Having a degree matters more than where you got it...except...

Here's a dirty little secret about earning your degree that most college fair reps won't tell you:

In the 80/20 scheme of things (and probably closer to the 99/1 realm) -- having your degree matters more than where you earned it -- except to people that you might work with who ALSO have their degree from the same place!

Most job requirements simply say "Bachelors Degree" - MOST of the time they don't care if its "Arts" (BA) or "Science" (BS) -- they may go on to tell you that they would prefer that it's in a particular area. They might say "Advanced Degree Preferred" -- or even "MBA/JD Preferred" -- but most of the time it is also optionally "or equivalent experience."

You MIGHT even see that an employer will list "from a top school" -- but what does that even mean? School rankings change from year to year, and even within a given year -- it depends on who is doing the ranking. Unbiased? Unlikely. Go look at how much advertising is spent by the "top" schools in those magazines. In fact at my graduation ceremony at the Carlson School they implored us to keep in mind that:

NO ONE cares (or will know) what the rank of your school was the year you graduated. What matters is how the school is doing THIS year.

It was their way of telling us that we should stay involved in maintaining the brand.

What matters most about the college experience, is that you navigated a complex social system -- successfully. It shows that you were willing, one way or the other to commit to completing a multi-year assignment, facing down lots of instructors, professors, administrative staff, and peers along the way dealing with all manner of petty injustices.

It also doesn't matter how long it takes you to run the maze -- I dropped out of college and graduate school to work in the real world. But each time I went back and finished what I started -- largely due to the fact that I had to self-fund my entire education. When I started on my MBA it was a one class a semester slow crawl. By year two I was in full stride taking two four credit classes per week for a year and summer classes in order to get done. But that's only because I was finally fully mentally engaged to the point that I ended up with 10 extra credits -- I don't believe in doing the minimum, and, well, I'd found something to be passionate about.

Oh and just like standardized test scores, your GPA is only partially connected to your "potential to succeed" -- I contend HAVING a degree, a family, a full-time job for some length of time, running a small business for 20 years COUNTS as "proof" that you have more than just potential. Likely if you get a 4.0 you are approaching sycophant status or social outcast (or even are "hygiene challenged") -- and that you are too close to the system (but that's only my personal opinion and is probably a thin justification for only ever earning a 3.4 in grad school). By and large its a binary decision -- did you graduate or not. In fact people don't like it when you brag about your GPA. Remember, recruiters are people too -- as are hiring managers.

In fact after your first job, unless you're working for a big company, its rare that you'll even have to provide access to your transcripts. Claim you graduated from Harvard? Colleges like Harvard have a large staff that works full-time to prove you didn't.

Where you graduated from provides a connection to other people that graduated from the same school. If it's really that important to you from an identity standpoint, you probably need constant validation or suffer from low self esteem.

So today's Big Idea is this: Next time it comes up in conversation (and you know I like throwing conversations for a loop) -- when someone asks you where you went to school, ask them "Does it really matter?"

Because you can learn a lot of information about someone, not only from the statements they make, but the questions they ask!

One last dirty little secret: Most job postings are detailed to an heir apparent or an heir presumptive -- in other words, most companies already have a candidate in mind for a position. The more detailed the job description, the more it's likely written for an internal candidate -- not you. If not, it is probably for a position that was recently vacated because the company had not realized the true value of the last person in it!

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