Degrees where college prestige matters

[Anonymous]

For lawyers, it’s the law school that matters, not the undergrad. To get into a good law school, it’s the LSAT and GPA that matter, not the undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Is business more about rank of undergraduate program/college of business or the prestige of the overall university?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MBB Consulting - Bachelor's AND MBA prestige matter

Engineering - Literally any college, get the degree, can you do the work. A kid from Cal Tech can be working alongside UC Irvine .

By the same logic, a kid from UC Irvine can be working alongside a local community college student. No reason to overpay for a nameless UC Irvine degree when a CC Irvine does the same job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is business more about rank of undergraduate program/college of business or the prestige of the overall university?

Following

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For lawyers, it’s the law school that matters, not the undergrad. To get into a good law school, it’s the LSAT and GPA that matter, not the undergrad.

Again...prove this statement. Show a link to something, anything that supports this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MBB Consulting - Bachelor's AND MBA prestige matter

Engineering - Literally any college, get the degree, can you do the work. A kid from Cal Tech can be working alongside UC Irvine .

By the same logic, a kid from UC Irvine can be working alongside a local community college student. No reason to overpay for a nameless UC Irvine degree when a CC Irvine does the same job.

What community colleges are producing licensed engineers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MBB Consulting - Bachelor's AND MBA prestige matter

Engineering - Literally any college, get the degree, can you do the work. A kid from Cal Tech can be working alongside UC Irvine .

By the same logic, a kid from UC Irvine can be working alongside a local community college student. No reason to overpay for a nameless UC Irvine degree when a CC Irvine does the same job.

Reductio ad absurdum is a silly response.

One does actually need a 4 year degree in engineering, either from a very top engineering school (which might ignore ABET) or from literally any ABET-accredited E School. CCs do not offer those 4 year ABET accredited degrees. PP is fundamentally right. An MIT or CalTech engineering grad often will work next to someone from UMBC or ODU or GMU or WVU, doing the exact same work.

Within academia, where one obtained one’s PhD really does matter. The politics of academic publishing mean those CalTech or MIT or CMU PhD/ScD grads will have a leg up in getting the right publications — and getting NSF funding — which can be important for tenure and advancement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For lawyers, it’s the law school that matters, not the undergrad. To get into a good law school, it’s the LSAT and GPA that matter, not the undergrad.

Again...prove this statement. Show a link to something, anything that supports this.

Here you go:
https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/

Not surprising if more people who score high on the LSAT and had great grades went to elite undergrad schools, because they almost certainly went to those schools because they had great SAT/ACT scores and grades to get into those schools in the first place

[Anonymous]

For CS and related majors it matters more again (almost like the mid-2000s when today's parents were getting degrees). There are fewer entry level roles at the best employers, so there is more competition. For a while, people were thinking they should just go to the least expensive school and strategically pick a CS/eng major, but times are a changing in the tech and quant worlds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For lawyers, it’s the law school that matters, not the undergrad. To get into a good law school, it’s the LSAT and GPA that matter, not the undergrad.

Again...prove this statement. Show a link to something, anything that supports this.

Here you go:
https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/

Not surprising if more people who score high on the LSAT and had great grades went to elite undergrad schools, because they almost certainly went to those schools because they had great SAT/ACT scores and grades to get into those schools in the first place

They haven't even updated their rankings with the newly leaked USNWR rankings! They'll have to adjust their T-14

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the legal field, the prestige of your law school is what matters, not undergrad. And going to a fancy undergrad doesn’t give you an admissions boost for law school except maybe on the very edges. It’s all LSAT and GPA. In fact for someone targeting a T14 law school it might be a better strategy to go to a state school for undergrad if you can do better there (less competition).

Everyone gives this advice, but I have never seen anything that supports it...at all. Yale law school is 70% kids from just 20 undergraduate schools (all top schools), and then 30% come from 150+ other schools (i.e., 1 kid from each school).

The #1 feeder to any T14 school by far, is the undergraduate school. So, Harvard undergrad has the most kids at Harvard law, same for Northwestern, same for UVA.

I wish someone could show a link to an analysis or really anything to support the position that law school is only GPA and LSAT.

I’m the PP you’re responding to. I went to Penn Law, so I can’t comment on Yale. My class of ~250 at Penn comprised at least 50% of public and non-elite college alums. If you look at stats for admitted students (Law School Numbers is one source, although it’s self-reported), the common trend is that they are either at or above both medians for GPA/LSAT or have at least one of GPA/LSAT above the 75th percentile for those schools. The medians now are something like 3.9 GPA/171 LSAT and 75ths are obviously higher. Maybe attending an elite undergrad helps on the margin, like if they’re choosing between two applicants and it’s an “all else equal” situation, but otherwise those two numbers are the key factors. Often a high GPA and a high LSAT (required to get into any of those schools) means that the student is a strong academic performer and a strong standardized test taker, which sometimes/often correlates with the prestige of their undergrad institution. Obviously there are good reasons why it might not, and in my experience and also as borne out by empirical evidence if you look at T14 admits, students who are able to perform at that level (regardless of undergrad school) are not left out.

I would posit that the correlation between YLS admissions and T20 undergrad institutions is mostly just a correlation. The students admitted to YLS are, in all likelihood, lifelong high academic achievers. It makes sense that those students disproportionately attend T20 undergrad schools. Also, for what it’s worth, YLS is well known in law school admissions to be more “black box” and to value soft factors (i.e., not LSAT/GPA) more than their peer schools do. So maybe undergrad institution is a factor for them, I don’t know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teaching - go the cheapest route possible, bc after 15 years, you're making less than most early grads.

and get the degree in a state you want to work in after college. That way you will do your student teaching there and be certified for that state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the legal field, the prestige of your law school is what matters, not undergrad. And going to a fancy undergrad doesn’t give you an admissions boost for law school except maybe on the very edges. It’s all LSAT and GPA. In fact for someone targeting a T14 law school it might be a better strategy to go to a state school for undergrad if you can do better there (less competition).

Everyone gives this advice, but I have never seen anything that supports it...at all. Yale law school is 70% kids from just 20 undergraduate schools (all top schools), and then 30% come from 150+ other schools (i.e., 1 kid from each school).

The #1 feeder to any T14 school by far, is the undergraduate school. So, Harvard undergrad has the most kids at Harvard law, same for Northwestern, same for UVA.

I wish someone could show a link to an analysis or really anything to support the position that law school is only GPA and LSAT.

Yale law school is most likely like this because the kids who have the drive, connections and money (all pre-undergrad) got into a T20 school for undergrad and are continuing their dream at a top law school. But most likely the fact that kids who had the money for T20 schools and grew up in privilege continue to strive for "top professional schools" and also have the finances to attend them. The kids attending any T20 law school are all kids who had the resume for a T20 undergrad school, those that didn't attend most likely didn't for finances or just because it wasn't on their radar to even try to attend a T20 school (too poor, first in family to attend college, etc). But those kids most definately could have attended a T20 undergrad.

Basically, it's what you do in undergrad, not where you went. Of course majority at T20 schools will drive towards elite grad school programs and the like---they've grown up influenced by this and can afford it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For lawyers, it’s the law school that matters, not the undergrad. To get into a good law school, it’s the LSAT and GPA that matter, not the undergrad.

Again...prove this statement. Show a link to something, anything that supports this.

Here you go:
https://7sage.com/top-law-school-admissions/

Not surprising if more people who score high on the LSAT and had great grades went to elite undergrad schools, because they almost certainly went to those schools because they had great SAT/ACT scores and grades to get into those schools in the first place

And the kid who did not attend a T20 undergrad, simply because they couldn't afford it and smartly went to the affordable state school, most likely still cannot afford T14 law school, so they will go to the law school they can afford---the thought of going $300K into debt when they can go instate with a $35-40K tuition doesn't even cross their minds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any field where there are more potential employees than jobs and where image matters more than the quality of the work produced.

Academia
Consulting
Law
Finance

Yes academia, but academia measures prestige differently. Essentially, how important are your professors/alumni in the field. In this sense, Texas or Michigan or Wisconsin often produced more hired PHDs (proportionally) than say Brown or Duke.