<p>"Do you think things would have changed if she went to Harvard law?"</p>
<p>Yale law school has a much higher placement as law school professors, government positions in general, and, lately, in the Soliciter General's office, the apparent stepping stone to the Supreme Court. HLS alumni more typically make money.</p>
<p>well, great, but i really meant the "would she have met bill?" part</p>
<p>"Do you think things would have changed if she went to Harvard law?"</p>
<p>For dstark: State U Law grads are more often elected to office in their home state.</p>
<p>The point of the joke is that meeting this particular Bill wasn't what mattered for her to be married to the President. But, no, she would never have met this particular Bill.</p>
<p>"I think the op wants us to conclude that the beautiful model should sign up with her local tanning salon as her agent, because that NYC or LA agency wasn't going to make her any more beautiful or otherwise be with the higher commission they demand."</p>
<p>I want you to conclude whatever you want to conclude.</p>
<p>However, I wouldn't be so quick to conclude who is getting the better education. I'm watching all four students and it is too soon to tell. </p>
<p>Right now the state school kids are working harder academically (personality of the students?), but that could change. They all have their ECs. </p>
<p>The Stanford students love their school. Don't know if the state school students love their schools.</p>
<p>Four is a pretty small sample. But you may have a point that a particular student at a state school might well work hard at the state school, be a star in various ways, get to know the home state folks and "normal" people, and otherwise get the perfect background for a number of different tracks, including HLS, politics, making money and many others. This might be better for that person than anything that could happen at a "better" and possibly more expensive school. The outcome in particular cases doesn't prove anything, either way. Good luck to yours.</p>
<p>I think that eulenspiegel makes a good point. Your final goals and where you want to end up guide where you will find good networking opportunities. I've always lived in the deep south and really don't plan to leave. In this setting, an SEC school and participation in Greek Life open a lot of doors to you that wouldn't have opened otherwise which I know is completely not the case in many areas of the country. I actually had an interview once where the team interviewing me was extremely cold towards me until somehow they found out what sorority I had been in in college. All of a sudden their attitude warmed and I received a job offer the next day. (Honestly, this sort of put me off because I had a resume full of accomplishments and THIS is what impressed them.) However, that is part of the culture in this area of the country. There are many employers that like to hire graduates of their alma maters and in this area a large proportion of employers are SEC or ACC graduates.</p>
<p>There was a time when many US Senators from the area went North or Northeast to college and the the the best state law school before going into politics.</p>
<p>
[quote]
dstark writes: Take four students. Two go to Stanford. Two turn down Stanford to go to state schools. Will the two that chose Stanford have better lives? I'm curious because there are four specific students that I am thinking about. </p>
<p>Right now the state school kids are working harder academically (personality of the students?), but that could change. However, I wouldn't be so quick to conclude who is getting the better education. I'm watching all four students and it is too soon to tell.
[/quote]
I guess it all depends on your sample. I knew several kids who went to stanford, and what surprised me (graduate of a large state U) is how hard the stanford kids worked when it appeared they didn't have to. For example I remember one conversation where a kid talked about staying up late at night finishing a paper for a econ class, to which I expressed my suprise. Why put so much effort into it? At state thre weren't that many papers to begin with, grading was more midterms with scantron and blue-books. And the papers that were assigned were graded assembly-line by TA's, not by the prof. The kid in turn seemed taken aback by my remarks, and said that's just the way he and his classmates were, they wanted everything they turned in to be the best it could be. </p>
<p>My take after several conversations in this vein is that kids at the top schools seemed to take pride in their work and strove for excellence even when it wouldn't matter as far as grading (they all readily admitted to the grade inflation at their schools, so they knew they didn't need a superlative effort for a good grade).</p>
<p>I don't know why you're debating this in hypotheticals. Krueger and Dale did do a systematic study <a href="http://www.nber.org/digest/dec99/w7322.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nber.org/digest/dec99/w7322.html</a> and found there is little or no significant income difference over the lifetimes of those who went to an elite school vs those who were also accepted but instead went to a school outside the top 25.</p>
<p>The true gap is not likely to be in income, but in access to certain positions that are less about income than status or that are narrowly meritocratic but credential conscious.</p>
<p>That's right. And in many other things not measurable by income differences.</p>
<p>If you only look at academia -- which I know best -- I bet that almost all of the professors at the top 25 departments of economics or physics would not give up their positions for a no-name job in the same city (say Head of Creative Consulting at Unknown Corp) even if they had to do no work and were offered an extra $20k-$50k per year above their current salaries. So even leaving out the satisfaction from your college experience, money isn't everything.</p>
<p>But it is still interesting that degrees don't mean as much if all you care about is salaries of the brightest kids.</p>
<p>And the report DID find that an elite college degree helped those bright kids from the poorest families significantly. They probably benefitted the most from the new networks they entered.</p>
<p>Most law professors work for less than they made (or could have made) the day they graduated from law school (at today's rates) and could make ten times their income by moving into private practice (but they might have to work a little harder, as somehow defined). Getting hired was often influenced by which law school they went to (and how well they did there) and to a much smaller extent by their undergraduate institution. PBK and summa cum laude help get the position but, at least in this case, cost you a lot of money.</p>
<p>Doesn't this depend upon whether a student is attending anonymous state u to get a broad liberal arts education or because he/she wants to focus in a particular area where the state university is particularly strong? If a student, for example is attending Purdue, the quality of students with whom he/she is attending classes with may depend on whether the individual is an engineering major or a more broadly based liberal arts major (about 200-300 SAT points difference for the average admit). There are numerous other examples of this phenomenon. Thus, while it might be safe to say that an "elite" school offers a more intellectually gifted student population in general, the difference, if any, might be far less for particular areas.</p>
<p>I think you may also be overgeneralizing what's best for each and every student. Many students might thrive from being at a college where they are "in the middle", but others might flourish by gaining the confidence which would come from being an intellectual leader. I think college choice should be on a child-by-child basis, not on a set of broad principles.</p>
<p>No doubt about it. The Ivy League, with some exceptions, is not the obvious "best" school for engineers and probably for many others (Music, certain other fine arts, agriculture, no doubt others). But, it's not always certain that the strength of the state university at the graduate level should control the choice of undergraduate college.</p>
<p>As to the "in the middle point", you touch on a nerve here. Would it be advantageous in some ways to go to a school where one could really be a big cheese? You bet!</p>
<p>More on the "big cheese" question at the next level: Certain highly-sought after positions for lawyers require, as a practical matter, that the applicant be at the very top of the class at a lower-ranked (but still respectable) institution, or part of a larger fraction of the class at a higher-ranked institution.</p>
<p>More on the "in the middle question." There is a very intelligent, highly-placed person in our community who graduated from Stanford. Her daughter went to Stanford against her mother's advice, because she wouldn't necessarily be at the top of Stanford's tough pre-med fanatics. The mother turned out to be right about this from the admission to med school perspective, but not necessarily otherwise.</p>
<p>beck86nj defined "best" as "interesting, kind, smart human beings who are not only able to help others, but willing." Her post seems to have been lost in the dialogue.</p>
<p>I think it's important not to lose sight of the fact that we don't all share the same definitions here. I'm with beck.</p>
<p>"not only able to help others, but willing." </p>
<p>I don't see it. They may be good people, but so are lots of others who are just not the right applicants for a serious academic education.</p>