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What are the differences between the 'big names' of higher education, in comparison to other places?
For example, I often hear about MIT, Oxford, and to a lesser extent, Cambridge. Either there's some sort of self-selection, or do graduates from there have better prospects than graduates of 'University of X, YZ'?
In a little bit of unintended self-reflection I noticed that I have a strange binary way of thinking of higher education. It feels that if I don't go to one of the top n, my effort is wasted. Not sure why.
I'm just becoming somewhat paranoid regarding the real world after reading HPMOR because I always get a 'how much do I really know?' feeling. I'm not sure how my impressions were formed and I better double-check how well does the ideas in my mind reflect the real-world truth but at the same time I'm not even sure what's a reliable indicator.
Post-high education LWers, do you think the place you studied at had a significant effect on your future prospects?
Yes, there are differences.
I talked to a person who was hiring for tech jobs in Silicon Valley, and he said that the Ivy League schools in the United States get a much better quality of training than other United States schools in the fields of engineering and computer science. For example, the Ivy League schools would have 3 hour exams where you have to show how you arrived at an answer as well as the answer. Most of the other schools had 1 hour multiple choice exams.
The situation is different in other countries. In Canada, unlike in the US, engineeri... (read more)