Undergrad Econ VS. Undergrad Business Program

College Search & Selection
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<p>You have the author and the topic--you should know how to find it. It was widely reported in the news a year or two ago and discussed here very thoroughly. Show me how smart you are.</p>

<p>Sakky your guess about the groups not being similar is just a guess based on some dubious assumptions. I'll trust the Princeton prof's ability to adjust for confounding variables. The sample size was pretty large--not like he's looking at 30 points and drawing a conclusion. You could say people that decide to go to one school over another based upon some questionable rankings also have their own flaws like a strong need for attention or approval of others. I doubt there is one major reason why one group went one way and another the other. Maybe they just had girlfirends they wanted to keep seeing.</p>

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<p><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=197108%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=197108&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I'll read it after I finish my HW for the night, maybe tomorrow.</p>

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<p>good. Here's a summary</p>

<p>The following is an excerpt from a previous issue of The Long Term View. To see the full article, please visit our Subscriptions page.</p>

<hr>

<p>For many high school seniors, D-Day is fast approaching-the Decision Day for choosing which college to attend. Few decisions cause so much anxiety and grief for students and their families. Our research suggests that everyone should relax. The consequences of being rejected from or choosing not to attend an elite school are often vastly exaggerated. </p>

<p>Rather than considering a college's prestige, students should consider how well their goals and interests mesh with a school's strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, because so many students attend graduate or professional school after college, the choice of undergraduate institution is less significant than it used to be. </p>

<p>Consider Steven Spielberg. Rejected by his top choices, USC and UCLA film schools, he attended Cal State Long Beach. It is unlikely he would have been a more successful filmmaker had he attended one of the prestigious schools that rejected him. A study of ours about to be published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics suggests that Spielberg is not an isolated example.</p>

<p>But don't graduates of top schools earn more than those who attended less selective schools? Yes. In fact, according to the College and Beyond Survey, data collected by the Mellon Foundation, the average student who entered a highly selective college like Yale, Swarthmore, or Princeton in 1976 earned $92,000 in 1995. The average student from a moderately selective college like Penn State, Denison, or Tulane earned $22,000 less.
The problem with these statistics, however, is that they compare apples and oranges-the students who apply to and are accepted by the elite schools, on average, have more potential than the average student who attends a less selective school. The relevant question, then, is how much money would those talented students who make the cut at Yale or Swarthmore earn if they chose to attend a less prestigious school, say their flagship state university?</p>

<p>To answer this question, we used College and Beyond data to compare the earnings of students who applied to and were accepted by similarly selective colleges. Some students chose to attend more selective schools, some less selective ones. But all were similarly talented in the eyes of the admissions committees. </p>

<p>When we did this, we found that students who were accepted by similar schools had similar average earnings in 1995, regardless of the prestige of the school they actually attended. Indeed, students who were accepted by the most selective schools but attended only a moderately selective one had slightly higher earnings than those who actually attended the very selective school-$91,000 versus $90,000.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Sakky your guess about the groups not being similar is just a guess based on some dubious assumptions. I'll trust the Princeton prof's ability to adjust for confounding variables

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It would be simply enough to account for the confounding variables - just point me to where in the paper the authors attach an exhibit or a discussion that accounts for them.</p>

<p>If no such discussion or exhibit exists, then it is a valid objection to the thesis of the paper. Simply put, statistics relies on randomness, yet the 2 populations compared are not randomly selected.</p>

<p>Your objection that this is no worse than noting how some people will choose a higher-ranked school simply on rankings is irrelevant, for the simple fact that no study that claims to be statistically rigorous has demonstrated that to be the case. However, in this case, the authors are claiming that their study is statistically rigorous. If that is true, then they should show that no confounding variables exist in their data. It's not that hard to show that this is the case, if they have that information. If they don't show it, that only tells me that, #1, they didn't bother to collect that information, #2, the information is not available, or #3, they did and are trying to hide that information. Either way, the point is, there is a valid and potentially fatal objection to their entire analysis. If they wanted to deflect criticism, it wouldn't be that hard to attach an explanatory addendum dealing with this concern to the paper.</p>

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<p>Andrw, even per capita, Penn is only slightly wealthier than Micigan and Duke isn't exactly much wealthier either. Michigan's endowment per capita currently stands at $130,000/student. Penn is about $200,000/student and Duke is about $290,000/student. And this gap is narrowing big time. Like I said, we aren't talking about night and day differences. Some schools like Rice University and Grinnell College have endowments of $1,000,000+/student. Are Rice and Grinnell that much better than Penn or Duke? </p>

<p>The problem in this forum is that many people try to compartmentalize universities into tiny little groups of 3 or 4 universities That cannot be done. Well, at the very, very top, you can pick 5 universities that stand a tip-toe over the rest and we all know what universities those are. But after those 5, there are roughly 10-15 research universities that are considered equals, maybe not on this forum, or not by high school students or their not-so-knowledgeable parents, but by those in a position to make a difference in a student's life. Duke and Penn are in that group...as are Cal and Michigan. Those schools are all equal. They provide equal qualities of education and give equal opportunities to their students. </p>

<p>Sakky, for some reason, you think that students only chose elite public universities over elite private universities for financial reasons. I didn't. Nor did the majority of international or OOS students I hung out with at Michigan, most of which, like me, were admitted into Ivy leagues schools and still chose Michigan. In fact, most people I know chose a university based on quality, and their definition of quality generally means top academics and great social life and atmosphere.</p>

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<p>I think Michigan is the only one of the flagship publics that is similar enough to be comparable in niche to the Penn-Duke range private schools.</p>

<p>Berkeley for example, lacks the endowment per capita and is notorious for the lack of undergraduate focus. Berkeley is huge, and is too disimilar in size. Since Berkeley is so huge, itn't not very good for getting people into professional schools. Its feeder percentage is only 1.9% vs 2.7% for Michigan and 5.5% for Penn.</p>

<p>UVA is more similar to the Ivies in feel, but I think that UVA, while a very excellent school, is not as connected to buisness industries as Ross, Hass and the Ivies are.</p>

<p>Ironically, Michigan is also the most expensive.</p>

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<p>Alexandre,</p>

<p>this is from posts couple of numbers before, but...</p>

<p>where do u get the WSJ ranking of graduate school placement rate?
and what is ur view on NYU CAS? (in terms of job placement, career, education, anything else you want to mention specifically?)</p>

<p>Thnks.</p>

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<p>jhpark, here is the link you request:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/college/feederschools.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/college/feederschools.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>"UVA is more similar to the Ivies in feel, but I think that UVA, while a very excellent school, is not as connected to buisness industries as Ross, Hass and the Ivies are."</p>

<p>people, please stop reading USNEWS undergraduate business rankings............yes UVa's comm school is ranked #9 there, but that doesnt mean it;s not elite. We attract the same kind of recruiters Wharton/Ross attract and have extremely elite networking. IF you want the truth, UVa's undergraduate business program is a lot better than that of UTexas and UNC......... If you want to land on a good job, it'd be stupid to give up UVa for UNC/Texas.</p>

<p>I sometimes feel like UVa comm school offers more job opportunities than Berkeley's Hass. this could be caused by the fact that Hass is on the west coast.</p>

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<p>Have to post a slightly sideline note here: someone mentioned the "Spielberg Factor" and how people that really are driven to excel can go most anywhere. Well, I went to Cal State Long Beach back in the early 1970s for my undergrad before going on to UCLA for the graduate degree. (I was accepted to Brown as an undergrad, but won't go into how I ended up at CSULB).</p>

<p>Anyway, in a speech class I took, the professor mentioned Spielberg (who dropped out in 1968) to start doing film and had a bit of success. The professor pointed out how people should pursue their "passion" even if it meant dropping out of school. </p>

<p>There were two people in the class who had just sold a "jingle" for a local bank's advertisement--and the "jingle" was becoming so popular there was demand for them to release it as a single record--or as part of an entire album. And so, Karen and Richard Carpenter ("The Carpenters") released their single "We've Only Just Begun" which became the first of their many #1 ranked songs--and they did drop out of school to pursue their singing careers. And two years later, Spielberg released "Jaws"--and we all know what he's done since.</p>

<p>So, yes, I guess if you really know what you want to do--and have the talent and connections to do it, this is a very valid way to go as well.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Sakky, for some reason, you think that students only chose elite public universities over elite private universities for financial reasons. I didn't. Nor did the majority of international or OOS students I hung out with at Michigan, most of which, like me, were admitted into Ivy leagues schools and still chose Michigan. In fact, most people I know chose a university based on quality, and their definition of quality generally means top academics and great social life and atmosphere.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Oh, come on Alexandre. Did I say that everybody chose an elite public over an elite private just for the money? I never said that.</p>

<p>What I did say is that money is a draw. I think we can both agree that if cost were the same, very few people would choose to go to Michigan rather than HYPSM. Of those students that right now currently choose Michigan over those other schools, quite a bit of that can be attributed to cost concerns. </p>

<p>Look, at the end of the day, I'm sure you must agree that HYPSM will tend to win the cross-admit war with OOS students, and usually decisively so. Does that mean that those schools get every single cross-admit. Of course not. But I'm fairly sure that it's more than 50%.</p>

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<p>WoW I can't believe I read all 131 of these posts, but this is a VERY good thread. Question: Do employers look at your overall ranking at your college?</p>

<p>Obviously, a mediocre student like me would do much better rankingwise in say, University of Arizona, than Penn or something. But does that matter at all?
<em>attempt to revive this thread again</em></p>

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<p>bump againnnnn....</p>