Project Classroom Makeover And Biographies Of Hegemony

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Establishing oneself as superior over others is crucial in modern day society where the caliber of candidates for any position is highly competitive. In the essays the “Project Classroom Makeover” and “Biographies of Hegemony” by Cathy Davidson and Karen Ho, both discuss the faulty system in which hierarchies in school and elites in Wall Street place on the selection process of individuals. They discuss the heavy bias and lack of depth utilized by both systems when analyzing individuals for selection into their firms and institutions. The overly simplistic system used by investment banking companies in the selection process is generic and fails to survey the vast population of candidates. This backwards system trickles down to the hierarchies …show more content…
When in a field of work which requires highly qualified, out of the box thinkers, one would imagine that extensive research is done on behalf of the many Wall Street firms to maximize their efficiency and output. Yet, the implemented system highly prioritizes people who graduate from only the top 15 to 20 universities. This lowers the incentive of those not in ivy leagues who have original and innovative minds which were unrecognized by many universities, while those in ivy league universities receive prestigious jobs with much less effort. Certain individuals who have the capacity to place into high ranked universities and cannot due to financial constraints, do not get the same opportunity, even though they have the same skill level. Many have a higher skill level and drive to get the work done, due to the fact that they have come from less prestigious institution to achieve the same as those in ivy leagues. “To be considered ‘smart’ in Wall Street is to be implicated in a web of situated practices and ideologies,” which boils down to someone who has studied at an ivy league and can only showcase an impressive GPA, as opposed to seeking for someone with better qualifications and a vast resume (Ho 167). If an individual, who fails to enter any elite university, works excessively hard in another university while balancing internships and any other extra curricular activities to place him or herself in the category of “highly qualified” gets put to the side over someone who paid themselves into an ivy league, would that not decrease the value of working at such an establishment? Firms seem to want the smartest and brightest people in their workforce, so on paper, it would make sense to pick from only ivy leagues, but it has been proven over and over that in many instances, most individuals who are enrolled in top tier universities with extremely high

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