For those so inclined, there’s alway the “Ivy Plus Society”! 
Not “an entity few can get into,” like some disco or a theater with only so many seats. More a quality few can achieve.
As for asking if my spouse has a college degree, you took your own comment out of context. “But [the degree] does say something about you – that you are smart, hard-workng, etc… and therefore are desire-able as a potential employee, friend, significant other, etc.”
How this got translated to a simple college degree, any college, is a question.
It is called “assortative mating”; picking a mate who is like you in various ways – religion, political beliefs, SES, intelligence, personal interests, etc. Likes marrying likes. Pretty interesting stuff.
As Epiphany points out, there’s trade offs. You might compromise a bit on education/intelligence in order to get a bit more in physical attractiveness.
Blossom, Sally – Neither you or I have hard data on this. But I suspect you under-estimate. Consider this. 24% of Princeton women report marrying a Princeton grad. That seems more than tertiary.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/women-and-marriage-at-princeton/?_r=0
"If you are familiar with the legal industry (which I am), you can look at that as perhaps the purest actual operation of how prestige for academic degrees works. "
Yes. Within the world of law. And within many, and probably most, other fields, college prestige just doesn’t matter anywhere near as much. On CC, there is this continued, willful blindness to the notion that there are many worthwhile fields people can go into – many that are lucrative, if that’s one measure of success – and certainly many that involve smart people solving interesting problems all day long – and in SOME of those fields (mgt consulting, i-banking, etc.) school prestige is important and in others it’s trivial.
I think the issue is that those who are in industries where college prestige is important, sometimes then therefore think that their occupation in general is more prestigious than other occupations. Like I said earlier, what’s so prestigious about being a lawyer? Even a lawyer at a fancy law firm? Why is that “better” than the person who decides to chuck it all and open her own yoga studio? It might be more lucrative to be the lawyer, sure, but why is it more “prestigious”? The second person doesn’t WANT to be a lawyer in a fancy law firm, so why would she see it as prestigious?
Yes, it’s called marrying someone you met while you were in college. Happens at most schools, I’m guessing.
“Consider this. 24% of Princeton women report marrying a Princeton grad. That seems more than tertiary.”
That’s completely silly and proves nothing. The % of people at any school who wind up marrying someone else from that school is going to be high, simply because that’s your dating pool. That’s going to happen all up and down the food chain.
“If I’m a committed Catholic, I’d rather that my son marry a woman who shares those values even if she graduated from Fairfield or Villanova vs. Harvard or Yale but is not a practicing Catholic. Relative differences in the prestige of the college are SO MUCH LESS IMPORTANT in the marriage market. Notre Dame and Providence College- who the heck cares about US News?”
Notre Dame is extremely prestigious here in the Chicago area, especially in the Irish Catholic neighborhoods. Seriously, it’s like a Harvard in some areas. CC never seems to acknowledge this, but it’s the truth.
I’d argue that Notre Dame (and Georgetown) are the equivalent of the Ivy League amongst observant Roman Catholics here in the Northeast as well. I mean Villanova, in many of my neighbors’ eyes, is much more desirable than Penn. And BC is quite elite in their eyes too. Most would likely prefer their children attended BC to Harvard.
Yes- Notre Dame is extremely prestigious- that’s my point. No Catholic parent thinks their son from Notre Dame is “marrying down” when he brings home a girl from Providence College. None, zip, zero.
Sorry I didn’t make that point clear.
And kids at Brandeis marry other kids at Brandeis. Soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg marry other soldiers at Fort Bragg. Pharmacists at Walgreen’s marry other pharmacists. This proves what exactly Northwesty???
People also choose their mates based on physical attractiveness.
So who would a very handsome Harvard grad choose, given only two options–a smart but homely classmate, or a UVM grad he met over the summer who is both smart and gorgeous?
Another vote for 'Prestigious is what you make of it".
Case in point: Telling someone that a particular sushi place is the most prestigious (or highest ranked) restaurant in town doesn’t really mean much if that person hates sushi.
Or that X hospital is the most prestigious (or highest ranked) hospital in the country… doesn’t really mean much if the best doctor for that person’s condition is at Y hospital.
I used the ignore button a while ago, so I may be missing some context here, but last year, the alumni office at my public, non-flagship alma mater mailed out 14,000 Valentines to married couples where both spouses attended the university.
Or, to put it another way, since I am also “familiar with the legal industry,”** the Princeton anecdote without statistical context proves nothing.
** And by “familiar with,” I mean “graduated from one of HYPS,” and we’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess which one it wasn’t.
Best personal regards,
SOG
“So who would a very handsome Harvard grad choose, given only two options–a smart but homely classmate, or a UVM grad he met over the summer who is both smart and gorgeous?”
From the NY Times article about assortative mating:
"A paper published last year in the Journal of Political Economy actually tried to quantify the trade-off that husbands make between beauty and brains when choosing a mate. Using longitudinal survey data on married American couples, it found that women can compensate for two additional units of body mass index with one more year of education. In other words, it’s all right for women to be a little heavier if they’re also a little more educated, or a little less educated if they’re also a little skinnier.
But for men, the stronger trade-off seemed to be between weight and wages: Men may compensate 1.3 additional units of B.M.I. with a 1 percent increase in wages."
But we all knew that anyway. Guys will trade off smarts for looks. Gals will trade off looks for dough. But within limits.
** And by “familiar with,” I mean “graduated from one of HYPS,” and we’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess which one it wasn’t."
Wow, Princeton Law School? You ARE SomeOldGuy, indeed!
I’ve told my Notre Dame prestige story lots of times here – A law school classmate of mine, from my home town, was one of only a handful of women enrolled at Notre Dame (in its engineering program) before it officially went co-ed. One Thanksgiving, at the biggest local Catholic high school jock bar, she was chatted up by a really cute guy who claimed he went to Notre Dame (and who didn’t know that she actually went there, and knew he didn’t). After playing him for a while – he was very cute – she asked him what he really did. He was Yale’s all-Ivy quarterback, a molecular biology major pre-med, future Bonesman. In that bar, in our city, chatting up a cute girl, he thought it was better to be anyone who went to Notre Dame than to be who he really was. (As it happened, though, that particular cute girl was much more impressed with the Yale stuff. So it goes.)
Yep, prestige is dependent not only on geography but also cultural group.
Among a good many Catholics (not just in the Midwests but the coasts as well), ND is the pinnacle of everything (up there with Harvard; or higher. Not too many non-Catholics feel the same way.
Likewise with BYU, which some Mormons would choose over any Ivy (and very few non-Mormons would)
What I get a kick out of is how Cal/UCLA are perceived compared to USC. You have one poster on CC who turns down a full-tuition scholarship to USC to go to Cal while another poster forgoes the in-state discount at Cal to be full-pay at USC.
“But for men, the stronger trade-off seemed to be between weight and wages: Men may compensate 1.3 additional units of B.M.I. with a 1 percent increase in wages.”
Anything there about height? You know the old joke – my husband’s tall … when he stands on his wallet. Ha ha.
@PurpleTitan Any clear reason why the user turned down a FULL TUITION SCHOLARSHIP?
So “smarts” must not be the most important thing after all.
(Plus, I should have mentioned in my Harvard/UVM hypothetical–just because the beautiful woman went to UVM doesn’t mean she wasn’t smart enough to go to a more selective school. All we know is that she didn’t.)
@Jarjarbinks23: That poster thought Cal was better.