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Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs

Author

Listed:
  • Lauren A. Rivera

    (Northwestern University)

Abstract

Americans are taught to believe that upward mobility is possible for anyone who is willing to work hard, regardless of their social status, yet it is often those from affluent backgrounds who land the best jobs. Pedigree takes readers behind the closed doors of top-tier investment banks, consulting firms, and law firms to reveal the truth about who really gets hired for the nation’s highest-paying entry-level jobs, who doesn’t, and why. Drawing on scores of in-depth interviews as well as firsthand observation of hiring practices at some of America’s most prestigious firms, Lauren Rivera shows how, at every step of the hiring process, the ways that employers define and evaluate merit are strongly skewed to favor job applicants from economically privileged backgrounds. She reveals how decision makers draw from ideas about talent—what it is, what best signals it, and who does (and does not) have it—that are deeply rooted in social class. Displaying the "right stuff" that elite employers are looking for entails considerable amounts of economic, social, and cultural resources on the part of the applicants and their parents. Challenging our most cherished beliefs about college as a great equalizer and the job market as a level playing field, Pedigree exposes the class biases built into American notions about the best and the brightest, and shows how social status plays a significant role in determining who reaches the top of the economic ladder.

Suggested Citation

  • Lauren A. Rivera, 2016. "Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 2, number 10723.
  • Handle: RePEc:pup:pbooks:10723
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Henry Renski, 2018. "Estimating the Returns to Professional Certifications and Licenses in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 32(4), pages 341-356, November.
    2. Nick Huntington-Klein, 2021. "Human capital versus signaling is empirically unresolvable," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(5), pages 2499-2531, May.
    3. Erin E. Toolis, 2021. "Restoring the Balance between People, Places, and Profits: A Psychosocial Analysis of Uneven Community Development and the Case for Placemaking Processes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-18, June.
    4. Francisco Meneses, 2021. "Intergenerational Mobility After Expanding Educational Opportunities: A Quasi Experiment," Working Papers 586, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    5. Michael Donnelly & Alex Baratta & Sol Gamsu, 2019. "A Sociolinguistic Perspective on Accent and Social Mobility in the UK Teaching Profession," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 24(4), pages 496-513, December.
    6. Shoshana, Avihu, 2019. "Youth, class, and happiness," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 64-73.
    7. Karly S. Ford & Kelly Ochs Rosinger & Qiong Zhu, 2021. "Consolidation of Class Advantages in the Wake of the Great Recession: University Enrollments, Educational Opportunity and Stratification," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 62(7), pages 915-941, November.

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