[Stymie]

I personally think that the "40-year decision" meme is highly overrated.  I'm a few years past that 40-year milestone and I can honestly say that after the 1st 5-10 years of my career, my Stanford degree (as well as my "Stanford of the East" degree) meant increasingly nada the more I aged and the more influence I achieved.  What counted for me and still counts is the quality of character, rather than the quality of the sheepskin.  Of the hundreds of people I worked closely with over my working career (even if in some cases only for very short periods), none shone out to me just because they happened to have a Stanford or Harvard or whatever degree.  What shone out (if and when it did-genius is rare and ephemeral) was random relative to where they got (if any) a degree.

When we pontificate to our potential recruits that "our" degree is significantly more valuable than that of our quasi-competitors (or even the Florida States of the world) we are potentially sticking our heads in the sand.

[Stymie]

I personally think that the "40-year decision" meme is highly overrated.  I'm a few years past that 40-year milestone and I can honestly say that after the 1st 5-10 years of my career, my Stanford degree (as well as my "Stanford of the East" degree) meant increasingly nada the more I aged and the more influence I achieved.  What counted for me and still counts is the quality of character, rather than the quality of the sheepskin.  Of the hundreds of people I worked closely with over my working career (even if in some cases only for very short periods), none shone out to me just because they happened to have a Stanford or Harvard or whatever degree.  What shone out (if and when it did-genius is rare and ephemeral) was random relative to where they got (if any) a degree.

When we pontificate to our potential recruits that "our" degree is significantly more valuable than that of our quasi-competitors (or even the Florida States of the world) we are potentially sticking our heads in the sand.