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To me it doesn't because there's nothing I can do about it except excel as much as I can with what I have.
Yes, I believe it. For the majority of people (who aren't go-getters or extremely ambitious or whatever you want to call it) being at a lower ranked school will likely mean a much less demanding education, and resultantly fewer and less well-developed skills. Combine that with worse on campus recruiting, fewer ambitious peers etc. and it becomes easy to see how most (not all) will be disadvantaged when compared to people who went to higher quality undergrad institutions.
I'd be curious to learn more about why recipients of so called elite graduate degrees earn far less than their peers if they went to a less reputable undergrad though. This obviously doesn't extend to things like base salaries in post MBA banking roles.
What does it really take for somewhat to be ambitious? Could you define it? If someone wants to become a doctor, would you say they are ambitious?
Ambition is relative. Compared to most and generally speaking, becoming a doctor is ambitious. However, there is a difference in ambition level between wanting to be a regular GP/family doctor in podunktown USA vs. the head of cardio thoracic surgery at a major hospital in a major city. More likely the latter will come from a school of great pedigree vs. a for profit school like Grand Canyon u or whatever the article referenced (extreme example to illustrate point).
I read the article, but not the actual research. With the data presented in the article, it is difficult to conclude anything other than the researcher mistaking correlation with causation. How should it be the least bit surprising that the students who got into and attended the best colleges would get into the best graduate programs at a higher rate than those who attended the worst colleges?
well, if it's published in the Times, it must be true. remember kids, rule #1 is that everything you read in the media is 100% true and should be taken at face value.
Like most things, it's really up to the individual. My own personal experience completely contradicts this study.
What would you guys consider ambitious then? Investment banking at goldman? Working for McKinsey? Or google?
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I got bored reading it about half way through so maybe I missed some great revelation, but I feel like the initial assumption, that "they" say don't worry about where you attend undergrad simply isn't correct. It's been a long time since I going to college so maybe things have changed, but in my day the advice was always to go to the best university into which you were accepted. Obviously there are personal financial issues that affect the decision but isn't that why there's this mountain of student debt that everyone thinks is the next bubble to burst?
And I don't think it's some groundbreaking observation that having an undergrad degree from a top school makes it easier to get into a top tier grad school. Only a stupid fucking academic would spend years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of grant money to tell us that water is in fact wet. "Mr./Mrs. Professor, so you're telling me that I have a better chance of getting into Harvard Law or Wharton if I went to Princeton rather than Kutztown University?" No shit.
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Well, I mean, I believe the data. Most people in my business school went to a "Tier 1" undergrad college. That said, as DickFuld brought up, correlation isn't causation. I had the honor of going to a really shitty, working class high school. The top 4-5% of students got into Tier 1 and Tier 2 schools, and were able to get scholarships and loans to cover it. People going to Tier 4 schools, for the most part, were less intelligent people. I can think of one or two exceptions in which a really smart person took a full scholarship at a worse school, but thats usually because their career goals were to become a teacher or something of that sort. Even among lower income people, VERY rarely are the very brightest picking shit schools for financial reasons (hell, they'd get full scholarships at AT LEAST tier 3 if they were really that worried).
What do high ambition people from elite university hope to achieve. Coming from a high school when no one even know about banking, my paradigm used to only consist of doctor and engineer.
This was my experience as well, and thus why I didn't end up going to an Ivy/other tier 1. Living in the south is very different.
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