[dgabriel]

It depends on how good you are and how hard you work. The point of the article isn't that elite colleges are bad for your career (of course not!), just that less prestigious schools aren't necessarily bad for your career, either.

[bd]

There are plenty of extraordinarily capable people outside of elite colleges.

In The Bell Curve they mention SAT statistics for top verbal scores. Although their point was to show extreme concentration of talented people at the elite schools, it also shows how many are outside of them:

  90% of the top scorers were not in Harvard/Yale
  69% were outside of the top ten universities 
  40% were outside of the top fifty universities

[globalrev]

Sure but what I mean is for engineering the difference between a good and bad college might be bigger than say for economy?

[dgabriel]

I don't think so, not beyond your very first couple of jobs. I've worked with MIT grads and college dropouts with the same title, salary, and job expectations.

The big exception is in academia, where the college counts for a lot.

[nostrademons]

In my experience, the degree helps with "cold" applications (HR departments, recruiters, grad school applications, "over the transom" submissions, etc.) and does very little for "warm" applications (referrals, impressive projects/blogs).

The article may've found that degrees rarely help CEOs because CEOs rarely make "cold" applications. Once you get that high, nearly everything is done via network and past record, so the degree doesn't confer much information that isn't already available.

Similarly, technical people may rely on degrees more because their networks are not as well-developed as business people. Though honestly, most of the successful programmers I know either have no degree or went to a state school, and it's never hurt them. They maintain good networks, though.

And it may matter in academia because a lot of the grad school application process is blind, with very little information available. It doesn't seem to matter once you start to publish and people can judge the quality of your work for themselves.

[globalrev]

"I don't think so, not beyond your very first couple of jobs." And how long is that, 5-10years?

And for the really attractive jobs, do you even get a shot if straight out of college if you are not from a top one(often you don't either how because of no experience but when you do)?

Don't want to bash the point though. Effort > talent, I agree.

[jerf]

It depends on a lot of things.

In computer science, if you're trying to go into a programming career, the difference between a prestigious college and a non-prestigious college is significantly less than the advantage you get from having proof of coding skill, such as significant open source work. Anyone serious about programming should definitely make sure to have something like this in hand before they leave, if they want the good opportunities.

Of course, side project + prestigious college is a winning combo... but even then, I'd say it's the side project dominating for most good employers.

I would imagine in fields where the means of production (whatever they may be) are not so much in the hands of the masses that the college distinction could be more important; how do you prove yourself a competent civil engineer with a side project? (I dunno, maybe there's a way, but it must be a lot harder.)

[nihilocrat]

Anyone serious about programming should definitely make sure to have something like this in hand before they leave, if they want the good opportunities.

Every college freshman should be told this repeatedly. It is too easy to miss out on that bit of information and think that getting good grades and graduating is enough to land you a job out of college.