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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it’s the parents who didn’t themselves go to T20 schools that overstate their importance.  It’s not the golden meal ticket you think it is, the majority of students at these schools still have painfully average careers.[/quote]

Both myself and my partner attending T10 schools.  We have never used any connections from those schools once we graduated.  Yes, I'll admit that graduating in the early 90s, we both benefited from the school, in that not as many companies were hiring but we found jobs since companies were still going to these schools.  However, I went on at least 10,  2nd interviews at larger companies (including Ford, Anderson,Bell Labs etc) and at least half the interviewees at these sessions were not T20 students.  At the company who ultimately hired me, our incoming group of new hires (we knew each other as we lived together for summer then went off to grad school in fall), only 30-40% were from T20 schools, rest were from T60-80 schools, and at least 20% outside of those ranges,  even in a difficult time to find a job.

But after our first jobs, we have NEVER used connections/alumni networks to get jobs.  All future jobs have come because of the hard work, dedication we have done.  Literally nobody asks about where you went to undergrad----they want to hear about your projects, and references from people who've worked with you.  And even with our first jobs, we got hired because we both had over 3.9GPA in engineering at T10 schools---we earned our jobs by doing well.  And my data points indicate that we would have still found jobs even if at a T100 school, because we would have networked/used resources until we landed a job because that's our work ethic.  
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I did my undergrad at a mediocre school in another country, worked and moved to the US for grad school (at an average state school), eventually switching over to IT management.  I do find kids coming out of these 'hoity toity' schools to be smart, well spoken and present themselves very well but for any work needing experience, I could care less about their educational pedigree.

My kids will likely end up in CS or adjacent fields (I'm shepherding them in that direction unless they show strong interest in something else) where a good chunk of the hiring managers would be like me, foreigners who 'grew up' in corporate America.  They only care about performance and wouldn't care two hoots about a top school.

What I keep hearing is that there are certain opportunities (e.g. Investment banking) that are more open to kids from top schools than to other kids.  For example, will Goldman Sachs or a boutique wall street firm be more willing to hire a student from, say Williams, who's an average student vs. say a student at the 75th percentile from Virginia Tech, assuming the same degree and resume profile? [/quote]

You have to think differently.  The "average" kid from Williams is more likely to have a parent or parent friend that works at GS and/or can tap a bunch of alumni that work at GS.  The Virginia Tech kid is unlikely to have much of either.

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Yup, so it's not as much the degree from Williams as it is the parental connections. [/quote]

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