Why is Washington and Lee so high? There has to be a common sense explanation.
Is anyone familiar enough to have an educated guess?
The frat effect?
The associated article mentions taking students to trips to New York (presumably Wall Street) and the old boy network there.
Note that at Harvard and other selective colleges, a good portion often enter 2 years and out type IB type programs, but few pursue IB/consulting as careers. An article describing this effect is at http://www.vox.com/2014/5/15/5720596/how-wall-street-recruits-so-many-insecure-ivy-league-grads
For example, in Harvard’s senior, survey 34% said they are planning on working in finance or consulting next year, but only 5% said they planned to be working in these fields in 10 years. If you look at surveys 10+ years out, the students really are leaving these fields and pursuing careers in other fields. The fields students do pursue at such highly selective colleges vary, but they often involve advanced degrees. A survey of Yale’s class of 2002 found 11 years after graduation 85% had received graduate degrees with roughly a third of them having a law degree, so a very large portion of alumni were practicing lawyers, a higher portion than any other school I am aware of for undergrad. More that 20% had a doctorate, a large portion of which were working as educators. It’s quite a different view from graduation when >30% were entering finance and consulting and fewer than 20% of students were directly entering grad school (basing on class of 2000 since 11 years out)…
Even selective LACs like Swarthmore show this pattern of leaving finance/consulting and pursuing careers involving grad degrees. ~23% of recent Swarrthmore grads entered finance, consulting, or business. A survey 11 years after graduation found relatively few were still working in these fields, but 86% had received graduate degrees, nearly the same percentage as Yale. However, the grad degree fields were very different from Yale. Far more Swarthmore grads pursued non-MBA master’s degrees and doctorates, frequently having careers as educators or scientists; and far fewer pursued pre-professional degrees than Yale – notably lower for JD, MBA, and MD.
So if you look at careers long after graduation, you’ll probably see Yale with higher salaries than suggested in the Economist article, with a large portion being high salaried lawyers. And Swarthmore will probably still be well behind HYPSM, with a large portion being researchers and educators. However, this isn’t a bad thing and probably has more to do with self selection by students than the school. Students who are interested in law are more likely to put Yale at the top of their list. It has the highest ranked law school under USNWR and will probably help advance such goals more than most. And students who are interested in a career in academia are probably more likely to favor Swarthmore for comparable reasons, and it will probably do a good job of assisting in such goals.
“If you include not only IB but also consulting/professional schools like medicine/law/etc., you probably could say the same for ANY elite colleges in CC’s standard.”
Not those elite schools that have rich art, theater, music programs. Where people actually care about creativity and have passion for things outside money.
“You run a large media conglomerate. You have sports channels, you have cable political channels, you have mainstream entertainment channels, you own websites and interactive entertainment properties, and a couple of studios which make content both for your own distribution and through other people’s channels. How many kids who major in sports management can you hire in any given year- even if your marquee property is a sports channel? You need people who learn how to price and sell media time regardless of the content area. You need investor relations people who can analyze reams of data and turn it into a message which your CFO can credibly relate to the activist hedge fund which owns a significant percentage of your stock. You need creatives of all stripes. You need HR people who can figure out why your retiree benefit costs went up when your retiree cohort went down last year.”
Two major media conglomerates are clients of mine. And like pretty much everything Blossom posts, this is spot- on. It seems like common sense to me that these jobs exist, which is why I have to roll my eyes at the constant drumbeat of STEM on cc. Yeah - from people who have no clue that the jobs described above are just as real.
There are so many lists. All I know is that each of my 3 kids schools end up on all of the top 10- 50-75 lists of colleges in the country. So I know they are smart and went to top schools. It is what they do after school that matters. That us where my kids differ.
If you have no drive and natural smarts (high 700’s math SAT I and II and Physics SAT w/o doing a smidgon of studying.) where does that leave you? With the same smarts and strong drive? The world can be and is yours. In the middle, not so bad.
Son is first. D1 is second and D2 is third.
Well said.
I agree that not all people (independent of where they go to school to a certain degree) have equal abilities.
Regarding Washington & Lee, one of the independent variables in the regression is for location, with schools in high income areas getting a boost. The article list the following characteristics for W&L.
$42,751 median graduate income for an average college
$22,370 Overperformance
$4,634 impact of SAT scores
$2,784 sex ratio
$2,783 fields of study
$2,278 all other factors
Overperformance = $77,600 actual median income
They might have characterized W&L as a rural school with income levels approximate to Lexington VA when a large percentage of their alumni end up in Washington DC or New York, two high income levels.
If their model is correct, the errors between the actual results and their projections can be attributed to how well the schools teach their students in ways that are captured in income, or it may be explained by data that was not contained in their dataset. Babson, W&L and Villanova outperforming the regression projections should not be a surprise.
Is it possible that the very high debt loads that many full pay students buy into to attend top schools sort of mandate that they make a lot of money to pay back those loans (and feel they got value out of their education). Then the 80 hour work weeks and lack of fulfillment and long-held interests in other fields send them to more modest jobs later?
If I had $240K in student debt and was offered 6 figures or above, you bet I would take it.
Highly selective private colleges tend to have very generous grant financial aid and overrepresentation of students from wealthy families, leading to low average debt loads. For example, among colleges in Mass, the ones with the highest average debt per student are:
- Anna Maria - $52k
- Wheelock - $47k
- Curry - $43k
- Springfield - $42k
- Endicott -- $39k
And the colleges with the lowest debt per student are:
- Wellesley – $13k
- Williams – $14k
- Amherst – $14k
- MCPHS – $14k
- Harvard – $15k
… - MIT – $19k
- Olin – $20k
There is a notable correlation between high selectivity and low average debt.
I think the correlation is more between top aid offered and high selectivity (the aid is so good people want to go there). That results in low average debt.
Although we should give these colleges with generous FA some credit, there could also be another factor here:
Is there also some correlation between high selectivity and student’s family income? We deinitely know there is some correlation between student’s family income and low average debt.
Let’s not confuse debt with generous parents who do full-pay to Ivy or Ivy equivalent but are basically unlikely to give junior another check afterwards. What I was referring to is a lot of upper-middle-class (used loosely here for $200K annual income types) who will pay for a prestige school, but for whom it is a hardship of sorts (deferred retirement or savings, lifestyle changes, whatever). When they graduate from HYPS, parents are more likely to say … hey, it’s great you got that IB job, it really paid off for us …
and less likely to say … oh, honey, you should go to grad school so I can keep subsidizing you into your 30s … we just won’t ever retire or take another vacation.
50% of families are full pay at prestige schools, but I doubt more than 10 or 20% are 1% ers who just take it out of the future trust fund.
A state flagship grad whose full-pay parents are only down $80-120K rather than $280K might be more likely to encourage that dream grad school gig.
Are PLUS loans tracked in these really low numbers for average student debt, or is this STUDENT debt?
Your earlier post was clearly talking about debt, stating “the very high debt loads that many full pay students buy into to attend top schools sort of mandate that they make a lot of money to pay back those loans” and talking about having $240k in student debt; rather than upperclass families who need to make lifestyle changes to pay for college.
That said, the rate of students who attend grad school at such selective colleges is extremely high, far higher than less selective colleges. For example, one Yale survey found that ~86% of Yale grads eventually attended graduate school. An MIT survey found that after 10 years out 77% had previously enrolled in grad school, and another 11% were currently enrolled in grad school. A Swarthmore survey found 90% eventually attended grad school, with degrees primarily being in non-professional (lower pay) fields. Of course, this doesn’t mean their parents are subsidizing their grad school. I’d expect most students are either getting their grad school paid for by employer/school independently from parents or paying for it themselves, in a few cases using the IB money you referred to, starting on grad school soon afterwards the typical IB two years and out program.
So my hypothetical family with $200K family income and therefore full-pay (assume one-child) is on average able to write a check for all but $5K per year of their kids college expenses, which are close to $70K? I find this difficult to believe, unless there are primarily FA recipients and folks with $300K or more incomes and/or some serious 529 balances (who the heck has $280K in their 529).
I do know many families who opted out of this and sent their kids to our state’s flagship despite acceptances to higher ranked, in some cases very high ranked, universities.
I think there are a good number of people who attend a top school full-pay, see the financial strain this is putting on their family, and switch to something where they can pay off their loans (including family PLUS loans, private loans, whatever, maybe even some credit card bills their family hasn’t been able to pay due to $35K checks twice a year …
rather than following their art history muse.
Sure employers will pay for a lot of graduate study credits, likely for either a technical masters or an MBA or other somewhat practical degree. It has to be stated that earning a MS or MBA while working full-time is a huge time commitment that may or may not be compatible with a family life of any kind. And employers can be picky about what exactly they will pay for and even the tuition amounts.
Also would think that being surrounded by wealth on some of these campuses would make earning 6 figures or more at age 22 even more appealing …
According to Yale’s report at http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/Yale-College-By-the-Numbers.pdf , the average parental contribution for families with incomes of >$200k (includes $300k+ incomes and other far higher) is 60% of sticker. You can use the NPC to get some more specific values for different colleges, but the point is financial aid can be quite significant at $200k.
The link above also indicates that 84% of Yale students graduate without debt, and the few that have debt have a median debt of $11k at graduation. Such low loan rates and amounts are typical for HYSPM… Average loans and typical financial strain are going to be more noteworthy at the overwhelming majority of less selective colleges than at typical HYPSM… type highly selective colleges, so it seems odd to imply financial strain and loans at “top colleges” is causing different career decisions than at less selective colleges.
My statement was, " I’d expect most students are either getting their grad school paid for by employer/school independently from parents or paying for it themselves." In some fields, an employer or school paying for the degree is common. In others it is not. It’s also common for students to work before pursuing a grad degree in many fields. The longer students have been working and living independently, the smaller percentage of their parents pay for grad degrees.
I think there is something methodologically wrong about a ranking system
that places California Institute of Technology and Rice at the bottom of the list.
Harvard = 99th Percentile
California Institute of Technology = 1st Percentile
Rice = 0th Percentile
The figures quoted are for federal direct student loans or, in earlier years, federally-backed student loans issued by a private lender (i.e., loans for which the student submitted a FAFSA) . Not included: Parent PLUS loans (the average Parent Plus borrower takes out $20,300 in loans, over and above any student debt their child takes on); and any private borrowing that either the student or the parents do. On the student side, federal direct loans now make up 90% of the market, but in individual cases, private student borrowing could be quite high. On the parent side, I’ve known quite a few parents who have opened HELOCs, refinanced their principal residences, or even borrowed from their own retirement savings to raise cash to pay for junior’s tuition. None of that gets counted, so to that extent, the federal figures may be misleading. Note also that upper-middle class households typically have more equity in their homes and more substantial retirement savings than those with more modest incomes, so strategies like those I describe are probably somewhat easier to pull off, likely to be able to generate more cash, and possibly less scary in that income range. At incomes of $300K and up, these strategies probably aren’t necessary (but I can only speculate). So my guess would be that more of this sort of borrowing goes on among households with incomes in the range of, say $180K to $250K, than among those with lower or higher incomes.
It would be difficult to squeeze that much out of current income at a gross income of $200K, but it’s not so unrealistic for families that started saving for college early and have kept adjusting the savings rate upward as college costs have escalated. A family income of $200K might still make you eligible for need-based FA at HYPS, but at the vast majority of schools, including many of the “elites,” that income would make you full-pay. The implicit assumption is that if you’re at that income level, you’ve probably been earning a pretty good income for some time, so you should have saved—and most people have. Even if the savings aren’t specifically designated for college, most upper-middle income households have accumulated substantial home equity, retirement savings, and after-tax savings and investments by the time their kids are entering college.
Also, in some relatively affluent families, there are also relatively affluent grandparents who are willing to help out.
The truth of the matter is that an upper middle class family (if for example arbitrarily defined as households with gross annual income of $200K and up) without grandparents/relatives’ help can still afford to pay the tuition of private colleges with a sticker price of around 65K for - let’s say - 2 kids, if they want to. However, even in HYPS, they will either be full paying or (typically) receiving an FA package that wouldn’t make them feel a whole lot easier. It is not a “walk in the park”, and it does mean sacrifices and sometimes lifestyle adjustment. Still, FA quickly gets less generous beyond HYPS. So there’s no more financial related incentives for the tipsy top school graduates to pursue high paying jobs. Why is there a higher proportion of them going for WS or consulting then? Because they can. Those firms are targeting the top students from top schools and recruiting them.