Do you see a difference between candidates from target schools vs. non-target schools? I feel like this term is overused and it just works as a prejudice against people who were less fortunate.
I think practically speaking the very smartest people end up going to do PhDs so you have a decent number of top candidates for finance and programming jobs from the top 30 ish schools. Places like Harvard and MIT have disproportionately more people going to top PhD programs, leaving the less talented for industry. However as you move down the rankings you have to screen harder and harder. If the person has strong coursework and grades aren't too low I'm not worried. I find with grade inflation at top schools, the grades are still sort of comparable to schools where less As are given because the people complaining loudest about grade deflation usually deserve their bad grades. Finally, I've seen some really slow/clueless people from top 6 schools so it's not necessarily a good signal.
As a non-target myself. I’d love to hear more people’s experiences
My girlfriend went to a target school. Her roommates were clueless, but compared to a lot of my friends from my non-target they were definitely a notch above.
Yep, target schools are definitely way better on average. I went to a non-target but most of my high school friends went to target schools.
As a fresh grad: Yes. Once you have actual accomplishments your resume: Maybe. You need to remember that some of these students may actually have the potential and qualities identified by alumni - like Yale. Other students may have faked their way thru preparation for the admission process ... and rote-forced their way thru school. I'd like to know how lazy the student was in school to get to graduation ... combined with their class rank. The lower the effort and higher the rank ... or see what actual valuable work they did in college. (Not classroom crap.)
What if they were lazy but still top ranked?
This is what we call a unicorn.
At MBB the term refers to the schools we target for hiring into Ba and Asc roles. There’s an official list somewhere...
@Op in the past yes in some areas but not most. Today mostly not. A lot of them are resume mills now due to so much SJW criteria so it’s less about the best of the best. I also think it’s been a long time since it was. Not everyone is exceptional regardless of your school. A lot is innate ability and drive. Like I said individuals are unique. I’ve had plenty of peers from such schools and it’s a mixed bag. I didn’t go to one and I’m in exactly the same career spot as the ones I know that did. Humans are humans. Also these schools are great for connecting early in life. But they’re two tiered.
When I used to do campus recruiting... It was really obvious if I was at a target or non target school program after talking to 10-20 kids. That said, take the top 1% of students from any school and they will probably all be good. The problem is, as you increase that percentage, non target schools have a lot more bad candidates in proportion to target. After 2 years of experience, target school or non target should mean nothing.
I agree mostly. I would private vs. public is important too. I should’ve included that in my previous response.
Malcolm Gladwell has a great talk on this, using actual data, not a bunch of anecdotes from Blind users. One thing that stuck out to me was the graduate student publication rate. The conclusion was to pick the top students from every school, not every student from the top schools.
Yeah but not sure that really matters in the real world.
Not sure what matters? If you're talking about publications, you need to watch the talk. In the example, it was a measure of success in the academic world, where it does matter. I'm not going to go through the whole talk in a Blind comment.
US undergrad degrees 9/10 produce better employees.
Yep.
There are 5 people from top schools in my group of engineers at Bloomberg, and 3 have PhD's. One of the PhD's is a superstar. One other PhD is below average despite having a Stanford PhD, and two more are about average (and I consider myself about average in this group). There is one other whose work I'm unfamiliar with.
I feel like STEM PhD by itself is not a great signal, in the Bay Area I came across a large number of PhD applicants that just weren't good. Even from Stanford. PhD in math or physics usually means they're smart though. Sometimes they get sidetracked but you can train people to not do that over time.
Agreed all these places now have all these basically mail order advanced degree programs now. Degrees are important but experience and skill trump a diploma on its own.
On average yes. But any one person can make the most out of their situation and be an outlier.