<p>While it's unclear how representative the data is, the fact that five Ivys + Stanford, MIT are 7 of the top 10 and that NYT, WSJ, Fortune feel the data is accurate enough to run stories around them lends some credibility to the Payscale study.</p>
<p>Do</a> Elite Colleges Produce the Best-Paid Graduates? - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com</p>
<p>I don’t get the point of these rankings. No knock on Dartmouth or anything, but economics is the most popular major there and many kids go there to eventually end up on Wall Street, hence there mid-career salaries will be far higher than say a larger school that is far more popular for the arts like Brown, and whose mid-career salaries will be diluted by these artists. Catch my drift?</p>
<p>You’ve just got to look at this with a discerning eye</p>
<p>According to Princeton Review, Economics is the #2 major at Brown. Presumably, the vast majority of those who go to Wall Street out of Brown and Dartmouth would eventually get an advanced degree, so would not be part of the sample anyway. It’s difficult to tell how large the sample size is for each college but, for example, Columbia comes out lower than Brown despite most likely having a high percentage go onto Wall Street jobs; so I don’t think it’s as simple as a school like Brown ranks lower than Dartmouth (by 17%) because it has more artists.</p>
<p>
No, unless you tried to compare Dartmouth to RISD instead. Dartmouth has a slightly higher percentage of humanities students than Brown. Humanities majors at Brown make up less than 25% of all majors.</p>
<p><a href=“Office of Institutional Research | Brown University”>Office of Institutional Research | Brown University;
<a href=“This Page Has Moved”>This Page Has Moved;
<p>Hmmm… good points, but I still think this ranking is flawed and shouldn’t be given a whole lot of value</p>
<p>The methodology is probably flawed in many ways, as is the USNews rankings methodology. And most other rankings, for that matter. It is impossible to identify what is “best.” Is Harvard really better than Princeton? Is a 760 math SAT really better than a 740 or 730? Etc. etc.</p>
<p>Given that, for what my H & I pay for our 3 kids schools (although we do not pay full price by any means because of their scholarships and FA), I am glad to see their schools (3 different) at the top of the list. </p>
<p>Maybe they will buy us a retirement home on a beach in an ideal location!!!</p>
<p>I think this kind of data can be useful in very general terms, but simply can’t be used to imply that any individual school will result in a higher salary for a particular individual. The reason is that the study doesn’t control for the caliber of the student. Studies that have normalized for student stats show that the elite school advantage is fairly low. Grossly simplified example: if a student who had a 4.0 GPA, a 1590 SAT, was captain of the football team, and started a business that now employs 5 people decided to go to Indiana University instead of Harvard, ten years later he’d probably be making more or less the same kind of money.</p>
<p>The fact that the study looks only at those whose undergrad degree is their terminal degree also skews things, though in ways that might be hard to predict without really digging into the data.</p>
<p>The “ranking” also discriminates against schools that may send more grads into teaching, public service, etc.</p>
<p>I think the charts by MAJOR are far more illustrative, and provide a reality check for students interested in fields like elementary education and music. Interestingly, philosophy majors earn more than I.T. majors mid career, which the author of the study attributes to philosophy being a popular major only at elite schools.</p>
<p>The study does not normalize for geographic location of the jobs. Look at the local schools that popped up in the top 20 (Polytechnic University of New York, Brooklyn and Santa Clara University). Even at the best schools people will tend to stay in the region they went to school in.</p>
<p>As I said on another thread about this article:</p>
<p>"1. “While the data are not from a randomized scientific sample”</p>
<ol>
<li>“An important note: The data include only survey respondents whose highest academic degree is a bachelor’s. Therefore, doctors, lawyers and others in high-paying jobs that require advanced degrees are not included in the data set.” </li>
</ol>
<p>That means no MBA’s, either. </p>
<ol>
<li>"He also said that for many schools including alumni with advanced degrees would bring down their median salaries, because in PayScale’s sample advanced degree recipients are primarily teachers getting master’s degrees in order to teach. " </li>
</ol>
<p>Because as we NU students know, most of the people graduating from NU go on to teach :facepalm:.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>“Unfortunately, Mr. Lee says that year over year comparisons are difficult because the methodology changes from year to year. For example, the coding for career choices changes from year to year, depending on how survey respondents label themselves.”</p></li>
<li><p>“A note: PayScale declined to say how big the sample size was for each school, but said that for the bigger schools in many cases the responses numbered “in the hundreds.” For many smaller schools PayScale has not provided as much detailed statistical information because it said the sample size was too small.”</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I could get more scientific results by haruspex (that’s divining through goat entrails, just fyi)."</p>
<p>Correct for family income/assets going in…</p>
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</p>
<p>I feel that when people want to correct for this that they are failing to appreciate that, on average, the children of wealthier families are more likely to have higher intelligence and greater earnings potential, which is why they are descended from families with higher income in the first place. It’s very difficult to separate out connections and inherent effects of wealth from raw intelligence and ambition.</p>
<p><em>sigh</em> There’s only one worthwhile, meaningful sentence in that entire article:</p>
<p>“The data include only survey respondents whose highest academic degree is a bachelor’s. Therefore, doctors, lawyers and others in high-paying jobs that require advanced degrees are not included in the data set.”</p>
<p>■■■■■ the VAST majority of people at top 10 schools will fall directly into those 3 categories. Schools like Colgate, Notre Dame, Bucknell, PUNYB (are you kidding me?), Lehigh, and Santa Clara don’t deserve to be anywhere near that list. Almost every single person I have met thus far going to Duke wants to be a Lawyer, a Doctor, or a CEO with an MBA. Literally. Probably 95% of them. I assume it’s the same at HYPSM, etc.
Frankly, the fact that the top 10 schools are even ON this list at all, given that the stupid surveyors left out the 3 largest groups of elite grads, is even MORE evidence to me that they’re far and away the best places to go. Period.</p>
<p>Notable absences? Columbia. UofC. Williams. Amherst. etc.</p>
<p>Anyone who has taken Stats 101 will know this data is absolutely worthless. No self-selected survey has any statistical validity. It’s a Payscale website publicity stunt and the NYT should be ashamed. You do know websites make money by getting more hits, right??</p>
<p>^^ Indeed, the survey results are garbage.</p>
<p>Most professions nowadays have the master’s degree as the entry-level requirement (i.e., social work, urban planning, public policy, etc.)</p>
<p>Actually, colgate for some reason has a massive wall street presence. Don’t ask why. And for a non target bucknell does as well.</p>
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<p>GASP they must be PRE-PROFESSIONAL! NOOOOOO!!</p>
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<p>They left those groups off intentionally to to try to isolate undergrad effect. Their whole point was NOT to measure the “elite grads” (and LOL at you including MBAs in a group of elite grads) but what the average grad (or really below avg grad considering ~ 75% of grads from their top 50 schools go on to get some kind of graduate degree) at these schools goes on to do. Columbia. UChicago. Williams. Amherst are all on that list among the ~ top 40.</p>
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<p>Set foot on a college campus as an actual student; nevermind graduate and move on with your career before and then you will be in position to see what a misinformed statement that is.</p>
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<p>Maybe, because they are mostly Dartmouth rejects with a similar mindset.</p>
<p>I don’t see how this makes the data worthless. It simply gives credit where credit is due. Adding graduate school statistics would be completely pointless because grad school admissions do not really take the prestige of the undergraduate school into significant consideration. </p>
<p>So if someone goes to U Pitt as an undergrad and then goes to Yale Law School and becomes a wealthy partner, it shouldn’t show up on U Pitt’s salary survey because his increased earning potential came from Yale Law and not Pitt.</p>
<p>I don’t think these rankings are moot. They are useful in showing where one might want to look to attend in order to become an engineer or a businessman. I do agree, though, that this is a naturaly biased list due to the varied distributions of majors at each school.</p>
<p>Also, I’m going to show this list to my mom so she can stop calling Harvey Mudd my safety school just because she hasn’t heard of it before. Psh, parents. :)</p>