Your major is 1000x more relevant than the school itself when talking about prestige

Yes, connections this, alumni that, but why do people act like the non T20 ___ school that is ranked very high in a specific major is somehow significantly worse when it comes to connections??

Last summer I had an internship at a FAANG-adjacent company, and 65% of the intern cohort(total of around 200) came from schools people would laugh at in this sub, if they found out they chose it over the Ivy/T20.

The schools I’m talking about are places like UW and UIUC in relation to my major, CS. The main other 35% of interns were from schools like UCSD, Stanford, and Caltech, and proximity definitely helped in this area (Bay Area). And then obviously, there were a couple MIT and UWaterloo and CMU people as well.

And to help put things in further context, there were more interns from state schools with excellent CS programs, in this case, UMich, UMD, and UT Austin, compared to every single Ivy league school combined. If you know what company I’m talking about, you might be able to find the data if it’s published (this is just based off the headcount that was done during onboarding week).

The reason I’m bringing this up, is because I was talking to a liberal arts major at UIUC who thought I was crazy to take a cheaper tuition in-state for CS there, instead of going to Brown or Duke in which I was accepted for their CS programs. The argument they always bring up is connections which always makes me LOL because:

The literal only reason I was able to get a summer internship at this company, was because one of my CS professors whom I was close with got me a direct job opportunity with a hiring manager he knew there.

Obviously, if you’re reading this, take it all with a grain or salt, as I know specifically careers in quant, IB, and law are much more limited when it comes to what school you go to, but the way people talk in this sub, you would think everyone and their mamas were attempting to pursue one of these 3 professions only lol…

TLDR: (I’m writing this out of pure spite based on a recent interaction I had with a Dartmouth student)
No Becky, your degree in Creative Writing is not more prestigious than a degree in __ just because of the school you went to.