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[quote=Anonymous]Earnest answer: absolutely yes, but probably largely because I'm an immigrant whose family came here with no wealth or connections, so while it may not be fair or logical, whatever cachet some people ascribe to the school name did help open up opportunities that would have been much less accessible to me otherwise. It mainly works for the first couple of years out of school, but getting someone to give you that first opportunity is usually the biggest challenge.

As one small example: I ended up working for a place that recruits heavily from a small number of feeder schools (including all of HYPSM). It's absolutely possible to get hired from other schools not on the "feeder school" list, but you either need a connection/referral or do a ton of extra networking. I didn't even know about the existence of this industry coming out of HS, so there's just no way it would have happened if I had gone to a less "prestigious" school. This is the same story for many of my college friends with similar immigrant and/or middle-class backgrounds who got jobs in i-banking, consulting, and tech.

If my kid got in to any of the 5 schools, I'd certainly recommend they attend it (or a school of similar reputation) as long as their interests aligned even moderately with the school's strengths. But I hope my kids have more "breathing space" in the sense that we have better resources, social networks, knowledge, etc. to help them than my parents did, and therefore they'll have more paths to success in life even if they don't win the college lottery.[/quote]

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