Big Three Grads, What Did Your Degree Do For You?

Most people don't matter. Most people are more concerned about who made the cut on "Dancing With the Stars" than with b-school rankings.

However, the people that do matter, potential employers in the business world, will certainly be aware an applicant is a graduate of UFL-Warrington.

 

And so what. A Penn degree doesn't guarantee admission to UC's MBA program and vice versa.

A 780 GMAT and an Excelsior, COSC or TESC degree should land you a slot at either school.

 

I have been through this topic so many times it's exhausting, but I'll do it again. I am a successful executive making six figures a year. In 99.999% of the cases, the school a candidiate graduated from makes no difference at all...ZERO. In fact, in about 80% of cases, a graduate degree doesn't matter if you have quality experience to go with the BA.

Pug

 

Easy there big guy If you are tired of talking about the utility of big name MBAs, quit bringing it up! This thread has nothing to do with the utility of graduate degrees. We were simply discussing the types of schools that will admit an average person with a big 3 undergrad degree.

Since you clearly did not take the time to read the entire thread, here is a quote from me (9 posts up)...

 

Ooops, sorry. Long day!

 

Isn't an absolute fact that "most people" don't attend a top ranked school?

Isn't it also a fact that the majority of Americans do not have a bachelor's degree at all.

Then, my Excelsior BS places me higher than the more than half of the US population that have a bachelor's degree from no place at all. So, of the less than half of the US population that has a bachelor's degree, less than half of those have one from the top half of schools... Since the Big Three aren't exactly the bottom of the pile -- the number must be fewer than 50% of less than 50% of the population have a bachelor's degree of higher prestige than mine from Excelsior.

Something less than 20% have a graduate degree. Fewer than 1 in 5. That means that any one of the graduate degrees I'm working on places me academically ahead of more than 4/5ths of the US population.

So, A person gets a Big Three degree which places him equal to or high than more than 50% of the population and some here say "ewwwww you suck" and then he gets a master's from a "lesser known" which places him academically higher than about 80% of the population and some here say "ewww you suck"... and then he gets a DL PhD from another "lesser known" which places him academically higher than a very significant portion of the population and some here say "ewww you suck"

And to those I just have to ask; "are you just plain stupid? Do you really think that only top program degrees have a value? Can you not see that the overwhelming majority of people DON'T have one of those degrees?

Get real and maybe a clue...

 

I can't find any posts in this thread where anyone has stated "only top program degrees have value".

I am proud of my alma matter and my degree had utility (admission to grad school). However, I think you would be hard pressed to find a 4-year RA school with less prestige. Sure there are many at a similar level but I doubt you could find any that are less prestigious (certainly not 50%)

 

I responded to "why bother".

Now, our respective colleges may or may not be in the top 50% but reality is that half of all schools must be in the lower 50% and half in the upper.

Now, I have to ask - if they are "The Big Three" then how much more well known can we ask for? These schools are not unknown to admissions officials of graduate programs.

So, how about we use Appalachian State University in Boone NC as an example here. Is ASU more "well known" than COSC? It surely is in and around Boone but how about in Iowa? An ASU degree is pretty "well known" throughout NC but then, is it better than Iowa State?

We are fooling ourselves and feeding our detractors when we concede that "The Big Three" are not "well known" - it's simply not true. There are examples of Big Three grads entering the finest (and worst) grad schools in the world. The are Big Three grads in government leadership and there are Big Three grads in education.

One has to ask the question "where do the Big Three rank exactly" in order to answer any question about a better or more well known grad school.

I just believe that unless you are a graduate of a truly elite program (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, etc...) then it doesn't matter in the slightest because most people out there have no clue whether Florida State is better than U. Florida (unless we're talking football and then they have an opinion).

It just doesn't matter - it's a checked box in probably 80-90% of situations.

 

This post kind of reminds me of a fake NON-BAR admitted California Real Estate "maybe" Lawyer that used to post here under several names.

Honestly, I think he just wanted to start a fire...

 

Unless of course you actually live in Florida and, ....umm... have attended both schools.

The truth is that the "Big" three are only big to people in the know about distance learning which is a very small percentage of people. However, the reality is, that schools you know about are always better than the schools you don't know about (even if that's not quite the reality.) It goes back to the old saying about the "devil you know..." Compared to the U. of Iowa, Iowa State University, Indiana University, (and the rest of the big 10, southeast conference, the big sky conference etc.) the people who recognize COSC, TESC or Excelsior is almost nil.

 

A degree from practically any properly accredited school is good. Unless you're attempting to become a high-ranking executive at a major company, most companies do not care:

1. Where your degree is from. All they care about is that you have one, and that it's legit.

And...

2. Some employers DO care whether it was earned by distance or not, but fewer care every day. Many employers actually encourage employees to get into DL programs.

If you're attempting to become a high-ranking Exec, your degree is probably not going to be the company's deciding factor anyway; it will almost always come down to your track record, and then your degree, secondly.

As stated ad nauseam, people are hired all the time who hold degrees from schools most people have never heard of; somehow, these people go in and do a great job (insert sarcasm here).

People need to realize that the degree is just one component, then there is your ability to make connections so you can get the great career; then there is still a fortune factor--being at the right place at the right time and having things fall correctly--and then once you get the job you have to prove yourself. If people actually gave this some thought, they would understand why folks with Community College degrees or degrees from lesser known schools wind up becoming High-level Executives, while many people from well-known schools never quite make it that far. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you graduated from Harvard, because you're going to have to do something beyond your graduation.

Your degree, regardless of where or how you earned it, guarantees nothing but a better chance (and that's all it should do); the rest is up to the individual.

 

I would suggest that outside of the ivy league, the recognition factor is driven primarily by an institution's athletic programs.

As far as name recognition, the Big Three are not much different from any of the RA colleges and universities with low-profile athletic programs.

 

The we need a "Big Three Conference" and a football and basketball team. We don't even have mascots in the Big Three, 'lotta work to get done but we can do this....

 

Should is the key word. Has this actually happened? You would think that a Big 3 grad would be here proudly telling people what he/she accomplished if this happened. Unfortunately, I feel a Big 3 grad gaining admission into UChicago's MBA program is very uncommon despite any GMAT scores.

Regarding an earlier post, I know two people here are attending GW and UIUC after graduating from a Big 3. But it seems like they are the exception and not the norm.

 

The big three are well known to us but not the rest of the general public. Do a search of this forum and see what the majority of threads about the big three discuss. You will find information about transfer credits, credit banking, portfolio credits, exam acceptance, etc... You will be hard pressed to find threads bragging about the quality of classes and impressive job placement rates. In fact, a person cannot even complete a degree at COSC by taking classes (at COSC). They offer a number of DL course but not nearly enough to acually complete an entire degree.

U of Phoenix is well known by much more of the general public. But that doesn't put it anywhere close to the upper 50% of schools. U of P is well known for the things they advertise, easy scheduling, easy admissions, short courses, etc...

The real question is.... what are the big three well known for?

 

Not so fast....

If you go to Excelsior, you're a GLOBE!

If you go to TESC, you're a BULB!

If you go to COSC, you're an ACORN!


Hahahaha!!!

 

I certainly agree with that. I would also add that I suspect that most people believe that all big time sports universities are suitably accredited which reduces one step that HR departments go through in filtering resumes. Of course, I would readily admit that's probably the only significant advantage (at least from a hiring perspective) of going to a well known state school.

 

But the schools will only know if the alunmi informs them. For example I never told Excelsior where I got admitted for my Masters.

 

Congrats. What school/program are you going to attend for your graduate studies?

 

Ok, completely ignoring what I believe your motives are, I'm going to give you a few facts.

In the U.S., only about 25 to 27% of the population get at least a bachelor's degree. Only 6.9% get a Master's. Only 2.0% get a professional degree higher than a Master's and only 1.1% get a VALID doctorate. (2005 U.S. Census, American Community Survey) In light of those facts, it is uncommon for anyone to get any Master's degree and even more uncommon getting a Master's degree from a top ten University.

Now, let's take a look at the three main transfer schools. Excelsior, over it's existence has granted degrees to over 100,000 people. (Excelsior College Business Catalog, pg. 1) Assuming we assign smaller, yet similar numbers to COSC and TESC. We can probably safely assume that the "Big 3" have granted degrees to approximately 200,000 people.

Considering that less than a third of people who obtain undergraduate degrees go on to obtain a graduate degree, we can assume that only 66,000 of "Big 3" graduates have obtained graduate degrees.

Since there is literally a couple of thousand graduate schools in the U.S. alone, the probability that someone who chose to get a degree using alternative methods would choose a "top-tier" traditional school is infinitesimally small. We'll be generous and say that 3% even attempted to gain admittance into a top-tier graduate program. 3% of 66,000 is 1,980. We'll round that to 2,000.

2,000 is only one percent of the 200,000 number that I approximated for getting degrees from the "Big 3". Looking at the total membership count for this board at ~8,600, we can safely infer that there are quite a few graduates of Excelsior, COSC and TESC that have never visited this board and probably never even heard of this board. Taking that into consideration, I'm impressed that so many of the graduates that post to this board have proceeded on to obtain graduate degrees.

There is a simple truth. A smaller proportion of graduates from ANY school will enroll in a top-tier graduate school if they did not attend that school for their undergraduate degree.