5 ms·
> not told to "just go to the best college no matter what" > majoring in Underwater Basket Weaving was not a great idea from a financial point of view I've me
by crdb 9y ago
> not told to "just go to the best college no matter what"
> majoring in Underwater Basket Weaving was not a great idea from a financial point of view
I've met many people in places like McKinsey or Goldman Sachs (i.e. "elite" high paying jobs) with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge in Philosophy, English, Arch & Ant or Theology (in "decreasing usefulness"). Many more than, say, graduates in accounting or business administration from Manchester University, although a few might make it. Hell, I know a Harvard philosophy major who co-authored a very useful Haskell library.
My conclusions from anecdotal evidence:
- these universities, regardless of degree, encourage very
hard, focused work, and teach and encourage critical thinking; both critical thinking and hard focused work are useful in all jobs;
- people overestimate the "technical" portion of most jobs, and how easily it can be taught (a law conversion course takes a mere few months in the UK, and banks routinely train thousands of fresh unqualified graduates every year);
- people overestimate the marketability of skills taught in most "useful" degrees especially outside its area of specialisation (e.g. is a medical major more qualified a strategy consultant than a philosophy major?);
- you gain access to a vast alumni network and its reputation (which includes world leaders, the CEO of the companies you apply to, etc.);
- the selective nature of admissions sends the market a signal about your "intrinsic" quality.
(edited to be more readable on mobile)
Obviously, if you want to become a specialist and you are sure of it, it is a better idea to study that field in the best place you gain admission to. But that has not been true of the vast majority of my former classmates.
In fact I watched a strange inversion whereby those who were certain they wanted to be engineers are now at McKinsey or banks and those who were certain they wanted to make tons of money in business are now working in "hard" engineering jobs (structural engineering, fluid dynamics for car companies, etc.).
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoThis would be more convincing if McKinsey and GS were genuinely considered to be producing something of value. The reality is - more nuanced. Certainly there are many who consider both GS and McKinsey to be very bad things indeed, and not in any way a professional niche that high quality graduates should aspire to. Perhaps there may be more to "intrinsic quality" than an obsessive work ethic and social connections? My experience has been the opposite to yours. People who don't have technical degrees but have been trained to consider themselves experts in business management generally overestimate their own skills, and vastly underestimate the skills and insights of those (nominally) "under" them.
- crdb 9y agoAh, but I'm not saying that Ivy/Oxbridge grads make better employees all else being equal (in particular salary). I'm specifically saying that on a financial/job hunting basis, it makes more sense to pick a prestigious university and "useless" degree than a "useful" degree at a non-prestigious university, in aggregate. When you are on the other side, other variables come into play. For example, elite grads might be generally overvalued and for the same money you can get a much better community college drop out (who is on the tail end of his own talent distribution), because the market undervalues his skills. This is something that comes up a lot in the Valley and the last team I've personally hired was about half no-degree and half not-famous-degree, so you can guess my position (we hired based on technical capability and more or less ignored CVs). Whether or not I agree with you on Goldman and McKinsey's intrinsic value adding capability, I have observed that people doing a stint at either are basically guaranteed nice employment for life, fast track to the best management jobs, get a premium on hiring, and so on. Which is what the OP was concerned with.
- cstejerean 9y agoI think there may be some hidden variables there. For example the kids of a VP at a large company may very well go to Oxford and study philosophy and then get a job at McKinsey, but how much of that was based on the family connections rather than anything to do with the philosophy curriculum at Oxford. And some of those kids get into the ivy schools because their parents went there or made large donations, so again it may have more to do with family and socio-econimic background rather than Ivy League education. If you don't come from the right background I'm not sure that studying philosophy at Oxford is the best move.
- aninhumer 9y agoPlease don't use code blocks like this. They force horizontal scrolling for long lines which makes your list of points very difficult to read (if not impossible on mobile).
- crdb 9y agoIs there a better way to create a bullet list on HN? I googled and found this. Still time to edit.
- grzm 9y ago- In my experience, - I find that just using a hyphen or asterisk for the bullet - and two newlines to separate items works well enough. There isn't any specific formatting that will be rendered as an html list.
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- arethuza 9y ago"a law conversion course takes a mere few months in the UK" For a start there isn't a single legal system in the UK - Scotland has a different process for qualifying than England does and NI and Wales might have different processes. In Scotland to qualify as a lawyer if you already have a first degree in another subject requires 2 years to get an LLB and then another year to get a postgraduate diploma in legal practice (both full time) then 2 years training at a law firm. From what I can see in England the equivalent of the 2 years LLB takes 1 year but you still have to get a postgraduate qualification and do the training. The Law Society for England and Wales says 4 years to qualify as as solicitor if you have first degree. https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/law-careers/becoming-a-solicitor/qualifying-as-a-solicitor/ https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/law-careers/becoming-a-solicit... Qualifying as a barrister (or advocate here in Scotland) ironically may take less time - but that's exceptional. NB My wife did the "conversion course" route here in Scotland and it took 5 year and she went on to be called to the bar as an Advocate.
- crdb 9y agoSure, I was just going in the spirit of the comment. I have a few friends from degrees ranging from philosophy and music to physics who did a few months somewhere in the City and then were working relatively well paid corporate jobs ("relatively" because London just eats everything until you make enormous amounts of money). I'm sure they were useful in some degree to the legal departments they entered after "graduating" from that course...
- stillhere 9y agoI know someone who went to NYU who now makes $15/hr and is $90k in debt because they majored in media studies. I am not trying to make fun of them as I love them but they believed and still legitimately believe the lie that going to an Ivy League should have been enough for them to live comfortably. Problem is that doesn't matter when your thesis is literally based on playing Second Life. Not that there's no value in her thesis but the reality is people are not hiring for that.
- phdp 9y agoNYU is not an Ivy League school though.
- creepydata 9y agoSpecifically - the Ivy League is an athletic conference and it's members are are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale.
- phdp 9y agoNYU is not an Ivy League school though.
- thatwebdude 9y agoA poor choice in majors is still sometimes a poor lifestyle choice in any school, Ivy League or not.
- rlanday 9y agoBelieving that NYU is an Ivy League school betrays a lack of understanding of the American class system.