Auren Hoffman: the brand of your school stopped working
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Anonymous
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Everyone here will argue about where the cliff is (top 5, top 10, top 50) but there is a cliff.
https://auren.substack.com/p/if-you-cant-get-a-job-today-its-your the brand of your school stopped working (mostly) until very recently, american companies hired new grads basically off the US News rankings. top 20 school? you got invited to interview at Google, JP Morgan, and McKinsey. number 50 school? there was a job for you. number 400 school? there was a job for you too -- just less prestigious than the one at the top 50 school. the brand of a top 20 degree is still high. those graduates still get looks. the network is dense and the admissions filter is real. a Stanford degree opens more doors. a less prestigious state-school degree does not. below 20, the system does not work anymore. there is now almost no difference between a #35 school and a #350 school in the eyes of a recruiter. the brand completely collapsed and most parents and students have not been told yet. the high schooler who worked their tail off to get into Tufts University (currently #36 in US News) has basically no real job-market advantage over the student at DePaul University (currently #169) -- even though the difference in median SAT scores between the two schools is roughly 300 points. 300 SAT points used to be the difference between two completely different career arcs. today it is the difference between two students sending the same number of cold applications into the same void. this is not a knock on Tufts. it is not a slight to DePaul. both schools teach their students well. the brands of the schools just converged in the eyes of the people doing the hiring. paying $80K a year for a brand that no longer carries any hiring premium is one of the worst trades in the consumer economy. and that trade is being made by hundreds of thousands of families per year who never got the memo. 
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Anonymous
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Looks at a butterfly clearly labeled [correlation].
"Is this … causation?" |
Anonymous
| Well, damn. If they wrote it on a napkin then it must be true. |
Anonymous
Correlation vs causation is not even relevant here. You just see statistics and a dim little bulb goes off in your head to post about correlation vs causation like a faux smart atutomaton. |
Anonymous
| I'm not sure I really buy this argument. It's plausible, but this piece is just conjecture. I don't see any evidence of it yet. In fact, I'm concerned that the opposite effect is happening and that branding matters more than ever in the face of AI. So, food for thought, for sure, but not sure if I'm convinced. |
Anonymous
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"below 20, the system does not work anymore."
I'm going to wait to see some actual evidence from the author before I start clutching my pearls. |
Anonymous
| +1 to the last two comments. There isn’t even an argument here, it’s just a hypothesis essentially. |
Anonymous
Agreed. Like “the Penn State alumni network has collapsed” and “Georgia Tech alums have the same employment results as alums of Christopher Newport” are claims for which I would like to see some evidence. |
Anonymous
| Students from both schools should quit sending cold applications into the void. It’s not how people get jobs. A significant majority are through networks, colleagues, and professors. Randomly applying through Indeed and LinkedIn are useless, whether you went to Tufts or DePaul. |
Anonymous
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There's truth to the idea that within local job markets, many schools can be sufficiently well thought of to provide good job opportunities within the local area.
Also HR recruiters and departments are not usually where people from elite schools go to work. You can give them rules to follow but if you don't, they may not follow the hiring manager's internal hierarchy. Job experience keyword matching as a hiring screen makes school name even less important. |
Anonymous
| Epically stupid….just a complete load of nonsense. |
Anonymous
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wtf...DePaul recruited the same as Tufts?
I've seen my share of stupidity but this one might have won the award for click bait asininity |
Anonymous
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Sorry but the author's napkin notes are not scientific or compelling.
Didn't Forbes just do a whole survey of F500 employers to determine which colleges they recruited and found the most promising graduates (their so-called "New Ivy" list)? My DS was just recruited for an internship at Bain (he is at Tufts). Bain has a appointed representatives (who are Tufts alums) who specifically recruit Jumbos at Tufts for internships and jobs. They have set aside resources to visit and actively recruit Tufts students. Apparently they do not actively recruit at DePaul. For all Ivy Plus/so-called "New Ivies", there are some recruitment advantages like the above example, but the students need to be motivated and take advantage. |
Anonymous
+1 on the on campus recruiting, which is significant. This analysis is also missing that many schools are strong in certain areas. Tufts, for example, will get kids into IR-related jobs and grad schools in a way that DePaul does not. This is true at other strong IR schools, as well as universities with strong business schools, engineering programs, etc. It may be true that you can get hired at Deloitte from Cornell or from Alabama. But there are so many areas where it isn’t the same. |
Anonymous
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Worth reading his article. We can argue over it but there are valid comments. I work for a F500 in the consulting arm and our people come from all over the place. There is no correlation between fancier schools and leadership. We have some who did go to Ivies (like I did) and we have many more who did not and went to directional state schools. That's my context.
Life has taught me that people with drive and capability and aptitude will succeed regardless of where they went to college. |