 What's happening guys? It's Shane here. So I know this is going to be a little bit of a controversial video because people go a little bit crazy about their colleges. They have a lot of school spirit and a lot of people think that they are going to get a job after graduation by attending a certain college. They think that the alumni network is going to help them, but in reality how often does that actually happen? Network is one of the biggest opportunities that you have and with the right alumni network and the right school, this will open up a ton of opportunities for you. Whereas if you pick the wrong one, all you're going to get is a bunch of annoying emails begging you to donate money to the alumni association. So this should definitely be something that's on your mind when you're making the decision about which college you're going to attend and as a bonus at the end, I'm going to reveal the four best ways to tell if your college alumni network is going to come in clutch for you or whether they're going to fail you miserably. You have failed me for the last time. All right, so first on the list is going to be the University of Kansas, my alma mater. Now I promise to be completely unbiased on this list, but objectively speaking, the University of Kansas KU is definitely S tier status. I mean for one, they're better at basketball than your school and for two, they're really good at basketball and then number three, they beat K-State every single year. KU is clearly S tier status. Speaking of K-State, they are clearly F tier status and they're honestly lucky to even get that high of a ranking and this has nothing to do with me being a Jayhawk like I said, totally unbiased here. K-State goes in F tier status and then so does Mizzou. University of Missouri is definitely F tier status. In fact, they might even be worse than K-State. Okay, with all joking aside, next one on the list is going to be Stanford and this is where it gets a little bit serious. Now depending on where you live, a degree from Stanford is going to really have some weight behind it. It's going to open up some serious doors for you and honestly, Stanford is so well known that even if you don't live in the Northern California area, it's probably going to open up doors for you even if you're on the East Coast. But a degree from Stanford is especially good if you live in the Northern California area like San Jose, San Francisco or Silicon Valley somewhere in there and they do rank number two on the most supportive alumni network list and so for that reason, they are definitely going to go into S tier. Next one on the list is going to be Harvard and this one might surprise you a little bit because you might think that Harvard would have an amazing alumni network and they do but according to students when they were surveyed, Harvard doesn't actually help their students out that much after they graduate especially when you compare them to the other Ivy League schools or some of the other top schools in the country. Now this could be for a lot of reasons. It might be that having a degree from Harvard already gives you such an advantage that the alumni network doesn't really even need to help you out that much but for that reason, I'm going to go ahead and put Harvard on a tier status. Now the next one on the list is another Ivy League school that's going to be Dartmouth and of course they're not as well known as Harvard but they are extremely well known for having a very supportive alumni network. They really do go above and beyond to help each other out and so for that reason Dartmouth is going to go in S tier. Next one on the list is going to be Duke and everybody hates Duke so they better have a damn good alumni network and they do. They have a pretty good alumni network. It's not as good as the other ones on the list that I mentioned but it's still pretty good so for that reason Duke is going to go in B tier status. Notre Dame is the next one on the list and they have one of the highest student consensus ratings out of everybody on the list and that's what I was talking about before where they sent out the surveys and students talked about whether the school actually helped them and opened up doors and gave them opportunities and depending on which industry or which degree you get, Notre Dame can really open up some doors for you and give you some incredible opportunities so for that reason I'm going to put Notre Dame in A tier status. Next one on the list is going to be Cornell and they are still in the Ivy League but I've really heard some mixed reviews on them and their rating wasn't quite as good as some of the other Ivy League schools so for that reason I'm going to go ahead and put Cornell in C tier status. Let's see how well you know your big red history. Princeton is next on the list and from all the research I've done and everything I've read online they might actually have the best alumni network out of any school in the United States of America. Now it rated really well with the surveys but basically what I found is that the alumni of Princeton have the most school spirit out of any of the Ivy League schools and they really do help each other out when it comes to you know getting really good jobs or other opportunities after people graduate especially in the financial services industry aka Wall Street. So for that reason Princeton is definitely going to go into S tier and they might be the best one on S tier. Alright so let's go back all the way across the country to the west coast. We're going to talk about USC University of Southern California and they have a really good alumni network especially if you live in the LA area. So if you're planning on living in the LA area this might be one of the best. It might be S tier but overall you know if you're moving to Florida or something like that they're probably not going to help you out as much. So for that reason I'm going to go ahead and put USC in B tier status. UCLA right next door to USC is the next one on the list. This is the University of California in Los Angeles and they're pretty close to USC but probably just a little bit worse. Plus their colors are really ugly so I'm going to have to go ahead and put UCLA in C tier status. Next one on the list is going to be the University of California at Berkeley and it's kind of hilarious because if you go to stanfordrejects.com it redirects you to UC Berkeley's website and that kind of says all you need to know. If you go here you'll always be known as a stanford reject. I'm halfway kidding here but I'm going to have to go ahead and give them probably a C tier status. Next one on the list is going to be the University of Texas in Austin so they're the Longhorns and if you get a degree and you stay in the Austin area again this is one of those that's going to be amazing for networking and you know having alumni opportunities. However if you go outside of that area probably not nearly as good and that makes it a lot less valuable so for that reason I'm going to go ahead and give them C tier status. Next one on the list might have the largest alumni network in all of the United States and that's Penn State and the reason that's so important is because you're likely to run into fellow alumni wherever you happen to go. So even if you don't stay in the Pennsylvania area you're likely to run into other people who went to Penn State even if you moved to California or Florida or Texas or wherever you decide to live. So for that reason I'm going to go ahead and give Penn State a tier status. Next one on the list is going to be Michigan State University and another fantastic school lots of school spirit there but they have the same problem in that the alumni network doesn't really extend that far outside of the sphere of influence of Michigan and for that reason I'm going to have to put them in D tier. Texas A&M is next on the list and they are very well known for having an outstanding alumni network. I mean that's kind of one of their claims to fame honestly. I mean they all wear the rings so that they can recognize each other at the airport. The school spirit of Texas A&M is definitely there and for that reason I'm going to have to go ahead and give them S tier status. Next one on the list is the University of Michigan and this is another school that's just huge has tons of alumni and they are some of the biggest fans you'll ever meet out there. They have tons of school spirit. I lived with a UM grad for years and man he the school spirit was real. I mean he was serious about University of Michigan. So for that reason I'm going to have to give UM solid A tier status. Next on the list is Ohio State excuse me the Ohio State University. Another school that everybody hates but it's also extremely popular with the people who do love it. The school spirit is real. Their alumni network is pretty good. Not quite S tier status but I'm going to go ahead and give them A tier status. Now don't get mad about this list because all of the ones that made it on this list except for KU, Mizzou and K State actually do have really good alumni networks. For instance Michigan State has a pretty dang good alumni network but compared to Stanford it's just not that good. But if you compare it to just a random school somewhere in the country it's really really good. It's probably A tier status but if I included every single school in the country this video would be three and a half hours long and somebody's got to occupy the low tiers. Now as promised I'm not going to let you down like most alumni associations do. Here are the four main ways that you can tell if a college that you are considering has a really good alumni network or not. The first thing you want to consider is the area. Now there are some schools on this list like Princeton or Stanford or Harvard maybe where it really doesn't matter where you live and then there's other schools like Penn State where there's just simply so many graduates that it probably doesn't really matter where you live either. However most of the ones on this list it's very important that you live in certain areas if you really want to take advantage of their alumni network. I think USC is the most obvious example of this. I mean if you live in LA and you went to USC that's really good. That's going to open a lot of doors for you. That's really good. There's tons of very influential people who went to USC and they'll probably help you out. However if you go to USC and then you move to South Dakota it's probably not going to help you out that much. So the area is really important and it's definitely something that you should spend some time thinking about and of course I know you can't see like 10 years into the future but you probably have a pretty good idea of the area that you want to live. Maybe you're like oh you know I could definitely see myself living in Southern California. Maybe I could see myself living in Arizona around Phoenix area. Maybe I could see myself living in the Austin area. Look up places that you can see yourself living for a long period of time and then look up schools that are in those places. The second one is probably going to surprise you but I actually recommend doing research online in forums and you can even just go to sports forums out there. You know there's a ton of forums for each school. Some of them are school related. A lot of them are actually related to the sports team so you might have like a basketball forum or a football forum but there'll always be a section on there to talk about just normal school related stuff and what you can do is you can go into these forums search through the history keywords like alumni or alumni network and then just look at the threads that talk about the alumni network. There'll probably be a lot of people giving their opinion on whether they actually help them out or not or maybe they're complaining about getting a bunch of mail and emails begging for them to donate to the alumni network and if they don't have a thread like this you can just go ahead start your own thread and just ask people. Now forums are a really good way of getting a general idea but you can't always trust what people say on forums because it's just not always accurate but it's a really good way to get just a general idea of which schools provide better service to the people who graduate from them. The third one on the list is going to be talking to real people. This step is so important and it's honestly one of the ones that a lot of people actually skip. Once you've identified a few colleges that are places that you could see yourself potentially going and then living for you know a decade into the future what you want to do is you want to either look through your network you know ask your family and friends if they know anybody who's went to that college or you can just jump on LinkedIn. So for instance let's say you find somebody on LinkedIn who went to the college that you're interested in you'd want to message them and then respectfully ask them if you can just ask a few questions about their experience at the school. Most people will be more than happy to help you and they'll either say really good things about the alumni network or they'll say they're super annoying and they try to get money from me all the time. Now the next step is a really amazing resource that I found online and it's actually two different resources and I use these two to actually do a lot of the research in helping me make this video and these are bestcolleges.com and then collegeconsensus.com. Now there's a ton of websites out there that claim that they you know rank different colleges but these are the two and I did a ton of research on this that seem to actually have the best methodologies in terms of ranking different colleges. They rank the colleges based off of student surveys, published reviews from experts as well as real students who attended the school and again these might not be the most accurate don't 100 trust these you always have to talk to real people in real life that's the most important step but they're definitely a good place to start and they can kind of guide you in the right direction and save you a lot of time. Another thing to note is that I didn't include small liberal arts colleges because there's just so many of them and the video would have lasted really long. I kind of tried to stick with the bigger schools but a lot of smaller liberal arts colleges have a reputation for having a very good alumni network so they're definitely ones that you should look into as well and I make videos on this channel about how to make money, invest money, save money and big opportunities, big trends that are happening and just overall how you can be more successful in life. So if you want to see more videos like this let the YouTube algorithm know by dropping a like on the video hitting the subscribe button bringing the little notification bell and then commenting down below any thoughts, ideas, criticisms that you might have and then also check out these videos right here because I made them just for you. Thank you so much and bye for now.