I know many successful entrepreneurs on the West Coast sending their children to Berkeley. Similarly, I know many successful professionals that have sent their children to Michigan and UVa. All of them had options to go to Ivy League or top private universities. Funding was not an issue with any of them. I don’t think that choice depends on the ability to fund or the perceived prestige factor. There are many factors that govern the decision-making process.
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I know many many very wealthy individuals who send their kids to UT or TAMU after expensive privates for K-12. @1Rubin Believe it or not, not everyone who can afford top schools and can get accepted choose them. There are many wealthy students at the flagships.
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This is definitely true in my area. Children of wealthy parents attend private schools K-12. The name of the college doesn’t matter, as they are planning to join in the family business.
Whether private school or not, many plan to join a parent. My neighbor went to dental school and she now works with her father. Another just graduated law school and will join his father. I just ordered flooring from a mom and pop store; we met when our sons were in elementary school. Their 33 y.o. Son now runs the business.
Probably varies by geographic region.
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There’s the third rail of CC value posting…absolutes.
Everyone knows somebody who didn’t do what you suggested. The proof came in the form of Berkeley, UMich, UVA (elite public schools not in New England). Texas schools are a universe to themselves with automatic acceptances and a regional perspective that they are every bit as good as the Ivy League. Family businesses and private K-12. Your comment about billionaires was refuted by a guy running the family flooring business!
If there was a lottery where people could attend any school they wanted for free…a disproportionately high percentage would attend the Ivy League.
People without family businesses and private K-12 backgrounds would determine the connections they believe would be made available and the perception of their achievement and ability would be best there.
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Harvard has~$0 expected cost for the nearly half of US families, after FA. They claim to be less than state schools for 90% of families. Several other Ivies have similar FA. Ivies are more expensive for full pay billionaires, but they are often less expensive “earthlings with limited resources.”
However, Ivy application tend to go in the opposite direction from cost after FA. Higher income kids for which Ivies are more expensive are far more likely to apply and attend. And lower income kids for which Ivies are less expensive are far less likely to apply and attend. I expect the primary reasons for this pattern have little to do with ROI. This pattern still occurs, if you limit to just high achieving kids, with high grades + scores.
While wealthy kids are more likely to apply and attend Ivies than not wealthy families , many extremely wealthy families also choose public colleges. For example, at the time of the Chetty study, Michigan had more than 3x the number of kids from top 1% income families than Harvard. 6835 * 9.3% = 636 top 1% families at Michigan. 1417 * 15% = 211 top 1% income at Harvard Harvard had a higher % top 1% families, but Michigan had a higher total number of top 1% families because they have a larger student body. The colleges were the largest portion of top 1% kids were non-Ivy privates, some of which are not associated with great “prestige.” Wealthy kids choose a variety of different colleges for a variety of different reasons.
Based on Ivy yield rates, which range from just north of 60% up to Harvard’s 85%, it’s not that the wealthy have decided to attend someplace else…they haven’t been given an option.
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Yield only includes persons who applied to the college. People who’d prefer to attend elsewhere generally do not apply to Harvard as a backup in case the less selective college rejects them. Instead they don’t apply, so they don’t impact yield figures.
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When my daughter was accepted to her public university, we attended a dinner in our city that was hosted by the college. We spoke to a girl (from a local, wealthy town) who attended private K-12, and she told us that many of her HS peers were questioning why she would consider a public university (she was also considering Georgetown). She said she felt a lot of peer pressure to attend a private university. Fast forward …we ran into her on campus. She was very happy and had no regrets. She told us she made the right decision.
There are lots of reasons why people choose their school.
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Yield only includes people who get accepted. Acceptance is the key to making a decision.
If I know I’m not going to get in…so I don’t apply…it doesn’t mean I want to go someplace else, it means that I have self-selected to not participate. From there, it’s easy to say “I wanted to have this…or study under that person.”
Going back to the comment that started this sidebar…I would believe a lot of those who have “chosen” someplace else did so with the knowledge that attending an Ivy was unlikely. Given a “golden ticket”, a lot of them would change their mind.
In my opinion…
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We would also be wrong to assume that anyone that says no to an elite acceptance is doing so to attend what has been defined here as a “non elite”. In many cases the approximately 15% of students who decline acceptances to elites are doing so to attend an alternative elite.
In my opinion.
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At St John’s School, which is the best coed private HS in Texas, more graduates attend Wash U and SMU than Texas A&M. UT leads by far. For expensive private HSs, not Catholic, how many are getting into T20 colleges? Families are value conscious and the T20 colleges are far away, except Rice. UT’s honors programs are full of prestigious students, wealthy and not.
Plenty of students who are academically qualified do not apply to Ivies. For example the study at https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18586/w18586.pdf found that, "We show that the vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply
to any selective college or university." Note that by “selective” they aren’t referring to just Ivy Plus colleges. They mean colleges that do not have near open admissions.
High achieving high income kids were far more likely to apply to highly selective colleges than low income kids, but even among this group, I’d expect the majority do not apply to any Ivies. The specific numbers depend on how you define “high achieving” and how you define “high income.” In many communities, applying to relatively nearby state schools is the norm for high achieving kids, and applying to Ivies is not, including at some public HSs in higher income areas.
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In our experience, the payoff for family members and friends attending prestigious National Universities was significant.
Attending & earning a degree from a prestigious MBA program (school) or from a prestigious law school is usually quite substantial. Actually,the payoff is astonishing.
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As I touched on in my earlier post, students who prefer a less selective college over HYPSM… generally wouldn’t apply to HYPSM… as a backup in case the less selective college rejects them. That wouldn’t make any sense. So you are left with an application pool of kids who prefer HYPSM… type colleges over less selective colleges, and cross admits reflect that. Harvard might lose some cross admits to Stanford or MIT, but they aren’t losing many to UMass. Kids who prefer UMass generally don’t apply to Harvard as a backup in case UMass rejects them, so they don’t show up in cross admit figures.
A list of colleges with highest yield I copied from another post I wrote is below. In addition to selectivity, yield depends on a variety of other factors including portion of class admitted from ED/REA/SCEA…, financial aid policies, and for lack of a better word “uniqueness”. For example, BYU typically rivals Harvard and Stanford as the highest yield USNWR national ranked type college. In some years, BYU is highest. This relates to BYU’s unique status as being a Mormon sponsored college in Utah. I’d expect many (most?) BYU matriculants would choose BYU over Harvard if admitted to both, but they don’t apply to Harvard as a backup in case BYU rejects them, so they don’t impact Harvard’s cross admit stats.
USAFA – 98%
Ozarks – 95%
U Puerto Rico: M – 94%
West Point – 86%
Harvard – 82%
Stanford – 82%
BYU – 79%
Chicago – 77%
MIT – 76%
Webb – 76%
Berea --73%
Soka – 62%
Brown – 61%
Yeshiva – 59%
U Alaska – 58%
Notre Dame – 57%
CMC – 56%
Barnard – 55%
Cooper Union – 55%
Duke – 55%
UNC: Arts – 54%
Davidson – 46%
Berkeley – 45%
U Florida – 45% (UF online was 91% yield)
U Georgia – 45%
Caltech – 43%
GeorgiaTech – 41%
U Nebraska – 40%
Harvey Mudd – 39%
WUSTL – 38%
Emory – 28%
Tulane – 28%
Northeastern – 23%
Case Western – 18%
Reed – 17%
Emory: Oxford --13%
Thanks for making the point much clearer and more concisely!
In reality both admission and affordability (without financial aid) are hard to achieve for salaried professional parents so it’s rarely a real choice, no matter what the official stance is.
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Although not billionaires, the Bush twins chose different colleges when their father was President (so could go anywhere they wanted). One went to UT-Austin and the other Yale.
Obama kids - one Harvard, one Michigan.
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I had previously posted this but it serves to contextualize your observation beyond the two data points cited…
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, UT
Clinton- stanford
Carter- Brown
Regan- Yale, Northwestern
Kennedy- Harvard, Brown
Pretty strong bias towards elite schools. You will see the trend continue as well when looking at the significant others and children of cabinet members.
Elite school students represent less then 1/2 of 1%. Showing an exception or two juxtaposed against such a significant trend dominated by such a minority actually serves to prove the trend.
Most (not all) people who have power and resources send their kids to elite schools (assuming the kid can gain acceptance) and in many cases are alums themselves. We can of course debate why, is it worth it etc.
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But the comment was that a privileged child would NEVER choose a public school over a private one. That just isn’t true. I went to a public school with many students who were much more privileged than I was. I also went to high school with many student who could have chosen private schools but most chose the flagship.
There have been tales of students getting into all the Ivies but choosing Alabama over them because of the cost, even if the parents could afford the cost. Many kids never even apply to the Ivies or other elites because they want to go to the flagship, a parent’s college, won a scholarship and like the cohort.
I’m friends with a family where the father is a doctor and money isn’t really an issue. Oldest picked Dartmouth, next went to Notre Dame on a soccer scholarship, and youngest to Alabama because of the scholarship. Kids do pick all kinds of colleges to fit their own personalities, not just because of the ranking.
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