I’m not doubting the accuracy of that, but any one persons characteristics will always belong to them. Sure, they can work on changing them, but those attributes are formed long before college.
Are you suggesting that students who apply to Babson and don’t get in will do as well going to UMass, just because they applied to Babson? And since 20% of Babson students applied to Harvard, they’ll have similar earnings because they imagined themselves in that cohort? At some point, acceptance and attendance has to account for a certain amount of individual characteristics.
None of that means you can’t be successful at any school, but the statistics show that students who are willing to let more selective college brands use their abilities to drive public opinion regarding prestige…tend to make more money.
There are also intangibles that influence salary. For example, the D&K study found that after controlling for scores, the higher salary was associated with applying to the highly selective college, not actually attending. Being the type of person who applies to highly selective colleges may be associated with being the type of person who favors certain career paths, is more likely to think nationally rather than locally in employment, comes from a certain type of family background, etc.
The point is the statistics you posted don’t imply that the college name is driving the increased average salary, which is the whole point of the thread. Instead they suggest that students attending more selective colleges tend to have higher salaries, as one would expect if college name had no influence on salary. To draw further conclusions, you’d need further controls, such as controlling for some measure of student quality (for example stats) and preferably also some measure of personal/family characteristics + choice of major/career field.
This is sort of interesting, though people also make unrealistic applications, and I’m not sure what that indicates. At the risk of over-personalizing, here’s an anecdote:
Today I cringe at the fact that I applied to MIT (nearly 40 years ago) and also had no clear idea of how to write appropriate essays, prepare for the interview etc. My SAT score was pretty strong, my grades less so. Given what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have bothered at all. But if I did, I wouldn’t have made such a half-baked effort.
On the other hand, I was quite confident in my own abilities. I had taught myself assembly language and wrote some sizable (unpublished) games for the TRS-80. I cobbled together knowledge from books or Byte magazine with my own problem-solving skills. I didn’t know nearly as much about computer science as I imagined I did, but it wasn’t a bad effort for a teen working entirely alone. I had also read a number of popular works, probably influenced by the authors (e.g. Weizenbaum) to conclude that MIT was the place where interesting things were happening. But only in my fantasies would I have been aware of Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming. It wasn’t on my radar. Also, I probably would have found it impenetrable without the requisite background.
The main reason that I could push my way through to a PhD in computer science is not because I have ever had uniformly impressive grades or test scores, let alone “interesting” extracurricular activities. It is just because I’ve never lacked confidence in my own abilities when it comes to things I know I am good at. (There are lots of things I’m terrible at too, and I like to think my assessment is realistic.)
A “certain type of family background” also applies. I can point to postgraduate degrees going back generations, some of them “elite”. My parents were overextended financially and not that hung up on status (or maybe not by the time they got to me). Still, none of my ambitions seemed unreasonable at least in my youth. I eventually went to a state university that we could afford. Same pattern for me: strong but not unblemished grades, enough specific impressive work to get recommendations that matter. If I recall correctly, I retook my computer science GRE because my first try was not that good, and I brought it way up.
So in short, it helps to have a North Star. I can understand how elite schools may cultivate this, but I don’t see how they can create it. There is just a lot that’s beyond anyone’s control.
Also in agreement and ultimately I think it will always be debatable what proportion of the result is attributable to the selection of high performers at the outset versus resources, alumni network, name recognition etc. But the anomaly is indisputable and shouldn’t be ignored based on anecdotes.
For any one individual… Is it reasonable to assume that if you can get into the cohort that attends Harvard, that you can expect to make more money than if you attend UMass?
If the answer to that question is yes, then this thread is about assessing the potential cost difference and estimating which path has a better ROI.
If you say no…you will make what you make because you’re you…then how do you account for the connections and experiences that so often dictate outcomes?
The quoted post mentions controlling for a measure of student quality, such as stats. An simple, example comparing kids with a ~1500 SAT who attended Harvard vs kids with a ~1500 SAT who attended a college substantially less selective than Harvaad, including UMass among countess other options. Yes, UMass does get a few 1500 SAT kids. Controlling for a measure of student quality like this is more relevant than comparing the average kid at Harvard who has a ~1520 to the average kid at UMass who has a ~1290 and noting there is a difference in average outcome.
Congress definitely does not tilt to elite colleges, however you want to define that term. In fact the more recent elected (2020) officials had a lower percentage at top 20 college per US News, than the 2018 class, from Forbes:
“If you consider the 20 highest ranked national universities on U. S. News’ 2021 list, 17 of the 70 (24%) new Senators and Representatives received at least one of their degrees from a college on that list. That compares to 40 of the 102 (39%) new Senators and Representatives first elected in 2018 receiving at least one degree from a top-20 institution.”
Again, as others have pointed out, this includes graduate degrees as well, so the numbers could even be lower. Bruni uses Biden and Chris Christie (both U Delaware grads) a lot to prove his point at least in public service, and now Kamala Harris (Howard) as the VP. I think it may have been in Bruni’s book or possibly elsewhere that candidates running for government will tout their non-elite education to prove they better the represent the common man or woman.
There are also a lot of structural reasons, mostly bad, why the disproportionate representation happens.
My answer is no and is what I’ve been pointing to the entire thread. No one has shown that connections and experiences at an elite school like Harvard dictate outcome. Folks like to believe that to be true, which is the same as saying that prestige matters a whole lot. I’m very skeptical of that based on my experience attending two elite schools, working in an elite industry for decades, what I’ve observed of my DD’s and similar cohort scholarship outcomes, and just reviewing the directories of my alma maters. All have led me to the conclusion - prestige matters far less than many think. How much it matters isn’t 0. I’ve never said that. But does it matter $220k+ more for a top student who can get into an elite school? I don’t think so.
I was looking at the Putman math high scores for another thread recently, and Putman has a far more notable tilt to elite colleges. In the most recently listed exam, 24/25 = 96% of the highest individual scorers attended Ivy+ colleges. MIT was particularly overrepresented. The 1 non-Ivy+ kid was IMO gold medal winner Ankan Bhattacharya who attends Ohio State.
For the LSAT thread, I looked up LSAT scores, and a similar pattern emerged. Among the 11 of the ~12 non-tech (tech colleges have too small sample size to be included in survey) Ivy+ colleges were among the top 12 colleges with highest average LSAT scores among law school applicants. The only exception was Tufts making top 12, and Cornell not making top 12.
I could list many other examples, but the point is that even metrics that by definition do not directly consider college name show extreme tilt towards Ivy+ colleges.
A better evaluation would be looking at why that tilt exists. For example, if you look at governors, state colleges are quite common, particularly state colleges within the state in which the governor lives. Among the A states – Alabama gov attended Auburn, Alaska gov attended UAlaska, Arizona gov attended Arizona State, Arkansas gov attended UArkansas. Is this because the voters like the college name? Persons who think in state are more likely to both run for governor and attend state colleges? Persons who attend in state colleges are more likely to choose to live in state? Connections made during the college? I don’t really know.
I do know that persons attending elite colleges are more likely to have the type of family wealth and connections that can be important for being an elected official, are more likely to be stellar students, are more likely to have high LSAT scores that help with law school (law school is common path to elected official), and are more likely to be the type that have high level political aspirations.
A salary survey has many issues and some of them have been mentioned. Another issue that hasn’t yet been mentioned is the delayed gratification effect. Some of the best students (especially in math and sciences) tend to go to graduate schools and we know where students go to undergraduate colleges has an impact on graduate school admissions.
Measuring outcomes without knowing what went in is just an exercise in futility. IMO, how much value (financial or otherwise) a college education adds to a student depends on the student and how well s/he “fits” with that college and the program s/he is in. In other words, there’s no universal formula.
Those two schools are focused on health professions, which may or may not be “STEM” (a fairly useless category that mixes some high paying majors like engineering majors and CS with some low paying majors like biology).
Really, the mix of majors confounds any school ranking of pay levels. Better would be to compare by major at school, which can be done from College Scorecard, but only for graduates who received federal financial aid.
The largest “STEM” major is biology, which tends to have relatively low pay prospects at the bachelor’s degree level these days. High pay after graduation is mostly associated with computer science and some engineering majors, so it is no surprise that schools heavy in computer science and engineering majors specifically are commonly found at the top of Payscale’s rankings.
For pre-law, the Ivy+ is more arbitrary than the standard Ivy+ definition. A few of the ivies should probably be replaced with strong govt/poly sci/IR programs - Tufts, Northwestern, Georgetown, Michigan, Virginia. Also I think it’s Putnam.
To clarify, those are the newly elected officials in 2020 (24% of 70 were top-20), not the entire House and Senate, and the comparison to the newly elected in 2018, which was 102 and had 39% top-20 graduates. Outside of the drop in elite college representation, a larger percentage didn’t earn a college degree. Also, where are you getting the 5000 number from? There are about 3,000 4-year colleges, may be you’re including community colleges and for-profit.
So where did these “common men and women” send their family members once in positions of power.
Chris Christie’s son attended The Delbarton School and Princeton University
Joe Biden’s children and grandkids attended the Archmere Academy and a combination of U Penn and Georgetown undergrad and Harvard and Columbia law to name a few. His cabinet is about 1/3 from Harvard along with Brown, Stanford and Columbia undergraduate with similar elite degrees on the graduate level.
Kamala Harris’s niece attended the Bishop O’ Dowd school and then Stanford undergrad and Harvard Law.
Presidents Kids…
Trumps- U Penn
Obama- Harvard, Michigan
Bush-Yale
Clinton- stanford
Carter- Brown
Regan- Yale, Northwestern
Kennedy- Harvard, Brown
For reference, the 12 colleges whose applicants had the highest average LSAT scores in the most recent available year were as follows. MIT and Caltech are missing because sample size was too low. Chetty’s Ivy+ definition includes the Ivies + Stanford, Chicago, Duke, and MIT. These colleges compose the top 11, with the discussed Tufts/Cornell exception.
Regardless of how you define Ivy+/elite/prestigious/top # USNWR; the point is that these colleges dominate the list of highest average LSAT scores, which has implications on rate of law school admission and rates of things that depend on law school admission . They do not dominate the list because the LSAT test scorers are impressed with the “elite” college brand name. Instead they primarily dominate the list because the highly selective colleges admit high scoring kids – the “elite” colleges have a different set of inputs. Having a different set of inputs, influences almost any measure of outputs, such as average outcomes of students, or rate of extreme outliers. As such, it’s important to control for these difference in inputs, when comparing differences in outputs.
Obviously, there can be a difference between the generation that earned something and the next generation who inherited the advantages from what the previous generation earned. Of course, the next generation can earn still more, but they started from a position of considerable advantage.
