<p>As I said, Afan, for those who pick colleges based on future earnings, it is a useful study; for others, the fact that it is an interesting or a measurable question, or that you have to pay for college, is simply immaterial. I get what it's saying; I just don't care, so it has no bearing on why I or my children chose the colleges we did.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Economists focus on income because it is an interesting economic question, it is measurable, and you have to pay for college. Sure there are lots of other goals in life, but measuring and valuing them would be almost impossible.>></p> </blockquote>
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<p>That's precisely why discussing college selection solely in terms of income-earning potential is so fruitless. If every single one of our decisions were made on financial grounds alone, how impoverished would our lives be!</p>
<p>I read this book called 'The Power of Myth', which is a series of interviews of Joseph Campbell by Bill Moyers in the 1980s. Joseph Campbell tells people to 'follow their bliss' and advises parents to let their children follow their bliss. Joseph Campbell graduated in 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression. He did not have a job for 5 years! 5 years! He spent this time in a small cottage (with no indoor plumbing) reading Frobenius and Dante and "following his bliss".
According to Campbell, if you follow your bliss, everything else will follow. People say, these are rough times, the US is losing it's edge in everything, there will be a severe recession, there aren't enough jobs for people in non-technical fields. But how much harder can it be, than during the 1929-35 Depression?</p>
<p>Well, as I said, economists study economic questions. Lots of people do assume that going to an Ivy, or other elite college, pays off financially, so it is an interesting question.</p>
<p>Fascinating that Dale and Krueger found that attending a more expensive college did pay off financially. This is what economists would expect. If people pay for something, they expect it to be valuable, and money is the capitalist currency of value.</p>
<p>Bowen and Bok attempted to look at the non financial payoffs in Shape of the River, but I don't recall how much of the analysis was independent of affirmative action, which was the main topic of that book. To the extent that they looked at differences in overall happiness I recall them analyzing this for African Americans who attended colleges at different levels of selectivity, but I do not remember whether they looked at it for others. Anyone have that information handy?</p>
<p>This is why the "admissions disappointment" thread is so misguided. Students should not be devastated by adverse admission outcomes. Not because they should plan better to avoid it, but because there is so little at stake.</p>
<p>"If people pay for something, they expect it to be valuable, and money is the capitalist currency of value."</p>
<p>How sad is that?!</p>
<p>What the actual Dale & Krueger (1999; p.30) study has to say:</p>
<p>"After we adjust for students' unobserved characteristics, our findings cast doubt on the view that school selectivity, as measured by the average SAT score of the freshman who attend college, is an important determinant of student's subsequent income. Students who attend more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended a less selective school. ...the average SAT score of schools applied to but was rejected from has a stronger effect on the student's subsequent earnings than the SAT score of the school the student actually attended. These results are consistent with the conclusion of Hunt's (1962; p. 56) seminal research:</p>
<p>'The C student from Princeton earns more than the A student from Podunk not mainly because he has the prestige of a Princeton degree, but merely because he is abler. The golden touch is possessed not by the Ivy League College, but by its students.'"</p>
<p>They go on to state, as afan said, that it is not a school's "selectivity" that is correlated with higher income, but its tuition cost. So, if higher income is the goal, pick an expensive college and don't worry too much about the average SAT scores of its students.</p>
<p>"The golden touch is possessed not by the Ivy League College, but by its students.'"</p>
<p>Well, duh. Isn't it true also of magnet high schools? If Princeton made a habit of enrolling students with a median SAT score of 1050, would it still be Princeton or would it become Podunk? Can one separate the school from its students? </p>
<p>'The C student from Princeton earns more than the A student from Podunk not mainly because he has the prestige of a Princeton degree, but merely because he is abler."</p>
<p>Now, that, I find hard to believe. Podunk would need to be wayyy inferior for its A student to be less able than a C student from Princeton or other highly selective schools.</p>
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<p>really don't give a rat's *** how much my kids make when they graduate.</p>
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<p>Exactly. That's not what it's all about. Maybe the study will be replicated and maybe it won't. Either way, it won't have any impact on my opinion about ultraselective schools and whether they're worth it for certain kids.</p>
<p>One of the main issues I am seeing with this thread is that people are wary of schools like HYP, where the kids go in smart and then obtain easy A's. When I looked at colleges, prestige was a big factor, but what drew me away from HYP and towards other top universities was their reputation as being top colleges, with slightly less famous names, who were known for making students work, hard, for their grades, and eventually putting out a student who got his money's worth out of the education, and not just the name. </p>
<p>In your opinions, which top schools have the ability to make their students progress the furthest? ie. Go in smart, leave a heck of a lot more intelligent, as opposed to barely get in, and then say, "well done, now you can rest." How about what is the best Ivy League for this? I know this is speculative, but I think it is interesting to seperate the name from the education.</p>
<p>After much investigation on this very topic my opinion, and my S's, is that The University of Chicago provides the best overall academic challenge for students (Princeton Review currently Ranks it #1 for best academic experience). Columbia University (an Ivy) is known for undergrad rigor as well.</p>
<p>That conforms to the reputation of places with rigid cores. Reed is another one. But back to the main point. If someone will only work hard and try to accomplish something if forced to do so, then their problem is with their attitude, not the college they attend.</p>
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[quote]
In your opinions, which top schools have the ability to make their students progress the furthest? ie. Go in smart, leave a heck of a lot more intelligent, as opposed to barely get in, and then say, "well done, now you can rest." How about what is the best Ivy League for this? I know this is speculative, but I think it is interesting to seperate the name from the education.
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I'd have trouble answering this because so many college students are involved in extra-curricular activities that eat into their time. Take a very recent example: the Harvard student who invented the Facebook.com has had to take a leave of absence in order to tend to his exploding business. I don't know how well he was doing in his studies last year, but surely, he got rather sidetracked. Many careers in journalism, in the arts, in sports, business or politics were actually launched when their practitioners were in college. </p>
<p>Is is possible for students to coast through the most selective schools, using their native intelligence to do the minimum work and yet still earn decent grades? I think it is. I doubt, however, that they constitute a substantial proportion of the student population. What is more important is that there are enough hard-working and smart students to create a community in which like-minded students can strive for excellence. This sense of community is by no means limited to HYPSM. Chicago, Reed, Caltech, Swartmore are all notorious for making students work hard</p>
<p>The choice of Chicago was not the Core alone, but in the intellectual atmosphere, the emphasis on the Chicago style of argument, the 4:1 student to faculty ratio (with most classes taught by faculty not grad students), and several visits to first year courses, with no more than 8 students and as few as 3 enrolled.</p>
<p>I know my S, at Columbia, is working harder than he's ever worked in his life, and I can see his thinking and knowledge developing by leaps and bounds. He's not doing this because he's forced to; he chose this school knowing that this would be the case--it's what he wanted.</p>
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<p>people are wary of schools like HYP, where the kids go in smart and then obtain easy A's.</p>
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<p>If I had an eyeroll smiley...I can tell you first hand that being a straight-A student or close to it at HYP takes a lot of work.</p>
<p>With the new enforcement of only a maximum of 35% of each class allowed to receive A's at Princeton, I would argue that Princeton is no long that inflated.</p>
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<p>only a maximum of 35% of each class allowed to receive A's at Princeton</p>
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<p>Besides which, even if 70% of the students were getting A's, it would not follow that A's are easy to get. When the average student at a school is both very skilled and very devoted to schoolwork, it may take a lot of work just to be at the middle of the class, whether the middle of the class is labeled "A" or "C."</p>
<p>agreed. many people dont take into account that the people receiving grades at the top institutions are pretty damn smart to begin with.</p>
<p>In choosing Duke, my consideration was based on:</p>
<p>likelihood of being prepared for grad school</p>
<p>having a balanced academic workload(as opposed to my junior year where I took 6 aP classes and self-studied 5 more and did Orchestra and Football and Government, this left me having to sleep at 8 pm and get up at 2 am, YIKES!)</p>
<p>having fun :D</p>
<p>Where the students appeared to be the happiest and nicest</p>
<p>Are there any concrete statistics concerning the chances of success when going to an 'elite' school versus a 'non-elite' school?</p>