<p>“Research has shown that students who are accepted to HYP and the like do just as well at other colleges”</p>
<p>There is exactly one study that shows that students who were accepted to different universities (not just HYP) do as well in terms of income when going to “lesser” universities, using average SAT score as the proxy for “goodness” of university. The paper is NOT available free online, so I do not know how they adjusted for A. Differing majors among students who picked one or the other B. Differing employers (for ex NGOs vs private employers) C. Differing personalities etc, etc. There are other methodological issues I could think of as well, for example the assumption that “goodness” of job is perfectly measured by salary (jobs vary by fringe benefits, working conditions, etc) Also, of course, it assumes that the school with higher SAT is automatically the “better” school, which is rather different from the complex considerations of “fit” we see here. </p>
<p>I mean its a worthy data point, and one to consider, but its not the slam dunk some folks at CC seem to think it is.</p>