Wow. That seriously devalues a Harvard diploma in hiring decisions.
Especially since Harvard is easy once you get in. 97.5% graduation rate. It's not like they're flunking out the losers among the legacy admits. UC Berkeley is around 90%.
Especially since Harvard is easy once you get in. 97.5% graduation rate. It's not like they're flunking out the losers among the legacy admits. UC Berkeley is around 90%.
1. Elite schools are motivated to have high graduation rates in order to be competitive in various rankings.
2. Most programs at elite schools are not incentivized to take a tough love approach since it reduces enrollment numbers and ultimately funding. Popular programs get a pass on this.
3. For most elite school grads, if you’re hiring them for their education, then your usually hiring for the wrong thing. The best elite school grads, regardless of major, will get you access to better networks. The median elite school grad will get you someone who is aggressively willing to jump through hoops for rewards. If you don’t know how to capitalize on that, don’t hire these people.
FWIW, some majors at Harvard are definitely not easy — they just cull the weaker students early.
P.S. It shouldn't be a good thing to brutally weed out students. Facts are facts though.
An Engineering degree that really teaches stuff will be difficult. And some students will find it is not for them and leave. Preferably early before they have invested too much in it.
The reason why students exit engineering programs isn't just the material- it can be a terrible teacher (hello physics professor with a thick accent that would insult their students for being stupid), the culture, or being underprepared for the material with no clear path forward to becoming prepared.
What's FST?
In my district, students were required to go through Algebra II and Geometry. We were also required to take three years of math. As a result, kids who took Algebra I in middle School went Algebra II->Geometry->Precal, while those who didn't went Algebra I-> Algebra II->Geometry. One group had the requirements by default, and the other didn't need to decide until senior year.
We required 3 years of high school math, but if you did algebra in 7th grade it counted toward the requirement. A lot of higher tracked kids were done with thier math requirement by the end of 9th grade as a result.
Not even close. It's a brand and it's a good brand ... a very good brand and one of the best and it opens doors. Nobody honestly really cares about what happens behind the scenes the halo is typically that strong.
Look at it this way. If someone gets an Academy Award it's a branding that says 'you are chosen and special for some reason'. Doesn't matter if the film is good or sells the most ticket. Someone has decided it's special (or a production person/director/producer is special) and that's that.
When someone buys a luxury product sure it's most likely a more quality product but that is not what they are paying for or they care about. Not only do they not want to hear it's made in the same factor that makes things for Target but if they did hear they'd probably not care that much either.
> Especially since Harvard is easy once you get in. Did it occur to you that perhaps people rise to what is expected of them and are perhaps more fearful of failing or take advantage of all sorts of help so they do graduate? Or that they work really hard because they are there and are afraid to flunk more so than at a lesser university? It's also obvious that there are probably 10 people that could 'do the work' for those that are admitted. It has never been about the best and smartest at any upper tier college. And there isn't even a way to measure that anyone who thinks top grades and testing is what matters hasn't dealt with enough people in the world who are productive, have achieved but do not test well.
I think that the high graduation rates at Ivy schools are fundamentally misleading in a couple of ways, if your takeaway is that getting a degree there must be easy. First of all, for academic and demographic reasons, most people at these schools would still have overwhelming odds of graduating elsewhere. Broadly speaking, it’s not the “dumbest” kids who flunk out, but those who are least likely to be in college in the first place.
The comparison of Berkeley/MIT/Caltech is interesting in that their attrition rate is much higher than HYP etc. IMO that reflects well on academic standards for the “alt ivies”, but I think the crucial point here is to recognize that academic programs have substantial influence in this regard.
Most obviously, there’s the difference in grading across fields, with STEM being the least forgiving across the board at top institutions. Thus it’s natural that the STEM dominant institutions have higher burnout.
The second, less obvious piece has to do with rules around changing programs, and opportunity cost. Notably most of the Ivy schools (and many alt schools) allow students to switch majors without significant hassle. Since many “soft” majors at Ivy schools are still on the FIRE/Consulting pipeline, the natural course of action for someone who’s underperforming in a more difficult program is to remain in the institution and change their major. This isn’t necessarily true for the STEM-first schools, whose humanities undergrads are less successful winding up in a lucrative east coast industry.
So I’m inclined to think it’s more about incentives than any conscious effort by the schools.
I think it's important to remember that in the big picture of things, very, very few employers care about whether a hire went to Harvard or not.
But as it happens, the ones that do, also wield a lot of power.
I think a lot of these places only care partially about the intellectual prowess of their candidates, but also about a lot of other factors. Socioeconomic background, networks, pedigree, and what not.
Hiring the right kid from Harvard / Yale / Princeton / whatever means that he/she can be a good future resource not just because they're smart, but because they have many other attributes with considerable upsides 20-30 years down the road.
Hell, I'll put it in plain text: I think a lot of elite universities are valued in the job market because they're breeding grounds for rich elites, where the new generation of rulers can mingle and network, which is very useful for future operations. It's about grooming people for succession .
Obviously doesn't hold true for everyone there, but the ones that know how the system is rigged, will follow the rules.
Just Devil's Advocate.
But what if these legacy admits are not as dumb as people think they are?
Just kind of, throwing that possibility out there.
People only use the backdoor when the front one wont work.