<p>The school that you graduate may impact your first job but after that its the experience and talent that you have that makes the most difference. That being said, for some reason, my company especially prefers MIT graduates far above graduates from any other school.</p>
<p>I think the student is important; the school is just the facilitator. These are hard issues to parse, but certain students will not be stimulated to do their best in particular environments.</p>
<p>If the kid is inspired, that’s the ballgame IMO.</p>
<p>For us, it was worth a lot of sacrifice to see our kids inspired. Other parents may trust that their kids will rise to the occasion wherever their placed. I think that’s a reasonable expectation that doesn’t always materialize.</p>
<p>Brand name consciousness is silly at times, I agree. Some people are prone to it; others aren’t. However, there are times for certain students when particular schools influence their perceptions of themselves and their possibilities that if a family has the means it is a good decision to use those resources.</p>
<p>There are circumstances in which this isn’t true.</p>
<p>I think that generalizations will fail us here.</p>
<p>I also think that parents usually know their own children best, so I trust that the decisions parents are making are in the best interests of their children and their families. And yes, of course, finances play a part in the assessment process. However, the algorithm will differ with different factors and different students.</p>
<p>This is very prolix, and stiff. Sorry.</p>
<p>I guess what I’m saying is that I didn’t send my kids to private schools to impress their employers. I did it for them and them alone. And some parents who said their kids were “too big for their britches,” yes, we feared this, too. We don’t want spoiled, elitist kids, and we agree with the parents who insist that their kids can receive a comparable education at a public and prosper and thrive. There is not doubt about it. Both of our kids wanted specific experiences we didn’t feel we could duplicate at our state’s public university. If we could have, our process would have been different.We did receive FA, but had things worked out as planned, we would have payed full freight.</p>
<p>I understand the reasoning of parents who feel the opposite way and see the validity of their thinking. My own parents felt that way, and i went to a public. I did well enough to get an Ivy grad school acceptance, so it did not influence my future prospects.</p>
<p>Is this the “affirmative action” equivalent on the parent forums? Only less…strident…</p>
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<p>Slow night on the AA front Shrinkrap? 
;)</p>
<p>Just giving you grief. POIH is being POIH. The rest of us are trying to use something other than Ivy size fits all to address a question of how much a private school education is worth.</p>
<p>Umm… what is POIH?</p>
<p>I’m just noticing how many posts this subject gets and how strong opinions are. </p>
<p>I don’t usually indulge in the AA threads…</p>
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<p>YES. Very well said.</p>
<p>POIH=Provocateur of Ivy Hope</p>
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<p>ParentOfIvyHopeful - although vicariousparent maybe onto something - LOL. </p>
<p>I know you don’t indulge in AA threads, but I guess everyone likes a good multi-car pileup. Isn’t that the entire reason for the existance of NASCAR?</p>
<p>Feel free to continue the Kilroy. I don’t bite. (at least not often)</p>
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Good one! vicariousparent</p>
<p>POIH: You stated: “The top school will enhance your probability of success and there should not be any question about it.”</p>
<p>Actually, there is question about it. In fact, researchers Stacey Dale and Alan Krueger, among others, have found it not to be the case at all:</p>
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<p>[Heaven’s</a> Gate - washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032801333.html]Heaven’s”>Heaven's Gate)</p>
<p>*Who Needs Harvard?: *<a href=“http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2004/10education_easterbrook.aspx[/url]”>http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2004/10education_easterbrook.aspx</a></p>
<p>This reminds me of “the mommie wars.” </p>
<p>I am not sure why we need to be defensive or judge each other. The nature of the beast.</p>
<p>I know there are many roads to good outcomes, and many different value systems that work.</p>
<p>If the parent and the student are on the same page, all’s right with the world. If they’re not, things can be miserable.</p>
<p>Sometimes it’s the student’s fault, and sometimes it’s the parents. Some parents try to shove elite schools down kids’ throats when they want something different.</p>
<p>I know I had certain preconceptions about elite schools that have been challenged by my time on CC, and I’m quite glad, because I think my kids’ lists (at this point in time) are more expansive than they might otherwise have been.</p>
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<p>I am not known to be the most PC parent on CC. I did decide to send D1 to more of a top tier school to impress her future employer(s). D1 could have gotten a very good education in almost any school. But many employers do use schools to help them do some filtering. A school has a good reputation because quality of education, in turn they get better applicants, and then those students push each other to excel. To get into those top schools, those applicants competed with 20,000+ other students. When an employer is interviewing students of a top tier school, they know they are not going to be that far off. Whereas they may have to interview a larger pool of students of lower tier schools in order to find a few good candidates. As time is money, most employers just don’t want to bother to reach down that far, and there’s no need for them to do that.</p>
<p>As someone who does quite a bit of hiring for my own department, when I have 50+ resumes for one opening, I would interview candidates from other top tier firms. We all have fairly good idea how our competitors operate and what calibre of people they have working there. Therefore I also look to my competitor to help me filter out some candidates. Unless I am really desperate or someone makes a very strong recommendation I wouldn’t hire someone from a lower tier firm. Not to mention, HR and my manager most likely would ask for justification.</p>
<p>In the performing arts world, when we hear someone is a graduate or student of Julliard, SAB or some conservatory in Boston (I clearly am not in that world), we have a certain perceive notion of how good someone is. D2 studies ballet under 2 very good teachers at a no name studio. Her technique is excellent. This summer when she was at the ABT summer intensive, they had one hour to dance to be placed at an appropriate level. Her roommate who was a student at well known ballet school, was automatically placed at a higher level than D2. Was that girl capable of dancing at that higher level? Yes. Would D2 have done just as well if not better than that girl at a higher level? Maybe. But when those instructors faced with placing 200+ kids in one day, they relied on those dancers’ schools to help them decide. If D2 was thinking of making ballet as a possible career, we would probably need to move her to a better known school to build up her resume and exposure, because at her small studio, no matter how good she is, she still wouldn’t have the same credibility as other dancers (of course, if she was some sort of prodigee, it wouldn’t matter where she is, but she is just a very good, solid dancer).</p>
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<p>Exactly. It’s not the Ivy League education that makes you successful, it’s your ambition, drive and self-discipline. That said, many kids who get into an Ivy have those characteristics (at least as it relates to HS). Those same kids who succeeded after having gone to an Ivy would have been just as successful had they gone to State U. It’s not the school that makes one successful in their career, it’s the person, period.</p>
<p>We have many friends who are in the top 1% income bracket (we are in the 5%) and not a one of them went to a top school. Some of these people have their own private jets, all are small business owners or CEOs or physicians in certain specialties. Every one of them went to a state school or a small LAC in the state. IMHO, thinking that your child is going to be a high-wage earner because they went to a top school is naive. There is no correlation between the school a child goes to and their career success. It irritates me to see posts here on CC about 'Is this a high enough salary for a X graduate?" or “My Ivy league child can’t get a job - why did I pay all that $$$ to send them there?” Those people are missing the point entirely, IMHO.</p>
<p>If you look closely at starting salaries at the top schools - they are all usually in a few fields - engineering, accounting/finance, medicine, off the top of my head (I’m sure there are a few more). Those are the top starting salaries for ALL colleges. If you are concerned about your child’s earning potential - focus more on the major than the school.</p>
<p>mythmom made some important points. </p>
<p>First: The fine arts. As the husband to a fine artist, I’ve had the experience of observing and advising lots of artists in their careers. Where you go to school does seem to matter. For example, there was a cadre of folks who got MFAs at Yale who got each other into galleries and boosted each other. They are all well known and a number sell paintings for $100K or more each (gallery gets 50%, but you can make a living that way). Similarly, RISD gives fabulous training in hard, hard work, which is required. If you want to teach at the college level, you need an MFA (and a better school increases your odds) and a willingness to work for relatively low wages. It is not necessarily the case that one should go to the Ivies for art (I think several like Princeton are pretty weak in fine arts) but being a member of a good network can help.</p>
<p>Second, do elite schools make any difference? I think the studies are very interesting but probably need a second pass. I suspect that the elite schools confer a significant benefit upon a subset of the students. Poor kids for sure, but others as well. I think it depends what fields you choose to go into and how you set your aspirations and then how you use the networks you build. I don’t think one’s lifetime income will be much different (on average) if you go into museum management from a state school and from Yale (although your probability of getting a job may be higher from Yale). Similarly for working in an NGO promoting human rights in Western Africa. But, I suspect that if you choose to go into finance, going to an elite school will make a significant difference on average. I helped start a couple of hedge funds and while I never ran anything, I met many people in the industry. One of our investors was a huge hedge fund that only hired Harvard grads. While they were extreme, there was a huge elite component to the hiring. When we had the investment idea, we observed that hedge funds got to keep way more of the gain than other kinds of investment structures. So HF managers do better. Similarly with investment banks. Getting hired is easier from the elite schools. When we were on a tour at the school my son now attends, the tour guide told us she did a summer internship at Goldman organized by an alum for kids from that school. </p>
<p>What the few elite schools (15-20 or the 25 Gotta-go schools perhaps) give students besides good faculty (and not all of them have wondrous faculty or faculty that care about teaching) are horizons and contacts. The top few (smaller than the top 15 I’d say) encourage you to set your standards to be “I want to be the best in the world at what I do” rather than the best in Canada or the top guy in my field in Georgia. That’s a mixed blessing, I’d say, as not everyone will be, but the striving likely leads on average to greater success. They also provide extraordinary networks. The folks I meet at reunions every five years are remarkably successful folks (Fortune 500 CEO, dean of law school, PE guys, I-bankers, World Bank economists, head of charities, med school professors, partners in law firms, …) and several of them, friends and acquaintances, know of what I do and have become clients of my firm or referred clients to me. I’m meeting with such a referral next week – 30+ years after graduation. And I’m a poor networker. This would happen to me had I graduated from other schools, but the pool of potential referrers would be a lot less rich.</p>
<p>My own observation is different from the poster who said that coming from a good school only affects your first job and then it is what you do thereafter. But here’s what I see. First and foremost, what you do with what you bring to the table counts. But, my experience and observation is that you take many steps in life and the probability of getting an opportunity, a client, etc. depends upon what has happened for you in the past. In another thread (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/730092-what-makes-hyp-different.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/730092-what-makes-hyp-different.html</a>), I recounted how at key steps when I got a job in between years of grad school, changed fields in the middle of grad school, changed fields in academia between grad school and professorship, when I left to work at an investment bank, when I went to work for a wealthy family’s direct equity investment arm, and now as a consultant, I have benefited both from my actual work experience but also from my elite academic pedigree. In each case, I am confident that the probability of getting a good outcome increased because of the background. That said, if I couldn’t deliver the goods at each stage, impressive sheepskins wouldn’t be worth much. But the fact that quality of work also matters doesn’t mean that, in certain fields, having a good pedigree didn’t increase the odds of good outcomes and thus higher income over time.</p>
<p>[My caveat is that while my firm works for big corporations and government, my work has been in the consulting/finance worlds, which is where I have seen the effects of gilded schools. I have looked a lot less closely at what happens inside big companies. They’re far from meritocracies, but I don’t have the same clear view of how educational credentials affect outcomes/incomes.] </p>
<p>Momlive, I suspect that we live in different parts of the country. I’m not sure what the 1% income cutoff is (I just did a web search which said it was $388K in 2008), but virtually all of the folks I know who would be top 1% went to the top 25 schools. That’s more likely to be the case in the Northeast where I live, but both our samples are probably idiosyncratic. I do think self-made billionaires tend to have a lower proportion of elite school backgrounds.</p>
<p>One final speculation: I suspect that someone who end up in the bottom half of an elite school class would be better off at another school where he or she could be at the top end. The probability of a good outcome at the next step is higher being the biggest fish in a smaller pond rather than a small fish in a bigger pond.</p>
<p>I know of several cases where the student was offered a free ride to state flagship school HONORS PROGRAM and chose instead to go to prestigous private school. Parents were certainly conflicted. Child said he wanted to be surrounded by intellectually superior students and that was more likely in the private venue. I challenge that conclusion. It seems to me that the state Honors colleges are bursting with really bright kids whose parents just have different values and priorities.</p>
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<p>This is from the bio of a friend:</p>
<p>David holds a Master of Music Theory and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Texas Tech University, and has composed extensively for Universal Studios, the Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros., Six Flags and many others.</p>
<p>[Kneupper</a> Music - Composer and Sound Designer - Bio](<a href=“http://www.kneuppermusic.com/bio.shtml]Kneupper”>http://www.kneuppermusic.com/bio.shtml)</p>
<p>Clearly the lack of a big name school didn’t hurt him.</p>
<p>We told the kids that we’d pay for the best school (for them)that they can get into. We have the money, but they also see that we don’t drive fancy cars or take elaborate vacations or live a super upscale lifestyle like alot of people we know here. When the kids say that their friends have more of this and that we say that whatever “disposable” income we have gets socked away for college. This way they have the choice.</p>
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<p>There will always exceptions. Do you believe your kid will be a Bill Gate?</p>
<p>I am not even saying that unless one went to a big name school then one is doomed for failure. I am speaking of probability here, one leg up…As mentioned by other posters, unless you could deliver after you are hired, it wouldn’t matter what school you went to. As a parent, I try to prepare them best way possible and give them the best opportunities, what they do with it is really up to them.</p>
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This is the way we see it as well. To me, it’s not so much about understanding the value of money, but rather about the work ethic. I’m crossing my fingers as I type this, but our kids have already demonstrated a good work ethic, and reasonable thrift in terms of spending their own and our money.</p>
<p>As for the value of an elite education, I think it has some value beyond its potential to improve your earning potential. It’s a great experience, you learn things that will interest you all your life, and you’ll meet a lot of very interesting people. I guess all those things are luxuries, to some extent, but they have value–just as the (to me, ridiculous) seat warmer in my wife’s car has value. To me, we don’t ruin our kids’ attitudes by giving them these luxuries, as long as they have the work ethic too.</p>