I am a VP of Operations for a federal contractor that does consulting and IT work. I hire a lot of people every year.
Being perfectly honest, I now discount anyone coming from the Ivy league and here is why.
The SINGLE most important characteristic when I hire is character. If someone is not a good person, a good team player, has a level of personal and intellectual humility, then no matter how smart or how educated they are, ultimately they are more trouble than they are worth. If they lack real empathy with people unlike them, then they will make horrible managers and will fail at working with clients.
Increasingly I find that the best people are coming from what are normally thought of as second or even third tier schools or have taken unconventional paths such as taking 6 yrs to graduate while working through school to pay for it.
I was on the corporate board tasked with identifying a new general counsel about 6 months ago. We had applicants from various places, many of whom had come from the top tier law schools like Yale and Georgetown. Ultimately, we picked a youngish woman who graduated from the University of Nebraska and went to law school in Florida. She has proved to be amazing at her job and is really enjoyed as a person by her peers.
It is time to admit that our "elite" schools are no longer so elite and that they are producing weak people with poor character. Oh...they may have plenty of power under the mental hood, but they are useless to an organization. Of course, that is a generalization. I am sure that there are quite a few good kids coming out of those places, but an elite degree no longer carries the cache it once did.
An emphatic thumbs up on this. Raging narcissism, nihilism and the absence of humility is the plague we are facing. A legacy of an education system that has indulged little egos from early age. From my perspective, birthed out of the "self-esteem" movement that indulged our children in the mindset of "you are special... you are unique..." and we should be surprised that after 2 generations it turned many of our kids into graduates of the school of "see me/affirm me" narcissism and impassioned followers of identity ideology. Spend 4 years at an "elite" university and we've honed their "character" even further to produce legions of smug, dismissive & arrogant, 20-something narcissists who see themselves as having a birthright to destroy the personal and professional lives of those they see as "heretics." The fun has just begun...
I greatly sympathize with author's personal story regarding her husband, but the seed that led to his professional destruction was sown years ago and the future consequences should have been abundantly evident. We spent the last 2 generations institutionalizing this garbage and we're going to have to deal with for quite some time to come.
Brilliant Fisher you have summed it up to a tee now to deal with these upstarts let’s see how well they going to cope going forward with America in a recession and all these fancy degrees no jobs available a lifestyle of absolute privilege let’s watch the meltdown it’s not going to be pretty the kids who have had to work and study the kids who don’t come from so much privilege are the kids I’m watching they are our future in everything from politics to theater to medicine name it
I don’t think it’s a generalization they are all weak and bad from the Ivy League varsities to privilege to spoilt to much power and no brains if I was looking I definitely look further down at second tier those kids are much more solid and seem to have a better value system
I just shared your comment with my husband to send to a friend of his. The friend went to Penn & Wharton. His very brilliant daughter is an over achieving senior in high school who did not get admitted to one Ivy that she applied to. GPA over 4.0 high level SAT scores, academic extracurriculars, everything one would think is needed for admittance. No idea what these schools are now looking for if a person like this isn’t it. (Well, I probably do, but not going there now.)She is devastated, as is her family. She lives in Florida and will be attending the University of Miami. I told them that’s great, because she will probably be a standout and graduate top of her class, and the world will be her oyster anyway. Thank you for this insightful comment
Please wish her luck from me she is going to stand out at her university and in life where ever she goes she will be a credit to her folks and her community
My niece just went through that. Got turned down or wait listed at every single Ivy and Ivy light school. Top grades. Great SAT scores. Captain of her travel soccer team.
First, I am gonna assume your friends daughter is white. That does not help.
Then, she is female. Women are now making up 59% of the undergraduates. SO...she might have had more luck had she been male.
They do not need another white woman. Sad, but true.
Though, I would wonder what major she indicated she was interested in. That seems to matter too.
My daughter went through something similar. Graduated a year early from prep school with a 4.6 GPA, 2nd in her class by .03, high SAT, High ACT, ranked 14th in the nation for Olympic archery, ran her own business coaching archery, and she ran an annual charity event to raise money for the SPCA. Got wait listed at Georgetown and Stanford and turned down by Harvard and Duke. UVA gave her a lousy financial aid package. SO, she ended up going to Virginia Tech where she graduated Phi Beta in 3 yrs with a degree in neuroscience and minors in economics and philosophy. She worked the whole way through school and graduated with almost no debt.
I grew up in Boston. Spent a lot of time around Harvard students and Harvard graduates. Amazing the number of them that go on to have mediocre lives and careers. I told my daughter when she was applying to college that nobody is gonna give a damn where she did her undergrad 5 yrs after she graduates.
Well, she ended up getting a full ride to law school. This time, she specifically did NOT apply to any of the big names. Instead, she chose to go to a very good 2nd tier school that is ranked 1st in the nation in legal writing and 3rd for preparing trial attorneys. No big name BUT...she got a full ride.
SO, when she graduates, she will have almost no debt and very likely walk into a 6 figure salary.
I would also tell you, that as a hiring manager, the LAST thing I look at is the education section of a resume unless I am hiring a brand new grad. As I said above, I care about character first. Then I look at what people have actually DONE in their careers. Then, I will look at education and even then I am more interested in professional certifications than I am in where they did their undergrad. In certain specialties I might be interested if they got an advanced degree but only if it has a direct application to what I am hiring for.
The fact is....that an education from an Ivy is no better or worse than from almost any other school. What IS or what USED TO BE different, was that the Ivy's took only the very very best high school grads, the kids who are gonna win no matter where they go. They vetted out in advance the best and the very brightest. Once they set aside that mission and concluded that they needed to meet quotas and diversity targets, that no longer held true. Now they are just any other university and their degrees carry no more or less weight.
As a former head of HR for a large corp I agree with all that you have written about hiring the right candidate. Specifically those that may have taken longer to go through school as they simultaneously worked and/or supported a family. Another qualifier for me was how far did they move from their home to college? Those that moved x-country proved to be more independent and self-sufficient in their career.
Interesting thought about being a white woman. She is actually what I guess we are now calling brown? They are of Indian descent & as I’m sure you are aware, their culture is very strict about education & very dedicated to high levels of success. Maybe the schools had hit their quota of Asians. (Eye roll) Our friend was absolutely incensed that Penn rejected her, since she has both legacy and the right qualifications. He wrote to them to tell them he will no longer make donations to his alma mater.
Wrong kind of brown. If she had written an application essay about all her hardships and how even so she knows she needs to listen to and learn from the right kind of brown people and be their ally (actually that's insufficient now, I believe the latest term is "accomplice" [seriously]) and devote herself to achieving social justice for them -- that *might* have helped. Also if she were nonbinary, genderfluid, pansexual, and/or non-cis. But all that may not have compensated for being the wrong kind of brown. In the end, there are quotas to be met.
Well, Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka blessed UPenn with their brilliance (aka $$$$$). If this doesn't tell you all about the institution, what else would?
Very poor another person suffering from TDS I would be very happy if my kids turned out like DJT’s kids they great work hard and a tight family unit it’s what we all need
How true. I hire engineering students for my business, and I prefer those who have failed and gone back. High marks mean nothing, what matters is humility and perseverance.
Twenty years ago the Wall Street Journal wrote basically the same thing: Hire a bargain from a state school with a demonstrated work ethic, character and grit instead of an indoctrinated Ivy Leaguer. Sadly, the kids at Nebraska, Penn State and UCLA are now equally corrupt and sporting "degrees" in how to piss off their first boss.
I am a VP of Operations for a federal contractor that does consulting and IT work. I hire a lot of people every year.
Being perfectly honest, I now discount anyone coming from the Ivy league and here is why.
The SINGLE most important characteristic when I hire is character. If someone is not a good person, a good team player, has a level of personal and intellectual humility, then no matter how smart or how educated they are, ultimately they are more trouble than they are worth. If they lack real empathy with people unlike them, then they will make horrible managers and will fail at working with clients.
Increasingly I find that the best people are coming from what are normally thought of as second or even third tier schools or have taken unconventional paths such as taking 6 yrs to graduate while working through school to pay for it.
I was on the corporate board tasked with identifying a new general counsel about 6 months ago. We had applicants from various places, many of whom had come from the top tier law schools like Yale and Georgetown. Ultimately, we picked a youngish woman who graduated from the University of Nebraska and went to law school in Florida. She has proved to be amazing at her job and is really enjoyed as a person by her peers.
It is time to admit that our "elite" schools are no longer so elite and that they are producing weak people with poor character. Oh...they may have plenty of power under the mental hood, but they are useless to an organization. Of course, that is a generalization. I am sure that there are quite a few good kids coming out of those places, but an elite degree no longer carries the cache it once did.
The Ivies never should have had that cache to begin with.
An emphatic thumbs up on this. Raging narcissism, nihilism and the absence of humility is the plague we are facing. A legacy of an education system that has indulged little egos from early age. From my perspective, birthed out of the "self-esteem" movement that indulged our children in the mindset of "you are special... you are unique..." and we should be surprised that after 2 generations it turned many of our kids into graduates of the school of "see me/affirm me" narcissism and impassioned followers of identity ideology. Spend 4 years at an "elite" university and we've honed their "character" even further to produce legions of smug, dismissive & arrogant, 20-something narcissists who see themselves as having a birthright to destroy the personal and professional lives of those they see as "heretics." The fun has just begun...
I greatly sympathize with author's personal story regarding her husband, but the seed that led to his professional destruction was sown years ago and the future consequences should have been abundantly evident. We spent the last 2 generations institutionalizing this garbage and we're going to have to deal with for quite some time to come.
“Wow! I’m getting a trophy!!!??? I didn’t do $hit, and everybody knows it. Well, OK…it is kind of shiny.”
Brilliant Fisher you have summed it up to a tee now to deal with these upstarts let’s see how well they going to cope going forward with America in a recession and all these fancy degrees no jobs available a lifestyle of absolute privilege let’s watch the meltdown it’s not going to be pretty the kids who have had to work and study the kids who don’t come from so much privilege are the kids I’m watching they are our future in everything from politics to theater to medicine name it
Yep I am not surprised, and the new woke graduates it will be worse
I don’t think it’s a generalization they are all weak and bad from the Ivy League varsities to privilege to spoilt to much power and no brains if I was looking I definitely look further down at second tier those kids are much more solid and seem to have a better value system
I just shared your comment with my husband to send to a friend of his. The friend went to Penn & Wharton. His very brilliant daughter is an over achieving senior in high school who did not get admitted to one Ivy that she applied to. GPA over 4.0 high level SAT scores, academic extracurriculars, everything one would think is needed for admittance. No idea what these schools are now looking for if a person like this isn’t it. (Well, I probably do, but not going there now.)She is devastated, as is her family. She lives in Florida and will be attending the University of Miami. I told them that’s great, because she will probably be a standout and graduate top of her class, and the world will be her oyster anyway. Thank you for this insightful comment
Please wish her luck from me she is going to stand out at her university and in life where ever she goes she will be a credit to her folks and her community
My niece just went through that. Got turned down or wait listed at every single Ivy and Ivy light school. Top grades. Great SAT scores. Captain of her travel soccer team.
First, I am gonna assume your friends daughter is white. That does not help.
Then, she is female. Women are now making up 59% of the undergraduates. SO...she might have had more luck had she been male.
They do not need another white woman. Sad, but true.
Though, I would wonder what major she indicated she was interested in. That seems to matter too.
My daughter went through something similar. Graduated a year early from prep school with a 4.6 GPA, 2nd in her class by .03, high SAT, High ACT, ranked 14th in the nation for Olympic archery, ran her own business coaching archery, and she ran an annual charity event to raise money for the SPCA. Got wait listed at Georgetown and Stanford and turned down by Harvard and Duke. UVA gave her a lousy financial aid package. SO, she ended up going to Virginia Tech where she graduated Phi Beta in 3 yrs with a degree in neuroscience and minors in economics and philosophy. She worked the whole way through school and graduated with almost no debt.
I grew up in Boston. Spent a lot of time around Harvard students and Harvard graduates. Amazing the number of them that go on to have mediocre lives and careers. I told my daughter when she was applying to college that nobody is gonna give a damn where she did her undergrad 5 yrs after she graduates.
Well, she ended up getting a full ride to law school. This time, she specifically did NOT apply to any of the big names. Instead, she chose to go to a very good 2nd tier school that is ranked 1st in the nation in legal writing and 3rd for preparing trial attorneys. No big name BUT...she got a full ride.
SO, when she graduates, she will have almost no debt and very likely walk into a 6 figure salary.
I would also tell you, that as a hiring manager, the LAST thing I look at is the education section of a resume unless I am hiring a brand new grad. As I said above, I care about character first. Then I look at what people have actually DONE in their careers. Then, I will look at education and even then I am more interested in professional certifications than I am in where they did their undergrad. In certain specialties I might be interested if they got an advanced degree but only if it has a direct application to what I am hiring for.
The fact is....that an education from an Ivy is no better or worse than from almost any other school. What IS or what USED TO BE different, was that the Ivy's took only the very very best high school grads, the kids who are gonna win no matter where they go. They vetted out in advance the best and the very brightest. Once they set aside that mission and concluded that they needed to meet quotas and diversity targets, that no longer held true. Now they are just any other university and their degrees carry no more or less weight.
Yes, there are gems everywhere. You just have to search for them.
As a former head of HR for a large corp I agree with all that you have written about hiring the right candidate. Specifically those that may have taken longer to go through school as they simultaneously worked and/or supported a family. Another qualifier for me was how far did they move from their home to college? Those that moved x-country proved to be more independent and self-sufficient in their career.
Interesting thought about being a white woman. She is actually what I guess we are now calling brown? They are of Indian descent & as I’m sure you are aware, their culture is very strict about education & very dedicated to high levels of success. Maybe the schools had hit their quota of Asians. (Eye roll) Our friend was absolutely incensed that Penn rejected her, since she has both legacy and the right qualifications. He wrote to them to tell them he will no longer make donations to his alma mater.
Wrong kind of brown. If she had written an application essay about all her hardships and how even so she knows she needs to listen to and learn from the right kind of brown people and be their ally (actually that's insufficient now, I believe the latest term is "accomplice" [seriously]) and devote herself to achieving social justice for them -- that *might* have helped. Also if she were nonbinary, genderfluid, pansexual, and/or non-cis. But all that may not have compensated for being the wrong kind of brown. In the end, there are quotas to be met.
Funny……but also not because you’re probably right
Ah...the Asian quota. Yep. Seeing that al over the place. Kinda sick. If the kid has worked hard and earned it then that should be all that matters.
We should be running a strict meritocracy. Ethnic background should be meaningless.
She definitely got screened out for being Asian. What shameful bullshit.
Wrong out...melds well with the post, a crown. thanks
Well, Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka blessed UPenn with their brilliance (aka $$$$$). If this doesn't tell you all about the institution, what else would?
and then Penn turned around and gave the money to Biden for a no-show professorship.
An empty and poorly crafted argument for this topic
Very poor another person suffering from TDS I would be very happy if my kids turned out like DJT’s kids they great work hard and a tight family unit it’s what we all need
Rob...thank you
How true. I hire engineering students for my business, and I prefer those who have failed and gone back. High marks mean nothing, what matters is humility and perseverance.
Twenty years ago the Wall Street Journal wrote basically the same thing: Hire a bargain from a state school with a demonstrated work ethic, character and grit instead of an indoctrinated Ivy Leaguer. Sadly, the kids at Nebraska, Penn State and UCLA are now equally corrupt and sporting "degrees" in how to piss off their first boss.
equally corrupt and sporting "degrees" in how to piss off their first boss.
I love this line.