<p>Those are difficult questions and I am sure there are different ways to approach them. Below is an interesting, relevant article. Of course, it's important to avoid jumping into conclusions based on the numbers:</p>
<p>Do</a> Elite Colleges Produce the Best-Paid Graduates? - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com </p>
<p>This is an article last year, but I would like to know your opinion. I am prepping an essay about it.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I believe it’s the ability of the students that leads to the higher salaries, but going to a top college builds connections and makes it easier than going from an unknown school.</p>
<p>while many of the ivy leaguers go on to great things, the fate isn’t shared by all. For example, I know a Princeton grad still working as a bar tender 7 years after graduation. A Harvard grad who’s jobless after 2 years and is going back to graduate school at Ole Miss. There are many more examples like that.</p>
<p>But a large portion of ivy leaguers also get recruited by top investment banks, management consultancies, or go on to top law and medical school to work for BigLaw and work as surgeons.</p>
<p>I would say more than anything the Ivy League has produced a very strong network of insiders when it comes to certain jobs. Outsiders need not apply.</p>
<p>As is usual for these studies, they mention the Krueger paper which I believe is deeply flawed. For reasons see my post at <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/145732-do-students-make-school-does-school-make-students-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/145732-do-students-make-school-does-school-make-students-2.html</a> and <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/302730-juniors-words-wisdom.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/302730-juniors-words-wisdom.html</a></p>
<p>As to answering the question, the best approach seems to be the one initially adopted by Krueger (but one that he abandoned) which is to find matched pairs of students who were accepted to identical (or overlapping) sets of schools but attending different ones and then analyze their earnings. However, and this is a big however, even matched entering students aren’t identical. If you come from a wealthy family and love art, you may have the family trust fund resources to pursue a field you love that is low paying such as museum curator, and also attend an elite college since tuition is no object. But your income gets lumped into that of the elite school and lowers the average. The point is the motivation of all college students isn’t identical, and in fact may differ in systematic ways depending on which school they attend. Which would skew any measured results.</p>
<p>It is one’s ability and drive, not one’s alma matter, that determines long term financial success.</p>
<p>Well, I’d think some principle like Occam’s razor would say that the explanation for zero difference is, in fact, zero difference, not a number of speculative factors which happen to perfectly balance each other out (you could come up with a million - maybe people who choose to go to fancy schools are more ambitious and want to earn more money, or maybe they are more in debt, so they start at higher-paying jobs, putting them on a more lucrative career track). I mean, I wouldn’t call the study sound proof or anything, but I’d say it tends to shift the burden onto the fancy schools to prove that they really add value.</p>