Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In many jobs it’s better to have gone to a local school. I.e. if you’re applying to law firms in Houston, they’d rather a U of Houston law grad with a specialization in oil & gas than a Yale Law grad. Having local connections & knowing the local culture of where you want to work matters a ton.

This is the downside. Even where the schools are local, they’re not local. In Connecticut, for most practicing professionals, it’s better to have a degree from UConn than Yale. You may not have the same theoretical grounding, but very few practicing professionals (or clients) care about that.

Obviously in theoretical fields theory is a plus. And for the very wealthy the inability to do anything practical is a status symbol. So whether this is a plus or minus depends on the individual.

Anonymous wrote:In many jobs it’s better to have gone to a local school. I.e. if you’re applying to law firms in Houston, they’d rather a U of Houston law grad with a specialization in oil & gas than a Yale Law grad. Having local connections & knowing the local culture of where you want to work matters a ton.

Anonymous wrote:Several Princeton alums I know were legacies and got in principally for that reason. They would not have gotten in otherwise. They graduated bottom third of the class in the humanities/social sciences. The best part about Princeton for them was getting in. Going to Princeton and graduating from Princeton was deflating. All of them went on to mediocre careers and bounced around from job to job. In hindsight, Princeton legacy was a millstone around their necks. All three would have been better off charting their own paths. I have seen this with Harvard legacies but know them less well. I have come to the conclusion that bring legacies at these schools is a bit of a curse, with MIT being an exception because they don’t favor legacies in admission and MIT grads are the real deal. The downside of these schools is the weight of expectation for future greatness and more than half of the graduating class will lead unextraordinary lives. Frankly, many Princeton, Harvard, Yale grads are underwhelming and it must be painful to be on the receiving end of that. This is the downside of these schools. People broadly think the degree confers more talent, aptitude and drive than it actually does.

Anonymous wrote:I think there is a ton of discussion on this and other forums about all the benefits that a degree from HYPSM or other elite schools confers. However, I have not seen much discussion about the potential downsides or costs of attending such a school.

When I say costs or downsides, I am not referring to debt you had to take on or the high stress level during undergrad. I am referring to costs and downsides you have experienced once you graduated, it can be related to your career or life overall. I have recently been working with a bright Princeton graduate. I noticed that she did not list Princeton on her LI. We were having a casual convo once and the topic of LI came up. I asked her how come she doesn't list her alma mater on there, and she said that she hates the assumptions people make about her only because of where she went to school, such as being entitled and privileged, when in fact she was first gen and came from a working class family.

This is really the encounter that made me think about what are some of the negative sides of attending one of these schools, especially once you leave, that are not discussed enough, yet I feel is important to talk about given the ongoing obsession with these places.