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TheOtherDave comments on What Is Signaling, Really? - Less Wrong
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I have often wondered if anyone has tried to save their acceptance letters from colleges they couldn't afford to go to and show them to employers. Why doesn't this work?
Because getting into college isn't a very good signal. People may use it as one if they're not thinking things through, but not if you call their attention to it. It's not a very good signal because it's based on high school (a long time ago) and judged clumsily by admission officers under poor circumstances.
Graduating is more of a signal, at least if the college is willing to flunk people. Graduating with difficult electives on your transcript is even more of a signal.
And college isn't just signalling. One is expected to have learned there.
So if what's being said here about graduation from Harvard being highly correlated with admission to it (um... no, that's not quite what I mean... but you know what I mean) is true, does it follow that getting into Harvard is a good signal?
Don't expect people to be consistent or logical in how they interpret signals (also, suppose they don't believe higher ed is pure signaling with no value - this is a legitimate out given by dspeyer - all those impressive Harvard grads they've seen were made impressive by the awesome Harvard teachers).