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What Role Colleges Play In Career Success Stirs Debate

Gauging from the scores of readers who responded to my recent column "Any College Will Do," the question of whether a degree from an elite school boosts one’s chances for success in business is hotly debated. It’s also an extremely emotional topic, because memories of the college application process trigger strong feelings of being either validated or rejected.

As a parent, Krishna Memani, a bank analyst from Livingston, N.J., writes that his job is to improve "the odds of success" for his kids, and to that end, he supports going to the right college. "It does not guarantee success — that will always be up to the kid — but it certainly helps," he says. "I conclude that from looking at the anecdotal evidence in the general population rather than just looking at the backgrounds of CEOs."

The graduate degree that Janice LeCocq, of Century, Fla., earned from Stanford in medical anthropology enabled her to launch her investment-banking career more than 20 years ago, she says. Even though her degree had "no relevance" to finance, she says, employers were impressed.

"I know that when I was a partner a few years later, they wouldn’t look at anyone but Stanford and Harvard," she writes. "I argued there would be good prospects at other schools, but they didn’t want to bother."

By Carol Hymowitz

From The Wall Street Journal Online

Full Story: http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/inthelead/20060926-inthelead.html?cjcontent=mail

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