This paper investigates the career progress of scientists at major and minor universities once they have chosen to participate in the development of an emerging field, posing three fundamental questions: (1) are scientists who are involved in the early stages of a field's development and who persist more likely to graduate from more prestigious universities? (2) In an emerging field, do graduates from prestigious universities pursue career paths that differ from the ones pursued by their peers from less prestigious institutions? (3) Are graduates from prestigious universities who choose academic careers more likely to find employment at prestigious universities?Empirical evidence is provided on the career progress of 373 scientists working in the field of neural networks, graduating from US universities. The prestige of a scientist's graduate school is found to be a significant indicator of the prestige of his or her academic appointment in the initial five years after graduation. Beyond five years, the effect of graduate school prestige becomes non-significant. Whether one entered the field before or after it gained widespread legitimacy in the scientific community apparently does not affect subsequent career progress in terms of institutional prestige.