> you can handle a large and difficult work load with precision and attention to detail
This part may be true, but I doubt it's determinative: over a long career I've not found much difference between Ivy folks and State folks in engineering roles, and I can easily think of a few Ivy-Leaguers who ended up in very high office and whose fulfillment of your criteria was, at best, questionable.
I didn't say State STEM grads couldn't perform equally, nor did I say "Ivy" anywhere. Only that a "top tier" (of which Ivy is a subset) STEM degree is reliable proof of ability, and implicitly that it is one of the most reliable proofs of ability.
I read your comment as saying a "top tier" STEM degree is a more reliable proof of ability than some other STEM degree, and I was using "Ivy" as shorthand for "top tier by American reputation" -- granted, inaccurately, but it's common to do so.
And if you were saying that I still disagree. It's not that a math degree from Stanford isn't a good indicator of ability, but that it's not any better an indicator than one from Cal Poly or for that matter Arizona State.
> It's not that a math degree from Stanford isn't a good indicator of ability, but that it's not any better an indicator than one from Cal Poly or for that matter Arizona State.
It would really require an in-depth curriculum and grading comparison to answer that question definitively. But one thing I do know from anecdotal experience is that top tier STEM programs carry a stronger expectation that their students not just master a body of knowledge for competent commercial application, but for continued theoretical research. The top tier programs are usually research universities oriented toward making breakthroughs in our understanding of particular fields and driving humanity’s knowledge forward.
Students at normal universities tend to be there to get the grade, get a good GPA, and get a good job. Anecdotally again, I’ve heard professors at such universities complain about that. STEM curriculums at top tier research universities tend to be designed to weed out ones not capable of advancing the state-of-the-art, which is quite a high bar. I’m not sure that standard is applied elsewhere. Though again, would take a comprehensive curriculum and grading comparison to know for sure.
This part may be true, but I doubt it's determinative: over a long career I've not found much difference between Ivy folks and State folks in engineering roles, and I can easily think of a few Ivy-Leaguers who ended up in very high office and whose fulfillment of your criteria was, at best, questionable.