From NBER working paper #30677 “Subjective Evaluations and Stratification in Graduate Education” (sorry, I’m not allowed to post urls):
We show that a subjective score that aggregates subjective ratings and recommendation letter features plays a more important role in determining admissions [to a PhD program] than an objective score based upon graduate record exam (GRE) scores… indicators of individual achievement have a smaller effect than an undergraduate degree from an Ivy Plus school (i.e., Ivy League + Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago). In the self-selected pool of applicants, Ivy Plus graduates are twice as likely to be admitted to a top 10 graduate program and are much more likely to obtain an assistant professor position at a top 10 program upon PhD completion.
If you wonder if high prestige undergrad university matters, here’s your answer.
It’s self-selected in the sense that applicants to grad schools are not chosen randomly. A student chooses (self-selects) to apply to grad school. I suppose you can try to make the argument that only strong Ivy-plus students self-selects to apply, and only weak non-Ivy-plus students self-selects to apply. Good luck with that.
This lines up with my (admittedly anecdotal!) experience with Econ PhD programs 20 years ago. But I think this is more pronounced in Econ programs than in other fields. I knew many graduate students in engineering or science departments at MIT and most of them came from non-“top tier” programs.
Maybe it is true for some other fields besides Econ, but it isn’t true for all fields, I think.
I think it’s the perfect combination of highly motivated students, along with successful/well-connected faculty mentors who can facilitate the next steps in the journey…
I think kids who get into top tier undergrads are far more likely to get into top tier graduate programs - for the same reason they got into the top undergrad schools to begin with. If they’re the top after HS, they are likely the top after undergrad too.
As a cohort yes they are better. But there are great students at other schools too.
And I think some kids that are more research oriented choose a certain school to begin with and that helps.
It doesn’t behoove a school to eliminate students from non top tier schools on that basis alone or they’ll develop an elitist and non inclusive reputation.
Most undergraduate Econ programs do not prepare their students for graduate school. If you are at one of those schools, and thinking that you are going above and beyond, that likely still puts you middle of the pack of the regular Econ majors at a place like UChicago. The ones that did well in the honors classes are still well above you in rigor of class work. This is why there are many PhD prep masters programs in Econ.
It is very helpful if the reader of a LOR knows the writer. I was asked about my LOR writers when I visited graduate programs along time ago. The top school faculty all know each other.
PhD programs in economics prefer strong advanced math and statistics background, which is generally not required in typical undergrad economics majors (even at prestige colleges).
Prestige colleges may just have more pre-PhD economics (or math or statistics) majors who take the desired to advanced math preparation (real analysis, linear algebra, probability theory, etc.).
But a prestige college economics major who stops after a single variable calculus and introductory statistics probably is not going on to a PhD program in economics.
Folks are so used to Econ being a look-a-like major for kids who want to go into investment banking but also want to attend a college that does not have a finance major or a business school- that they forget- it’s not.
Studying Econ to end up at an academic/research track (i.e. U Chicago type econ) is not the same thing at all as studying econ at… a place which spits out econ majors as apprentices to financial institutions. I won’t name names so I don’t get flamed.
We see posts ALL THE TIME from kids who are applying to be finance majors at 12 colleges-- and econ majors at their 4 reach colleges (which don’t have a finance major). These are not interchangeable majors, except that finance majors will likely take the micro/macro sequence that freshman econ majors will take. Finance doesn’t require much math-- yes, it requires solid computational skills although with so much algorithmic “plug and chug” these days, it requires less than it used to.
Unlike undergraduate admissions, graduate admissions are mostly determined by professors. They know very well which colleges have strong undergraduate programs in their fields. They also generally know the content and rigor of the courses applicants have taken and whether these courses form a sufficient basis for further studies in the relevant fields. They may know professionally, or even personally, the professors who wrote the LoRs. The LoRs written by professors who are well known/respected in their fields obviously carry more weight, and applicants from prestigious colleges or prestigious undergraduate programs are more likely to have such professors writing LoRs for them. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, accomplishments in undergraduate research are the surest tickets to a highly regarded PhD program. Prestigious colleges and/or programs offer more such research opportunities.
Even many prestige privates do not require more than the above math for an economics major (though Chicago, MIT, and Stanford do). Some (and some other colleges) offer a less math and a more math version of the major and intermediate economics and econometrics courses. Less math for the “business” majors, more math for the pre-PhD students.
It’s applicable to far more than grad school admissions. Profs at top universities are also well connected not only to academia but industry also. Undergrads coming out of these universities can come highly recommended to a high level executive. I personally know of that happening with a CS major coming out of UChicago (in this case the CTO). Might not have even got an interview much less the position had he not received the personal recommendation of his prof.
The recommendations are for kids who want to get a professional degree, such as an MD or JD. The article specifically speaks of a PhD in economics. Not an MD or even a MBA, but a PhD, and not just any PhD, but a PhD in Economics.
If you look through all of the advice that has been given here through the years, the recommendations for a kid who wants to end up with a PhD is, first and foremost, “don’t”. The second is that they should either attend a college which is highly prestigious in their field for their undergraduate or attend a Liberal Arts College.
As for students who are NOT looking to end up with a PhD? The article that you cite is not relevant to them at all.
Additionally:
A. “Top-N”, as it is used here is not the measure of “prestige” that is used by PhD programs.
What is considered “prestigious” here on CC can differ radically from what is considered “prestigious” for by a PhD program.
B. “In-State Publics” include Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UVA, UNC, UIUC, and many others, all which are good enough even for the most prestige-ridden.
“In-State Publics” include Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, UVA, UNC, UIUC, and many others, all which are good enough even for the most prestige-ridden.
Yet the paper specifically called out “Ivy League + Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago”.
So that leaves the reader with a difficult question. Are these academic economists from Harvard and Columbia who study placements into top PhD programs rubes who do not know about Berkeley, UCLA, etc.? Or are undergrads from those schools deliberately not included among those who receive a bump from their alma mater? The mind boggles.
I only skimmed through the paper, but the regression analysis suggests that the higher rate of Ivy+ kids being admitted primarily relates to Ivy+ applicants having better references and better GRE scores on average. Some specific numbers are below. Also note that the vast majority of variance in admission decisions is not explained by any of the listed criteria, so there are a lot of unknown factors. I’d expect these unknown factors include things like GPA and transcript, which were not evaluated, and are likely to further reduce the influence from college name when controlled for.
Variance in T10 Admission Explained By…
GRE (objective score) + References (subjective score) – Explains 21% of Variance
Above + RT # Reference Score – Explains 22.9% of Variance
Above + Gender/International – Explains 23.2% of Variance
Above + Attended Ivy+ for Undergrad – Explains 23.9% of Variance
You posted the article as though it was relevant to undergraduates who are looking for a place to study as pre-med, pre-law, or almost any other major and career. The article is not relevant, and I addressed that issue in the first part of my post.
My point B. was aimed at what you wrote, not at what was written in the article.
The article is absolutely correct in their claims. but, once again, this article has nothing to do with more than 99.9% of all undergraduates.
To, once again, flog that poor horse’s corpse - the article talkings about the faculty hiring practices at economics departments in research universities. It is only relevant to the couple hundred undergraduates each year who are interested in ending up with a PhD in economics. SInce there are around 2,000,000 students who begin their undergraduate each year, this is not even relevant to 0.1% of all college-bound students, it’s closer to 0.01%, or even fewer.
Of course, there may actually be a high school student who comes on CC, and writes “I love economics, and I want to end up doing my PhD in economics, and then getting a tenure-track positions”. In that case, I promise that the advice that will be given by those of us with familiarity of the academic job market in economics will be that they attend a college which will maximize their chances to attend a highly-prestigious PhD programs. Nobody will fault that kid for doing their best to be accepted to an undergraduate program which is highly prestigious in economics.
The paper itself is pretty interesting. The sample is 6,000 applicants to a single top PhD program. The researchers find out what program the applicants went to and then follow them to see who ended up with top assistant prof jobs.
The recommendation letter writers are asked to rate each applicant on four different criteria and these subjective ratings turn out to be predictive of acceptance success and top job outcomes. The same letter writers appear many times in the sample and their ratings are especially predictive. These letter writers tend to be from top schools. The researchers also look at the way the student’s research promise is described in the letters and use this info as well.
Although the subject line of this thread highlights the importance of undergrad school attended, I’d say it also highlights the role of the subjective ratings given by the letter writers and perhaps the importance of having a well known writer.