I guess the only disadvantage is the apparently unbearable pressure of keeping it to oneself for more than 5 minutes?
>Take-home message number two is the importance of humility. I get seriously annoyed when I hear stories of people from name-brand schools being arrogant towards or looking down on people who weren't fortunate enough to go to name-brand schools.
Thanks Philip "MIT" Guo, but I don't want your sympathy or your company.
The author seems like a tool. That's the thing about name-brand graduates (particularly Harvard), within 5 minutes of meeting someone you will hear about where they went to college, even 10+ years after they graduated. Clearly this is an exaggeration, but definitely has some truth to it.
However I must agree with the OP sentiments, it is way easier for name-brandies to get job interviews/offers. Nevertheless, I am doubtful that the price differential is worth it strictly to help you land a job. I guess I will never know what I missed out on, but faced with ~40k per year in loans I am very glad I chose to go to a state school.
By gratuitously recapping the top 1% of humanity's absurd privilege through a litany of self-congratulating narcissism disguised as advice are we supposed to reach some sort of nirvana?
Given that 4 years of tuition at one of those name-brand schools might run $150k (vs, say, $25k at your local state University), the given advantages don't seem to be worth it. Starting off your career 1/6th of a million dollars in debt in order to cut short your job search by a few months and earn perhaps a few percent higher salary (a lot of which will get swallowed up if you're unlucky enough to jump into the higher tax bracket in that range) seems a dubious decision to me.
If I had gone to one of those "name-brand" schools I suppose I might have been better off in some ways, but right now I'm 100% debt free and that gives me a hell of a lot more options than a diploma from a name-brand University would, in my opinion.
Right on for being debt-free out of college :) The financial argument you make is convincing, but please note that I am not trying to pit private schools against public schools! There are plenty of people who are $150k in debt out of college who went to private universities that are not known as so-called 'name-brand' schools.
If you don't start with the advantage of a name-brand school and work resume then you have less to risk or distract you from your world-beating startup.
yes i totally agree --- actually i've observed that people who graduated from name-brand schools are often more risk-averse and less likely to start their own companies, since they've been trained at a young age to take the safe and steady route through school and life.
regarding your billionaires comment --- please note that nowhere in my article did i say that going to a name-brand school would make you more likely to strike it rich :) the advantages are most prominent when you want to stay within "the system" rather than venturing off into new territory
Maybe those points(which glaringly describe benefits) are no substitute for competency & experience. This sounds more like entitled mediocrity from the author 'privileged' enough to have attended one of these schools.
I've known enough ivy league grads(even post-grads) who would argue against the claims in that blog post. Of course they are proud of the schools that they graduated from but their joy rests primarily in what they learned while they were there.
The author writes as if education ends after graduation.
Why not also write about the 6 figure debt that many graduates walk into their first job with ?
> Maybe those points(which glaringly describe benefits) are no substitute for competency & experience.
Agreed, but the title of my article was the ADVANTAGES of attending a name-brand school, so of course it glaringly describes benefits :) i should probably write a follow-up article talking about disadvantages
> Why not also write about the 6 figure debt that many graduates walk into their first job with ?
sure, that's also a good topic to write about, but please note that many graduates of non-name-brand private schools also walk into their first job with the same 6-figure debt. i'm not trying to contrast private/public schools here.
Good thing when you start a startup you answer to reality, and reality doesn't make estimations of your abilities based on a degree
Of course I agree, if you want to get a job, a name brand degree is going to help. Heck if I was recruiting for a company I'd certainly pay more attention to someone with a better degree (just more attention though). But doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.
Not just that, but many companies focus the large majority of their recruiting efforts on a select few universities. My company, for example, focuses almost entirely on CMU, Berkeley, and Caltech for technical hires.
If our recruiters' actions are any indication, a name-brand school can save your resume from being trashed right off the bat. But it won't land you a job; it just makes the competition more intense.
The author speaks like not going to a "name brand" school will doom somebody or make things exponentially harder. This is simply, empirically not true.
If landing a first job out of college is what worries you, factors which matter a great deal more (for dynamic, high growth, technology companies of any size) are competence, curiosity and credibility.
Speaking from my own experience, somebody from an relatively uknown school but who spent his college and high school years working in the industry (even in small companies people have rarely heard of) and writing code outside of work/school in his spare time, will get noticed, interviewed and hired by top tier employers no worse than somebody coming from a brand-name school.
> Speaking from my own experience, somebody from an relatively uknown school but who spent his college and high school years working in the industry (even in small companies people have rarely heard of) and writing code outside of work/school in his spare time, will get noticed, interviewed and hired by top tier employers no worse than somebody coming from a brand-name school.
I totally agree with you, but one of my points in the article is that (rightly or wrongly, i'm not in a position to judge), somebody from a name-brand school would have a decent chance of getting that same job offer even without putting in nearly as much self-driven dedicated real-world hacking work experience as somebody who didn't have such privileges.
This is not a study. It's also especially susceptible to confirmation bias.
Also, my friend went to a name-brand school and he did not experience any of the listed so-called advantages for which he was applicable. Clearly the article is only a celebration of the author's ego since he fails to cite the number one professional advantage from attending a name-brand school: receiving a world-class education, and becoming more intelligent than coworkers.
[+] [-] jquery|16 years ago|reply
>Take-home message number two is the importance of humility. I get seriously annoyed when I hear stories of people from name-brand schools being arrogant towards or looking down on people who weren't fortunate enough to go to name-brand schools.
Thanks Philip "MIT" Guo, but I don't want your sympathy or your company.
[+] [-] mattiss|16 years ago|reply
However I must agree with the OP sentiments, it is way easier for name-brandies to get job interviews/offers. Nevertheless, I am doubtful that the price differential is worth it strictly to help you land a job. I guess I will never know what I missed out on, but faced with ~40k per year in loans I am very glad I chose to go to a state school.
[+] [-] jdlegg|16 years ago|reply
By gratuitously recapping the top 1% of humanity's absurd privilege through a litany of self-congratulating narcissism disguised as advice are we supposed to reach some sort of nirvana?
[+] [-] known|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|16 years ago|reply
If I had gone to one of those "name-brand" schools I suppose I might have been better off in some ways, but right now I'm 100% debt free and that gives me a hell of a lot more options than a diploma from a name-brand University would, in my opinion.
[+] [-] pgbovine|16 years ago|reply
Right on for being debt-free out of college :) The financial argument you make is convincing, but please note that I am not trying to pit private schools against public schools! There are plenty of people who are $150k in debt out of college who went to private universities that are not known as so-called 'name-brand' schools.
[+] [-] rfreytag|16 years ago|reply
An astonishing number of billionaires never finished college (http://www.pennylicious.com/2006/10/09/billionaire-dropouts/)
[+] [-] pgbovine|16 years ago|reply
yes i totally agree --- actually i've observed that people who graduated from name-brand schools are often more risk-averse and less likely to start their own companies, since they've been trained at a young age to take the safe and steady route through school and life.
regarding your billionaires comment --- please note that nowhere in my article did i say that going to a name-brand school would make you more likely to strike it rich :) the advantages are most prominent when you want to stay within "the system" rather than venturing off into new territory
[+] [-] jgrant27|16 years ago|reply
I've known enough ivy league grads(even post-grads) who would argue against the claims in that blog post. Of course they are proud of the schools that they graduated from but their joy rests primarily in what they learned while they were there.
The author writes as if education ends after graduation.
Why not also write about the 6 figure debt that many graduates walk into their first job with ?
[+] [-] pgbovine|16 years ago|reply
> Maybe those points(which glaringly describe benefits) are no substitute for competency & experience.
Agreed, but the title of my article was the ADVANTAGES of attending a name-brand school, so of course it glaringly describes benefits :) i should probably write a follow-up article talking about disadvantages
> Why not also write about the 6 figure debt that many graduates walk into their first job with ?
sure, that's also a good topic to write about, but please note that many graduates of non-name-brand private schools also walk into their first job with the same 6-figure debt. i'm not trying to contrast private/public schools here.
[+] [-] chrischen|16 years ago|reply
Of course I agree, if you want to get a job, a name brand degree is going to help. Heck if I was recruiting for a company I'd certainly pay more attention to someone with a better degree (just more attention though). But doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.
[+] [-] known|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unalone|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novum|16 years ago|reply
If our recruiters' actions are any indication, a name-brand school can save your resume from being trashed right off the bat. But it won't land you a job; it just makes the competition more intense.
[+] [-] strlen|16 years ago|reply
If landing a first job out of college is what worries you, factors which matter a great deal more (for dynamic, high growth, technology companies of any size) are competence, curiosity and credibility.
Speaking from my own experience, somebody from an relatively uknown school but who spent his college and high school years working in the industry (even in small companies people have rarely heard of) and writing code outside of work/school in his spare time, will get noticed, interviewed and hired by top tier employers no worse than somebody coming from a brand-name school.
[+] [-] pgbovine|16 years ago|reply
> Speaking from my own experience, somebody from an relatively uknown school but who spent his college and high school years working in the industry (even in small companies people have rarely heard of) and writing code outside of work/school in his spare time, will get noticed, interviewed and hired by top tier employers no worse than somebody coming from a brand-name school.
I totally agree with you, but one of my points in the article is that (rightly or wrongly, i'm not in a position to judge), somebody from a name-brand school would have a decent chance of getting that same job offer even without putting in nearly as much self-driven dedicated real-world hacking work experience as somebody who didn't have such privileges.
[+] [-] ekpyrotic|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unalone|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stanleydrew|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sheldonwt|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zackattack|16 years ago|reply
Also, my friend went to a name-brand school and he did not experience any of the listed so-called advantages for which he was applicable. Clearly the article is only a celebration of the author's ego since he fails to cite the number one professional advantage from attending a name-brand school: receiving a world-class education, and becoming more intelligent than coworkers.
[+] [-] unalone|16 years ago|reply