patrick.net

Not all Ivy leagues are alike. They are tier-1 Ivy leagues, they are called HYP (harvard, yale and princeton). If you are looking for a job at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, KKR, yes, HYP is the stepping stone. The proportion of tier-2 Ivy admits to that of total Ivys that a school has sent is very high at schools like Harker. So, don't pay top dollar for "Ivy": look for tier-1 Ivies that a particular school has sent.

BTW, Cornell, an Ivy league, is called poor man's Ivy on the east coast.

Same with companies: there are tier-1 companies. Tier-1 companies love to recruit students from tier-1 Ivy schools. It is true that McKinsey recruits from tier-2 Ivys like Duke, Columbia, etc. Tier 1 companies recruiting at tier-2 Ivies is like Harker sending to tier-2 Ivys.

Tier 1a Investment Banking(IB): Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley
Tier 1b IB: JP Morgan
Tier 2a: Citi, Barclays, credit suissie
Tier 2b: UBS, Duetsche Bank
Tier 3: Wells, HSBC, Nomura, etc.

Just working at Citi does not make you a top tier IB guy, any more than going to duke does make ya top tier Ivy. Yes, there are outliers; even these outliers have to do with the family pedigree. For instance, Brown used to recruit kids of famous hollywood actors, actresses, dumb kids of billionaires. And Goldman Sachs love to hair that dumb kid from Brown; this is an outlier.

Consulting:

Tier 1: McKinsey, Bain, Boston/BCG. Even here, McKinsey > Bain/BCG

Private Equity:

Tier 1: Blackstone, KKR, etc

MBA schools:
Tier 1: Harvard, Stanford
Tier 1.5: Wharton, which is called MBA Factory these days.
Next tier: Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia, MIT

Law Schools:

Tier 1: HYS: Harvard, Yale, Princeton
Next tier: T14 schools minus Tier 1.

When you don't have any pedigree beyond the school--and this is the case with the majority of American population including immigrants, you have to scheme to top tier Ivies, top tier IB/Consulting/PE, etc. This is a very hard game. Most of the time, most of us don't know how this layered system works. From the outside, every Ivy appears to on par with every other Ivy; every IB job appears like every other IB job.

Just go to collegboard.com, wallstreetoasis.com, to see how some kids/parents have been trying to scheme to get to the top (the top money making potential. not so much of learning/intellectuality).

Tier 1: ASSHOLES!
Tier 2: ASSHOLES!
Tier2a: ASSHOLES!
Tier 14: ASSHOLES!