“We all know what pays the best, MD, JD engineering/CS and graduating in engineering in any university way down the list is going to give you a better outcome than graduating from MIT in a social science.”
@CU123, you have no idea what you are talking about.
@PurpleTitan I see you have no idea what you are talking about either.
@CU123, actually, I do.
You seem to think that any old JD is still a path to riches and MIT social science grads don’t pick up marketable skills.
Let’s just say that it’s clear that you have no idea how hiring in high-paying industries work.
I should have qualified the JD part to top 10 law schools, but you missed the point entirely. I didn’t know social science was a high paying industry??? I guess all those MIT social science majors go into Finance?
@CU123, yes, you have a lot to learn. Social science at MIT, like everything there, is quantitative, and quant skills are always in demand.
@PurpleTitan No I don’t have a lot to learn, did I hit a nerve here, are you a SS major in Finance? Clearly all graduates from MIT make a ton of money doing whatever. Yes that must be it.
@CU123: I don’t have a dog in this fight. I just don’t like seeing people act like know-it-alls and then spout off ignorantly.
Even if you were trying to make a point (and majors and skills do matter), there are so many target-rich examples out there. “MIT social science major” would not be one of those who would generally be hurting financially.
@PurpleTitan Again focusing on the example and not the message, but it seems you agree with me anyway “majors and skills do matter”
@CU123: Well, yes. Using bad examples weakens your point.
@penncas2014 “Enjoy your “stable upswing” while it lasts! The US News gods giveth and the US News gods taketh away…”
In this case “The God” is Mort Zuckerman, a Wharton MBA, and owner of USNWR. Lol
@Alexandre, you are saying Group 1 provides higher quality undergraduate education than Group 2 and so on? If so, I really disagree with your groupings. If you are saying the typical graduate of Group 1, all other things being equal, is better than Group 2 and so on, I still have issues because I don’t see it that way. I think you are mixing undergraduate, graduate, and research together here.
You are still wasting time on these secondary institutions. As a Magna and Phi Beta graduate from the only school that matters, I then made my gingerly way to a JD MBA from the only school that matters, made partner in a leading Wall street firm in 6 years instead of 8 and then formed my own global consulting firm,. The social science MIT grads that we hired, as part of a community outreach project, did a credible job with upgrading the water cooler. Their quants were locked up in a room far away from any human interaction to ensure they did not chew on the furniture in public. We did enjoy the UChicago graduates a bit, as they came up with semi witty quotes from various esoteric social critics and passé philosophers as Penn graduates were passing out drinks.
@PennCAS2014 Check a few world university rankings. See if you can find PENN anywhere in the top ten.
WSJ is really biased against public universities, any ranking that has USC at 15, UCLA at 26 and Berkeley at 37 is very very flawed. Let me explain why - USC higher on outcome than those two should be the first warning - USC being more expensive and having a worse academic reputation started giving out a lot more scholarships to the top students in it’s applicant pool, and I give them credit for that. You would think that student loans would tip the outcome against USC, but these scholarships and parents of USC students being more wealthy meant that they came out with less loans. Should a college be given credit for wealthier parents? The other category is resources, where WSJ of course is going to favor privates.
Even USC grads don’t think they’re better than UCLA or Berkeley, a lot of them are there because they couldn’t get in to one of those two, Stanford or any of the Claremont colleges.
Chrchill, you need to chill out man! 
Seriously, According to Times, Chicago is #10, Penn is #13.
According to QS, Chicago is #10, Penn is #18
On a global scale, there is no difference between universities ranked within 10-15 spots of each other.
According to the Times, is #1 Oxford materially better than #10 Chicago? Is #3 Stanford that much better than #12 Yale?
According to QS, is #1 MIT that much better than #11 Princeton? Is #10 Chicago significantly better than #20 Columbia? Is #9 Imperial really better than #23 Michigan?
theloniusmonk, the US News is also biased against public universities. Well, to be more accurate, the methodology does not do a good job accommodating the differences between public and private universities, and that often ends up benefiting private universities.
@Alexandre If you use the world rankings as a US rankings only,-- delete all foreign schools, you will get a very interesting and telling picture how the world views the pecking order in the US. The world rankings have been criticized for having a pro British/ anti US bias. But even within that constraint, they tell a story about relative perceptions of US schools vis a vis each other abroad.
I agree Chrchill. The World Rankings are UK centric though, and only give an idea of how the British view US universities. The French, Germans and Japanese have their own take, which is rather different.
But here is a look at the Times and QS ranking, including just US universities:
Times:
QS:
Again, those rankings show that very little separates universities ranked within 10-15 spots of each other. But like I said, that is just according to the British. The French, Germans and Japanese will have their own outlooks.
@Alexandre: Anything you can point to for French, German, and Japanese viewpoints on American unis?
@Alexandre Nobody ever said that a LOT separates the top schools. We are splitting hairs in all this. NOTE: QS is the Shanghai ranking. That’s Chinese. Times is British. So you have a European and Asian view.