Reply to Nate Silver: "Go to a state school"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Double Ivy grad. Hiring manager at major consulting firm. Agree with everything Silver said. Everything is spot on.

It's not the 1990s any more. Most parents with kids heading to college won't realize how much higher education has changed since their days, especially at elite schools. Even if the name of the classes look familiar, how those classes are taught is hugely different now and far more ideologically slanted.

Our best associates and analyst these days are from major state schools but there's also a place for the good and solid LACs too, so don't lose hope. [/quote]

I call bullsh*t.  Most consultants are clowns, but MBB is still running to recruit at HSY and will only take the very, very topped ranked at Flagship State University.[/quote]

You're not understanding and are actually making the same point. Top hs students will find the same success regardless of whether they attend an elite college or a public university. The reason there are more form HSY than from Flagship U is because there are more top hs students attending there, not because they have that name on their diploma.[/quote]

Well yes and no.  As another poster pointed out, it’s still probably at least somewhat true that certain industries draw disproportionately from elite college.  Banking, consulting,  VC/Private equity.  Law, but only for law school, but even then not as much as Silver implies.  No one cares where you went to undergrad as a lawyer.

BUT, the pendulum has been swinging the other direction for some time now, even in these industries.  [b]Where they once only recruited from a tiny handful of colleges, now it’s more broadly.  Partly because these firms have offices all over but mostly because they realize that they are missing out on a lot of talent by ignoring the top of the class at less prestigious colleges.  That second trend is only going to continue.  
[/b]
And btw it doesn’t take anything more than average intelligence to do most of these banker, private equity, VC, and consultant jobs.  Prop/quant trading does require advanced math/coding.  But M&A advisory, brokerage, valuation, leveraged finance, accounting, strategy consulting all barely require algebra and/or good Excel skills.  “Soft” skills are far more important in most of these jobs. Which is why these shops used to recruit heavily from “elite” colleges; they were seen as finishing schools.  The students were smart AND polished.  But that gap has significantly narrowed.  Everyone (employers that is) knows there are tens of thousands who get rejected from elite colleges who are just as smart and accomplished and they are better off taking a top student from a “lesser” school than a middle one from an “elite” one.

[/quote]
+1  Google is a perfect example of this.

They only used to hire from a selected list of colleges. They actually had a list. I saw it.

A few years ago, they dropped that list, and now, they don't even require degrees for software engineers.  They realized that they were indeed missing out on talent by being too restrictive.  I worked along side ivy grads and state grads.  You couldn't really tell the difference.

-former old timer Googler[/quote]

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