Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

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Sadly there are still jobs that have firm requirements of "Top 20 schools" based often on pretty subjective metrics. UF and FSU and Auburn are great schools and the quality of education there is probably comparable to that of Harvard, but that almost doesn't matter.

I went to a decidedly unfancy university (WGU), I think it was fine, and then I went to a slightly fancier University for graduate school (University of York, UK), but I still didn't get callbacks for the Wall Street jobs that I applied for [1]. Obviously there are thousands of factors that could lead to me not getting a callback, but eventually one recruiter outright told me that I shouldn't waste my time applying because I didn't go to a "top 20 school", and to "try working for a bank instead".

Keep in mind, I'm hardly a "fresh graduate", I have like 13 years of software engineering experience and have worked at a FAANG and other very large corporations and have spoken at multiple technical conferences. For most companies that's more than good enough (I actually worked at Apple when I was still a dropout), but the Wall Street world seems to care a lot more about yuppie credentials.

What I'm getting at is there are some careers where the quality of the education itself is secondary. They want to see some fancy names on the resume and it really doesn't matter if you're "qualified". It's not fair, it's arguably classist, but they didn't ask me when making these policies.

[1] Though some people tell me that I might have dodged a bullet with that one.

> UF and FSU and Auburn are great schools and the quality of education there is probably comparable to that of Harvard, but that almost doesn't matter.

What is that based on? (Also, why those particular schools?)

Here's one way to look at it:

To learn something, some people want to learn from the best in the world and to study with the best in the world. They want to change the world and want to maximize their potential; they want professors and fellow students who can challenge them as much as possible, who can take them as far as possible.

Some people are more oriented toward a less maximizing path, which is fine - maybe more about learning what is in the textbook from a decent professor. Possibly they indeed wouldn't benefit from Harvard. I suspect when people say things like 'Auburn's education is the same quality as Harvard's', they mean that the kind of education they got at Auburn wouldn't be better at Harvard. Maybe that's true, but Harvard offers something far greater, not available at Auburn. It's a chance to work with (and build relationships with) the very best minds in the world, some of the best in human history.

Think of that kid in your high school who just blew away every class, even the hardest ones; who found other things outside school or at nearby colleges to challenge them. That kid wants to be around other kids like them, who challenge them, and around professors who can make the most out of their potential and passions.

> What is that based on? (Also, why those particular schools?)

I don't have any hard data, but I've worked with a ton of people who have been to a bunch of different schools, including Ivy League and they weren't appreciably better engineers than the people who went to decent state schools.

I mentioned those particular schools because the parent comment mentioned them.

> It's a chance to work with (and build relationships with) the very best minds in the world, some of the best in human history. > Think of that kid in your high school who just blew away every class, even the hardest ones; who found other things outside school or at nearby colleges to challenge them. That kid wants to be around other kids like them, who challenge them, and around professors who can make the most out of their potential and passions.

Ok, no, I call bullshit, that's a common thing I hear about expensive yuppie schools but I don't buy it. The really hard decent students can easily be priced out because they don't want $300,000 of student loan debt. Not everyone can get scholarships.

And "best minds in the world"? "best in human history"? Really? Think of nearly any politician that you think is a moron (I won't name names), and they probably went to an Ivy League school. I think it's utterly ridiculous to assume that only rich yuppies with rich yuppie parents are the "best minds in the world".

This is elitist horseshit, and frankly I think it's harmful. It's an absurdly reductive and honestly naive view of the world, that really only exists to have some feeling of smug superiority about how smart you are because you went to a school that was paid for by your multimillionaire parents or you got into $300,000 of debt to learn the same shit you could learn at a decent state school.

ETA:

Sorry, I was wrong, people that are going to college aren't "yuppies" because they're not professional yet. Their parents might be yuppies, or just rich.

You're right, but it's a little misleading to through around stuff like this without basically calling out that it's only big law and investment banking that behave this way. I don't think any other industries are the same.

When I was at Jet.com, there was a somewhat controversial decision made by the CEO that the new "category specialists" they were hiring had to be from a "Top 20 school". They of course didn't define what that meant, but it did a good job pissing off pretty much everyone.

I agree it's primarily finance and law, but I don't think they have a monopoly on elitist snobbery.

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