Berkeley busted... importance of college rankings?
When thinking about college rankings, the US News & World Report is one of the sources that anyone would reference for college rankings. However, Berkeley has been busted according to Forbes for fudging numbers that were used to calculate its spot as #2 among the publics. US News & World Report has now demoted Berkeley to the status of "unranked."
This raises questions about the importance of college rankings generally in high finance/consulting. College rankings are used by prospective high school students to pick a target college all the time. So what do you think about college rankings generally and the Berkeley scandal? How important are college rankings for finding elitist jobs?
In my experience employers like it when you went to a school they view as good and this tends to be correlated with ranking lists. However, it would seem odd for an employer to use published school rankings in their decisions. I’d like to hear from others with my experience on the topic.
I mean I would assume that Berkeley wouldn't fudge numbers for nothing... There has to be real benefits to having a higher ranking.
Wait lol guys be honest with me. Is Berkeley considered non target on this site and that's why this is getting only a couple replies?
The rankings don’t mean shit because you cannot objectively rank the “best” colleges because “best” is an incredibly vague parameter meaning the methodology in no way lines up with the way the rankings are interpreted. Yet people across the country have faith in US News and use it as a barometer for prestige (so it makes sense Berkeley wants to be ranked well).
Also, Berkeley is a target because it’s the most represented school in all of SF investment banking, which has grown a lot the past ten years. Look at their DSP chapter’s job placement to confirm these kids don’t fuck around. The problem is Haas has the same type of kids that go to Stern, straight hardos. They don’t call em Haas snakes for no reason :)
no
Quick question, isn't UC Berkeley consider the #1 public university in the nation? If I am wrong, please do tell. I am not biased or any way associated with U.C Berkeley.
Overall, they're in the top tier of public universities, but, for employment it depends on on the field you're comparing them against other schools for. Engineering, I'd say GTech is better. Business, they're the top public school in their region (hard to compare top business programs across different regions). For medicine, they're not even the top UC.
Since you're new I'll add a "This" to this comment.
Ahem....Stanford would like a word.
Not a public university
College rankings are important for "elite" jobs because those "elite" firms are lazy and use the college admissions/graduation process as a first round for recruitment. McKinsey knows that they have a statistically better chance of getting a good consultant if they mostly limit their search to the top colleges. They "know" what top colleges are based on rankings and with limited time and personnel to do things like OCI, they pick mostly based on that.
Are college rankings intrinsically important? No. Is the whole "ranking" industry a bunch of bullshit? Yes. Is that going to stop companies or schools from caring? Of course not. There's a massive benefit to caring and ranking as high as possible.
non target undergrads - rankings don't matter! target undergrads - rankings matter!
people in the workforce - it's all bullshit
focus on getting a good job kiddies, you'll be fine.
Emphasis on the last point, everyone manipulates rankings to somehow project themselves as better, sometimes to ridiculous lengths. Always chuckle when I see parents share articles on FB claiming their kid's school is #1 for something absurd.
People in the workforce may not care so much about college rankings, but people in the IB forum keep trying to rank banks/groups all the time .
I interviewed for a specific group at a top tier fund out of undergrad and under the requirements it listed "top 5 university" which I thought was hilarious. Worth noting also that I did not go to a top 5 or even 10 university but everyone else at the super day did
There's two things to consider when it comes to ranking:
Actual banks/groups recruit from different schools to different extents and that is the "ranking" that is useful to you as a finance job seeker. This may be very different from the following point.
All of these other 'rankings' are marketing gimmicks. It's used by publications to sell subscriptions, and it's used by college to sell themselves. How much merit they have....is highly debatable.
Pretty much everything falls under one of those categories.
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