[quote=squat250]the thing is, law, and colleges, have for so long been bound by “status” and “rank” and by trying to perceived by others as the best and brightest.
that brand value does have some value–when you talk to other lawyers, and you tell them you’re from a top school, they think immediately, here’s a smart guy. It also has a slight intimidation factor.
True also with college degrees. guy graduates from harvard you think, well, hell, he’s probably fairly clever. that’s translated into money and access to jobs for years.
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I think the brand value only has any meaningful value at the beginning of one’s career. It helps open the first few doors. But after you’ve been at your profession for a decade or so… I don’t think your alma mater(s) count for much anymore – you’ve either done impressive stuff or you haven’t.
Having said that… humans are risk averse, and in hiring decisions they will often seek comfort in what a candidate “looks” like rather than what s/he’s actually done. For example, you’re probably not going to get fired for hiring the Harvard MBA almost no matter how bad the candidate turns out after the fact. So, many folks seek out the candidate who is least likely to make them look foolish, and this favors “resume-friendly” schools and work experience.
Interestingly, there was some academic research done several years back that concluded that the actual university that a person attended was generally less predictive of future success than the best university that person COULD have attended based on grades, test scores, etc. This makes sense to me.
The reason, after all, that a lot of Harvard MBAs (just to pick one example) tend to be successful in commerce is not because they attended Harvard, but rather because they were the type of person that could get accepted into the program in the first place. Obviously there are a lot of folks who are capable of going to the brand-name school who for various reasons don’t go that route… and turn out to be just as successful as they would have had they gone the brand route.
In the long run, however, all that really matters is your combination of ability, guile, work ethic, social skills, and, critically, luck. And luck plays a pretty damn big role.
