Reply to How do you think “prestige” matters?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I get why people would ask about which schools attract recruiters from a specific industry or which schools place undergrads in top grad or professional programs or which schools are strong in a particular discipline or combination of disciplines.  There’s a practical “can DC get there from here?” or “Does it have what DC is looking for?” component to those kinds of inquiries (and there are facts that can be pointed to to back up an answer).  But these questions like “Are service academies prestigious?” and statements like “Bates is more prestigious than Oberlin” are baffling to me.  Is it just a desire to start pissing matches that prompts the posters or is there some kind of there there?  If the latter, what’s at stake/why does it matter/how could any answer beyond “depends on who you ask” be convincing?[/quote]

People talk about prestige, because it is a signal, just like a slim woman with a 0.7 waist to hip ratio signals that she may be fertile and produce healthy kids.

Going to a prestigious school signals that you may have high cognitive ability, which is a valuable signal in today's economy. Not going to a prestigious school doesn't mean you don't have it, but it is harder to say, because the school may attract mediocre talent also. Prestigious schools may also attract mediocre talent, but the general consensus is that most people who go there are cognitively gifted, so the mediocrity is an exception not a rule. So if Harvard suddenly changed its admission policy to admit its entire class through a lottery, the prestige factor would quickly vanish.

Getting into a prestigious school is also an external validation of your cognitive abilities. Somebody else agrees with your internal assessment. This is why many are crushed when they get rejected, because now they don't have any external validation about their cognitive abilities.

Another reason people care about going to a prestigious school is because it gives you an opportunity to network, interact and build relationships with the elite of today's society. This is important because it can open doors for you later in life.  You are not going to interact with Melia Obama or Chelsea Clinton if you go to North Dakota State University, because they won't go there. So you would need to be at Harvard or Stanford for that to happen. 
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