Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion which college and does it matter

We have been down this road from an academic perspective. But I had a discussion with someone at Google and he said they were now restricting applicants based on the schools they attended. I was wondering how pervasive this is, or going to be.

Any input?

Major companies have always recruited more heavily at some colleges (fixed) than others. They sent recruiters only to certain schools, and they tend to have more interviewers (multiple recruiters) at the schools where they have found the strongest employees in the past. And student from schools where they don't usually find the strongest candidates get extra scrutiny in the hiring process in my experience just to make sure they are up to the job.

Not sure what this means to "restrict applicants based on the schools they attended". It could mean a lot of things. Requiring a 4 year degree? Requiring a masters degree for some jobs? No hires from state directionals? Only a small list of schools they will hire from? Does whatever "it" is apply to experienced hires, or just fresh out of college hires? Is it company-wide HR policy at Google, or only certain departments?

Assuming you're not only interested in the US [was: UK, a typo!]

Anecdotally (that is, I have only vaguely remembered second-hand knowledge of specific companies that have come out and said "we only take people with degrees from...", but it's a thing "everyone knows") it's common here, where the favoured group of universities is usually the Russell Group, plus or minus a few depending on context.

What's definitely observably true is that many good employers only actively recruit from certain places. That's obviously an advantage of being there even if applicants from other places aren't automatically rejected.

However: I have never heard of a university auto-rejecting applicants for graduate places based on where they come from, so if graduate study is a firm intention, it may matter less. (Disclaimer: I mean places in the same country, or countries the institution is familiar with. If an applicant is from an obscure university in a country noone in the institution is familiar with, it might be very hard indeed for them to get to seem like a good bet for a PhD place. And of course there are still advantages to having done a first degree in a research-strong place; I only mean that not having done so wouldn't automatically rule you out as it apparently can outside academia.)

For big consulting firms, big investment banks, big law firms, this has always been true. I am sure the super selective colleges are way over represented at big techs as well.

I am a bit surprised by Google, because I seem to remember they don't even ask for a bachelor's degree for their programmers. For one thing, it is easier to deploy interview questions that directly tests technical ability, much easier than some other fields. So the screening and signaling role of the fancy degrees are not as important. Maybe they only recruit from fancy colleges for all other types of jobs.

Bit of a conspiracy, but a friend once pointed out that courses at elite colleges are much more in-depth than what you'd receive at other schools, even when you're talking about something as simple as Biology 101 or Calculus 101, where you wouldn't think there'd be a lot of discrepancy. When asking another friend what she thought about it, she pointed out that the material covered in another friend's graduate program at a SUNY school was the same covered in the 101 level at our elite college.

I don't pretend to know where the line is drawn, but it seems that it could be a thing and that certain companies might prefer students who have a more challenging background, like this?

In isolated instances, that might be so, but in STEM? I frankly do NOT believe that. I do not believe it because I went to a little no-name directional college, and have close friends who went to top-25 colleges for the same course of study.

They were, if anything, hampered in graduate studies by a lack of hands-on experience with instrumentation, at least those who came from institutions with state of the art equipment being run exclusively by post-docs, professional technicians, and graduate students. Their theoretical knowledge was absolutely no different than mine.

Also-- if this WERE true, then the textbooks used in those "elite" courses would differ significantly. They most certainly do not.

Finally, my peers and I, graduating in a class of fewer than 10, were accepted into some of the most elite graduate programs anywhere in the world, and were highly successful in those programs, no less. So if our undergraduate degrees were so second-rate, someone should definitely let places like CalTech, Berkeley, and MIT know. LOL!

Is it true in the humanities? I have no idea, but it would explain a few things to me if it were, I suppose. Now, if you're comparing a not-quite-mediocre graduate program to a top-5 undergraduate one, then I might well believe that the material covered in a 300-level undergrad course was more or less equivalent...

but honestly, a lot of this kind of discussion strikes me as rationalization based on sticker pricing.

Different corporations have different recruiting policies. Those policies change with some regularity. Even within large companies, those recruiting policies may not be monolithic. For example, one high-tech employer that I know of LOVES to hire Stanford grads-- in California. In their other sites worldwide, those degrees carry far less weight... they basically tend to hire locally.

In contrast, a smaller (also high-tech) company in the region refuses to hire Stanford grads at all.

{shrug} I think it's kind of a wash, personally. If you have an HR that idolizes elite colleges, it gives you an edge to have a degree from one. If you have an HR director who has a bias against them on the basis of anti-elitism, though, it will actually hurt you, but maybe you don't care since who wants to work there anyway, right?

Really is that new? Is that even legal? I talked with a google recruiter last year and that wasn't the official line, nor one that other were talking about. In addition I have friend who were hired by google in the past year that went to university with me. I have no idea if it's on the list but it's not a "top" rated university. Now this was someone with 20+ years experience and not someone fresh out of university. Perhaps that is what they are talking about.

I'll repeat what I wrote in an earlier thread since I think it's relevant:


You can find the syllabi (and often lecture notes and homework assignments) of many college courses online and compare the rigor of courses at various colleges. It's not my impression that Harvard's CS50 (introductory computer science) is more "in-depth" than the equivalent course at other schools.

When I started physics graduate school, we were given a "free shot" to pass the qualifying exam based on first-year graduate courses. People normally took the exam after one year of graduate study. I did notice that U.S. students coming from elite undergrad schools and foreign students tended to pass on the free shot, whereas U.S. students from non-elite student were not ready for it. However I'd guess that physics majors at
elite schools are more likely to have AP credits in Physics C and Calculus, so that they start with 2nd-year courses and are often taking gradate level courses as juniors and seniors. So the difference in free shot passing rate may reflect not the greater rigor of courses at elite schools but the fact that the students are a little smarter and better prepared coming in.

There is no question that elites give advantages. In addition to the more tangible ones you suggest, there is simply the fact of being surrounded by people who got into elite schools. Being with "my people" at MIT probably made more difference to me than my research projects, for example.

Whether those advantages are worth the cost is a different question. I didn't have much trouble paying off my student loans, but they spent a long time in deferment, between grad school and law school. I was lucky to have gotten them at a time when they didn't accrue interest while I was in school. I think fewer loans have that feature now.

Law has always been like this, so there's not much for me to add here.

I've gotten two legal positions (out of three) basically because of where I went to law school.

The third was because of my experience and specialization.

I still don't know what the point of college was or is, so I still think of it as an extremely unpleasant complete waste of time.