[edit] and before anyone asks, no I’m not Canadian
Where IVY undergrad matters is if they plan to pursue a PHD. And even that is debatable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30448083
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x
Most relevant: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x/tables/3
Downplaying that doesn't do anything for anyone.
That’s before we even unpack your claim that there’s a clear line between “top” and “middle” schools. I see it as more of a spectrum myself, ignoring “brand recognition” (which is a mostly meaningless metric).
Many schools have honours programs or especially challenging degree programs, which will be filled with excellent and ambitious students, even if that school is not an ivy league.
Fast forward to the first time I meet them all in person, and I say to who I thought was the intern something like “how have you enjoyed your internship?”. Cue horrified looks, and my engineering manager counterpart swiftly moving in to smooth things over. Turns out the worst performing, least engaged engineer on the team was an FTE, and the UBC intern wasn’t even remotely who I thought it was (they were awesome)!
> But he truly is a special kid who gets inspired by super smart people and thrives on challenges, and will do better at Cal, Caltech, Harvey Mudd etc.
As opposed to UW, UBC and Waterloo, which are filled with less intelligent people? It is laughable.
My theory - you have precisely zero idea what those schools even are.
The reality is that the most elite universities create kind of a petite noblesse (necessary for moving into the upper nobility) that is very appealing to the middle class. I think the context here is that each race wants to keep the prestigious aspect of these schools in place but have it benefit their own group. We would probably all benefit if we got rid of this bottleneck by creating more stellar universities so that four or five universities don't have a monopoly on cachet but no one is interested in doing that.
IMHO, the best way forwards is for folks to push for the expansion of the size and power of the middle class by any means possible (government policies as well as simply patronizing small businesses with our money). We don't need a ruling elite that holds power partially by their common participation in 'prestigious' educational institutions. Those institutions demonstrably do not provide the best education, they should not serve as gatekeepers to power.
I am kind of disgusted with the whole thing though. I don't like all this zero sum competition over a name on a piece of paper.
I think in some other countries they have a system where if you make it past a threshold you have a guaranteed spot in their top tier school system. We should do that. We should educate people who have the talent and want to be educated, the specific name should be less important. I think this would ease a lot of tension, make things more fair, and provide the best outcome. But I don't even know if people would want this because the appeal of a super elite degree seems to be pretty enticing.
I have to think about the expansion of power of the middle class. Buying from small businesses would lessen the incentives to have these degrees to some extent. But I have to think about how to apply that to tech. The exact pedigree of a CS degree seems to be extremely important for example even if this is probably meaningless.