Employers

•  Joseph Duncan, CEO and founder of Geotext Translations (100+ person multinational company)

Lenny,

As an employer, we would hire the best person based on how the candidate handled the pressure of the interview process, stellar references, experience, proven ability to commit (wish-washy isn’t good for us), etc.  We always hire the person we believe would be best for the job.  Frankly, what school the person attended wouldn’t be an overriding consideration for us. Having graduated from a great university doesn’t hurt of course, but for us it is not the deciding factor.  Our perception of how well the person would fit in and perform is far more important.

We’ve hired many people from top universities.  But we’ve also turned down candidates from prestigious institutions in favor of others who graduated from less recognized schools.  Several of our best long-term employees, as well as several of the most promising up-and-comers we’ve ever had, received their undergraduate degrees from places I didn’t know much about.  I have no idea how those schools rank, and I don’t care.

By the way, during interviews I often ask, Tell me about college?  What did you like? What didn’t you like?  Too many negative answers is not a good sign.  Is she happy at UMass?  To me that seems to be an important consideration.

I hope this helps.

                             

• Dr. Vint Cerf, president of Association for Computing Machinery (Dr. Cerf is recognized as one of "the fathers of the internet") 

I was a Stanford undergraduate and formed a lifelong attraction to the university. I taught there, later in my career, and return to campus to teach a few times a year. There is something exhilarating about the place - smart, enthusiastic and creative people and facilities of extraordinary quality. Later in life you discover how good your classmates were as they ascend to significant positions in the world: Senators, heads of state or ministers or secretaries, ceos, brilliant researchers. So the kinds of people you meet at the top undergraduate schools may well determine opportunities for you later on.

                             

• Senior partner at a top US accounting firm

They are both good schools and in the end it will not make much of a difference in the hiring process.  What will make a difference is the person herself, what she has accomplished outside of education, and how she presents herself !
                              

• Dr. Marc Cluzel, founder C&F Consulting (previously head of R&D at Sanofi) 

Fench are still old "regime" despite the revolution, except that education has replaced God and the King. So the dream is to be accepted at École Polytechnique if you are an engineer or  École Normale Supérieure if mathematician or philosopher. If you add the cartesian mind, ranking is very important.  To your point I think that they are clusters (would you ask the same questions if it was Princeton rather than Boston U?). Within these clusters, I fully agree with you, the more important in my eyes is to find the environment that is the best for our kids. Might be some specificity in teaching, ratio male/female ( I suppose my son would love NY!).... 

                             

• Isaak Karaev, Senior Vice President at EPAM (previously, CEO and co-founder of Multex and InfoNgen) 

As far as jobs prospects I frankly don't see any difference between the two below. This is the quick answer and that's the only one I have time for today). I can of course elaborate and should, maybe over the weekend. I was actually thinking about it recently. College education and jobs opportunities is a very interesting subject. It's actually multidimensional and very much depends on a lot of parameters, like type of profession, level of education, type of education, etc. When and if :) I'll have time I'll try to think about it systematically and write.

[continued, next day]

I didn't have time to write a proper response to your post, so I just plagiarized someone's else's post :), see below. It reasonably well represents what I see in my market, computer science and software development. I am sure it's very different in fields like medicine, law and others science intensive disciplines. But from a "job" perspective knowledge of a good set of popular tools and capabilities is much more important than a college degree. Although as the article below points out there are specific areas in our field as well where a
deep scientific background and/or advanced degree is necessary.
So anyway this is a very large subject and I'll still try to expand on it at some point. In the meantime enjoy the the article below.

Article: College Degrees: More and More, They're Just a Piece of Paper
                             

• Partner at one of the top NYC lawfirms

While I agree with your analysis, and the schools would be viewed as equals in our hiring decision, you cannot analytically measure the subjective and the emotional benefits, e.g. self worth, a student and their parent will derive from one but not necessarily the other school. Unless you can make a clear analytical case for one school over the other, the subjective case makes the decision. 
But that's my "5 cents".... (I like how your Columbia v Stanford analogy is qualified by 15 years!)
                             

• Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google

I agree that for a given applicant, I would look at what they had done, and would not differentiate between BU and Umass Amherst.

Now, if it were between the local community college and MIT, it would be a different story: the community college student would have to have an exceptional record of accomplishment to avoid being dismissed summarily.
                               

• Andrea Carfi, Head of Protein Biochem. USA, Novartis Vaccines

I think this is a complex topic and that's why I did not want to reply by e-mail (by the way I wrote all this with iPhone.... Getting good at it!).
In general I agree with you and I think that the questions she should ask herself are the right ones (see below for 1-2 exceptions in the answers). What matters is not the name/ranking (also here the difference is small/marginal) but what the place can offer you. However, I have to say that at that age those are difficult questions to answer as there is a lot of confusion / uncertainty in a young person's mind.
From a job perspective, if my opinion matters here, I care where people have done their Ph.D. and postdoc, but most important what they have done during that time. For non-Ph.D. I care most about their lab experience/studies and life experience. I do not know well the 2 universities (I had a tech. from BU) but I guess that each of them may be better than the other one on certain topics as you say in your example.
In general for a very bright person having very good teachers may be less critical and studying/living in an intellectually stimulating environment may be more useful. People surrounding you may have a profound effect on where you go with your life. Also, connections are important and so being in the "right" place may help (eg if you want to do research next). On the other hand, in some cases, having good teachers may be key to future success.  Certainly does not hurt.
I think it is a difficult decision. I would not transfer unless I did not like where I am, as transferring can be disruptive. But again the way you frame it in terms of questions that may help her to decide is a good one.
And final 2 comments.
1) I had a pretty bad high school training and ok undergraduate studies (however with an impact on my next steps) and I have a reasonable job. So the school is not everything. Of course, perhaps by  now I could have had the CSO job if I had gone to a better school. We will never know.
2) There is one thing that I will never forget from my first days at the university (Chemistry). My professor at that time started the first-class  by saying that the only thing that mattered to succeed in his course was to have attended a good daycare/preschool when we were children. From that time I knew that I was in the right place. I think it is probably true for everybody/everything.
I hope it helps in some way,

                               

• Seth Hemley, EVP at Brandon Associates

Lenny, as always your thoughts are erudite and passionate for your sincere hope to make sure, she chooses the best choice.

Choosing a college is clearly a very personal choice. It is very common for people to choose colleges for all the wrong reasons and have it work out as a fantastic and perhaps even the best choice with the benefit of hindsight. The same is true with people, who research and agonize over all the details and look at it analytically, choose the best choice and have it work out poorly.

 I would be the first person to agree, you must be very careful about how you view statistics and take them with a grain of salt. One last thought before, I give some viewpoints, I have learned that the idea of the right choice or the wrong choice when comparing two clearly "exceptional choices" can be a silly notion. Each choice yields challenges and opportunities for success, learning and failure. So a person with a certain level of gifts can and frequently will manage through any choice. In other words, they will adjust to ultimately make the choice the best choice possible for them given the path they have walked down.

My perspective may be a little different. As an employer, I look for what I have come to refer to as emotional intelligence, the moniker being a reference to a number of works by Malcolm Gladwell on the subject which has tended to align with the way I view the world.

I am in business not research or academia. Our goal is to have enjoyment, make money, operate ethically and build something we can be proud of.  By the way as a result of this view, I do not necessarily feel, I have the opportunity to express my highest degree of intellect or achieve satisfaction that comes with knowledge and higher learning.

In any event, this is the direction, I chose - so my view is going to be slanted. The attributes I look for as an "employer" are based in upbringing (background or really parents’ philosophy), presence, people skills,  communication skills, confidence, articulation, maturity and then lastly do the set of skills meet the job.

So the questions, I would ask for my child are:

a) What is the social setting dynamic and how does this align with my child's maturity and how will this help my child achieve emotional intelligence. Is my child similar in background to the typical student, is this relevant, do they understand what difference or similarities in people can mean in the way they interact, prejudices, social alignments.
b) I would choose the undergraduate with this in mind and then choose graduate school based on "reputation", "exceptional education" and ability to get a job.
c) What are the negatives of each school and can my child cope with those negatives. People, tend to maximize what they view as positive and minimize what they view as negative.

d) As someone not at all familiar with Amherst (except that it is known to be a great school), I happen to love the city of Boston, the people and the culture. Boston does seem like a great place to study journalism. I like cities, because they give people an opportunity to expand the interaction outside the school/campus.

Hope this is at all helpful. Also, consider that some of my worst choices have caused me to work harder to be successful and toughened  me the most.  So, is it even relevant to choose "The best choice among great choices"?  This does not mean, she should not have lots of views and really work to understand the facts as they are best available. In the end, make a choice and don't look back. Hindsight is frequently 20/20.