Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
On one hand, I think I benefited early on from being “top student at a good school” vs “good student at a top school.” Also, on the employer’s side of the interview table, I feel the “top student at a good school” makes the stronger impression (I work in academia, so this may be field-dependent).

Of all the career paths where going to the top school matters, academia is the one where it matters the most.

Not really. The most important factor in early career academic employment is the quality of the dissertation. Do students at higher ranked schools write better dissertations? Yes, on average, but that has more to do with the individual (and the thesis advisor) than the school.

Beyond the first job (in STEM, usually a temporary position), it’s the quality of the work that matters. Tenure track hiring decisions are difficult and high-stakes (the goal is to hire a colleague who will stay for their whole career), so the role played by the name of the degree-granting institution is very small. The undergraduate institution is basically irrelevant at that point.

I don’t have experience with many other fields, but in academia there is no analogue of the hiring managers I hear about who are only willing to recruit from 3 or 4 Ivy League schools.

In short, if you don't go to one of these highly prestigious PhD programs, you are a damn fool to get a PhD.

LOL, Is that what you think the text you copied from the article means?

If what you really meant by “going to the top school matters” is that there is sharp inequality in academic hiring, such that a relatively small number of PhD-granting institutions (about 20 percent of them) produce a disproportionate share of faculty, that much is well known and uncontroversial, and entirely consistent with the facts about academic hiring. Yes, we have all read the Nature article.

Again, as a factor in hiring, the quality of a candidate’s dissertation far outweighs the name of the PhD-granting institution. I know this (and don’t need to write in bold) because I have hired or recommended dozens of PhDs, and read thousands of applications, and know dozens of other faculty in my field who have done the same. Have I heard of a weaker file being elevated over a stronger one because of where they got their PhD? Yes, but it is exceedingly rare. Far more

Lol. I see you, Budget Socrates.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
On one hand, I think I benefited early on from being “top student at a good school” vs “good student at a top school.” Also, on the employer’s side of the interview table, I feel the “top student at a good school” makes the stronger impression (I work in academia, so this may be field-dependent).

Of all the career paths where going to the top school matters, academia is the one where it matters the most.

Not really. The most important factor in early career academic employment is the quality of the dissertation. Do students at higher ranked schools write better dissertations? Yes, on average, but that has more to do with the individual (and the thesis advisor) than the school.

Beyond the first job (in STEM, usually a temporary position), it’s the quality of the work that matters. Tenure track hiring decisions are difficult and high-stakes (the goal is to hire a colleague who will stay for their whole career), so the role played by the name of the degree-granting institution is very small. The undergraduate institution is basically irrelevant at that point.

I don’t have experience with many other fields, but in academia there is no analogue of the hiring managers I hear about who are only willing to recruit from 3 or 4 Ivy League schools.

In short, if you don't go to one of these highly prestigious PhD programs, you are a damn fool to get a PhD.

LOL, Is that what you think the text you copied from the article means?

If what you really meant by “going to the top school matters” is that there is sharp inequality in academic hiring, such that a relatively small number of PhD-granting institutions (about 20 percent of them) produce a disproportionate share of faculty, that much is well known and uncontroversial, and entirely consistent with the facts about academic hiring. Yes, we have all read the Nature article.

Again, as a factor in hiring, the quality of a candidate’s dissertation far outweighs the name of the PhD-granting institution. I know this (and don’t need to write in bold) because I have hired or recommended dozens of PhDs, and read thousands of applications, and know dozens of other faculty in my field who have done the same. Have I heard of a weaker file being elevated over a stronger one because of where they got their PhD? Yes, but it is exceedingly rare. Far more often, a candidate (maybe one in six or seven?) is hired at a more prestigious institution than the one where they got their PhD. Why? Because they wrote a stronger dissertation than the competition.

Academic hiring differs from other fields in that it hinges on this very specific measure of candidate quality that is ultimately independent of tendentious markers of institutional prestige. That’s why I advise students to maximize the chances that they will produce an excellent thesis, leading to an independent research program. If you knew anything about academia, you’d know this is not remotely the same as “going to the top school” - only a prestige-obsessed drone would think otherwise.

I will give you this: Anyone shallow and stupid enough to accept your proposition that a PhD is only worth getting if it is from an arbitrary list of dcum-approved prestigious institutions is not likely to find success or happiness in academia.

DCUM quantum state where academic jobs are for losers, get a CS degree (bachelors only) BUT ALSO the comings and goings of the handful of PhDs getting appointed at prestige institutions is a reliable metric of school quality.

I must be hallucinating all those Math PhDs at hedge funds.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
On one hand, I think I benefited early on from being “top student at a good school” vs “good student at a top school.” Also, on the employer’s side of the interview table, I feel the “top student at a good school” makes the stronger impression (I work in academia, so this may be field-dependent).

Of all the career paths where going to the top school matters, academia is the one where it matters the most.

Not really. The most important factor in early career academic employment is the quality of the dissertation. Do students at higher ranked schools write better dissertations? Yes, on average, but that has more to do with the individual (and the thesis advisor) than the school.

Beyond the first job (in STEM, usually a temporary position), it’s the quality of the work that matters. Tenure track hiring decisions are difficult and high-stakes (the goal is to hire a colleague who will stay for their whole career), so the role played by the name of the degree-granting institution is very small. The undergraduate institution is basically irrelevant at that point.

I don’t have experience with many other fields, but in academia there is no analogue of the hiring managers I hear about who are only willing to recruit from 3 or 4 Ivy League schools.

In short, if you don't go to one of these highly prestigious PhD programs, you are a damn fool to get a PhD.

LOL, Is that what you think the text you copied from the article means?

If what you really meant by “going to the top school matters” is that there is sharp inequality in academic hiring, such that a relatively small number of PhD-granting institutions (about 20 percent of them) produce a disproportionate share of faculty, that much is well known and uncontroversial, and entirely consistent with the facts about academic hiring. Yes, we have all read the Nature article.

Again, as a factor in hiring, the quality of a candidate’s dissertation far outweighs the name of the PhD-granting institution. I know this (and don’t need to write in bold) because I have hired or recommended dozens of PhDs, and read thousands of applications, and know dozens of other faculty in my field who have done the same. Have I heard of a weaker file being elevated over a stronger one because of where they got their PhD? Yes, but it is exceedingly rare. Far more often, a candidate (maybe one in six or seven?) is hired at a more prestigious institution than the one where they got their PhD. Why? Because they wrote a stronger dissertation than the competition.

Academic hiring differs from other fields in that it hinges on this very specific measure of candidate quality that is ultimately independent of tendentious markers of institutional prestige. That’s why I advise students to maximize the chances that they will produce an excellent thesis, leading to an independent research program. If you knew anything about academia, you’d know this is not remotely the same as “going to the top school” - only a prestige-obsessed drone would think otherwise.

I will give you this: Anyone shallow and stupid enough to accept your proposition that a PhD is only worth getting if it is from an arbitrary list of dcum-approved prestigious institutions is not likely to find success or happiness in academia.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
On one hand, I think I benefited early on from being “top student at a good school” vs “good student at a top school.” Also, on the employer’s side of the interview table, I feel the “top student at a good school” makes the stronger impression (I work in academia, so this may be field-dependent).

Of all the career paths where going to the top school matters, academia is the one where it matters the most.

Not really. The most important factor in early career academic employment is the quality of the dissertation. Do students at higher ranked schools write better dissertations? Yes, on average, but that has more to do with the individual (and the thesis advisor) than the school.

Beyond the first job (in STEM, usually a temporary position), it’s the quality of the work that matters. Tenure track hiring decisions are difficult and high-stakes (the goal is to hire a colleague who will stay for their whole career), so the role played by the name of the degree-granting institution is very small. The undergraduate institution is basically irrelevant at that point.

I don’t have experience with many other fields, but in academia there is no analogue of the hiring managers I hear about who are only willing to recruit from 3 or 4 Ivy League schools.

Yes, really. The most important factor in being hired to an academic job, and where you get hired, is where you got your PhD.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x#Sec9

For faculty with US doctorates, we find that academia is characterized by universally extreme inequality in faculty production. Overall, 80% of all domestically trained faculty in our data were trained at just 20.4% of universities. Moreover, the five most common doctoral training universities—UC Berkeley, Harvard, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford—account for just over one in eight domestically trained faculty (13.8%; Fig. 2a and Extended Data Table 3). Even when disaggregated into domains of study, 80% of faculty were trained at only 19–28% of universities (Fig. 2b).

There is a steep prestige hierarchy - you are very unlikely to get hired at a more prestigious institution than the one where you got your PhD:

Faculty hiring networks in the United States exhibit a steep hierarchy in academia and across all domains and fields, with only 5–23% of faculty employed at universities more prestigious than their doctoral
university (Fig. 6a,b and Extended Data Table 4). Measured by the extent to which they restrict such upward mobility, these prestige hierarchies are most steep in the Humanities (12% upward mobility) and Mathematics and Computing (13%) and least steep in Medicine and Health (21%; Fig. 6b).
...
Among the 1,070 departments that are ranked top-10 in any field, 248 (23.2%) top-10 slots are occupied by departments at just five universities—UC Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia; fully 252 universities (64%) have zero top-10 departments. These findings show that, both within individual fields and across entire domains, faculty placement power is highly concentrated among a small set of universities, complementing the already enormous concentration of faculty production among the same set of universities (Fig. 2). Together, these patterns create network structures characterized by a closely connected core of high-prestige universities that exchange faculty with each other and export faculty to—but rarely import them from—universities in the network periphery (Extended Data Fig. 2).

In short, if you don't go to one of these highly prestigious PhD programs, you are a damn fool to get a PhD.

Anonymous wrote:As I said to my daughter this morning, the thing about Harvard is it's full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. Do any of you think a cocktail party full of high-achievers is a fun place to be? Because I have been to many and I would like to point out it is not.

A focus on zero-sum competition and rank, agonizing over the difference between a 1540 Sat and an 1580... Packing a "well-rounded" resume with a focus on creating a polished 18 year old product... Everything about that process creates deeply confirmist little worker bees. Who are also boring. Learning, real academic learning, the pursuit of real knowledge, is about research and debate. It's not competitive, and it is its own reward.

I'm still not sure where the college that caters to those kind of students is, and I'm not sure my daughter is one of those students. But I'd like to find it.

Basically, most schools “where fun goes to die,” that aren’t known for being hyper-competitive and nasty, and that are unpopular here.

So, Rice, WUSTL, University of Rochester, for a start.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As I said to my daughter this morning, the thing about Harvard is it's full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. Do any of you think a cocktail party full of high-achievers is a fun place to be? Because I have been to many and I would like to point out it is not.

A focus on zero-sum competition and rank, agonizing over the difference between a 1540 Sat and an 1580... Packing a "well-rounded" resume with a focus on creating a polished 18 year old product... Everything about that process creates deeply confirmist little worker bees. Who are also boring. Learning, real academic learning, the pursuit of real knowledge, is about research and debate. It's not competitive, and it is its own reward.

I'm still not sure where the college that caters to those kind of students is, and I'm not sure my daughter is one of those students. But I'd like to find it.

`

Harvard isn't full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. To assume that no Harvard student values real academic learning is a bizarre rationalization.

+1 Indeed, most are genuinely interested in some field or fields. But....many are also hypercompetitive. Which is good in some ways, and definitely not good in others.

What am I rationalizing, strangely defensive person?

Not going to Harvard?

I also did not say that every student who went to Harvard didn't value academic learning. What a bizarre interpretation of the text. However, if there's one thing reading YA fiction written by ivy league graduates has taught me, for some, everything, literally everything, is a selection game where your oppressed protagonist is both the cleverest person in the room and also the one everyone is jealous of for their specialness.

Of course, novels like The Magicians are not in and of themselves representative of an entire population. And yet.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As I said to my daughter this morning, the thing about Harvard is it's full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. Do any of you think a cocktail party full of high-achievers is a fun place to be? Because I have been to many and I would like to point out it is not.

A focus on zero-sum competition and rank, agonizing over the difference between a 1540 Sat and an 1580... Packing a "well-rounded" resume with a focus on creating a polished 18 year old product... Everything about that process creates deeply confirmist little worker bees. Who are also boring. Learning, real academic learning, the pursuit of real knowledge, is about research and debate. It's not competitive, and it is its own reward.

I'm still not sure where the college that caters to those kind of students is, and I'm not sure my daughter is one of those students. But I'd like to find it.

`

Harvard isn't full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. To assume that no Harvard student values real academic learning is a bizarre rationalization.

+1 Indeed, most are genuinely interested in some field or fields. But....many are also hypercompetitive. Which is good in some ways, and definitely not good in others.

Anonymous wrote:As I said to my daughter this morning, the thing about Harvard is it's full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. Do any of you think a cocktail party full of high-achievers is a fun place to be? Because I have been to many and I would like to point out it is not.

A focus on zero-sum competition and rank, agonizing over the difference between a 1540 Sat and an 1580... Packing a "well-rounded" resume with a focus on creating a polished 18 year old product... Everything about that process creates deeply confirmist little worker bees. Who are also boring. Learning, real academic learning, the pursuit of real knowledge, is about research and debate. It's not competitive, and it is its own reward.

I'm still not sure where the college that caters to those kind of students is, and I'm not sure my daughter is one of those students. But I'd like to find it.

`

Harvard isn't full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. To assume that no Harvard student values real academic learning is a bizarre rationalization.

Anonymous wrote:As I said to my daughter this morning, the thing about Harvard is it's full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. Do any of you think a cocktail party full of high-achievers is a fun place to be? Because I have been to many and I would like to point out it is not.

A focus on zero-sum competition and rank, agonizing over the difference between a 1540 Sat and an 1580... Packing a "well-rounded" resume with a focus on creating a polished 18 year old product... Everything about that process creates deeply confirmist little worker bees. Who are also boring. Learning, real academic learning, the pursuit of real knowledge, is about research and debate. It's not competitive, and it is its own reward.

I'm still not sure where the college that caters to those kind of students is, and I'm not sure my daughter is one of those students. But I'd like to find it.

This.