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by CuriouslyC 741 days ago
Pro tip, people hate ivy droppers. The only people who will respond well are other people who went to the same ivy as you. The value of an Ivy Education is that you become friends with people who have rich parents, and those people bring you into the stuff they start because they have the capital to do whatever they want.
2 comments

> The only people who will respond well are other people who went to the same ivy as you.

Not my experience at all. I’ve been at multiple companies where the top management came from different Ivies (or similarly prestigious universities).

They all promoted and hired people from other prestigious universities.

I have never actually seen this proverbial situation where an entire company clique is all from one, single university except at very, very small startups.

At big companies, it’s less about the exact uni and more about where it falls in the rankings. Anything top-10 is basically interchangeable.

Being at an Ivy doesn't buy you much 10+ years into your career as an ordinary applicant in most industries, a lot of people hardly make it that far down a resume before tossing it. Getting your first job out of college (or getting recruited while in college) and knowing people from an Ivy who are 10+ years into their career and being able to skip the applicant pile is very different.
I'm pretty skeptical of the networking with rich people theory. Of course, it happens. But I'm not sure it's a rationale, by itself, to go to Harvard if you can. While I've done business with various people I know in school I can't point to any clear examples where some opportunity came along because of school connections. Professional connections, yes, in pretty much every case. But very little to do with school.
I got invited to a startup that had a good exit through school connections. I left a good bit before the exit because my school chum became a megalomaniac that was impossible to work with, but I can at least give you n=1.
Oh. Totally happens--probably especially at small companies/startups. I'm just saying it probably isn't a great bet if that's your main reason for going to the school.