One thought on “Where To Go To College”

  1. I tend to agree, based on my experience and what I see around me: as long as the school teaches the core of what is needed for a given field of study (say, aerospace engineering), then a smart, motivated student at a middle-tier state university will do just as well as he/she would have if that student had gone to a top 20 university in the field (in my example, say MIT or CalTech or Berkeley or Purdue or Cal Poly SLO).

    However, there are two caveats that bear mentioning: one, if you want to do grad school somewhere besides your undergrad school, you may have a harder time getting a stipend at a more prestigious school if your bachelors is from good ole State U (and a masters is pretty much required for a lot of even entry level work in AE nowadays); two and more importantly, employers are focusing their recruiting on “top-tier” schools in the field, so you have better job prospects if you go to one of those.

    This trend worries me; I think employers will be missing out on good people by narrowing their focus so much, and it can create something of a monoculture. But at least at my employer, we still get to see all resumes that come in, so this battle isn’t over.

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