MIT and Stanford are Kiki, Yale, Princeton, Cornell are bouba
All state schools are Bouba I think
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Definitely applies, also to the folks who went to weirdly elite and small private universities like Reed/Colgate/Bowdoin.
They have this odd entitlement/resentment conundrum that makes them awful to work with in the 23-28 age bracket from my experience.
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My limited slice from consulting world experience:
Pride for going to an elite Uni which gives off a certain smugness only a private can grant, resentment for not going to a household-name elite Uni which pisses them off when national rankings come out. Smart ones age out of it
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The credentialing game over the last <10yrs has really picked up in finance/consulting and now tech world (esp business side).
If your Uni isn’t top-ranked in US News & World Report “target school” classification those who value elite-credentialism act like you didn’t go to Uni.
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This trickles down to private schools that don’t have the immediate Harvard/Yale/Princeton signaling.
You get a great education but don’t have the signaling power which leads to the resentment. (Strong alumni channels of elite privates help tho)
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tl;dr it is a very dumb game, don’t get too worried about it.
And if a potential offer comes in from a firm and the hiring MD says, “we’re taking a chance on you, your background seems week but I can tell you have drive, half our folks went to Princeton”
RUN
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Seems to have gotten worse than in my early career days
Hoping the Great Resignation/labor shortage fixes some of the issues with this trend.
There are some very smart people playing really stupid games with awful incentive structures who are rightfully over it after experiencing 2020.


