Remember that janitor that solved that impossible math problem at MIT. He was pretty smart.
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Love that movie!
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But your willingness to concede the point is what makes it valuable. They didn’t say their kid or they themself was smart…you did. What is that worth when you can deliver an assumed positive attribute about yourself just by telling someone where you attended college?
College costs a lot of money…period. Is it worth extra to buy that kind of assumption, right or wrong? It’s unknowable, but most assume it is incredibly valuable.
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People have the same positive reactions though when they hear of engineers from Michigan, GT, Purdue, UIUC, etc…
My D was at a meeting with the senior leadership team at NASA one summer and more than half the room yelled “Boiler Up!” when she was introduced.
The alumni networks for these schools is very strong and also very large in comparison.
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It’s a good thing she didn’t go to MIT or Caltech! Well done.
There are many ways to be clued in that somebody is smart, without knowing where (or if) they went to college.
The custodian at my place of employment passed his citizenship test and he is still learning English. He can watch the news and have an in depth discussion about world events. I have no doubt that he’s a smart guy.
I have no idea where my boss went to school, but I know she is extremely intelligent based on the conversations we have.
Name dropping to let somebody know you are smart seems ridiculous, especially many years out when surely you must have accomplished other things.
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11.8% of Fortune 500 CEOs attended Ivy League schools. That’s 8 of approximately 4,700 undergraduate schools. We are talking about a cohort of approximately 13,000 kids a year among 3,000,000+ annual undergrad graduates.
Similar over representation exists in the upper echelons of other careers such as politics, law, consulting and banking.
This “anomaly” can be attributed to the following…
A- The kids accepted to these schools would thrive anywhere based on the criteria for acceptance (Dale & Krueger).
B- The schools offer resources that elevate the academic experience and result.
C- The alumni networks serve to provide enhanced “pathways” to certain careers.
D- Society has a positive predisposed bias towards graduates from these schools.
E- All of the above circumstance dependent.
Alternatively, we can conclude that it is a “fluke” or point to anecdotes to explain, rationalize or refute this reality. So to OPs question is it worth it?
Of course people can and do succeed from all backgrounds but all things being equal outcomes are statistically skewed higher from Ivies. It is likely a function of numerous factors some of which can be replicated elsewhere.
If however, affordable (and these schools are generous), and in the pursuit of certain careers the juice appears worth the squeeze.
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I will admit that where you went to college is a common ask in my neighborhood but it’s because we live adjacent to a T10. I’d say half our friend group went there for grad school, loved the area, and stayed put so when people ask, they are fishing to see if there was any overlap friends from the local T10. We run the whole gamut of schools represented in my circle from no name directional to Harvard and everything in between.
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From what I’ve seen in engineering, the type of job that the person wants to do is a much bigger factor in pay than where they graduated. The salary bands for academia vs working at a national lab vs working in industry are different. An amazing engineer who chooses the academic route will likely make less than a reasonably good engineer who works in certain segments of industry. I know people who choose lower paying jobs in industry because they have issues with certain companies - they don’t like the application of their work, the corporate goals, the work environment, the hiring practices, or any number of other factors. Some people prioritize interesting work over income, or consider anything over income X to be fine as long as they like the rest of it while others negotiate for every penny.
I know that elite schools select for a certain level of accomplishment, but when I was in grad school the policy was to rank the students 1-40 and then funding was assigned in order - the top 2 nominated for a university fellowship, the next 10 given funding from a training grant, etc. Very few had their own funding because the department, which was in a STEM field, guaranteed funding to every student. I didn’t see that students from ivies or public ivies were more likely to be in the top spots than students who went to regular public colleges. This is just anecdote, obviously, but the advantages of a particular undergrad college didn’t seen to be dramatic in either spouse or my STEM fields, in grad school or beyond. Maybe it would have been different had we gone to elite grad schools. The people that we went to school with seem to have done well for themselves so I’m not sure what ‘better’ would look like.
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Is a Sociology undergrad degree from Harvard worth $100k more than one from UMass?
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But does “worth” come down to dollars and cents? S24 is looking at some elite schools, and we will happily pay if he is accepted to one, but it isn’t going to be because I think he’ll end up as a CEO, senator, judge or working in IB. Frankly, knowing as many Ivy League/MIT grads as I do, I am well aware that the likelihood of any of those is very small. I think these schools offer a lot beyond future earnings/future prestige but somehow these discussions always come down to those two things. At the end of the day the Chetty study showed that for a small subset of students, an Ivy League+ education increased the likelihood of being in the 1% - somehow the “small subset” part of the equation keeps being passed over.
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I don’t think I can quantify a qualitative assessment that is in many ways entirely personal. I was responding to OP who was using dollars and cents as a measure.
You are talking about “intangibles” and I agree but once again I have deliberately avoided anecdotes and personal experiences as they aren’t quantifiable or universal.
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On the flipside, expectations are higher too. The greatest disappointments I’ve had with employees and colleagues are when someone with a Stanford or Harvard degree turns out to be just not that good at their job. Especially if they are arrogant with it.
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For me it’s been the ones that have been dishonest or unethical and they have come from all sorts of backgrounds and in some cases they were seemingly good at their jobs…,but I digress😀
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When I hear somebody was accepted to Harvard, I don’t assume smart. I assume they are a child of some sort of famous or rich person. When I hear somebody was accepted to Caltech, I know they are smart. Also top publics like Michigan, I assume smart. Those are my private perceptions and I am sure all individuals have their own lens they experience these schools, but Ivy League does not bring “smart” perception to me (I know plenty of smart people attend there), but brings perception of well connected families and private feeder schools.
I am curious how you guys define elite institutions? Is that top 10?
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On CC…
1- School poster attended
2- School posters kid was rejected by
Absolutely. I used to joke with folks that the smartest and the dumbest people I’d worked with both graduated from Wharton. You never know.
What I can tell you is that the dummie benefitted a great deal by having that diploma. He had to prove he was stupid over and over before some would believe it.
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This question can only be answered on an individual basis.
I must add that whenever we travel with our S and meet people the question of “what do you do” is usually followed up by “where did you go to college”. This has happened 3 times over the last 5 days as we are visiting family. One of the people asking was the dean of a med school who happenedto have graduated from Cal. Lots of back and forth on that conversation.
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There is a way to know, as long as one factors out random luck able to happen anywhere. A combination of College Scorecard, Payscale, LinkedIn employers, and costs paints a pretty accurate picture. It may not be exact, but beyond that you have mythology and magical thinking.