Does it really matter where you go?

Updated December 2023

Summary: You can get a good education pretty much anywhere, even at your local library. The real value of a top university is that it gives you a direct pipeline to the best employers, and it connects you to an important network of other students and alumni who will help you in your career.

Let’s be honest…

Does it really matter where you go to school? Are you really going to get a better education at an renowned university like Harvard than at a more conventional school like the University of Alabama? Or are you pretty much going to learn the same basic things — like Economics, Physics, Math, History — no matter where you go? In other words, is it really worth the high cost and immense aggravation of trying to get into a top university? Well, yes and no.

It depends on your goals.

If your goal is just to get a good education and then get a good job, you can get that pretty much anywhere, even at many community colleges. In fact, if you just wanted to educate yourself about the world — to become a more enlightened and informed individual overall — you could make the case that you don’t need a college degree at all. In “Good Will Hunting,” Matt Damon pointed out that you can learn just about everything you want for $1.50 in late fees from your local library. And he’s right. Yes, a talented professor can enhance your learning, and there are certain science labs you can’t conduct in your basement, but is that worth $400,00 in tuition costs?

For many students it is.

The fact remains that most of us don’t just want an education; we want a high-paying job. And many careers require a college diploma. If you walk into an investment firm like J.P. Morgan, and tell them that you want to become a portfolio manager, the first thing they’ll ask is where you went to college. If you tell them that you skipped college, but that you spend every day at your local library educating yourself for free, they’re going to politely validate your parking and send you home.

It’s not that they don’t think you’re smart. It’s that they don’t want to take a chance on you. Without a degree from a leading university, you’re an unknown quantity. It’s far easier and safer for them to simply hire the candidate sitting next to you who graduated from Cornell with a B.A. in Economics. You might know everything about the stock market, but she’s got the fancy diploma and you don’t. What her Cornell diploma says is that, 9 times out of 10, she’ll be a great fit at the firm. Plus, they’ve probably got a bunch of other Cornell alumni working there who are all doing extremely well. Since Cornell is a reliable pipeline to fill their ranks, year after year, they’re going with her. Sorry, bud.

So here’s the real purpose of college.

The purpose of college, first and foremost, is to give you a quality education. But since you really don’t need college for that, the second purpose of college is even more important: it’s to make you an appealing job prospect. When you go out into the job market after graduation, you’re going to be competing for jobs against hundreds, or even thousands, of other highly qualified applicants. The easiest way for employers to select who they want is to begin by looking at where you went to school.

Most employers are extremely busy trying to keep their business afloat and firing on all cylinders. They simply don’t have the time or resources to sit down with all 5,000 job applicants to try to suss out who’s truly the best candidate. That could take years. Instead they simply scroll down your resumé to see where you went to college, and that usually tells them 90% of what they want to know. They figure: if you were smart enough to get into Stanford, you’re probably smart enough to work here.

After that, it just comes down to your college major, your interview skills, and personal fit. This process is known as pre-selection. Your Ivy League-caliber diploma signifies that you’re good enough to be “in the club.” The school has thoroughly vetted you by accepting you, and vouched for you by graduating you, and that’s good enough for most high-end employers. It’s like being pre-approved for a new credit card based on your credit history.

Additional benefits.

Of course, there are other benefits to attending an elite university as well. First, top universities are able to attract top-level faculty. That means that if you take a government course at Georgetown, your professor might be a former Secretary of State of the United States, rather than just some random guy who majored in political science. Being able to learn from esteemed scholars can be a real boon to your education, and their enthusiasm and expertise might make all the difference in the quality of your experience.

However, it’s important to underscore that famous scholars and leaders of their field don’t always make the best teachers. Many of them don’t want to be teaching undergraduate students at all. Many of them are just at the university to work on research grants, or to finish their next book, or to give their time to advanced graduate students who truly deserve their attention. Teaching introductory-level courses to a bunch of clueless undergraduates may not be their idea of a good time, but most universities require them to do a little bit of it anyway. Conversely, there are many excellent professors at lesser-known schools, and while they’re not famous, they’re teaching skills are legendary.

The other substantial benefit of a top university takes place outside of the classroom… with your classmates. If you surround yourself with bright, ambitious students, that’s going to rub off on you and help you in your own career. If your roommate is a brilliant coder, the two of you might collaborate on a billion-dollar start-up. If the guys in your fraternity all end up at J.P. Morgan, guess where you’re going to land a job too? It doesn’t really matter what particular field you go into; having school connections will always help tremendously in your career. And many leading universities like Harvard, UPenn, Columbia and Dartmouth are famous for having super-strong alumni networks that help you land highly-coveted jobs.

Can you be successful without that Ivy League degree?

Look, the truth is that, by itself, going to an elite university will not make you successful. Many alumni from top universities have unremarkable careers. Perhaps even most. If you want to be truly successful in your career, then you have to be focused, driven, hungry, and ambitious. And those are personal traits that a university cannot give you, no more than they can take them away.

You can graduate from a community college and still go on to be incredibly successful in any number of high-profile careers. Your path will simply be harder. The most pronounced benefit of a prestigious degree is that it opens doors. Often times that’s the difference between getting the job and not even landing an interview. And that’s just the truth.

Having an Ivy League-caliber degree is like entering the job market with a turbo-booster strapped to your back. Everything will be considerably easier for you. Everything will move faster for you. Everyone will want to take a meeting with you. It won’t automatically guarantee your success, but it will give you a huge leg-up on the competition. And in a game of inches, that’s sometimes (but not always) the difference between winning and losing.