The gist of it:
The actual study isn’t linked but they claim to have controlled for the higher stats, income, etc of the students elite schools admit.
I’ve been dubious also.
The results:
Some interesting data tables there for majors and such.
This is an interesting line of research where there has been a history of mixed findings. In general, the better able the researchers are able to control for student factors that would predict earnings regardless of school attended, the smaller the estimated earnings premium is. Alan Krueger at Princeton has done some work comparing earnings of Ivy grads with non-Ivy grads who were accepted at top schools but went elsewhere and finds no differences in earnings.
(But the data is from 2003, so it is kind of old.)
Derived from the table in the article, the difference in earnings between graduates of most selective versus not selective schools by major group:
Health related +54.7%
Education +52.8%
Social science, humanities +45.0%
Business +39.8%
Life and physical science +28.1%
Math, CS, engineering +23.9%
Professional, vocational +21.1%
Probably not too surprising which major groups show higher or lower differences in pay outcomes relating to school selectivity.
The authors should ask a harder question: Are Ivy graduates more capable of earning more or do employers simply pay them more regardless of their abilities?
Trend in @ubcalumnus #2 shows the latter is more in play: not much an Ivy advantage in hard sciences/professionals.
This has not and cannot be shown; this is a flaming post hoc fallacy. Students who are admitted into Ivies do well; what they “get” from those schools [as opposed to other fine schools further down the USNWR list] is debatable. Krueger & Dale’s extensive (and repeated) research shows this. Kids who are admitted into an elite and end up going to a “lesser” school for whatever reason earn, after 20 years, the same as their elite counterparts.
I think they’re trying to add to the debate.
I wonder if the study compares the students of the same pre-college academic standing or it is another study of apples vs oranges? I mean, does the study takes into the account the heavy pre-selection of applicants to Ivy’s? It should, because otherwise, this study is about student personal differences and not the college differences. It pays out to be a very hard working student who is achieving at the highest level, I cannot imagine that this concept is doubtful with or without any kind of study. In addition, there is no proof that Ivy graduates benefit in application cycles to ALL graduate schools, maybe some (?), but not all.
Nowhere in the article is the controlling methodology explained. Unless you are comparing elite grads and non elite grads who had been accepted to an elite (but did not attend), controls are going to be impossible; there are too many variables.
They claim to control for SAT, income level, etc. - all the things that would say student X will do just as well at School Y and School Z.
@snarlatron - yeah I’d like to see the actual study with that info. All we have so far is:
Looks like they just presented this weekend so perhaps it will be online at some point.
http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/prel_prog_fridayaug_19_saturdayaug20.pdf
Or they were presenting this paper from a year ago?
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/LISCenter/Readings%20for%20workshop/Attewell.pdf
There’s definitely a “prestige” factor in the Income by Major table between Most Selective and Very Selective. Who wants to see a StateU doctor when you can see one from Harvard? What business wouldn’t want to have a Harvard MBA listed on their “About Us” page? Makes clients feel better. In the STEM fields its more about what you do on the job.
But admission to elite schools typically requires some high level achievement beyond grades and test scores, so the above may not account for the difference between elite school students and other students with similar grades and test scores but not other high level achievements.
The stats are not much of use because IVY grads are already a selected group largely for future earning potential, either through extra ordinary existing achievement and/or family background.
Posters keep using the word “Ivy”. I do not think it means what you think it means 
I believe (but this needs to be checked) that schools like Tufts and Boston College are in the most selective category too.
I might be willing to bet that most people haven’t even heard of 3/4’s of the schools on the “not selective” list.
The study isn’t trying to parse the difference between Harvard and UCLA … the 19% salary difference that the study claims to find (after controlling for all the above factors) spans a far wider range of schools than I think most people have in their minds.
"Who wants to see a StateU doctor when you can see one from Harvard? "
Most people select their doctors based on convenient location and what their insurance covers, not where the doctor went to undergrad. Most doctors certainly aren’t requiring Harvard-educated doctors for their own family and friends. They know medicine is a flat field.
"What business wouldn’t want to have a Harvard MBA listed on their “About Us” page? Makes clients feel better. "
Seriously? Plenty wouldn’t. It’s an important draw in some fields and not at all important in others.
“Who wants to see a StateU doctor when you can see one from Harvard?”
- I definitely would be the one. If the doc’s reputation is great, I really truly do not care about the name of the doc’s medical school. In addition, the topic here is not about Grad. school but rather the college. And the third point, the Harvard graduate doc. and the state public medical school graduate most likely will be working in the same office, receiving the same everything (giving the same years of experience and the same positions) and in actuality, the more popular one may not be the one from Harvard.
I select my doc based on the convenience of the location and also “human” skills. I just do not trust the doc who finds no time to level with me as a human being and not only as a human body that happen to have some medical issue. There are specialties that are not even taught at medical school at all, they are learned during residency. And whatever is taught at the medical school is not deep enough to be a successful attending. So, if you want to go with the academic background of the doc., you should be going with the place of residency rather than the medical school name. And the place of residency has its own specialty ranking.
I do not see how all of these has any connection to the college that MD attended.
You’re going in for a quad bypass and you have two surgeons to choose from that have no discernible differences – do you pick StateU or Harvard? Be honest.
Med school curriculum is standardized. Med students all have to pass the same tests, State U or Harvard. Often the best practitioners in a field are not elite school trained. What on earth would State U vs Harvard have to do with skill in a quadruple bypass?
Are you familiar with how doctors think? They go by word of mouth on who are the best in a given field. Not the institution. It’s just a very “flat” field.
Btw it’s the residencies that make the difference, not the undergrad or the med school.
This result makes a lot of sense to me. Students who are put through a more challenging curriculum, see the students around them delivering a high level of work product, and know that this level of work is expected of them, seem likely to work harder and learn more.
It would be much easier for the same student to put in less effort and learn less at a non-competitive college where the average student’s work is not at the same level.
I am not sure why that is too surprising. It seems intuitive. However, I think that the bigger differences relate to choice of major, and school choice is secondary.