Success Despite College Rejection 436
selan writes "Are those who are rejected by prestigious schools destined to lead mediocre lives? Or are great people more likely to succeed if they were rejected by top universities? An inspirational column in the Washington Post discusses the "Spielberg Effect", a theory that it really doesn't matter where you went to school."
I was rejected by UCB (Score:1, Informative)
Re:School Entry Criteria (Score:1, Informative)
In the USA, I can see how the Univerisites are money making institution; tuition is what, $30,000 USD a year? Here in Canada, tuition is ~$7k a year (CDN, or 4.5k US). On top of that, it's rather easy to get a Bursary for $3000, and entry Scholarships aren't that hard to come by. Along with Co-op, and most students don't have problems paying off their University bills.
Now, in Canada, at the University of Waterloo, only 24% of the University Revenue comes from Student Tuition (as seen in http://www.information.uwaterloo.ca/images/pdf/an
Just my $0.02
-seyton (forgot my p/w)
Reporter misstates Dale's & Krueger's findings (Score:2, Informative)
"Dale and Krueger noticed something odd. In many cases, they found that applicants who were rejected by brand-name schools did as well in later life as those who were accepted."
Not so.
What Dale & Krueger noted is that people who were accepted by highly selective schools, but chose to attend less selective schools, later enjoyed the same level of professional success, on average, as their peers who did matriculate at the highly selective schools.
It may also be worth mentioning that D & K found this to the case only when the less selective school was only moderately less selective (so, for example, Harvard might be foregone in favor of, say, NYU, but not Remedial U.)
Re:for my PhD... (Score:2, Informative)
In short: don't believe the hype.
Re:I've hired many people and it doesn't matter (Score:3, Informative)
Absolutely. In successful companies, labs, (whatever), you want people who are capable, productive, and can work and play well with others. For instance, it was once reccomended to me by our former chair of neurosurgery that you take the potential job candidate out to dinner. If you cannot eat with that person or are uncomfortable there, they will never work out in your business or lab and for the most part I have found this to be true. (another interesting bit....I have found that some of the best scientists are also pretty damn good cooks).
As for the ivy league school bit you talked about earlier, it's interesting that it seems to get you into the door at many places (especially in England and in certain places on the east and west coasts), but getting into the door is no guarantee of success. I have seen more than one knucklehead from an ivy league school suck up many resource $$'s before leaving for another position having accomplished nothing. As for me going to an ivy league school, yeah, I was accepted into Stanford based upon college entrance scores, but finding out tuition was going to be $25,000/year, I was shocked and dismayed as I did not know where I was going to find the money to go to a state school at the time. However, I am happy with my decision not to go as I did not have to take out loans and any extra money I did not spend on tuition simply went into investments. Would it have been nice to go? Yes, but not for $100k and financial aid was not guaranteed.
Re:for my PhD... (Score:5, Informative)
Please back up your assertions. This is completely false. I speak as a college counselor with about 8 years of experience.
It does matter what undergraduate college you go to, but reputation, prestige, and ranking have nothing to do with it. Here is the principle:
When you look at results, most of the prestigious schools are defeated, beaten down, and put to shame by a relatively unknown class of schools, the small liberal-arts college. The mechanism should be obvious: small classes; professors who love to teach, have no research burden, and take an interest in your work; broad education that teaches you mental skills, not just job skills.
Since we're talking about grad school, let's take the percentage of graduates from college that eventually earn a PhD (from any institution, not necessarily the same one). So we're talking about your personal chances of getting a future PhD as a result of undergraduate college choice. Here's the top of that list:
I'll leave out the rest. Buy Loren Pope's excellent book Looking Beyond the Ivy League if you want the rest of the chart. Interesting to note, Princeton is the first of the vaunted Ivies to make this list at #21 (11.7%), and only because it is the one that behaves most like a small college. The next Ivy to show its face is Harvard at #37 (9.0%). Three of the Ivies and Stanford don't make top 50.
The list plays out the same way whatever measure you choose: MCAT scores, grad/med/law school admission rates (often 30-100% better than the prestige colleges), leaders and prominent figures produced, you name it.
Although their population is collectively tiny, the small liberal-arts schools produce half the professional scientists in this country. (Don't be fooled into thinking you need a technical school for a technical education.)
And now, here's the real kicker: many of these schools are not very selective. Reed, #3 on the list, will take you if you've got a B+ average, around 1300 on the SAT, and some demonstrable intellectual curiosity. But they will invariably turn out graduates that surpass those at famous schools.
Schools like Harvard deserve no credit for admitting "successful" people and then graduating "successful" people. I went there, and it improved me not at all. It's much more impressive to see a school take in an average student and make them great; or a good student and make them stellar.
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Dum de dum.
I work with you (Score:1, Informative)
You suck and are a drag on the team. I only hope you quit soon and stop dragging down the team and company.
You're pompous and full of crap.
"OH, I have a PHD and I came up to speed faster than the mediocrities around me".
The rest of us think you suck. We constantly have to clean up you messes.
I say again, I hope you quit. Or else, we'll figure out how to get you fired.
Moron.
Re:I am a high school senior (Score:3, Informative)
No, it means deferred. I think you're assuming and awful lot about what the admissions people care about, over-estimating your own credentials, and under-estimating your peer's. MIT is one of the preeminent technology schools in the world. You are probably a great student, but the number of applicants to a school like MIT is enormous. Out of a pool this large, there are bound to be people better qualified than you. Them's the breaks. I don't think MIT gives cares about if you played a sport or not.
I'm applying there for grad school (among many other places). I will graduate from Virginia Tech this May with a 3.6 in-major GPA and about the same for my cumulative GPA. I'm doing undergraduate research next semester. I'm a computer science major with a minor in math and a minor in physics. And I think my chances of getting into MIT are slim.
Things like President of National Honor Society club, etc. There was a kid at my school who got in early at Princeton with a 1250 SAT (thats not good) because he played water polo. Last year, one of my friends won the National Merit Scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins....and they wouldnt even admit him!
An SAT score of 1250 is just fine. SAT scores are bunk. They demonstrate one thing: your ability to take the SATs. You don't know why these people were accepted and rejected, so stop pretending.
an ivy leaguer speaks (Score:2, Informative)
Re:for my PhD... (Score:2, Informative)
Sure they do: they have the academic records of their admits. They keep tabs on how well their decisions turn out. Furthermore, you mention colleagues, academic papers, etc., of which a disproportionate number will be from high-quality low-prestige colleges.
But you're right. If you define prestige within the academic community, the schools with real quality do stand out. I never said that undergraduate school doesn't matter; quite the opposite, in fact.
My point is that popular prestige misleads people into thinking that these ultra-selective schools are better than they really are, and conversely that the best teaching colleges are worse than they really are.
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Dum de dum.
Depends on what you want to do (Score:3, Informative)
For my chosen profession, law, where you went to school makes all the difference in the world - and it matters not a hill of beans.
If your goal is to end up on the U.S. Supreme Court, well, five of the nine current justices went to Harvard Law (Darth Bader graduated from Columbia but went to Harvard), two went to Stanford, and the other two went to Northwestern and Yale. Roughly the same goes for most federal district and appellate judges.
Want to work for Bill's daddy at the 213-attorney Seattle home office of Preston, Gates and Ellis? Ask yourself, where do they do on-campus interviews? Aside from the local schools (Seattle U. and the Universities of Washington and Oregon), PG&E recruits from Bezerkely, Columbia, U of Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, NYU, Penn, Stanford, UVA, and Yale. Only about a third of their hires come from the local schools, and most of those are from the ultra-super-mega-hyper-prestigious (just ask 'em, they'll tell ya) UW. In other words, your chances of being hired by them are about zero if you did not attend any of those schools - and this firm is based in Seattle. I would submit that most large law firms have similar hiring practices.
Before giving up hope, though, consider what it's like to work there. Sure, the pay is good and the resources are near infinite, but the hours are long - 100 hour weeks are the norm rather than the exception. What are you doing then, practicing real law, representing real clients? Hardly. Most of the work involved is adding a few more zeroes to the end of some already-obscenely-wealthy white guy's bottom line. Finally, the careers there are generally quite short - a select few make partner, but most are cut loose after a few years.
Okay, so what's a young non-Ivy JD grad to do? Practice real law, of course. Represent ordinary people in real-world disputes and actually go to court once in awhile. Most attorneys make their living this way and their clients don't much care where they went to law school.
In sum, the black-and-white answer is that there is no black-and-white answer.
Re:Since (Score:4, Informative)
Either way, I haven't seen it in ages. This one is good enough for PhysicsGenius [slashdot.org]
Re:for my PhD... (Score:4, Informative)
One of the worst things you can do for law school (Score:2, Informative)
I can't vouch for other types of grad schools, but law school admissions is almost entirely about the LSAT, with a secondary emphasis on GPA. Borderline candidates will then have their extracurriculars looked at, and the college is in there somewhere, but at the top law schools it's almost as good that you went to a state school in Wyoming- they like geographic diversity, too.
Your degree from Harvard, which generally puts you a hundred thousand or so in the hole before you ever take a law school class, and a 3.5 will get you into the exact same place as someone who graduated from any state school with a 3.6 and the same LSAT. Moreover, they'll have gotten there for free.
Good luck to the high school seniors applying. Just remember, it's not the end of the world if you get turned down
U of M Law '05