@PurpleTitan Bc these kids are not going to be fooled by their GPA. The desire to learn isn’t limited by grades but the actual knowledge they want to acquire. They are sitting in the classroom asking questions in their heads that aren’t being addressed in the lecture. Kids can leave the classroom and say to themselves it must not be important bc it wasn’t discussed or they can go in search of the answer.
If you have a kid like the latter, you know that they are very unlikely to engage in the former behavior.
You do realize that there are kids who are not like the kids you described, right?
You’re willing to accept that there exist kids who would achieve more if they are pushed? That when I reply to you, I may not be all that concerned with or caring solely about your kid, special as he may be to you*?
*I mean, keep talking about him if you like, but I hope you can understand that not everyone cares about his accomplishments.
This has nothing to do with my child in particular, but character traits of people in general. The only point I was trying to make is that character traits are not easily controlled for in a study. Not all kids require an outside source to push them to achieve what they want. If they do, then perhaps the school attend is far more important than not. But, there are lots of kids who don’t need an external motivator.
ABET accreditation has a relatively high floor on content and rigor, so that the range that different schools can fall in is smaller than it potentially can be for many other majors. This is not to say that differences cannot exist (and elective options within the major can also differ at different schools), but the extra value of a “better” school may not necessarily be the same for engineering as for some other majors.
@ucbalumnus, though UMich is likely to offer more in other ways. And I don’t think the ABET standard is as high as what the top engineering schools maintain.
With engineering, I would look to see who hires from there. That would give you a sense of whether a program is rigorous enough.
Isn’t that reflected in the table from the link in the OP? The STEM category was a flatter curve than most of the other job categories in addition to being the highest paid group until you get to “Most Selective” (where the prestige factor in other categories kick in). Of course, the negative spin would be that there’s a shortage of STEM people and employers have to pay top dollar no matter where the engineer went to college.
@droppedit Because the post I quoted suggested an elite college admit would be “bored” at OSU. There are even grad schools there if regular undergrad courses are too easy.
My kids didn’t go to OSU (one is in fact at an elite) so I don’t have a horse in this race. But I highly doubt a kid who turns down an elite school for OSU (which happens all the time here, often for financial reasons) would be “bored” there.
I wasn’t making a general defense, simply responding to a specific post.
“They are sitting in the classroom asking questions in their heads that aren’t being addressed in the lecture. Kids can leave the classroom and say to themselves it must not be important bc it wasn’t discussed or they can go in search of the answer.”
-This is immature and foolish behavior that is not common at college level. This is a behavior of somebody who is not reminded by parents that they are spending ample amount of money for kid to succeed. There is so much help in college, ANY college, it is not close at all to what is going on in HS. There are prof’s hours, there are Supplemental Instructions (separate lectures by the best students in class, very helpful as peer to peer learning sometime is more effective), there are informal group studies. These kids never intended to seriously study at college, they are not anywhere near the caliber that would be considered by Ivy anyway, they should not be part of this discussion, they are outside of this thread discussion range.
The subject of this thread seems to come up pretty regularly here. Seem to be different studies or surveys which trigger another discussion. Generally speaking its the same arguments (when boiled down to basics) by the same cast of characters with a few nuances sometimes thrown in for good measure. Ultimately it seems to me the answer is it depends. On a number of factors. Many of which are subjective while others are objective (at least to a degree). Not necessarily susceptive to ordered lists that apply in all situations for all people. Should mean these discussions wouldn’t be staples here. But they are.
I suspect the main reason is there are a lot of vested interests here on emotional levels on both sides. Involving a subject the most near and dear to the vast majority of people here: our kids. Leads to a lot of defensive stances on each side. Throw in some biases from our own educations and the result is a renewed discussion from time to time.
@MiamiDAP If a student is being motivated by external motivators and does not require the information for an A, that is the student being described by @PurpleTitan as not going beyond classroom expectations bc the motivation is not there for them to. The part of my post you quoted was not meant to be a matter of a student not understanding what is being presented in a lecture and needing assistance in understanding, but of a student wanting more information than is being given bc it is out of the scope of the classroom instruction.
It was also meant to be an example of what distinguishes individuals beyond grades and test scores vs. classifying by institution attended. If a student is only expected to use a theorem but not derive it, some kids are not going to be satisfied until they derive it for themselves. While the elite school may expect the derivation, there are students at lower ranked schools where it is not expected that expect it of themselves. Those internal motivators cannot be so easily quantified in a study. That was the essence of my posts, that internal motivation matters, not just school name, GPA, or test scores. It was definitely not about boasting about my son. I was simply using him as an example to express my thoughts.
I didn’t read all the posts, but let’s think how a few outliers can greatly skew the numbers. You have some trust fund kids who take over parent’s business empires and make outsized incomes. Is their earning potential a function of the school they attended or the wealth / business they were born into.
Another way the numbers could move is for professional athletes - take a school with a graduating class of 1,000 and one kid gets a $25 million a year nba deal. He might be out earning a third of the class combined. Or more.
Re: blossom’s question, “Remind me again why we all (intelligent folks- even when we disagree) want to wade into this debate again?” I think the same cast takes interest here because one side rarely listens on the prestige hounds threads. It’s really like preaching to the choir with this group, with a few exceptions.
Just remember kids at some schools may just be more driven, in the first place. That’s not easily measured by stats or demographics. The reason they do so well at, say, Harvard or Stanford, is it’s not open admissions. It’s just that much cherry picking. No matter what you try to exclude for, they’re just a different sort of egg.
Then again, in terms of income, they don’t all do so well. The magic isn’t in the college. It’s the kid. And a driven kid, savvy enough to strive in the right directions, in the right ways, will succeed at a broader variety of colleges.
@ClarinetDad16 “You have some trust fund kids who take over parent’s business empires and make outsized incomes. Is their earning potential a function of the school they attended or the wealth / business they were born into.”
I think that is why researchers use median salaries for graduates instead of the mean salaries. If you don’t do that, data for Penn, Harvard, Yale and Stanford would be positively skewed by an outsized numbers of billionaires who attended those 4 schools, in particular.
This is far from the first analysis of whether attending “elite” contributes to earning more. In other studies, the conclusions vary depending on how the study is conducted. Some say it matters. Some say it has little influence. It seems that the study referenced in the original post hasn’t been published yet. Instead the article just has a brief summary with many missing details. This makes it difficult to say if it is a reliable conclusion or whether there are other explanations.
Seriously? Should all those parents of Ivy League students lie about where their kids go to school too since by the very nature of having been admitted they’re exceptional on some level?
It was an example. I guess anonymous parents now need to refer to "a student I’m aware of’ rather than “my kid” lest they offend people they don’t know IRL with their boasting?
There’s exceptionally smart, and there’s average smart. The exceptionally bright and motivate kid will seek out more knowledge and greater challenge, no matter what the environment he find himself in. In addition, he will likely be the sort of student who can learn independently and teach himself quite a bit. However, there are many really bright but more average smart kids who will tend to rise or sink to the common educational denominator around them. The latter may achieve better results at a more elite school. As an example, one of my kids would tend to measure himself against the best in his class and judge his capabilities accordingly. So if he had earned a 95% on an exam, but learned that the highest grade was 100%, he’d assess himself slightly negatively. My other child would compare her score to the lowest in the class, say a 75%, rather then to the highest score. Consequently, she’d feel truly great about her 85%. For this reason I thought she needed to be somewhere where the general bar was higher.