The polite version of this question is usually a proxy for socioeconomic sorting. In American conversation, "where did you go to school" often means "what's your class background," delivered in a form that lets both parties pretend it's small talk. The person asking is usually looking for a signal, and the person answering usually knows what signal they're providing.
I went to a mid-tier public university in a state I don't live in anymore. My honest experience of school is that it mattered enormously in the moment and mattered much less in the long run than I would have guessed at the time. The classes I remember are the ones taught by teachers who cared. The classes I don't remember are the ones taught by teachers who didn't. The institution's prestige had almost nothing to do with which was which.
What I've come to think is that the specific school matters less than whether the person got the two things school is supposed to provide: exposure to ideas they wouldn't have encountered at home, and a set of peers who took them seriously. Both of those are available in a lot of places. The elite version is more efficient and more expensive. The ordinary version, if you meet the right people, works fine.
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The Question Behind the Question
In a lot of social contexts, "where did you go to school" isn't really a question about education. It's a probe for class background, delivered in a form polite enough that both parties can pretend it's small talk. The answer sorts people — into prestige tiers, regions, social strata — and everyone involved usually understands the sorting even as they maintain the fiction that they're just making conversation. This is worth naming, because the discomfort many people feel around the question comes from sensing the sorting underneath the pleasantry.
The sorting function is strongest in certain professional and social milieus where educational pedigree operates as a credential and a class marker simultaneously. In those settings, the school you name opens or closes doors before you've said anything else about yourself. This is one of the less admirable features of how elite social worlds work, and it's worth being aware of when you find yourself either asking or answering the question.
How Much School Actually Matters
The research on the long-run effects of college selectivity is more ambiguous than the prestige obsession would suggest. Some influential studies have found that, once you control for the caliber of student who gets admitted, attending a more selective institution has surprisingly little effect on later earnings — the ambitious, capable students who get into elite schools tend to do well regardless of where they actually enroll. The school may function more as a sorting signal than as a value-add, identifying talent rather than creating it.
There are important exceptions — for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, elite schools do appear to provide a real boost, likely through networks and opportunities they wouldn't otherwise access. But for the median student, the evidence suggests that what you do in college matters more than which college you do it at. The intense competition for a handful of prestigious names is, for most students, a competition over a signal that matters less than everyone assumes.
What School Is Supposed to Provide
Stripped of the prestige sorting, school is supposed to provide two things: exposure to ideas and people you wouldn't have encountered otherwise, and a peer environment that takes you seriously and pushes you to grow. Both of these are available at a wide range of institutions, not just the famous ones. A motivated student at an unremarkable state school who finds the right professors and the right peers can get an education that rivals anything the elite institutions offer. The raw materials are more widely distributed than the prestige hierarchy implies.
My own experience bears this out. The classes that shaped me were the ones taught by people who cared, and the friendships that lasted were with peers who took ideas seriously. Neither of these had much to do with the institution's ranking. The parts of college that actually mattered were available to me at a mid-tier school, and I suspect the same is true for most people, even if the culture keeps insisting that the name on the diploma is the thing that counts.
The Networks Question
One thing elite schools genuinely do provide, beyond the education itself, is access to networks — the classmates who go on to run companies, staff governments, and fund ventures. This is real, and it's a large part of what people are actually paying for when they pay for prestige. The value isn't only in what you learn; it's in who you meet and the doors those relationships open decades later. Pretending this network effect doesn't exist would be naive.
But it's worth being clear-eyed about what this means. The network advantage isn't evidence that elite schools educate better; it's evidence that they concentrate advantaged people who then advantage each other. The credential works partly as a sorting mechanism for a club, and the club's value comes from its exclusivity rather than from anything that happened in the classroom. This is a real benefit for those who get it and a real unfairness for those who don't — one of the mechanisms by which advantage reproduces itself across generations. Naming it honestly is better than either pretending it doesn't exist or pretending it reflects genuine educational superiority.
What I Keep Coming Back To
The specific school matters far less, in the long run, than whether the person got the real goods school is meant to provide — new ideas, serious peers, the room to grow into themselves. The prestige version of this is more efficient and vastly more expensive. The ordinary version works fine if you find the right people. When someone asks where I went to school, I answer honestly and try to remember that the question is usually about sorting, and that the sorting measures something much narrower than the thing that actually mattered about those years.