My experience has been the same as OP. It's not a parallel reality, its the US. It definitely does not matter where you go. If you work hard and and keep pushing yourself into more challenging positions, you'll be a highly competitive candidate for employment no matter what school you went to. Some may argue that those who get into good schools have a greater propensity to push themselves and achieve regardless of their situation - we hope that's true. But I have never in my experience seen such blindness toward graduates of lesser schools.
back
1 comments
That hasn't been my experience. Students at top CS schools have much more access to recruiters at well known companies, who assign recruiters to particular schools. It's a lot harder to get an internship at such a company from a school without an assigned recruiter. Good CS schools also help students to get internships earlier in college, after freshman year.
I asked a professor in charge of admissions for a graduate program about their desired gpa. His response- 'What school did you go to?'.
Students at good schools don't have some innate willpower to push themselves harder- they have better opportunities available to them. That isn't to say that students at other colleges don't do just as well, it's just takes more effort.
I guess I'm biased from my personal experience. I started working on internships in high school. By the time I was in college, the better internships found themselves. I went to a good, but not top!, LAC but I still did well. Had my choice of grad schools based on my work - not my school. But I decided to drop out for other reasons. I have since had no issues making the 6 figs... So to anyone who tells me you need a top-college degree to get somewhere or make good money, I'd say there are probably other things at play. Now maybe I won't get a CTO position without a degree, but that is not being addressed here.
Seriously, if you feel like you are in an unfair position or want to talk about this stuff, send me an email. I love talking about this stuff. It's not about the school you go to - it's about what you do (have done) with your time.