Reply to University of Pittsburgh vs Grinnell College

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=andrew70912]OP here. I truly appreciate all the responses. Honestly, I was a bit surprised by the overwhelming support for Pitt over Grinnell. Considering that Grinnell is a highly ranked SLAC with an acceptance rate around 11%, compared to Pitt, a rather large public university with an acceptance rate nearly 50%, I expected more people to favor Grinnell.  That said, DC has always been part of large public school systems, so it's not surprising to me that he's not comfortable with a smaller college environment, especially in the middle of nowhere. Ultimately, it's going to be his decision, and as parents, we have to respect that.[/quote]

No skin in this game but bear in mind that at about 15x the size Pitt is bound to have far more boosters on a site such as this. Anyway, you are of course wise to defer to your child. Good luck![/quote]

PP above is correct.  There is sampling bias here on DCUM and it's undoubtedly traceable to scale, geography, and brand awareness.  I'm both a Pitt advocate and the person that said a lot of SLACs lack national brand awareness. That's meant to be a realistic, not an offensive, observation.  Part of my professional background is market research, so I pay a lot of attention to what people know and don't know.  My work also involves working with a lot of non-US people who did grad study in the US at big research universities.  Their brand awareness is more like this:

https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2024

Pitt is 90th on this list FWIW.

A final thought...acceptance rates should be used just for a candidate determining their chances of acceptance.  I don't believe students should go to the most selective school.  They should go where they think they will be most successful based on self-knowledge and the resources associated with their choice.[/quote]
How much does brand awareness matter to most industries? I went to a non-top 5 lac, but every recruiter has heard of my college and talked well of it. No one should be concerned that Susan has heard of their degree.[/quote]

PP.  I have an MBA background.  Brand Awareness here is a bit of shorthand.  It encompasses concepts like:

Awareness - I know this school's name
Familiarity - I feel like I know something about this school beyond it's name
Opinion - I have an opinion about the quality of this school
Consideration - I have a positive impression and this school would be right for me, suitable for my kid, great to have an employee trained by, etc.
(Purchase Decision/Product Selection) -  I choose this school to attend/I'm sending my kid/I would hire a grad from this school over all others

I think we all know that people tend to have impressions of schools.  That's why people come to DCUM - to trade impressions.  For elite jobs, school does matter for some kinds of early jobs. It confers some unmeasurable amount of advantage.  Kind of maddening because people's experiences as individuals/results vary a lot.  Some people gain nothing, others benefit highly.

So...why does brand awareness matter?  Because when you look for a job, you are marketing your work as a product.  You need product features that make the customer interested.  College is one proof point in this exercise.  Let's also admit there's an element of middle class and parenting status competition here.  School brand and alumni ties are part of many people's self-presentation.

State flagships with their high volume of grads create high brand awareness.  It's even possible that the brand might not be elite enough or someone has a negative opinion of it.  But at least they will have heard of it.  This is an advantage but it has unknown worth.

When PP says small SLACs don't get enough love on this board, that's exactly the phenomenon I was trying to explain.  These schools have highest awareness and positive sentiment where their grads live and work in large numbers.  In a lot of arenas, people haven't heard of or don't know any grads.  That doesn't say anything at all about the quality of the education.  It's simply a brand awareness issue.  You can't have a positive opinion of something you don't even know about. That's why advertising is an industry.

I have a belief that many educated people might want to be nationally mobile in case of upward mobility in their profession.  And also that people who leave their home region to go to college might want the option of returning.  These are situations in which brand awareness and favorable opinion help.

If one is in a specialized discipline, a small school can indeed be nationally famous within its industry.  It sounds like people believe this is true of Grinnell and public health.  That is far more relevant than generic PhD attainment rates or USNWR institutional rankings at the all institution level.  Or acceptance rates.  People are also letting Pitt's strengths for pre-med bleed into this discussion.  Which I think is okay but maybe less relevant to OP's kid.  Strength of the alumni network might also be a difficult to measure comparison point.  A small but very helpful (tight) school alumni network can be a big asset.  But first understand whether it really exists.[/quote]

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