Student Turns Down ALL the Ivies and other Elites for.....The University of Alabama! Bama Wins!

[Data10]

You can post just one, but there are lots more, summarized and cited here:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/11/29/does-it-matter-where-you-go-to-college

It is well-documented that that to the extent that there is a benefit from an elite degree, lower-income people, particularly lower-income URM groups, benefit more than whites and upper-income people.

The study you referenced found lower income persons would benefit more from the degree, but that doesn’t apply to the student in the a student in the article. His dad is an engineering manager, and his mom also works in management. He almost certainly comes from an upper income family. This fits with wanting to attend Alabama for financial reasons. HYPSM essentially gives free rides for students with incomes less than ~$65k and typical assets, and charges the equivalent of no tuition for students with incomes of less than ~$110k and typical assets. The non-international HYPSM students who have especially high cost of attendance, like the student in the news story, rarely come from lower income families.

The NYT article you referenced also suggests a different position than your posts, as quoted below:

The key to success in college and beyond has more to do with what students do with their time during college than where they choose to attend. A long-term study of 6,335 college graduates published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that graduating from a college where entering students have higher SAT scores – one marker of elite colleges – didn’t pay off in higher post-graduation income. Researchers found that students who applied to several elite schools but didn’t attend them – either because of rejection or by their own choice – are more likely to earn high incomes later than students who actually attended elite schools.

In a summary of the findings, the bureau says that "evidently, students’ motivation, ambition and desire to learn have a much stronger effect on their subsequent success than average academic ability of their classmates.”

The student in the news story falls into this group of students who applied to elite colleges, but didn’t attend, who were more likely to have high incomes later than students who attended the elite schools.