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Comment by sndean | Hacker News Reader

> Career services at non-top tier schools are shit.

Doing my undergrad and PhD at an average large state school, I was really lucky to get an internship (and now job), essentially by word of mouth and my PhD advisor.

Now that I'm doing a part-time Masters at an elite-ish (top 10) school, I'm realizing how amazing career services can be. They send out weekly emails saying:

"James Dimon is coming to speak." "Dir. of Engineering from Exxon will be taking questions." "Bring your resume and chat with recruiters." "Women's Society will be hosting Barclays tonight."

My state school had nothing. All of the leg work was done by individual students.

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> I'm realizing how amazing career services can be. They send out weekly emails saying: "James Dimon is coming to speak."

Interesting, and I can see it. But then again, I have to wonder if there is some degree of confirmation bias at play here?

It's likely the staff in Career Services at $ivyLeague are, on average, of a higher skill than their counterparts at $stateSchool. But by how much? Sending an email isn't exactly a massive technical accomplishment, and even being able to send an email saying Mr. Dimon is coming to speak might say a lot more about the name of the school they work for than it does their ability as administrators.

A school like Harvard has a lot more clout in name, money, and connections, in getting someone like Dimon, Blankfein, Zuckerberg etc... to speak(or even pick up the phone) than, say, New Mexico State University.

It may be organizational skills and capability, but I'm willing to bet it's also about name recognition, alumni connections, and availability of resources.

My guess is that it is about political will. If people in career services want a fief where "Guarding their gatekeeping function was of greater concern than doing their job." -- then it will take political capital to fight that. Depending on their incentives, university bosses might not bother.

But the Ivy League schools know that their bread is buttered by their ability to get students into elite positions, so they make sure their career services department gets things right. And have been doing so for so long that these departments do things right on their own.

Sounds like the dean of the college you were in needs to get a new job. I have a very similar profile to yours and my undergrad career services doesn't look too bad compared to my current post-grad career services.

ditto for the amazingness you see across different functions at an elite university. I remember being impressed that any cross cut I made, landscaping, financial aid, administrations, whatever the department was seemed plush with competent people who enjoyed their job.

Unfortunately career services is one of those areas of "administrative overhead" that legislators and pundits love to gripe about when complaining about the increasing costs of a higher education. It's no wonder they can't do as much as they used to.

Side note: It's interesting that you're getting a masters after your phd. Is it in a pretty different field?

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