The “target school” culture is extremely toxic

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08/19/2025 22:56

Subject: The “target school” culture is extremely toxic

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Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Then there are schools like Umich Ross, UVA commerce, which are supposedly the “best” business schools that will also place, but you must major in business while the Harvard people major in philosophy ( what makes a business school the “best” seems to be controlled by acceptance rate, which is in turn controlled by yield and popularity so it’s superficial in that sense). Lastly, the “target/non target” distinction is supposedly based on academics; however, strong academic schools are disregarded despite strong academic reputation if they never had a reputation for sending people into finance. U of Texas and U of Wisconsin are two of the strongest examples. By academic reputation, both of these schools are peers to UVa and Umich ( not necessarily exactly as good but they are in the same orbit). Nevertheless, a strong student from Wisconsin could get their resume ignored…

What? Wisconsin is not in the same league as UVA or Michigan/Ross. Just as the latter two are not in the same league as ivies/stanford +

Companies recruit where there is the highest likelihood of finding academically talented students.
It should be no surprise that ivies and a few more are the main targets.

OP is talking about academic reputation, that is the reputation of the professors and the departments of the schools. In this sense, Wisconsin, Michigan, and VA are all academic peers ( just look at the U.S. News department rankings across all subjects).

In theory, the best schools have the best professors which makes them the most desirable to attract the best students. The paradox is when a school has top departments, yet goes unrecognized. Wisconsin is clearly the foremost example of this phenomenon more than any other major university. Econ, Poly Sci, History, Math, Bio are all T10 or T15; yet, the yield for Wisconsin is remarkably low, signaling the student-market does not think too highly of its academic reputation.

As it turns out student yield is probably the best indicator of how the general public (including elite employers) view universities. Wisconsin is obviously not the only school like this; Purdue and CWRU are two other ones. But Wisconsin is by far the most well rounded and the most distinguished historically, making it the best example of what OP is talking about target schools being “arbitrary.”

Yes the arbitrariness is true to an extent. If people think, despite having no tangible reason, that UVa is better than Wisconsin, then they will yield thus making UVa more selective and prestigious. This cycle turns on itself, and thus the prestige of UVa seems somewhat artificial. This could be true of all rankings however. I say “to an extent” because it’s clear that some distinctions in prestige are accurate, like UVA/MSU or Wisconsin/Iowa.