I’m not the one sorting through the résumés.
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I guess I was not thinking of University of Phoenix. I was thinking of local colleges that are less expensive than the Ivies, sure, but also the bigger name state schools that have the football teams, etc.
And I’m not just talking about actuaries.
Yeah, and I went to one of those lesser schools, local college, interviewed locally, and one guy said, “X State, huh, is that a junior college?”
When there are “real” universities, mainly because of Fuhbaw on TV, people don’t take your podunk college seriously.
I went to a public college and when asked during an interview why I went to a college that is not ranked anywhere, I told them I don’t like student debt and everyone who I told that to was able to relate.
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only thing more expensive than a college degree is almost a college degree.
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Making a college decision that factors in the debt associated with the degree is such an actuarial answer that it has to make up for any perceived drop in institution quality, imo
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I’d gladly hire someone who did 2 years of CC and 2 years of state uni. Maybe I’ll look more favorably on somebody from an Ivy League with the same GPA and exams. If I knew the Ivy Leaguer took on massive debt for it, my opinion would be equal between the two.
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Unless there are 50 résumés to filter through.
I didn’t say it doesn’t matter at all… I said it matters materially less.
Even if there are 100 resumes to filter through, I bet they will first be filtered by exams and experience and selection of college will be third at most.
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There will be plenty of ties after the first two.
It is why I insisted on my children going to perceived “better” schools than my wife and I (we met at college, so it wasn’t a total waste of time!).
Sure. I’m just saying that it’s less important in this field than in others. If there were no exams, and you had to make the decision solely off the experience and the degree then the degree would matter more than in the reality where we do have exams.
I did not disagree.
Will disagree with you there for one specific reason.
Increasingly, I am seeing resumes being filtered by whether the person in question had an internship or placement (usually in the finance field) before their graduation and application.
Podunk U graduates will have far more limited access to companies that link up with higher-ranked Universities for actuarial internships and placements.
It might be different in the US because you have a more dispersed actuarial field (ours tend to be heavily concentrated in London & Edinburgh), but based on the people that apply, the bulk of them now have work experience if they studied at a more highly ranked University (vs a lower tier one).
Sure but even there you’re going based off the internships, not the degree itself.
And plenty of mediocre colleges have pretty decent internship programs. My nephew is at a perfectly average public university and has a bunch of internships: Fortune 500 companies, international companies… his resume will look great when he graduates.
We have actually been discussing the “name” of the University at work when it comes to applications for more experienced graduates (those with a few years of experience already).
Its contentious, but they want to eliminate the name of the school from the CV that is seen by the hiring manager, in order to potentially eliminate a source of bias. Same with the degree result (1st Class, 2nd Class etc.) So basically just BA, BSc, MSc in “X” etc… and thats it, along with their experience.
There seems to be an even split (for/against) of people at my current company about this issue. This is mostly related to trying to attract (and potentially hire) people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
What does this mean? I’m not familiar with this terminology.
in our field, the actuarial program brand name places aren’t always highly regarded unis. no offense, but Temple and Drake and Nebraska and Ga State.
i worked w a guy who did 2 yrs at CC then finished at state U. great guy.
we had 50 resumes to filter. I was sometimes more impressed with the 1 exam person from a school w no ActSci program than I was with the person with 2 or 3 from the factory school. we all look for different things i guess
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I think where you have your internship (and how many of them) will be far more important than the name of your college in this field.
But I will throw out there that who you know (and how well) is very likely to trump most other criteria that might be considered.
And that’s where college might have a bigger indirect role.
But so will getting your foot in the door through another job and finding ways to connect to people in the actuarial department. And there are so many today that don’t see this as “viable” because it’s not “efficient” use of time to get where they want to be.
IIRC, in the EU, many universities will give “final exams” as a way to determine how well one learned things, with results given as Poly shows.
This is something akin to using class rank and GPA in the US.