

Brown, Cornell and MIT Grads not considered good enough by recruiters - trustfundbaby
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/11/for-top-employers-brown-c_n_807566.html

======
weel
The article starts, "Think your Brown, Cornell or MIT degree carries weight in
the professional world?" But what on earth is the "professional" world? "Top
law firms, consulting agencies and investment banks."

In other words, what is being said here is that employers that emphasize
pedigree and polish like to hire from schools that emphasize pedigree and
polish.

Next week, somebody can publish a study saying that employers of, say,
computer programmers, actuaries, and petroleum engineers actually love to hire
from MIT, Caltech, Cornell, or CMU. And that would surprise me equally little.

~~~
mechanical_fish
From Gladwell's _Outliers_ :

 _In the 1940s and 1950s the old-line law firms of New York operated like a
private club. They were all headquartered in downtown Manhattan, in and around
Wall Street, in somber, granite-faced buildings. The partners at the top firms
graduated from the same Ivy League schools, attended the same churches, and
summered in the same oceanside towns on Long Island. They wore conservative
gray suits. Their partnerships were known as "white-shoe" firms – in apparent
reference to the white bucks favored at the country club or a cocktail party,
and they were very particular in who they hired. As Erwin Smigel wrote in_ The
Wall Street Lawyer _, his study of the New York legal establishment of that
era, they were looking for:

"lawyers who are Nordic, have pleasing personalities and ‘clean-cut’
appearances, are graduates of the ‘right schools’, have the ‘right’ social
background and experience in the affairs of the world, and are endowed with
tremendous stamina. A former law school dean, in discussing the qualities
students need to obtain a job, offers a somewhat more realistic picture. ‘To
get a job [students] should be long enough on family connections, long enough
on ability or long enough on personality, or a combination of these. Something
called acceptability is made up of the sum of its parts. If a man has any of
these things, he could get a job. If he has two of them, he can have a choice
of jobs; if he has three, he could go anywhere.’"_

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. At least nowadays you don't
necessarily have to be white, male, or non-Jewish, and the definition of _Ivy
League_ has broadened a bit, but this clubbishness is how it's been for a
century and more. What, you thought people battled each other to get into
Harvard because Harvard's graduate TAs were such talented and dedicated
teachers relative to the competition?

~~~
weel
Precisely. I actually have another comment to make, though, which is about the
impedance mismatch between Engineering School culture and Ivy League culture.

I graduated Caltech in 2005. Caltech may be the best example of a school with
extremely high academic standards but mediocre credibility with the "white
shoe" crowd. Many of my fellow Caltech alums are descended from parents who
are highly educated and moderately affluent, but also immigrants and/or Asian
and/or Jewish and/or from less fashionable parts of the US (say, Idaho). On
top of that, many of us display personality types most easily described as
"geeky."

Caltech alums end up in many industries, but everywhere they tend to converge
on rather specialized, analytical work. I know two who went into politics...
to do statistics for campaigns. I heard of one that went to law school... and
became a patent attorney. The ones in finance tend to do quantitative modeling
or computer systems. Many, of course, ended up in private sector R&D (biotech,
computer programming, engineering, what-have-you). And about half of us went
to grad school, often to pursue a career in academia.

Now one reason for this pattern may be that white-shoe firms are not
interested in hiring eccentric geeks as much as they are in attracting "well
rounded" Ivy League folks. But an equally important reason is _that the
eccentric geeks are often not very interested in "white shoe" jobs_ , or _at
least don't look down on more specialized work_.

That may be hard for the "white shoe" recruiters to understand. I recall
talking to an acquaintance for whom being a McKinsey consultant would be the
epitomy of career and life success, surpassable only by joining the Dutch
foreign service... and who was almost offended at the idea that I was not in
the least interested in such prestigious occupations.

I can easily imagine this attitude rubbing the white shoe folks the wrong way.
"What, you are actually considering a career in kernel hacking (or genome
hacking, or whatever) as a viable alternative to joining our glitzy band of
Masters of the Universe? You must be, like, arrogant or something."

------
tonydev
What is the point of this article?

There are some 2,000+ four year colleges in the US, and "recruiters" are only
interested in grads from 3 or 4 of them? I'm a graduate researcher at the MIT
Media Lab, no one I know or work with is even interested in job fairs,
recruiters, etc.

That said, any company that won't look at me because I'm from MIT and not
Princeton isn't the kind of place I would want to work anyway. I'm sure this
sort of discrimination makes for great internal culture.

~~~
bane
_That said, any company that won't look at me because I'm from MIT and not
Princeton isn't the kind of place I would want to work anyway. I'm sure this
sort of discrimination makes for great internal culture._

Would you count Google in that statement -- with their notoriously
discriminating hiring practices with respect to schooling?

~~~
tonydev
The handful of people I know at Google are from a variety of academic
institutions, ASU, UW, Stanford, and MIT to name a few. Most importantly,
they're all passionate, creative hackers who take pride in their work – not
riding the prestige of their education.

The answer directly, if google decided folks from Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech,
MIT were not good enough while those from Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and
Harvard were - then yes, I would count Google in my statement.

~~~
bane
That's good to hear -- and sounds like an improvement.

I was having dinner with a coordinator of university job fairs about a year
ago and she commented that Google and Facebook were among the worst companies
she's ever dealt with respect to hiring practices due to a very large school
bias. Many of the schools she works with complains that their students don't
even get their resumes looked at. She also note that Microsoft used to be one
of those as well, but with Google and FB vacuuming up everybody else they've
had to cast their net a bit wider.

Perhaps times are changing?

Anecdotally, the most brilliant people I've ever worked with came from either
state schools or CMU or Stanford or MIT (specifically). I've had very little
success finding top-notch folks from other established Ivies. Not sure why
that is.

I think pg's essay on schools really helps bring some data to that though. It
really is the individuals that count.

------
PostOnce
I graduated from a community college, heh. College is a way for me to maintain
social approval* while I learn, and I will then use my knowledge to build my
own company & fortune. Working for other people is a guaranteed way to stay
middle class.

If you're worried about who is going to hire you, you're worrying about the
wrong thing. Jobs are a way to obtain money, but not the best way to obtain
it, if you're smart.

*You can be in college and not doing much and people think it's respectable, but if you're at home not working, hacking all day, people think you're lazy and "spending all day on the computer", despite laying the foundation for future wealth.

~~~
m0th87
There is a subtle sense of superiority in this comment over people who simply
want a job. Which is ironic given your identification of the disrespect people
have toward the full-time hacker.

~~~
sruffell
Not only that, but he _graduated_. I fear it may already be too late for him:

<http://www.satirewire.com/news/0006/satire-ellison.shtml>

~~~
PostOnce
If you think I have any level of respect at all for community college, or the
education system in the United States in general, you are misinformed.

A poorly trained ape could graduate from any community college in this
country. Fact.

I had hoped you would glean from my comment: "If a Cornell grad can't find a
job, and I just went to a lowly community college, I must be fucked, right?"
NOT SO.

~~~
sruffell
All kidding aside--and I was just kidding with my previous comment--while I
think there is _vast_ room for improvement in how people are moved through the
education system I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't have any level of
respect for it or community colleges in particular.

I graduated from high school two years early and started attending the local
community college before moving to a 4-year university. My experiences were
that yes, the day classes were like an unfortunate extension of high school,
but the night classes were generally filled with people who were working
during the day and serious about their time in class at night. Compared to the
4-year university, the feel was more collaborative and less competitive. In
fact, one of my instructors during those community college days (Don Heidt,
I'm thinking of you) was among the best I had. I _still_ think about things
that he said in class on a regular basis, and that was ~19 years ago.

So even though "a poorly trained ape could graduate from any community college
in this country", I believe community colleges DO provide opportunities for
students to better themselves. The problem is that community colleges, since
they aren't selective, don't make great differentiators of applicants if
you're not interested in trying to determine for yourself how capable someone
is.

------
john_horton
The study (which strangely isn't available on SSRN or the author's website)
appears to be about recruiting law and b-school grads.

I wouldn't be that surprised if her results are true. Whenever there are lots
of applicants and lots of employer uncertainty about applicant quality,
screening on things like credentials that correlate (however weakly) with
average ability can still be "rational."

To give an example, assume that GMAT score is a) unobservable by employers and
b) perfectly predictive of future performance in the firm. If HBS grads have a
mean 1 point advantage over Sloan grads, it makes sense to lexically prefer
HBS to Sloan grads, even though slightly less than half the time the employer
will make the wrong (ex post) hiring choice.

This dynamic also tends to be self-reinforcing. If credentials are all that
matter to future employers (and all schools cost the same), then all students
will try to attend the most prestigious school they can. If admissions
committees are not pure coin flips, then it makes sense for employers to
believe that the HBS/Sloan "distinction" means something.

------
jedc
As usual, the HuffPo article is much less informative than the paper itself.
From the professor's site here:
[http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera...](http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera_lauren.aspx#research)

The following is the abstract:

 _Although a robust literature in sociology and economics has demonstrated a
positive relationship between education and socio-economic attainment, the
processes through which formal schooling yields enhanced economic rewards
remains less clear. Employers play a crucial role in explaining the economic
and social returns to formal schooling. Yet, little is known about how
employers, particularly elite employers, use and interpret educational
credentials in real-life hiring decisions.

In the following article, I analyze how hiring agents in top-tier professional
service firms use education to recruit, assess, and select new hires. I find
that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to
solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that
elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Employers privileged
candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top 5) university affiliation
and attributed superior cognitive, cultural, and moral qualities to candidates
who had been admitted to such an institution, regardless of their actual
performance once there. However, attendance at a super-elite university was
insufficient for success in resume screens. Importing the logic of elite
university admissions, firms performed a secondary resume screen on the status
and intensity of candidates’ extracurricular accomplishments and leisure
pursuits.

I discuss these findings in terms of the changing nature of credentialism and
stratification in higher education to suggest that participation in formalized
extracurricular activities has become a new credential of moral character that
has monetary conversion value in labor markets._

Key points:

* she looked at top-tier "professional service firms"

* separated out the "super-elite" schools

* found that just going to a super-elite school didn't mean much; you needed to have _done_ something there

------
gnok
The abstract of the paper the article quotes is here:
<http://tinyurl.com/6bgtwu4> [sciencedirect.com link; too long to put here]

There's no real mention of any university names. This line caught my eye:
"However, attendance at a super-elite university was insufficient for success
in resume screens. Importing the logic of elite university admissions, firms
performed a secondary resume screen on the status and intensity of candidates’
extracurricular accomplishments and leisure pursuits."

So it sounds like these 'recruiters' don't just look at what school you come
from, but also look at what else you've done outside school during your years.
Sounds about fair to me. HuffingtonPost article sounds like it was written in
a rather sensational manner.

------
tmorton
The recruiters in this article are hiring for "top law firms, consulting
agencies and investment banks." In those jobs, your number one priority is
selling to the wealthy and/or powerful, so this sort of selection makes
perfect sense. The recruiters are looking for a set of social skills and
connections, not hard skills.

This has been going on forever, and there really isn't any way to "fix the
problem." People - including the wealthy - are simply more comfortable with
others who share a cultural background. Sales jobs have always sought people
with preexisting connections to potential clients.

------
ZeroComplete
I signed up for this. Having just completed the recruiting process as a senior
engineering student at Cornell trying to go into some of the industries listed
I call BS.

I could expound for a while on this but to make it brief:

1) Undergrad recruiting for finance and consulting out of Cornell is not as
good as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton but it is very easy to break into these
industries coming from Cornell compared to coming from any state level
schools.

2) It is not an old boys club, anyone can break into the industry from any
background. A number of people I spoke with in industry failed to get a job
out of college in the area they wanted. Persistence and networking can land
you an analyst level banking job in less than three years after graduation. If
you want to be a banker you'll do it.

3) A number of programmers I knew wanted to go into the financial sector,
partially because of pay, partially because they got tired of geek.

4) I had a lab partner that played on the football team. His day started at
6am with videos (for the team), then breakfast, then weight lifting, then
classes/lab, then practice. He didn't settle down until 9pm at which time he
could actually start on his homework. His GPA was crap but I find it pretty
ignorant for a bunch of hackers to diminish those who pursue athletics in
college based upon their own personal bias. Athletics indicates someone
willing to work 15+ hours a day, and mind you standard industry work weeks
vary from 80 to 130 hours (looking into Moelis and UBS LA if you doubt the 130
hours).

5) My understanding and experience implies that "recruiters" are less involved
with the process than they let on. Cornell, and most other high ranked
schools, have career services offices that coordinate with a staffing member
at the hiring firm. That staffing member will take resumes from the school and
send them to employees working the position that is being hired for. While
this may generate an element of bias based upon existing employees it is not
one to be faulted too heavily when taking a pragmatic standpoint (look at the
biases displayed in this thread regarding community college and athletes)

7) I have ~18 resume drafts saved on my computer completed over a 3 months
period, ~50 cover letter drafts from a 1 month period, I applied to a total of
49 positions, and it took me a total of 4 months from start (beginning of last
summer) to finding a job. I beat my target base salary by 30%, I beat my
target max potential bonus by 30%, my promotion schedule works out to be twice
as fast as I anticipated, and I will have a much more reasonable work week
than those listed above. I am an average to below average applicant (from a
resume only perspective) in a down job market, recognizing this I put in a
great more effort than my peers that are just starting to look.

@PostOnce: I worked two jobs to support myself through community college. We
acted as a feeder college for a Top 10 engineering school. It eventually
trickled back from transfer students that the courses at my community college
were harder than the equivalents at the Top 10 school. EVERY course in math,
science, physics, and engineering transferred completely to the top
engineering school and I received FULL credit upon arrival at Cornell for my
previous coursework. In response to your lack of respect for community college
I offer this: to discount an institution, firm, or individual based upon a
potentially baseless or anecdotal prejudice is naive at best and moronic at
worst. Maybe you simply wouldn't have been able to take advantage of community
college and it is truly a lack of respect for yourself?

Anywho, I've ranted enough.

------
mindcrime
Luckily this is a self-correcting problem. When the grads from all the "second
tier" schools, ranging from MIT to the various community colleges, start their
own firms and ultimately eat these guys' lunch, it'll become a moot point.

------
lefstathiou
There arent many schools, aside from maybe stanford, that can rival the
combination of top notch talent and culture of innovation MIT has nurtured
(and I never went there). Any company worth working for would be stupid to
ignore this.

I've always had a problem with articles citing the famous "some people" (in
this case "some recruiters"). Yea, there are "some (really stupid) people" out
there in the world that behave in incoherent, irrational ways and make stupid
business decisions. We dont need to write articles about these people and
their stupid prejudices.

------
maigret
Why is MIT so underrated against Harvard? I thought the MIT would teach top
computer skills that are so valuable today in banking. Is the CS program in
Harvard so much better?

Also looking at the alumni, MIT has produced quite a few successful people in
banking
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_Institute...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology_alumni#Finance_and_Consulting)
. Of course there are much more Harvard alumni getting at this level also.

~~~
mynameishere
These are companies that hire out their employees as powerpoint-generating
consultants for x00 dollars an hour and need to be able to say that they all
went to Harvard/Yale/Princeton. I'm pretty sure it's the kind of racket MIT
students aren't very interested in anyway.

------
roel_v
From the article: "According to a forthcoming paper written by Northwestern
assistant professor Lauren Rivera, recruiters at top law firms, consulting
agencies and investment banks" ...

Of course, it has been like that for years. I'm not sure what the news is,
everybody who goes looking for these jobs (and knows what they're talking
about) knows it, too.

------
bane
<http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

------
Alex3917
For what it's worth, crew and student government have always been the two
most-valued extracurriculars. If you're a good rower then you can get pretty
much any job regardless of which college you attended.

~~~
tomjen3
As somebody who has never been in the US, allow me to scream from the top of
my lungs: why?

What possible benefit would being a rower bring to working in an investment
bank? I can see student government, but rowing?

~~~
ajscherer
In addition to the other reasons mentioned, I imagine it is also a decent
proxy for a number of other characteristics (white, from a wealthy family)
that you might not want to make explicit in your recruiting strategy. I guess
Harvard just isn't doing a good enough job screening on those things these
days.

~~~
Alex3917
"There's no surefire way to get into Harvard, but it certainly helps to have
every advantage you can get." --A Harvard faculty member on why 2/3rds of the
white students are Jewish.

------
acconrad
What a troll...I can't believe Northwestern gave her grant money to write
about schools better than hers and how they do not get into the top consulting
and law firms by looking at...ENGINEERING STUDENTS. News flash - software
engineers aren't trying to get into consulting and law firms.

------
tkahn6
Here is a list of schools ranked by recruiters with an emphasis on
engineering:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870455410457543...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060.html)

MIT is on there, but the only Ivy on there is Cornell.

~~~
tzs
When a list of engineering schools ranked by recruiters does not have Caltech
in the top 25 (or even on the "next 20"), but does have Cal Poly, something is
seriously screwed up.

