Ohio State's Scholarship Sign: Fiction

Totally agree.  I worked for several large manufacturing companies and a degree from Michigan, Purdue, Michigan Tech, and several others are all treated the same.  The interview and specifics about the person make the difference.  Michigan is a very good school, but most companies don't view it as superior when hiring a technical degree. 

On the bright side, when I worked at Dow Chemical, at least my area of the company frowned on taking any MSU grads. 

I think you guys are missing my point.

I don't mean prestige - I agree that the value of where you did your undergrad significantly decreases as you gain experience. Employers want experience. (You also happened to point out quite a few well-respected engin schools - Illinois, Purdue, Minnesota, Penn State, ISU and Tech are great programs and MSU & OSU are very good - so I don't know if  you chose the best examples) 

You talk about the NFL - and that's a great parallel - except you don't point out the fact that the guys getting drafted from I-AA and DII performed at a much higher level than their peers and are hired at a more lower rate than those that played DI BCS football. Immediate graduation placement happens the same way using GPA, standardized test scoring, degree prestige, extracurriculars, etc., especially at ultra competitive firms (or grad schools) that are more similar to the NFL than a large corporation (no offense intended). Once you've made the league (got your first job), it's mostly performance-based.

Back to my point - students learn about their concentration (finance, econ, chem engin, etc.) and skills to perform in that field but they also learn work habits, acceptable minimum quality standards, competitive drive etc. based on who they are competing with each and every day that allow them to succeed in a career.*

We can point to an exception to any rule by saying IBM has great MSU engineers; my buddy is an MSU chem engin grad that makes 2x what I do right now but he also graduated Summa Cum in 3 years from the Honor college. He was going to succeed no matter the degree. The idea is that a Michigan degree is worth more because you are better prepared to succeed. Rising tide lifts all boats sort of thing.

*This is (just) one reason why I think student : faculty ratio is such a dumb measurement of a education's quality and why you see universities like Michigan, Cal, UCLA (and Harvard & Stanford even though they benefit) talking so much shit about USNWR rankings. You're an adult in college, if you need a small class size to ask your professor/GSI for help you're in trouble already. You don't get to choose how many people your boss manages when you're done with college.

Link.

If the 25th percentile is a 26 and the 75th percentile is a 30, 28 wouldn't be an unreasonable guess for the median.

There's an effect that smears some of the information in this table: not everyone takes both the ACT and SAT and in general, at least in Ohio and I'm guessing throughout the midwest, the only-SAT group is stronger than the only-ACT group because the SAT is required by a lot of top tier schools, especially on the east coast. (Or at least this used to be the case--I haven't kept up on this stuff at all.) People tend to look at these tables as representative of the entire student body, but they may not be.

The main difference between Michigan and Ohio (leaving aside their treatment of athletes and the way athletics is integrated into university governance, which is a different matter altogether) is that Michigan has two major state universities and Ohio only has one. I'm guessing the overall pool of students isn't all that different in the two states, but in Michigan its split between UM and MSU and in Ohio they all go to OSU. (There are also more strong liberal arts schools in Ohio that probably strip off a bit of the top layer, but I doubt that has much effect on the mean or the median.)

If you look at any measure of admissions requirements at the three schools, OSU tends to be at or just below the average of M and MSU--pretty much what you'd expect.