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> Do you know any employers actively avoiding students from Ivy-league colleges?

Yes.

The Ivy grads are often considered over-qualified (rightly or wrongly). Especially for government positions that don’t normally hire elite school grads and smallish local/regional businesses.

I know plenty of people who work in different government positions (federal, state, local) who will not hire grads from an elite schools (Ivy, Stanford, Berkeley, etc.) because they think something must be wrong with them (“why would they apply for this job?”), or they think that the applicant will jump ship at the first opportunity.

I agree that those can both be issues, but I’m not sure those issues are limited to or are more likely in elite school grads.

I’ve certainly seen situations in which elite school grads have worked at an org that didn’t normally hire any of them, and the quality and quantity of work produced caused there to be some tough conversations in terms of standards and evaluations (they basically “crushed the curve”). In the two cases I’m most familiar with, the people in question were relatively non-ambitious female employees who just cranked out high quality work. They took those jobs because they were decent jobs near their respective families. In both cases, the companies had bittersweet feelings when said employees left —- they lost productivity, but they no longer had the manage outlier performers.

One of these ladies left her job to become a stay at home mom. The other joined a more prestigious privately-held company who seemed to know how to harness her abilities (she moved up quickly).

So… it happens.





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