Really? I would naively expect the outcome to matter a lot more. As a PhD, your work product has a lot more transparency than B.S./M.S. degrees, because people will actually hear about your work if it matters (for several different, valid definitions of "hear about" and "matters"). However, I would also naively expect the name of the school to correlate with outcome, but only because because different professors work at different schools.

The outcome is severely affected by what the faculty are doing at the school you end up at. Your chances of successfully completing a Ph.D. doing something completely different from what people are doing in your department are slim.

To whom?

People in your field.

We can give as much lip-service as we want to not caring about pedigree, but the prejudice is always there.

employers.

a MBA from an ivy league school carries more weight than a MBA from the university of phoenix.

He was talking about a PhD.

MBA's are more a function of whether or not you can pay for the program than your undergraduate grades really.

i was using an MBA as an example, as its usually the most exaggerated.

another example is that there is a well known preference inside of google for PHDs from a specific set of schools.

Well, google may in fact have specific qualifications that they require in order to work for them, but that's hardly representative of whether or not you can be successful, unless your entire definition of success is a job at google.

My point is that outside of academia and a few outliers, most employers don't give a lick where you obtained your degree. Sure, some people are charmed by an Ivy league school on your resume. I can bet though that more people are charmed by what you are actually doing than where you went to school.

i don't believe the point is whether you will be successful with a PhD. you can be successful with a PhD from almost anywhere. you can be successful without one, too.

the point is that the name on the PhD matters. and it does. it doesn't ALWAYS matter. but it does matter.

Fair enough, I can concede that.

Correct, especially if he wants academia.

It's not as bad as it is for MBA, law, or (at the extreme) humanities PhD programs. In those fields, it's not even worth going if you can't get into a top program. Nonetheless, the ranking of the PhD program matters.

What matters more than the ranking of the program is the reputation of the advisor. However, at a no-name grad school, there may not be any reputable advisors in the field he wants to pursue.