Well, I don’t have data, but my gut reaction is that it depends on career. It may not help at all in tech, for instance. If the question is more broadly how to make the most money, it may not help.
I think there are particular careers in law and government where the network effect is so overwhelming that putting in your best performance at a state school will not get you as far as going to one of very few Ivy League schools. It clearly makes a huge difference in opportunity where someone gets their law degree, for instance, and my guess is that those with prestigious degrees have an edge in where they’re admitted next.
If “payoff” is measured purely in dollars, there is a lot more flexibility of course.
Actually, while law pedigree may matter a lot for the first job, especially in biglaw, salesmanship rather than law pedigree or legal acumen wins the race. The biggest rainmakers aren’t always graduates of the tippy top law schools. And that’s just at the big firm level. The biggest rainmakers will be the entrepreneurs in small practice who can get and win/settle massive contingency cases (mass torts, consumer class actions, etc).
I’m not. That’s just where the real big money is. Corporate attorneys have a far lower ceiling as far as to earnings. They also have fewer career options. Sales skills still win.
But that’s a graduate degree. I don’t think anyone’s arguing that prestige shouldn’t be considered as a more important factor when choosing law schools or MBAs, MPPs, etc.
The irony is that many of those admission processes are traditionally more focused on quantifiable results on (at least somewhat) longer tail tests (GRE and LSAT).
And that in turn raises the question of how much of the prestige inherent in those graduate degrees comes from the knowledge that the admissions process does focus more on identifying the academic superstars rather than athletes/legacies/donors?
I don’t think most people are optimizing financial reward when they take the Ivy League route or influence their kids to do so. There are many ways to make money, and not all require a great deal of education. I also think that the products of elite schools wield influence in a way that affluent people outside the network usually don’t.
Start with the point that at least a few of the people who attend a school like Harvard really are brilliant and were probably going to be phenomenally successful in their field. This isn’t because Harvard provides the best education (independent of whether it does) but because they had the pick of the top entering students. In addition, many other students have connections to powerful people whether in government, business, or other areas of influence.
Any “merely excellent” student who’s along for the ride suddenly has an in with the above group. The same student who went to a solid flagship university, and graduated with a 4.0 and recommendations from top professors will have certain opportunities open to them (grad school being the obvious one) and are likely to do well financially or otherwise. But their situation is still very different.
So in short, I think the payoff of a prestigious degree is mostly a question of access and influence rather than money.
Far more than salesmanship, good results and word-of-mouth referrals are the best business development for lawyers. Inhouse counsel and companies are far too savvy to select an external lawyer based on a sales pitch. However, a sale pitch coupled with excellent results/track records, can’t be beat.
It’s great that your kid is doing very well and has a job he enjoys, but you didn’t explain how the Harvard degree paid off. An “elite” degree is by no means required to found a startup. For example, I founded a small Internet company that was quite financially successful in its peak. Founding the company initially only required a small web hosting fee and some programming knowledge – nothing to do with brand name of college. Do you mean raising capital from VCs or other investors would not have been possible had he/she attended the state flagship instead of Harvard?
Occasionally we hear back from a parent of an extremely high achieving child who attended a flagship for where most students have far lower stats. Almost without exception they mention positive outcomes, often with unique opportunities that they believe would not be possible had they attended HYPSM… (for example, standing out in class leading to special opportunities from professor). It’s hard to predict what would have happened with different college decisions and whether outcome would have been better or worse.
The relationship is far more complicated than fashion, food, wine, … For the most part, new college employers say that they emphasize relevant experience and desired skillset, rather the college brand name. And which colleges are favored for recruiting often has to do with things like which colleges have a good reputation in desired field, past history of hires, and distance. it generally doesn’t follow prestige well, although there are a few small subfields that can be exceptions, such as “elite” finance and consulting. In other posts, I’ve mentioned lists of which colleges have the most new grad alumni and/or interns with a specific job title at companies that often thought of as desired. It’s quote a wide range of colleges, often with many flagships and many colleges located nearby – for example UHouston or UCF for NASA. It’s not just a list of “elite” brand name colleges.
For example, in the survey at https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf , hundreds of new college grad employers were asked a variety of factors about employment decisions and which grads were favored for hiring decisions. As a whole, they rated college reputation as the least influential factor in evaluating new grads resumes for hiring decisions. Internships and employment during college were rating highest. When asked about which specific types of colleges they preferred, they rated state flagships highest, followed by national universities, and “elite” colleges in 3rd. The phrasing of the question with the word “elite” may have troubled them, but the survey certainly doesn’t imply they were emphasizing college name in employment decisions.
This makes sense in tech. Having worked with many people of many backgrounds, my feeling is that someone with an elite degree runs a somewhat higher risk of being a prima donna who’s hard to work without being all that likely to be much more productive at their job. That said, one of the smartest, funniest, and coolest people I’ve ever worked with has an Ivy League degree, so it’s not a given in any sense, just a heuristic.
Software, though, is unusual in that it’s not that hard to be self-taught and very effective. Though I have less experience in other fields, I think elite degrees do bring advantages.
Its definitely possible but less probable. I know in my kid’s case 50% of the funding was from investors with an H degree and the other 40% with a degree from other tippy top colleges or business schools. Like it or not, VCPE world is dominated with people with prestigious degrees and they carry similar bias when it comes to investing, especially if founders had not done prior startups.
I happen to think that top kids from state flagships and tippy-tops are equally capable of doing startups. Where things can differ is when they try to raise initial couple of millions to quickly grow their startups, build business connections and partnerships. Its just my observation that payoff can be huge if prestige can translate into a bit higher probability of success.
I drive a Toyota, but I see a lot of other people who drive BMWs, Mercedes, and more expensive cars. Are they under a “delusion” that their car will get them to their destination faster or have they just decided they want to pay for a luxury?
Some people may have unrealistic ideas of what a prestigious degree will get them. Other people just want it or want their children to have it. As the original article stated, a lot of it is about bragging rights. If the goal is simply employment with a good starting salary, you obviously don’t need a degree from a top school for that.
Many of these families (and students) believe that it’s game over once you are accepted at an elite college. They expect internships and jobs to fly into their laps because of the name on their diploma. It’s many times a rude awakening when this doesn’t happen.
I have friends who have graduated from Ivies and they’re struggling. Case in point.
It’s more about the work ethic, the tenacity, and the academic major that will many times get you a job rather than the school’s name. Our daughter has a great internship with a well known company this summer and she’s in the honors college at ASU. Great school, but not elite by any stretch. Some of her friends that attend more selective schools don’t have nearly the job that she has. Part of the reason is she’s a business major and they aren’t.
A study came out in The Atlantic a few years back. It wasn’t the schools that kids attended as much as the schools they applied to that mattered as for future income potential. Kids that were high achievers applied to a number of schools, including selective ones. When they pick a less selective school for a variety of reasons (proximity, cost, fit), it doesn’t usually mean they stop achieving. But they many times stand out among their peers.
My friend told me a funny story. His cousin lives in Phoenix and had three kids. One went to Princeton, one Georgetown, and a third was a homebody that got endless grief from his siblings for playing video games all day and then attending ASU.
Guess which of the three got accepted into Harvard Law?
I wonder if this is due to the mix of survey respondents - hiring manager vs say recruiter. I could see a hiring manager, especially in tech, look at their teams and conclude that college reputation is not a factor, as there would be a variety of colleges represented. Recruiters for entry level jobs could look more at name, but they also would in silicon valley anyway, consider a state flagship like Berkeley or Michigan prestigious where other’s may not. I think the word elite in the answer could have dissuaded people from checking that box.
A list of colleges with the most founders and startup funding is at https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pitchbook-universities-2020 . The top 10 were as follows. There are certainly many “elite” colleges near the top, but 4 of the top 10 are also state flagships. Plenty of state flagship kids also seem to get startup funding. I’m not an expert on VCs, but what I have read suggests they focus on things other than college attended. I’d expect the greater influence from college attended might be in things like networking and connections, which of course can occur at state flagships as well. In some fields the flagship network may be stronger. It depends on many factors.
The survey separated responses by several factors including type of respondent, size of company, and industry. Executives, managers, and HR all rated college reputation as the least influential factor. Companies of all sizes also rated college reputation as least influential.
Among surveyed fields of employment, media/communications was the sole field were college reputation was not rated least influential or a near tie for least influential. Instead in media/consulting, relevance of coursework was rated as least influential.
Good results is the easy part. There are countless great lawyers. The most skillful ones aren’t always the most successful, however, which takes us back to the point of this — that prestige isn’t the end all be all for lawyers.
This conversation always returns a bunch of comparisons and proof that a kid at State U created a startup an is now a billionaire. Sure, it happens, but I would agree with you that in certain environments those outcomes are much more likely.
My daughter received one of 20 competitive internships in NY this summer. There were over 1,500 applications. The schools attended by the recipients include HBS (2), Barnard, Columbia, Pomona, Williams, Haverford, Yale, and Penn. There is a SUNY and a CUNY, but the recipients have overwhelmingly elite school connections.
The findings cited by the OP have some significant flaws in the data. It is collected voluntarily through job sites and recruiting networks. Ignore the finance and banking folks who never “look” for a job, there are a lot of less financially rewarding careers that are overrun with elite grads…the arts (not artists…foundations, museums, theater)…education…government.
The data is usually 10 year post grad salary, which rewards those not attending grad school, who can work and make connections and climb in an industry for longer than those with masters and PhD’s. Three years out of Swat…one of our daughters has more close friends getting PhD’s than she does working. Options beyond money are not part of the research and reporting, but are a major factor in deciding to attend an elite undergrad institution.
Is it worth the extra expense? The answer is non-existent as it is simultaneously personal and unknowable. If your child is 25 and earns $70k/year after attending a flagship school in their home state, your experience suggests spending $300k is foolish. You will never know that they could be making twice that had they attended an elite, but your experience provides comfort that you have optimized your opportunities. That’s a good outcome.
Our experience has been that it’s worth every penny.
Two points…this thread seems to be all about financial outcome, not the experience itself. And most of the posters here seem to have family incomes over $180k. For those with incomes under that, financial aid reduces cost so “payoff” may be substantial.
Does anyone here have a kid with substantial financial aid at a top school, who is considering a less elite or state school instead? We did.
Two of our kids unexpectedly attended Ivies and the benefits post grad have been substantial. Not just financial. I admit I was surprised. I preferred the state U. for one but I was wrong.
