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Elite schools still offer far greater advantages than they should, let's not fool ourselves. A lot of hiring companies use elite college as a screen to run sim

Elite schools still offer far greater advantages than they should, let's not fool ourselves. A lot of hiring companies use elite college as a screen to run simple recruiting pipelines. GOOG was notorious for only recruiting from a handful of elite tech schools with very high GPA requirements to filter out resumes. In finance just about every single person I have met in a risk taking role came out of an Ivy program. If you went to top engineering school the best you could do is work for the Ivy guy writing algos for him. If you didn't go to a top engineering school, you probably got recruited for desktop support. I'm sure every industry has a version of this, given the 2 I am familiar with most both do.

whimsicalism 2y ago
> In finance just about every single person I have met in a risk taking role came out of an Ivy program Front-office finance has very strong incentives to recruit from Ivy and other elite institutions beyond mere competence. I don't think it should be assumed to be the same effect at play at Google, etc
- steveBK123 2y ago
  I'm not assuming it is, that is what it was about a decade ago when I was graduating. Question for the Mag7/FAANG employees out there - how many state school engineering programs do you send recruiters to job fairs at? How many state school new grad hires do you make? And I mean broadly speaking state school, not the handful of super selective elite ones. I mean Uconn, Penn State, etc.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    I don't see any problem with companies targeting their recruitment efforts.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Works great when you only need a few people and the effort to filter people is significant on a small team. But, it gets really expensive as a company grows both because you need to pay more and because it forces you to accept worse candidates. Still worth it if you’re in a high reputation industry like investment banking, but not if you’re just looking for talented doctors.
      - whimsicalism 2y ago
        If you're running out of candidates, expand to IIT and China's C9 league before going to UConn or PSU. The problem with doctor cost has much more to do with cartel behavior than Ivy league preference.
        Retric 2y ago
        There’s a huge realm of options between elite colleges and local community schools. If you want a hundred security professionals, an undergraduate from a mid tier state school and a master’s in computer security from GMU etc is a vastly better option. That said, if you want the absolute best early filters fail. Linus Torvalds went to the University of Helsinki. John Carmack went to University of Missouri–Kansas City for two semesters before dropping out. Donald Knuth may teach at Standford, but he got his undergrad and masters from Case Western Reserve University before getting a PHD. Founders are more likely to come from elite schools because it eases fundraising, but talent is distributed widely.
        steveBK123 2y ago
        I mean everyone is free to their opinion, but this line of thinking kind of puts to bed any idea of college as an opportunity for Americans to rise up the social classes / do better than their parents. Majority of kids who are first in their family to go to college go to state schools. They are affordable, and have capacity for millions of seats versus the 10Ks of capacity at the elites. If the answer to not having enough elite grads is to hire H1Bs as your next best option..
    - steveBK123 2y ago
      I was disputing the notion that elite schools aren't important. You are reinforcing that they are. Company recruiting drives the importance of college eliteness, which then makes college admissions weighing extracurriculars drive kids to do these for resume padding It's ultimately future employability that drives all of this
      - whimsicalism 2y ago
        Oh I don't disagree with your main point that it makes a big difference, just adding details
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Man, I still consider UConn and Penn State pretty high-tier as college prestige goes. Most grads, by far, are from lower-prestige schools than those.

whimsicalism 2y ago

> In finance just about every single person I have met in a risk taking role came out of an Ivy program Front-office finance has very strong incentives to recruit from Ivy and other elite institutions beyond mere competence. I don't think it should be assumed to be the same effect at play at Google, etc

steveBK123 2y ago
I'm not assuming it is, that is what it was about a decade ago when I was graduating. Question for the Mag7/FAANG employees out there - how many state school engineering programs do you send recruiters to job fairs at? How many state school new grad hires do you make? And I mean broadly speaking state school, not the handful of super selective elite ones. I mean Uconn, Penn State, etc.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  I don't see any problem with companies targeting their recruitment efforts.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Works great when you only need a few people and the effort to filter people is significant on a small team. But, it gets really expensive as a company grows both because you need to pay more and because it forces you to accept worse candidates. Still worth it if you’re in a high reputation industry like investment banking, but not if you’re just looking for talented doctors.
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      If you're running out of candidates, expand to IIT and China's C9 league before going to UConn or PSU. The problem with doctor cost has much more to do with cartel behavior than Ivy league preference.
      - Retric 2y ago
        There’s a huge realm of options between elite colleges and local community schools. If you want a hundred security professionals, an undergraduate from a mid tier state school and a master’s in computer security from GMU etc is a vastly better option. That said, if you want the absolute best early filters fail. Linus Torvalds went to the University of Helsinki. John Carmack went to University of Missouri–Kansas City for two semesters before dropping out. Donald Knuth may teach at Standford, but he got his undergrad and masters from Case Western Reserve University before getting a PHD. Founders are more likely to come from elite schools because it eases fundraising, but talent is distributed widely.
      - steveBK123 2y ago
        I mean everyone is free to their opinion, but this line of thinking kind of puts to bed any idea of college as an opportunity for Americans to rise up the social classes / do better than their parents. Majority of kids who are first in their family to go to college go to state schools. They are affordable, and have capacity for millions of seats versus the 10Ks of capacity at the elites. If the answer to not having enough elite grads is to hire H1Bs as your next best option..
  - steveBK123 2y ago
    I was disputing the notion that elite schools aren't important. You are reinforcing that they are. Company recruiting drives the importance of college eliteness, which then makes college admissions weighing extracurriculars drive kids to do these for resume padding It's ultimately future employability that drives all of this
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      Oh I don't disagree with your main point that it makes a big difference, just adding details
- vundercind 2y ago
  Man, I still consider UConn and Penn State pretty high-tier as college prestige goes. Most grads, by far, are from lower-prestige schools than those.