An equal-opportunity employer (as long as you went to Harvard, MIT or Stanford)
I've applied recently to work at a certain company (who shall remain nameless as to preserve the chance that I might actually work there someday), whose hiring practices are well-documented, and who admittedly favors certain schools for their rich history of producing those with a high level of technical savvy and overall academic acumen. I'll also admit that I'm tragically not one of those people – for both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, I did what I could with the money I had at the time (which wasn't much on both occasions).
As an undergrad, I went to a small school, that...how shall I say....isn't known for producing Nobel prize-winning scholars. :)
In going through the company's HR pages, one of the form fields was, naturally, “Education”. A drop-down menu preceded the normal textbox used to type in my schools, which conveniently listed all of the select colleges, universities and tech schools that typically produce the caliber of person they're looking for – the usual Ivy League suspects, the U of Texas @ Austin, CalTech, Boston University, et al.
And then, of course, was my little afterthought form field where I was forced to manually type “University of Guam”. Go Tritons!
I'm not condemning companies that use this approach, nor am I ragging on their HR policies/practices (Microsoft uses a similar strategy as I’ve seen); I think it gives the company distinction and gives one something to aspire towards. But at the same time, it's a harrowing reminder of reality and the way the world works.
If I could do it all over again, would I change anything? Nope. If I was ashamed of my degrees and from whence they came, it would defeat the whole point of being educated. And while I didn't get one degree from some big school that coincidentally three U.S. presidents call their alma mater, I picked up several pieces of paper from smaller schools and am better because of it. I’m damn proud to have taken business classes just 500 meters away from what’s widely thought to be the world’s foremost research center for marine biology.
So for me, I’m happy. The worst thing you can walk around with in life is hypocrisy or regret, and fortunately I have neither. As for my yet-to-be-conceived kids, that’s a different story. My daughter’s going to Yale, with my son at West Point. J