Yup, and the reality becomes winners take all. Really starts to suck for us that ended up going to a ~200 ranked institution because we couldn’t get in to the prestigious ones (which, in all honesty, is much harder than finding a way to pay for an expensive school).

Sounds like an r/K selection thing. If you can't afford an Ivy and aren't elegable for assistance, then it may be more worthwhile to do community college and laterally-transfer into a different school.

I knew a dude who did community college in Northern VA (NVCC) and transferred to Cornell. Shaved off a lot of costs, got a scholarship, and walked out with an Ivy League diplo. All of those hills were good for his leg strength, too.

Transferring into Ivies is nearly universally more difficult than getting in normally, the only exception is Cornell.

Unfortunately, I'm still paying for being mediocre in my high school years!

Yeahhh outside of Cornell you're not going to transfer into an Ivy from a CC.

Doesn’t only apply to ivy leagues. I have a coworker than attended cc for 3 years and then transferred to a super elite/expensive private school in Oregon for his final year.

Ok, I didn’t think there were any elite schools on the West Cost apart from Stanford and after googling “most prestigious colleges Oregon” the only one I’ve heard of before is Reed, which USNWR ranks #68 among National Liberal Arts Colleges. This isn’t a knock on the students or the quality of education in Oregon or on the West Coast generally, just a statement of social reality. If you go by Lauren Rivera’s research on hiring practices of elite professional service firms the super elite are HYPS, with the remaining members of the Ivy League, Northwestern, MIT, Cal Tech and some others sometimes being included depending on who was hiring. No one’s transferring to any of those schools after three years at a community college. I doubt that’s ever happened at Reed.

Reed is among the top tier of liberal arts colleges.

Liberal arts college rankings aren't comparable to large university rankings. There are thousands of them, and many have specialized niches.

You need to adjust your scale when looking at colleges versus universities, and even then USNWR rankings are a crude metric if you are interested in a specific program.

Also, the idea that "elite professional service firms" and Ivy/Ivy-tier Universities have similar selection criteria doesn't seem at all surprising to me. But I don't think that's a model that's appropriate or useful for most HN readers.

Reed is #2 in the country for the number of graduates who go on to earn PhDs.

It's a more prestigious school than their USNWR ranking would indicate. Reed refuses to fill out the USNWR yearly survey, and is ranked lower because of it.

And Steve Jobs went there, but he dropped out.

It would be better to norm "getting a PhD" by undergrad department. Ivy league stem graduates often go straight to work because their salaries are basically as high as a phd

Anyone getting a PhD to increase their salary is probably making a big mistake.

Cal Tech must be #1, yes? Thanks for explaining the disjunction between their reputation and rank.

BTW, this is anecdotal and happened a long time ago, but I attended a "national liberal arts college" that's ranked _above_ Reed and had at least one classmate that completed two years at a local community college then transferred to this school for the final two years.

For that matter, my local community college system offers _guaranteed admission_ to several respected (and selective) universities. I.e., not only _can_ you do two years at community college and transfer to one of these more prestigious universities for a four-year degree, you can enroll in programs that guarantee it. (And several schools apparently found this useful enough to actively create a pipeline for it.)

There are other very good but smaller schools on the west coast like Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Reed etc.