<p>one fact that we should remember, however, is that Havard Law School has a LOT of kids from Harvard undergrad. Now perhaps those same kids would matriculate to HLS if they attended Florida, Maryland or Rutgers instead of H, but we’ll never know. :)</p>
<p>abl, </p>
<p>You may not have been around cc long enough to realize that student (and some parent) posters regularly advise students who have been awarded full tuition+ scholarships to places like Vanderbilt to pass them up in favor of full-price somewhere-or-other because the full price school’s “top medical and law school” placement rate is better according to that oft-reference WSJ study.</p>
<p>I think the point of the original post of this thread is that above a certain level, the individual’s record matters a whole lot more than the overall placement rate. </p>
<p>BTW, congratulations on the Teach for America stint. Just a word of advice, if you don’t mind: don’t let any of your fellow teachers or your students know your exact stand on “peer effects”.</p>
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<p>As does Stanford, MIT, and Caltech. </p>
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<p>The problem is actually finding them. After all, let’s face it, most people aren’t going to expend much effort in finding others. They’re just going to go with what is easily available. You tend to hang out with people in your own dorm because it’s just so much easier to know them vs. knowing people who don’t live near you. </p>
<p>That also means that you are also affected by the social environment around you. People tend to copy what they see around them, and that is especially true of young college students, most of whom are living by themselves for the first time in their lives. When the people around you don’t want to study and would rather spend all their time partying, you also tend to not want to study.</p>
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<p>Actually, one reason immediately comes to mind. It’s not necessarily that the SSU (as you call it) makes the students actually smarter. Rather, that SSU makes the students look smarter. </p>
<p>How’s that? Simple. Grade inflation. Let’s face it. At many of the top private schools (i.e. HYPS), it is almost impossible to get a truly bad grade or to flunk out. Sure, it’s difficult to get an A, but conversely, it’s almost impossible to actually fail. As long as you do the bare minimum of work, you are going to pass. Let’s be honest - how do you think George Bush managed to graduate from Yale despite freely acknowledging that he was an unmotivated drunk during those days? {Note, John Kerry was little better, as he also freely concedes that he was not very interested in his studies, yet he also managed to graduate from Yale.} The same cannot be aid for many lower-ranked schools where flunking is a serious threat. </p>
<p>Look, the truth is, getting into top med/law/business schools is a game, and part of that game is avoiding bad grades. One way you can win that game is to simply go to a school that just doesn’t give out many bad grades in the first place. It’s a matter of professional safety.</p>
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<p>That study is inherently flawed because of its endogeneity (which the authors freely concede). In essence, people didn’t turn down Harvard randomly, but rather as a choice. You didn’t have a experimenter randomly choose who among those who actually got into Harvard would actually go. That would be a true experiment. That is not what the survey performed (because it is impossible to do so). Those particular people who got into Harvard and then turned it down did so for reasons, and hence not randomly selected and that makes that set of people different from those who got into Harvard and actually went. </p>
<p>What the experimenters would need to do to establish causation is probably to use an instrumental variable. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any that are readily available. </p>
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<p>As far as business school is concerned, this is almost certainly false, for the networking aspect alone would point to a strong advantage. Surely we have heard the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, and that couldn’t be more true in the world of business. Most jobs are never even publicly published, but are available only through networks. That’s why every jobhunting book or website advises jobseekers to use their network. Admission to a top MBA program is mostly predicated on having strong work experience, but having strong work experience is itself predicated on having a good job in the first place.</p>
<p>As a case in point, I know a guy who is graduating from Harvard who is going to work for a top hedge fund. How did he even get that job? He knows another guy at Harvard whose older brother works there. That was his ‘in’. If not for that connection, he wouldn’t have even had an interview. Now, granted, to later get into at top MBA program, he still has to do well with his opportunity. But at least he has the opportunity. People at other schools won’t even get that opportunity. {I believe that hedge fund hired 2 or 3 undergrads this year, all from Harvard.}</p>
<p>Look, maybe that’s not fair. Maybe social networks should not be such an crucial way to find jobs. But the fact is, they are, whether we like it or not.</p>
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<p>I would argue that the talent pool in a certain school in Palo Alto is pretty ‘dense’.</p>
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<p>I personally think this is the most important aspect of all and gets to the social dynamics I discussed in a previous post. It comes down to a simple matter of motivation. When you’re surrounded by motivated students who are accomplishing great things, you tend to want to work hard to also accomplish great things. But when the surrounding students are less motivated, when they are not working that hard to accomplish great things, then you also tend to want to work less hard.</p>
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<p>While some of this rings true for many students, and if I may be so elitist as to say many “average” students, I do not think it is true for the very high achieving, very motivated students. That kind of student signs up for difficult classes, gets involved in the kind of activities that draw similar students, lands a research job and makes contacts that way, and so on. I don’t deny peer effects, and I do think there is a critical mass requirement to get anywhere near optimal opportunities, but I don’t think every single student in every one of your classes must be a top scholar.</p>
<p>Alumni networks are huge for jobs, but not so much for admission to professional schools.</p>
<p>Grade inflation is a result of the quality of the work not leniency in grading. Harvard undergrads that get A’s shouldn’t just receive B’s or C’s to reduce grade inflation if they are doing A work that is indistinguishable from their peers. The reason for this so-called grade inflation is that the differences among students are too slight to be significant at the most competitive colleges. To give out grades that suggest a greater gap in ability than is the case is misleading to graduate schools and employers. Unfortunately, for PR reasons some institutions (like Princeton) have reduced themselves to giving in to this nonsensical pressure to give out lower grades which will ultimately hurt the undergraduates when they go up against students from peer schools that haven’t made the adjustment.</p>
<p>Ernie H., if alumni networks are good for jobs they are good for professional schools (where work experience can be critical especially for MBA programs but it can distinguish a law school applicant as well).</p>
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<p>Oh, I profoundly disagree. Believe me, there are plenty of less motivated students at the not-quite-elite schools. Plenty. </p>
<p>I think the issue is that many students are only ‘artificially’ motivated. That is, the reason that they do well in high school is because of the watchful and stern eyes of their parents. However, at the end of the day, these are just kids we’re talking about. Left to live by themselves, no longer being actively watched by their parents, many of these kids are simply going to revert back to their normal, less motivated, form. </p>
<p>One example immediately comes to mind - my former roommate. He never had a date in high school, mostly because his parents simply wouldn’t let him, insisting that he spend his time studying. Once he entered college, he chose to spend all his time womanizing, and hence, never going to class, never studying, and so forth. He eventually flunked out. </p>
<p>What makes the situation so dangerous is not only does he lose his motivation, but he also tempts the other people around him to lose their motivation. People saw a guy who is having a lot of fun, going to numerous parties, hanging out with lots of girls, and they were tempted to do the same. Some of them did, and they ended up with academic problems also. </p>
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<p>But like I said, jobs are important for admission to business school. {I am inclined to agree with you as regards to law and med school, but not B-school.} A guy coming from a top hedge fund or private equity firm and performs reasonably will have an excellent shot at any of the top MBA programs. But the vast majority of people won’t even get an interview for such a job, as those firms predominantly hire through social networks. </p>
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<p>Ha! I wish that were really true. But let me state for you the two high-profile counterexamples: MIT and Caltech.</p>
<p>Here’s what I mean. I think we can all agree that MIT and Caltech have student bodies that are of basically the same quality as Harvard. Yet I also think there is little dispute that the grading at MIT and Caltech is significantly harder than it is at Harvard. </p>
<p>This is most prominent at the low end. It is practically impossible to actually flunk out of Harvard. But it is quite possible to flunk out of MIT or Caltech. The upshot is that somebody who flunked out of the latter schools might have actually successfully graduated from Harvard. Probably not with great grades, but at least he would have graduated. </p>
<p>But in any case, I am pointing to a more general phenomenon which is that the grading at many lower-ranked schools (especially public schools) is more variable. Like I said, at Harvard, it is practically impossible to actually get a terrible grade. But you certainly can at other schools. And I am sure we can all think of examples where somebody performed poorly despite working hard and knowing a lot. For example, I can think of one guy who completely misread his final exam question (and the entire course grade was based on the final exam). So he got a ‘terrible’ grade. The difference is that, at Harvard, even a ‘terrible’ grade is not really that terrible. At another school, a terrible grade can be truly terrible.</p>
<p>sakky–which do you think is a better explanation, that MIT and Caltech demonstrate that the rest of the top schools practice grade inflation, or the rest of the top schools demonstrate that MIT and Caltech practice grade deflation? It’s more than a semantic question–the question is whether grades at Harvard et al <i>should</i> be as high as they are.</p>
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<li><p>I did not say there were not plenty of less motivated students at “not quite elite” schools. I said it doesn’t matter as much for those who <em>are</em> motivated as the conventional wisdom of CC indicates.</p></li>
<li><p>Here is where I have to hope no one here in my town is reading this. I know students–friends and acquaintances of my kid–who went to HYP and other Ivys as well as Northwestern, Rice, Wash U, Vanderbilt, Duke and some top LACs. (I am assuming here that you are putting HYP and the Ivys–and the other usual suspects–in one category and the rest in another. Sorry if I am misunderstanding.) Not only is there no correspondence whatever–in my experience–to your assumption that kids at the not-quite-top schools are more likely to have been parent-driven and pseudo motivated than those at the tippy top schools, I would have to say that exactly the opposite is true. Without question, the kids who operated on their own steam, chose their own activities and performed at the top of their game to please themselves rather than their parents are attending a variety of not-quite-tippy top schools, in many cases because they landed very large merit scholarships, and in other cases because many top students in the midwest actually are not so anxious to move to the coasts. On the other hand, those at non-merit/traditional super-elite schools are living their parents’ dreams.</p></li>
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<p>sakky wrote: "I think the issue is that many students are only ‘artificially’ motivated. That is, the reason that they do well in high school is because of the watchful and stern eyes of their parents. However, at the end of the day, these are just kids we’re talking about. Left to live by themselves, no longer being actively watched by their parents, many of these kids are simply going to revert back to their normal, less motivated, form. "</p>
<p>sakky, I agree with this. This is what makes the job of the adcom (and parent for that matter) so difficult. When all the external markers are there (tough course load, high grades, high test scores), the adcom is left to search for subtle clues about the applicant’s innate intellectual curiosity, innate discipline, innate desire – that internal fire. It’s the same in evaluating talented young athletes in soccer or baseball/softball. I’ll take a kid with 90% ability and 100% desire and discipline over a kid with 100% ability but little desire or discipline. By 14 or 15 the 100% talent kid is out of the sport, and the 90% kid has added 5% to the talent by sheer determination, and will keep adding while others drop out.</p>
<p>One implication I draw from the longtitudinal financial success study is that the Harvard adcoms are very good at identifying kids who are genuinely intelligent, hard working and self-motivated – even though that kid for any number of reasons matriculated to U of Illinois (just as a placeholder for any Top 100 university) instead of Harvard (placeholder for CHYMPS). Those attributes work to make that student a success in life whether the ensuing four years are spent in Cambridge or Champagne Urbana. The college is of secondary, perhaps tertiary, perhaps NO importance in comparison to the interior fire of that student that the Harvard adcom identified.</p>
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<p>The issue is that adcoms are never perfect. Not every student they admit is intrinsically motivated. Surely we can all think of people who got into top schools who arguably perhaps should not have gotten in but rather who were ‘artificially’ motivated.</p>
<p>So then the question is, what happens to these students? Their future performance is probably going to be dictated by their social environment. Put these students in a place like Harvard, and they may well draw motivation from the other highly motivated students around them. But put them in a lesser school and they may just revert back to (relative) laziness. </p>
<p>Again, to take it back to my example, I am convinced that my former roommate would have probably graduated if he had gone to an Ivy or to Stanford. Granted, he probably wouldn’t have graduated with top grades. But at least he would have graduated. Why? #1, he would have been more likely to have maintained his motivation. And #2 (which I discussed in a former post), he would have taken advantage of the grade inflation where even a terrible grade really isn’t that terrible. </p>
<p>But he never even had the choice. He ended up going to another school in which he became more motivated in chasing girls than in studying, and hence promptly flunked out. Like I said, both George Bush and John Kerry were completely mediocre students, yet Yale still graduated them. </p>
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<p>Uh, like I said, the study does not show what you claim that it shows (and the authors also don’t make that claim). Like I said, those people who get into Ivies and then choose to turn it down are quite different from the entire population of Ivy admittees at large. Nobody turns down Ivies randomly. They do so for a reason.</p>
<p>Let me give you some examples. I know a guy who turned down a number of Ivies for a far lower-ranked state school. Why? Simple. He believes that his state school gives him the best shot at achieving his dream. And what is his dream? Simple - football. He was one of the top-ranked HS football recruits in the country and he chose to go to a state school that not only gave him a full football scholarship and not only gave him a shot at winning the national championship, but most importantly, gives him an excellent shot at making it to the NFL. That is his dream. Hence, even if he only makes it onto an NFL roster as a backup, he’s still going to make far more money than almost any Ivy grad (the NFL rookie minimum salary is a whopping $285k for only a 6-month season). </p>
<p>Similarly, there are people who turn down Ivies for specialized programs at lower-ranked schools, like BS/MD programs that provide guaranteed admission to med school. These guys are guaranteed to become doctors if they want to be. That’s a sweet deal. </p>
<p>Obviously one large category consists of those people who turned down Ivies for full rides at lower-ranked schools*. But, again, that speaks to a level of motivation around money. Those people who are motivated by money to prefer a full ride over an Ivy are also those same people who are probably going to be highly aggressive in terms of choosing the most remunerative careers they can get. In contrast, many Ivy student are not highly motivated by money, perhaps because they’re already rich and hence probably don’t need more money. Many of these people will be perfectly happy working for, say, a low-paying NGO. </p>
<p>The salient point is that that study is inherently measuring different populations and hence cannot establish causation. </p>
<p>*At least, this was a large category until the Ivies vastly improved their financial aid packages in the last few years such that the Ivies, especially Harvard, are often times cheaper for most students, once aid is factored in. For example, I know 2 guys who grew up relatively poor and in families who had never sent anybody to college before. They had dreamed of attending their flagship state school. But they also applied to Harvard and found out that Harvard would be cheaper than their state school once aid was factored in. I will always remember one of them acidly joking that he always dreamed of going to his state school but he couldn’t afford it, so he had “no choice” but to go to Harvard.</p>
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<p>Now, don’t get me wrong, DunninLA. I actually partially agree with your main point, which is that a lot of success of the HSU’s universities in terms of placing students in top grad programs has to do with the fact that they simply admitted top students in the first place. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, I am still convinced that they do give students some boost. Probably not as large of a boost as others may think, but some sort of boost nevertheless. If nothing else, we at least seem to agree that grade inflation is beneficial. It works. It shouldn’t work, but it does work. {And hence, we also agree that Princeton is, unfortunately, being foolish with their grading scheme, and, sadly, so are MIT and Caltech.}</p>
<p>I agree with Sakky that grading must be inflated because of the whole subprime fiasco where 70-80% of the people working at these firms coming from Ivy league schools. Flame away!</p>
<p>sakky, your point about grade inflation is a good one, but I don’t think it’s as important as you make it out to be. For example, as you have pointed out on numerous threads, there are plenty of kids at Cal who would be better served at a lower UC, due to their lack of academic preparation. And, of course, Cal is not known for grade inflation (in comparison to that Junior University in Palo Alto). But, while Cal may give out lots of Cs and Ds to entering Frosh, particularly in the sciences, wouldn’t it be fair to say that the majority of kids earning such grades are the ‘unprepared’ admits to begin with? Thus, even if they attended a grade-inflated school, they would struggle mightily, and, IMO, would not make it thru.</p>
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<p>Actually, I’m afraid I disagree. Allow me to explain.</p>
<p>What I am specifically discussing are those students at Cal who are getting D’s and F’s and then land on academic probation (and then eventually get expelled), of which there are sadly, quite a few such students. I agree with you that many of these students would have been better off if they had gone to an easier lower-UC or a CalState. However, I also believe that they would also have been better off if they had gone to a higher-ranked grade-inflated school like Stanford or many of the Ivies.</p>
<p>How is that? Simple. Because it’s practically impossible to actually get anything below a C at those other schools. Even if you’re the worst student in the class, you’ll probably still end up with just a C, and that’s good enough to graduate. </p>
<p>The upshot is that I am convinced that many students who flunked out of Cal probably would have graduated if they had gone to Stanford instead. Granted, they would have graduated with mediocre grades. But at least they would have graduated. Of course, the catch is that most of them would never have gotten into Stanford in the first place. But if you happen to be one of them, you may well be better off choosing Stanford over Cal. </p>
<p>What that basically means is that, for many students, Cal occupies this unhappy middle ground. Those students would have been better off either moving down to an easier UC or CalState, or better off moving up to a grade-inflated private school. But as it stands, Cal’s grading scheme is simply too hard for many students. </p>
<p>Now, how this ties into the discussion of med/law/business school admissions is that one grade - just one grade - of a D or an F can really damage your chances of getting into one of the top professional schools. But if you go to Stanford, you never really have to worry about that because, like I said, except in a true disaster, the worst grade you will get is a C. Certainly a C isn’t great, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to explain away than a D or F.</p>
<p>I also agree with Sakky on the above post. That is why it’s not a great idea to go to UCB if you come from one of those grade inflate HS. It’s very bad for your career and your self-esteem. GPA in college is more important than GPA in high school. In high school, if you have a bad GPA you can still recover, you go to CC, transfer to UCB/UCLA, or whatever. However, if you get a D or F from UCB, your best chance is some medical schools in the Carribean. My office mate has a best friend that came from a strict Asian background that discovered drug during his undergraduate at UCB. His grades suffered and he had to attend one of those medical schools in the Carribean.</p>