Does Where You Went To School Matter?

At one or more times throughout your life, you may have heard a guidance counselor or even a human resources worker say something such as:
"After your first job, no one will care where you went to school."
If you manage to become a professional athlete, then the above statement may perhaps be correct.
However, for most office workers, where they went to college or university will be important not only for their first professional jobs, but also for:

While the rest of this web page will try to address how important the prestige of any school that you graduated from is, my message is NOT that if you cannot get accepted into an Ivy League university you should not even try elsewhere.
When my time allows, I plan to create a web page and companion video on the college admissions process, tentatively subtitled:
Don't hate the player, hate the game
Until then, let's focus on the current topic and the sections below:

Confirmation Bias

To help us begin to appreciate the theme of this web page, we need to understand confirmation bias.
To help you understand confirmation bias, I will address outcomes below in which tasks have been assigned to Person A and Person B.
In all of the following outcomes:

Outcome 1

Management's Interpretation

In the eyes of management, the above outcome was to be expected.
Person A succeeded because he or she has a prestigious degree.
Person B failed because he or she does not have a prestigious degree.

Outcome 2

Management's Interpretation

Person A succeeded because he or she has a prestigious degree.
Person B succeeded because even though Person B does not have a prestigious degree, management so perfectly assigned the task that Person B was still able to succeed.

Outcome 3

Management's Interpretation

If Person A did not succeed with his or her task, the only way that management can interpret the result is that the task was so difficult, that Person B would have had no chance either.
The fact that Person A was not successful does not reflect on Person A.
As with the 2008 financial crisis, outcome 3 is deemed a market failure.
Person B succeeded because even though Person B did not have a prestigious degree, management assigned the task so perfectly.
Once again, management congratulates itself.

The Dice Have No Memory

If you are familiar with the fields of gambling and/or statistics, you should have encountered language such as "The Dice Have No Memory"
That means that if we assume that the dice are fair, past rolls of the dice give us no information regarding future rolls of the dice.
If you have real-world experience in business, you should understand that a similar concept applies.
You should understand that past experience is not relevant regarding hiring, firing, and promotions.
What matters is where a given employee or candidate went to school.
In all of our scenarios:

Person B notes that to his or her manager.
His or her manager will likely say something such as:
"We need to focus on our upcoming work, not rehashing old news."
The premise behind a game of pure chance is that prior iterations do not matter, because there is no pattern to be derived.
In the employment market, the success or failure of prior work experience does not matter, but credit will be directed towards those with the most prestigious degrees and blame will be directed towards those without prestigious degrees.

Matriculated Student

What does "where did you go to school" mean?
If we were living in the 1990's dot-com bubble, employer's appetite for all manner of computer related jobs was so great, that "where you went to school" might be so broad as to apply to an open-enrollment certificate program.
However, in today's world, the reality is that for the purpose of hiring and promotions,

In some cases, someone who was a matriculated student at a prestigious university, attended for one or more semesters, then dropped out may experience easier outcomes than someone who outright graduated from a less prestigious university.
However, please do not interpret the above statement to mean that you should consider dropping out of college without absolutely extraordinary consideration.

Dating, Online And Otherwise

Especially if you are a man, if you are communicating with someone regarding a potential romantic relationship, you may be asked "where did you go to school?"
The question could possibly be low-stakes small talk, however it could lead to a go/no-go decision.
If the prestige of the institution that you graduated from is below some threshold that the questioner has in mind, that may be foreclose the chance of any romantic relationship.
How such a foreclosure is executed can vary widely.
I have listed possible scenarios below:

Many men believe that it is plausible to convert a foodie call into a romantic relationship.
Such delusions make it easy for women to line up foodie calls at will.
I would argue that abruptly cutting off communication is far more considerate than to allow a man to believe that a foodie call can lead to a romantic relationship.

Teamwork?

Regardless of where you went to school, what schools you attended as a matriculated student will impact whether you are hired and promoted.
If you do not have a prestigious degree, you might find yourself on a team consisting of:

For the people in the list above, who is the success or failure of a given project most important for?
The answer should be obvious.
The success or failure of the project is most important for the person who either has no degree at all, or who has a degree that is not prestigious.
For the above person, the project succeeding may not mean a promotion, but it could possibly merely mean continued employment.
For the other people in the list, the stakes are less high.
Even if the project fails, worst case:

Actually, the bullet-point above is unrealistic.
The narrative of the outsourcing company would almost certainly be that it delivered what was asked on-time, on-budget, and that any statement to the contrary is because the U.S. workers were unable to clearly communicate what they wanted.

Exceptions And Outliers

Rankings Versus "Rankings"

Some universities have charted paths of focusing on advancing in college rankings.
If such a university is near Ivy League tier universities, it may be difficult for its graduates to capitalize on that higher rank.
They will be caught in the vice between Ivy League graduates and the outsourcing industry.

Conclusion

For a great many of us, the statement "After your first job, no one will care where you went to school" will prove to be false.
A more accurate might prove to be "After your second job, no one may remember your first job, but they will remember where you went to school."
Understanding that "where you went to school" will significantly impact hiring and promotion decisions is not defeatism, it is realism.
However, acknowledging that having a prestigious degree may be an extraordinary advantage is not the same as saying that any one person can control all the factors that may lead to him or her being admitted to a given institution.
If the median SAT score for some Ivy League institution is 1550 and a random person scores 1550, that does not mean that he or she will be admitted.
It merely means that that one component of the application is in the range of people who may be admitted.
As I stated in the introduction, when I get some free time, I plan to make a web page on the college admissions process.
Spoiler Alert
Sheer numbers dictate that the typical student will be well served by applying to:

During this college application season, and likely in many of the college application seasons to come, a great many students will be badly influenced by people who say "why go to our state's public university? That is where everyone goes."