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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

Question for the Americans: Does it really matter if you go to an "elite" college or a regular one? Where I'm from, about 8 universities offers roughly comparable Bc.S and Ph.D engineering programs. I'd guess that roughly 90% of the study material is the same. It's the same in many EU countries. No one, but an idiot, would claim that an engineer who studied in Luleå is more qualified than one who studied in Lund because of their choice of schools.

But in the US, if you graduated from (expensive) school X you are objectively more qualified than if you graduated from (cheaper) school Y?

Or if university programs are supposed to be equivalent across universities, cant you just lie and say you went to a brand-name university? Because it doesn't seem fair that someone who couldn't afford an expensive university should have his or her whole career retarded just because of that.

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There is an enormous threshold effect once you hit the "elite" level of colleges, because it's where many industries heavily recruit. It's relatively easy to sleepwalk from Harvard into a career in finance or consulting, very difficult from even a very good state school. "Qualification" has nothing to do with it.

That isn't true across all industries, of course.

> Question for the Americans: Does it really matter if you go to an "elite" college or a regular one?

One of the best engineers I know went to DeVry, which is definitely on the lower tier of schools. And I know a few great programmers that don't even technically have engineering degrees.

That being said, if I had to roll the dice I'd put my money on an MIT, Berkeley, or Caltech grad any day. The minimum standards, your peer group, and your opportunities are much better at an elite school. There are crappy grads from 'elite' schools, but the odds of this are a lot lower. And if you have a lot of talent, you're going to get noticed at the elite schools and have a much easier time finding a way to use your talent than at a lower-tier school.

But why are you contradicting your own anecdote? Do you have any evidence to believe "elite" university graduates are more competent? Seems to me like you and the sibling comments who also would pick the "elite" graduates could influenced by marketing.

But in the real world you don't have to roll the dice. You can ask applicants what courses they took and what their grade scores were. So if you had two applicants with the same grades in front of you, would you still pick the one that went to a brand name university?

> Do you have any evidence to believe "elite" university graduates are more competent?

I guess I'm talking about the difference between a strict rule and playing the odds.]

> You can ask applicants what courses they took and what their grade scores were. So if you had two applicants with the same grades in front of you, would you still pick the one that went to a brand name university?

With no other data, yeah, I'd pick the guy who graduated from MIT with great grades over the DeVry guy with the same grades. But of course my job during hiring is to try to acquire more data, and I swear I tried really, really hard, and sometimes it made the difference.

Computer engineering is probably a special case. It’s easier to demonstrate skills independent of credentials. Eg, a prominent open-source project or successful app likely proves employability as much as a degree.

It’s also true that the value of an elite education decays with time. The studies I’ve seen (someone help me with a cite) seem to indicate that after 10 years, choice of school has very little predictive power for one’s career success.

I think elite schools probably are helpful for elite engineering positions. One would expect a compsci degree from, say, Carnegie Mellon if hiring for, say, compilers or chip design or operating systems. But even then, successful work outside of university can trump the credential.

Objective qualifications are not the primary filter. The biggest advantages are from a higher level of networking, your fellow students are generally from a higher income bracket, have better connections, etc. Similarly the best paying firms tend to focus on the more prestigious universities as well.

All of this leads to a situation where wealthy parents have the education and means to ensure that their children have the advantages to give them a better chance of going the more selective universities, adding another level of systemic injustice based on wealth.

Short answer, no. Employment and wage statistics suggest that simply completing a 4 year course at an accredited school is sufficient to put you into the much smaller unemployment pool. Additionally major has a bigger impact that 'eliteness.'

That said, we were at the College recruiting fair this past spring helping out and one of the problems is that kids from disadvantaged familys do not even apply when they might be successful on the reasoning "Well if I got in, I couldn't afford it so why waste my time?"

We suggested to the representatives from Princeton, Ohio Wesleyn, USC. Stanford, and Brown (and any people we could talk to) that they make visible ways to apply without paying any fees for these kids. We have to make it at least a no-risk proposition for them to apply, in order to get them into the system in the first place. On the proactive side one of the parents was reaching out to the Bill and Melinda Gates trust to see about an application scholarship fund (basically fronting the application cost).

A small nitpick to your comment: the most elite schools in the US are not more expensive. Schools like Harvard and Princeton are effectively free for families at median income. Only very wealthy families pay the "sticker price". When you adjust the out-of-pocket costs by the risk of not graduating, the elite schools are even more affordable, because they offer significantly more supportive environments.

It isn't out-of-pocket costs that keep poorer people out. It's more the difficulty of becoming a highly competitive applicant when you're competing with students who have far more opportunities to develop academic and leadership skills.

If you want to work for an elite company, you don't had a hands unless you go to one of their chosen schools. Lying is always a violation of your employment contract, so probably not the best course of action.

The real ripoff is mid tier private schools.

Exactly, I still have no idea why anyone in the right mind would want to go to a mid tier private school that no one has heard of yet still charges the same tuition as Stanford and Harvard!

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