Is it more like “she was smarter than the rest of us in high school”?
Interesting story, but this board keeps circling back to the same problem in this discussion. If the choice is HYPSM or UMass, I get that HYPSM is a pretty compelling option. I am sure it happens, but I don’t personally know anyone that has applied to those six schools, or any material combination of HYPSM and UMass. This feels like a straw man argument.
There are a lot of other schools that would describe themselves as elite, and a lot of kids that get into those schools and a few publics, and have tough choices to make.
But let’s keep talking about Harvard vs. UMass.
Student aiming for HYPSM do not also apply to their in-state public universities, which could include UMass for Massachusetts residents?
Granted, it does seem that a northeastern region resident is more likely than most to choose private or prestige if they have a choice.
@CTDad-classof2022, my ROI comparison was to my safety school, U of Michigan Honors College, not to UMass Amherst. I think that is the kind of flagship state school that people who make ROI arguments would say is a preferable choice to the HYPSM. No?
“Brown only gives need based aid, there is no merit aid there”
Sorry, yes I mixed up merit and grants.
I don’t think there’s as much economic diversity as people seem to think. Taking Brown again, 70% of their class (Chetty, NYT) is from the top 20%, 19% from the top 1%, and 4% are from the bottom 20%. That’s a lot of wealth. ucbalumnus bought up Pell grant families, where the public colleges had higher proportion. Public colleges because of their mission of educating at a lower instate cost will have more economic diversity than privates. And by and large there isn’t a lot of difference in social background either, but that’s tougher to prove for sure.
“I don’t think payoff should be measured only in financial terms either.”
Ok payoff by definition is financial, wouldn’t a non-financial payoff almost be a contradiction in terms?
@Twoin18, I don’t know if my classmate would have been a superstar someplace else. And, had he gone to another school, he might not have thought he could get in to HBS. It obviously is hard to know what would have happened had he gone elsewhere, but I can say that HBS does select a fair number of kids from my alma mater. Not all of the HBS admits that I have met seem to be particularly amazing.
If memory serves (of a microeconomics course at a state university nearly 40 years ago), the correct metric here is utility, not money.
I think this thread has comprehensively discussed Harvard, and by extension HYPSM. I think that everyone agrees that those 5 schools are excellent.
Maybe it is just me, but a discussion of schools like Cornell, Brown, Vanderbilt, NYU, or Rice vs. really good state schools is probably a more relevant discussion of a decision kids will actually have to make.
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Brown’s financial aid is not as good as Harvard’s, for instance, so it makes sense that there are more wealthy students there.
My kids applied to at least one Ivy as well as UMass. For CS I thought UMass would be better, actually.
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It has occurred to me that as college degrees have become more common, the remaining distinction is either grad school (also increasing) or the specific college attended. In other words, the more students attending college, the more the particular school may matter. Just speculating here.
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I think this will be much more important than the name on the undergraduate degree. Grad school is going to be the new defining line separating certain jobs/careers/salaries from the unwashed masses.
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I know quite a few kids who apply both to Ivy League schools and UMass. For most super high performing kids in our town, UMass is the safety school of choice – a very good education at a somewhat reasonable price (not to mention the food). For those of us who grew up when UMass was more commonly known as Zoo Mass it is hard to recognize the school has changed quite a bit. My sense is that it is often more highly regarded outside the state than in. I’m not trying to compare it to flagships like Cal or Michigan or UVA, but it is a very solid school these days.
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Not sure about grad school versus elite school undergrad in terms of distinction for career purposes. Many of the grads I know from, say, Harvard, did not go to grad school unless they had an academic field they wanted to be in. But a lot of kids I know who didn’t go to a “top school” are in grad school for career purposes. Just anecdotal, personal experience. Time will tell.
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I don’t think society is there yet, but I think it’s trending that way. Time will indeed tell.
BTW, I’m a card-carrying dues-paying meeting-attending member of the unwashed masses.
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I first saw UMass as a teen nearly 40 years ago. It seemed like a nice campus, and I just lumped it with other public universities like Penn State, which I was more familiar with and ultimately attended. Was its reputation really that bad or does “Zoo Mass” reflect a more general snobbery around public universities?
I went to a prep school on a scholarship and I know that many of my classmates joked about Penn State, but honestly few of them actually went to very selective schools, just more expensive ones.
Public universities may have a better reputation now, not necessarily because they’ve improved, but demand for higher education is much greater and nearly everywhere has become competitive.
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I think the “Zoo Mass” moniker had more to do with a heavy duty party culture than anything else. Back then most in-state kids with reasonable grades would be admitted to UMass, now it is much more competitive. My understanding is that a few programs are especially strong: CS and Nursing come to mind. Not sure CS even existed back then, lol.
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I’m currently reading “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be” by Frank Bruni, and he argues the opposite. He says that, after the first job, employers don’t really care where you attended school for your undergraduate degree, that your work history and skills are far more important, and those have very little to do with the school you attended and more with the kind of person you are (did you make an effort to get early work experience through internships? Have you worked hard in that first job to increase your career knowledge and skills? How are your soft skills - the things they don’t teach in college?) It’s a great book; definitely worth reading.
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That is a worthwhile book to read! But, make no mistake, for some jobs/companies the undergrad school is important. As is often the case, the devil is in the details…undergrad school definitely matters to Investment Banking recruiters (just to take one example), less so for CS or accounting positions.
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There are some caveats in your post: for instance, you and Bruni seem to be implying that school does matter for that first job. And what careers are we discussing here? What kind of success? What kind of timeline?
As I wrote before, I am a person who urged my son to attend UMass versus an Ivy, and not for financial reasons. In fact the Ivy was cheaper. (None of my kids did test prep or had help with essays etc.)
However, for two family members, i have been surprised how much their Ivy undergrad degree opens doors- and not in finance, consulting or banking. I didn’t expect this.
Again, anecdotal and most of the kids from their high school are doing relatively well regardless of where they went, yes.
How do we measure doing well? The kid who went to a local state college who works in insurance or nursing or on the police force and now owns a house? The kid who went to an Ivy but is now living on a stipend at 30, in a prestigious program but lives in a basement and/or still has roommates? The timetable is different for everyone too so honestly, it’s tough to compare outcomes anyway.
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The foolishness of this entire conversation is that every single person is different, yet the measurement assumptions are broad generalizations.
The payoff for a prestigious college can never be measured. You need the same person to walk two paths simultaneously: with the same skills, experiences, interests, and timing. You can never measure the road not traveled.
If Mr Bruni wants to argue post job #1, then the value of job #1 is THE trajectory marker for all of an individuals professional life. In that case, would a single individual rather apply for that first job from State U or an Ivy? In what circumstances would it serve an individual better to have a less prestigious background?
If you want to make the argument for curriculum, great. If you want to suggest that the cost of the opportunities available for Job #1 isn’t worth the investment…totally fair. But if you’re going to generalize that after Job #1 school doesn’t matter, then picking the school that gives you the most options for Job #1 is arguably the most important investment of your life. How much is that worth to you? Considering the path is ~40 to 50 years, is $50k or $100k saved worth the options lost?
Happiness is beyond measurement and inclusion in this discussion, but I will tell you my personal experiences suggest more elite grads seem a bit more content with their path. It’s a small sample size of a few dozen folks, but the ones who had more options coming out of school seem happier in their chosen fields 30 years on.
Mr. Bruni is selling comfort and motivation to the masses, but the only thing that matters is me (the individual). To that end, prestige might make all the difference?
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