My perception is that the further you get from the time of graduation, the less it makes a difference where someone went to school. A year or two, I felt like where I got my degree might have made a difference in terms of my ability to find jobs, but coming up on a a decade since I graduated (which is a pretty small portion of what I expect will be a decades-long career), it might as well be entirely irrelevant. Amusingly, I said something similar to one of my colleagues recently when we were discussing the level of stress their teenager was having around their upcoming college applications, and they agreed, mentioning that no one cared that they didn't even have a degree, which was clearly true since I had absolutely no idea that was the case! It never came up in the past despite us chatting fairly regularly about our personal lives because it ultimately just didn't matter to either of us, and while it affected their initial attempts to break into the software industry, it pretty quickly stopped mattering even to their prospective employers compared to their actual work experience.

Obviously there are some industries where degrees are necessary (law, medicine, presumably academia, although I'm not certain), but outside of those, the limiting factors of how far you can go are independent of where you graduated from. There are some places where the initial hiring process will be mostly filtered by where someone graduated, but in the long term, most people will either hit a point of diminishing returns regardless, or they'll be able to make up the difference.

DeepMind and top firms from the City of London have recruiters chasing Oxbridge students in CS, Math, and Statistics before graduation, sometimes even a year or two ahead. You hear more about MIT or Stanford because you are based in the US. Ranking or prestige-wise, in case that matters (I think it's just a lazy filter), they are indistinguishable: https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2025

My counterpoint is that those companies you listed do more harm than good anyhow. Advertising and data gathering, helping LLM companies train models that use more electricity than many countries, and charging outrageous interest and practicing usury.

Why would you want to work for those places?

Infrastructure projects are where it's at. Pays well and you're using your technical skills to do some good for the country for a change.

> No, you can get a scholarship

Of course! So easy! What percentage of foreign students applying get aid or scholarships?

> Again, this is really the best of the best, those with the highest merit.

You're assuming that "the best of the best" are applying. This is not true. "The best of the best who are encouraged to apply and/or have the means", apply. This is not the same population.

> All they had to do was convince a bureaucrat their life was hard

I don't know who this "bureaucrat" is. When I interviewed at Cambridge I was seen by 3 fellows, all members of the relevant departments.

> If you can't get the grades, you don't have merit.

Nobody's this naive, surely?

The mean talent at Oxbridge and at the Ivy League is pretty similar. The talent level of Ivy League scholarship holders is significantly higher than either. Obtaining a scholarship is a significant hurdle that not all applicants clear - so it is very naive to act as if any Oxbridge candidate could just walk into a scholarship. And if you agree that they couldn't walk into it, then it obviously is a hurdle, contrary to your comment.

> Debase the currency, surprised when it has less value?

This bizarre comment is not related to the issue at all.

This is why https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2015/10/29/our-firs... concluded that the best university in the USA is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_and_Lee_University.

For this they measured the gap between what graduates made, and what they would be expected to make based on high school record, test scores, and choice of major. In other words, "How much do you earn because of the university you went to, rather than your own virtues?"

That university won because it has a network rich people who could help people's careers get a good launch.

If you're measuring the value in dollars, it would be very surprising if people maxxed on the INT stat rank higher than those on the USD stat. But, for example, if your goal is to secure a professorship at a top university, or do the most cutting-edge research at a national lab, I think the network value of knowing a smart person far exceeds that of a rich person.

Kind of depends. Attending a service academy in the states is a VERY GOOD IDEA if you want to make being a military officer your career. But yes, I take your point for the general case.

However... some of the best business contacts I have came from teaching at a trade school in Texas. But I'm just selling solutions into SMEs, I'm not baby-sitting kids with VC funds.

How are we valuing the network? There are doors that many wealthy people would not be able to open and vice-versa. On the other hand, someone both smart and wealthy... Sam Altman comes to mind, as well as a number of other figures of historic importance.