caliber.

Do they prefer certain schools, or are they just in a position to hire only the very best? Because it makes sense that the very best would be found mostly at the most selective law schools, since those schools get first choice of most of the strongest undergraduate talent.

DP. Both, I guess, but law school ranking is used by these firms as a proxy for “the very best.” Big law is notoriously elitist with respect to law school credentials and firms mostly/preferentially hire from T14 schools. They typically only participate in formal recruiting (OCI) at T14 schools. They do hire non-T14 students, but those students are typically stars at their schools and/or have some sort of connection to the firm.

As a former big-law lawyer (not Davis Polk) who went to a top 3 law school and took part in hiring meetings, yes many firms only target specific schools with rare exceptions (for instance, a government contracts practice may hire from non-T14 schools especially those known for that specialty). Some partners gave weight to undergrad prestige when comparing applicants for summer associate positions (i.e. their grades at an elite college were a plus when compared to someone from a more average college). It is a very elitist field. People could come in as lateral hires with less prestigious educational backgrounds, as they had demonstrated their chops with actual work. Once you get to senior associate level, the ‘golden resume’ advantage decreases (unless you have a Supreme Court clerkship in which case you’re forever golden), but as a law student/recent grad I think prestige of law school plus grades (if the school has real grades) are the two most important factors.

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Anonymous wrote:if your kid has to major in the humanities - classics, literature, history, sociology - try to go to an ivy. The degree with will be likely useless, by the name of the ivy on his/her resume will not.

I still do regret studying literature, but because I did it at Yale and Harvard (BA through PhD), I managed to make the transition from academia pretty painlessly. It shocked me how much the name impressed potential employers even though I felt woefully unqualified in terms of experience. People just assumed that I was smart enough to pick up new skills and fields of knowledge very quickly.

In the 30 years I've been working (half the time for a very well known tech company), I have learned that not every smart person can do any job. People, no matter how smart they are, are not plug and play where they can pickup new skills that quickly.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, even ivy grads.

A lit. major from an ivy has a better chance of moving up and running a tech company than a code monkey. The latter are a dime a dozen from 3rd world countries. To move up, you need to be able to communicate. Can a code monkey write like a novelist? That's golden in management.

lol you definitely don't work in tech.

No one in upper management at tech companies need to write like a novelist, nor do they have degrees in literature. That's hysterical.

Most have either tech degrees or MBAs or some other business type background. There are those who have things like linguistics backgrounds for speech software, but high level tech people don't have literature degrees.

You missed the point. They need to communicate. If they can write, they will go far.

Sure, but there are no lit majors in top positions at tech companies. People who go far up the ladder have more than just the ability to write well.

The vast majority of lit majors make far less than a "code monkey".

seriously. And the term that poster users - 'code monkey' - says it all. What a dou#$@

Can you imagine that person being your manager? ....

No...unless you too are looking to get a job at Starbucks as a Barista in training.

The "lit major" is probably mad that such degrees are no longer considered "prestigious" or are highly paid, and that "code monkeys" get paid more than their soft lit major. They also probably didn't do well in STEM.

Its not their major's fault as lots of people with soft majors do much better than STEM monkeys.

[Anonymous]

If bachelors is your terminal degree, prestige matters, if you are going for higher education, that matters more.