Elite/Ivy grads really do earn more? (new study)

Parents Forum
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Purple the name on the thread is pretty clear. There just aren’t anywhere near to 70 truly elite schools. By the time you hit 25 or so the big publics are right there and the student body is quite different. Your right I misspoke. The dorms are filled with national caliber athletes and more than a handful of olympians. Anyone with a child at these schools is aware of these achievements. Yes the average award is high but many people also get small awards. Run the FA on an income of 170k. At the very top schools you get something if you aren’t wealthy and more from Harvard.

The Pac-12 Conference leads the way with 113 athletes this year, nearly double the Big Ten’s 59. The ACC has 57, the SEC has 55, the Big 12 has 40 and the Ivy League has 35.

Stanford has the most athletes with 29 on Team USA. But it’s not all about the big schools. Middlebury College, an NCAA Division III school in Vermont, has three athletes, including cycling world championship bronze medalist Lea Davison.

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purple here is the list. Keep in mind only three can make it so the number of olympic caliber athlete is much higher
National caliber students are on every dorm floor. Are you really not aware of this? How exactly do you think they gained admission? You can’t get in just with normal top grades and scores you know.

http://coed.com/2016/07/14/summer-olympics-college-student-athletes-universities-team-usa-road-to-rio-games-list-photos/

U.S. COLLEGES WITH MOST COMPETITORS at the 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES
(based on research from CollegeSports360.com … updated as of Aug. 8, 2012)
please forward corrections & additions to Pete LaFleur: editor@collegesports360.com

41 – Stanford

39 – USC
38 – California and Florida
27 – Auburn
26 – Georgia
25 –UCLA
23 – Texas A&M
22 – Washington
21 – Texas
20 – Michigan
19 – Arizona
17 – Arizona State and Penn State
16 – Nebraska
15 – Princeton and Tennessee
13 – Florida State, LSU and SMU
12 – Arkansas and North Carolina
11 – Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oregon, Virginia and Wisconsin
10 – Connecticut and Oklahoma
9 – Columbia, Harvard, Pepperdine and TCU
8 – Duke, Miami and Wake Forest
7 – Long Beach State, Indiana, Texas Tech and UC Davis
6 (6) – Boston Univ., Colorado, Illinois, Kansas State and UTEP
5 (11) – Alabama, BYU, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Hawaii, Iowa State, Louisville, Maryland, Minnesota,
Old Dominion and Villanova
4 (12) – Cal Poly, Dartmouth, Houston, Kansas, Kentucky, Northern Michigan, Portland, Purdue, Rutgers,
South Carolina, Utah and Washington State
3 (13) – Cornell, Denver, Florida International, George Mason, Iowa, LIU Brooklyn, Louisiana Tech, Mississippi,
North Da

443

Aww, I’m shocked you don’t lose sleep lingering on your great disappointment that she didn’t go into accounting. I feel for ya :slight_smile:

444

Say, the name on the thread is “Elite/Ivy grads really do earn more? u” I’ll ask again. Did you read the study that forms the basis of this discussion? What was their definition of “elite”?

The fact that the authors’ definition of elite does not jibe with yours does not make it wrong. The fact that you do not include schools like Northwestern or Notre Dame or UVA (to name a few) in the “elite” category suggests that your definition is very different from that of most posters on CC. And we’re a notoriously “elitist” crowd. Based on that, it appears to me that you’re trying to reframe the debate to match your own agenda. And, to me, that’s disingenuous. Especially when combined with intrusive demands for personal information from other posters.

445

NU, ND, and UVA are definitely elite schools with low admit rate. Very few students from those schools will become HS teachers either. Let’s just say I found the HS teacher comments a bit strange on a thread about elite admissions.

446

@SAY, the caliber of the average athlete at any DivI P5 school that gives out athletic scholarships is going to be so much higher than the average Ivy athlete. Are you really not aware of this?

447

I expect Harvard students have as a whole have excellent quant skills, probably as good as other “elite” college that do not have the word “Technology” in their name. Their test scores or other public stats certainly do not suggest a weakness. I suspect that the relatively low % in engineering/tech more relates to Harvard historically not being a tech focused school, like its Cambridge neighbor. Stellar students who want to pursue engineering/tech often favor other colleges, while stellar students who want to pursue non-tech areas are more likely to favor Harvard.

For example, when I was looking at colleges, I was especially interested in engineering. At the time, Harvard did not offer specialized engineering degrees, such as electrical engineering or mechanical engineering. Instead you could just get a general engineering degree. The engineering program was very small and weaker than other schools I was looking at, so I did not bother applying. I applied to Stanford, MIT, Cornell, Princeton, and Brown; but did not seriously consider applying to Harvard. In recent years, Harvard has tremendously improved their engineering program… dramatically increasing the size, facilities, number of professors, number of students, number of available majors, getting engineering/CS improvement specific donations of as high as $400 million, etc. They have had some success with this change, including notable increase in number of planning to pursue engineering admits and engineering majors during this period, but they still aren’t on the same level of quite a few other “elite” schools like MIT, Stanford, Cornell, etc. For example, USNWR undergrad engineering rankings are based entirely on surveys of engineering deans & senior faculty of a variety of “peer institutions”. In these rankings, Stanford and MIT are tied for #1, Cornell is in the top 10, but Harvard has yet to crack to the top 25. They also are located in a non-ideal location for tech majors who plan to work in Silicon Valley.

448

Purple how is this relevant and it’s not even correct since Stanford is the top athletic college in the US. Duke and NU also have very top level athletes. But yes scholarships do make a difference but have nothing to do with my statement which was about gaining admission. Most of the football and basketball powers have open admission policies. The Ivies have national caliber athletes in all sports except FB and BB though a few like Lin do exist.

449

Which suggests that you may not know as much about the full range of opportunities at elite colleges as you’d like to think you do. Most would agree that USNWR’s top-20 national universities would be considered “elite.” Quick google search shows that at least five of those top 20 offer majors in secondary education.

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@SAY, you say stuff that makes me wonder a lot.

Did you read what I said? Either you aren’t aware that Stanford isn’t an Ivy (and in fact, is a P5 school), or you have reading comprehension difficulties.

And if the Ivies are as chock full of “national caliber athletes” as you say, yet other conferences blow away the Ivies when it comes to the number of the very top athletes, then how many “national caliber athletes” are there?
As @EllieMom noted, you tend to reframe and be disingenuous a lot. First you claimed that the “Ivies/Stanford/MIT” are full of Olympians (when really, it’s only Stanford). When I pointed out that no Ivy is among the schools with the most Olympians, you said there would be a “national caliber athlete” on every floor. I suppose if you have a very generous definition of “national caliber athlete”, but folks who actually follow college sports would laugh at your assertion.

451

Ellie do you have a point? Many of the graduates of the top colleges will end up with relatively low paying jobs. This is one of the big problems with the college tuition bubble. Ok sure a very small percent of the students will end up teaching HS. If that’s what they want it’s a free country. I just said that the vast majority of parents with children at the top colleges have slightly higher aspirations for their children. There is nothing controversial here.

452

I understand the caliber of student you’re talking about—Someone who is admitted to med school at 17. Or who represents their country in international science olympiad competitions all over the world. Or a Nepalese welder who’s studying engineering and attended a global youth conference in Kenya over the summer. Or a world-class squash player from South Africa. Right? But HYPMS is not the only place to find such students. Those kids are people D knows from her own dorm. At a school that didn’t even crack the top-30 on USNWR’s list.

I think your assertions of the “specialness” of sub-class of educational institutions seems to be based on limited knowledge of other alternatives.

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Purple you are getting hazy. First of all its far more than just Stanford. Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and Duke have a significant number of olympic caliber students. Its hard to get an exact number but its certainly 3-4x the number that make the team. The discussion here was about admission to elite colleges based on sports. Yes the Ivies are chock full of national caliber athletes as I said. That statement is a fact and if you re-read my post I excluded FB and BB. But in most other sports they are highly competitive. Purple if you research the topic you will see a different story. In sports like lacrosse, hockey, field hockey, tennis, and many many others the Ivies are major powers. Yes it does not include FF or BB though BB is full D1 and often teams get past a few rounds in the NCAA. They just can’t land the Bill Bradley types any more.

NCAA Championships 1957 to Present

Since the Ivy League officially began play in the 1956-57 season, the League has won 47 NCAA team championships and 200 NCAA individual/event championships through the 2015-16 season.

1883 to 1956
Since 1957
Team    Individual/Event        Team

Individual/Event
Brown 0 5 7 15
Columbia 4 21 11 28
Cornell 0 7 5 18
Dartmouth 1 11 3 38
Harvard 6 48 4 27
Penn 1 12 3 23
Princeton 12 38 12 22
Yale 25 72 3 34
TOTALS 49 214 48 205

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Ellie other schools certainly have highly qualified students but the admission craze is focused on the top handful of schools. These are the schools that reject most valedictorians and applicants with perfect or near perfect scores. When the NYT or WSJ writes an article about elite admissions they are talking about these schools.

455

@elliemom “And are you saying now that you do not consider NU or other schools like it to be “elite”?”

Now I think you are just baiting @Pizzagirl by picking NU. I don’t think anyone really thinks NU doesn’t belong in that group.

456

Ivies have the the largest D1 athletic programs of all universities with around 800 student-athletes. Due their relatively small student bodies most of them do have national caliber athletes on every floor.

457

@SAY, here you are being disingenuous again. It’s almost like you want to establish a reputation for that or something.

  1. Duke is not an Ivy (and is a P5 school) as you should be aware, so why are you using them as an example?
  2. Each Ivy has some Olympians and near-Olympians. Just like NU and other non-Ivy privates in the same league. Are you not aware that if Columbia, Yale, and Harvard have near-Olympians, that other schools would as well?
  3. And the height of disingenuousness: Using national title data from long ago (when there wasn't as much competition as there is now; if you go back farther, before the Ivies de-emphasized sports) to make a point about now. The plain fact is that since 2005, Northwestern has won almost as many NCAA team championships just by itself (7) as all 8 Ivies combined (9).
458

Much2 you are searching for a grassy knoll. NU is a very elite school with a number of programs on par with the top Ivies and Stanford. JH, Vanderbilt, and Wash U are similar great schools with very low admission rates. My discussion with Pizza was about graduates of these schools becoming HS teachers and if they don’t happen to be fortunate enough to be receiving a nice inheritance and have to actually live on a teachers income. Most of the people I have met in my life want their children to maintain their standard of living in an increasingly expensive society and this is the primary underlying reason they encourage their kids to aim for the top schools.

459

That’s simply not true. That’s how YOU define it, that’s not how the NYT or WSJ necessarily defines it. A simple Google search will demonstrate that. In fact, the first article that shows up when you google “WSJ elite college admissions” is based on the same study discussed in the OP’s article. Which, I’ll remind you again, is based on Barron’s selectivity tiers, with an “elite” list that includes 70+ schools.

Really, SAY, you need to learn to look beyond your affluent town in coastal CA and not assume everyone thinks like you do. The landscape of higher education in the U.S. is much more nuanced than you seem to think it is.

460

@SAY - you are aware, I hope, that there are large undergraduate colleges/majors in education at several elite universities? Do you think no one is in them?

Harvard, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, Vanderbilt, UPenn, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Northwestern, Duke, Cornell, CMU, Swat, Tufts, Brown, Wellesley, Middlebury…and many more, offer an education major or have an entire undergrad college for education.