Why aren't universities' SAT/ACT scores a bigger part of the US News ranking?

P.S. Harvard et al don’t really do all that much to “produce” CEOs. More likely, the kinds of smart, ambitious and competitive people who can get admitted to Harvard are often the same kinds of people who are likely to become successful in business.

@northwesty .

How is a fact in any way misleading? The list is the list. Yeah lots more kids attend public unis. I am not saying they are better. That’s not the point. It’s the almost instantaneous rejection of any non elite as an option for many smart students. Outcomes are outcomes.

And we are talking ug not grad school

It just speaks to the top schools not being the only ticket to the top.

Updates to list below from 2016 here two recent updates as of July 30 2018.

  • John Flannery CEO of GE went to Fairfield University in CT
  • Darren Woods CEO of Exxon mobile went to Texas A and M

Here’s the 2016 list

Doug McMillon (Wal-Mart Stores) - University of Arkansas (BS), University of Tulsa (MBA)

Rex Tillerson (Exxon Mobil) - University of Texas at Austin (BS)

John S. Watson (Chevron) - University of California, Davis (BA),

Warren E. Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) - University of Nebraska (BS),

Tim Cook (Apple) - Auburn University (BS)

Greg C. Garland (Phillips 66) - Texas A&M University (BS)

Mary Barra (General Motors) - General Motors Institute/Kettering University (BS),

Mark Fields (Ford Motor) - Rutgers University (BA),

Jeff Immelt (General Electric) - Dartmouth College

Joe Gorder (Valero Energy) - University of Missouri-St. Louis (BA), Our Lady of the Lake University (MBA)

@gallentjill I totally agree. I just threw out an arbitrary number to illustrate the point.

Any accredited university in the USA can and does produce exceptional doctors lawyers and executives and yes titans of industry.

It’s the student and their use of what’s been given them that makes the difference in the end

The 2000 new investment bankers each year being the go to rationale for 1.8mm students is just silly. And a virtual feedback loop.

Richest Americans:

Bezos – Princeton
Gates – Harvard
Buffett – Penn, Nebraska, Columbia
Zuckerberg – Harvard
Page – Michigan, Stanford
Ellison – Illinois, Chicago
Brin – Maryland, Stanford
Charles Koch – MIT
David Koch – MIT

Not to mention the connections and backing that many of them have right out of the gate.

Slight edits. And not sure of the point. No one is saying top shcools aren’t great. the point is there are many other as well. And sorry but your list actually supports this as well. The Koch’s and Jeff bezos. Ok.

the other four went to state unis

And except for bezos none of them have any wall street experience

Gates and zuckerberg didnt finish Zuckerberg was a shocking admission as well having to have fought the mean streets of Phillips Exeter

Buffet graduated from nebraska

Page went to Michigan

Ellison went to Illinois

Sergei Brin went to Maryland
And the Koch brothers were rich to begin with are basically one.

Let’s all the waltons together and compare to the Koch’s

I would say let’s look at students below the development case level for the average kid and their choices.

@northwesty I’m not sure what your point is. Clearly, elite universities attract some of the most brilliant minds in the world. Its not surprising that some of them go on to become quite wealthy. Others are probably wildly successful in fields that are not necessarily highly renumerative. You can be a great district attorney and not make any money. Some of this begs the question of how much the universities actually contributed to their success. Would Zuckerberg be less successful if he had dropped out of Suny Binghamton instead of dropping out of Harvard?

Each student is unique and students with excellent credentials generally have a number of choices when it comes to colleges. Those choices may not include HY+. Hopefully, at some point the brilliant, but rejected kids will realize that they are not limited by the ranking of their alma mater. Hopefully, they will be able to look beyond the numbers to see what the schools actual offer, and make a choice that works for them.

@gallentjill

Amen. Mic drop.

“Apple’s Tim Cook has a Duke MBA. Amazon is run by a Princeton guy, Microsoft had Harvard and Stanford guys running the show for a long time and now has a UChi MBA as CEO, Facebook has Harvard and Stanford at the top, Google has Stanford at the top, Berkshire has Penn and Columbia, Alibaba’s CEO did mot attend school in the U.S. J&J has USMA and Penn, JP Morgan has Tufts and Harvard, Exxon has Northwestern.”

But those are grad schools and I don’t think anyone is saying grad school doesn’t matter, it definitely does. Your post actually disproves your assertion on elite schools:

Google - Michigan, Maryland undergrad, Stanford masters
Apple - Auburn, Duke MBA
Exxon - Texas A&M, Northwestern MBA

This would argue to attend a state school undergrad (gasp!), do well and attend an elite grad school. And crediting Harvard with Gates and Zuckerberg is misleading as well, if it was such a great place, why didn’t they stick around to graduate?

PB’s list illustrates how rankings can turn out to be very slanted/not-so-good depending on how you define the metrics.

How can PB’s list be a solid one if it omits Bezos (who graduated Princeton fyi) and Amazon from a list of top CEOs and companies? And who, depending on the day, is the richest guy in the country?

By market cap, PB’s company list misses 4 of the top 5 (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft). Which really undercuts his conclusion about elite schools since omitting those companies deletes a lot of elite school connections.

Like all rankings, read PB’s with a grain of salt.

The wealthiest American or CEOs of top Fortune 500 companies are such extreme outliers that they have little relevance to much of anything in this thread. For example, Gates and Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in their sophomore year. Buffet transferred from Penn to Nebraska in his sophomore year (~70 years ago), rather than dropping out. He was rejected by Harvard. Does that mean if you want to be a billionaire or top CEO you should try to attend the most prestigious school you can, then drop out or transfer in your sophomore year?

I think the only thing one can conclude about such extremely rare anecdotal examples from many decades ago is that going to HYPSM… is not a requirement for being a billionaire or CEO. Instead most attend public colleges, like most students as whole in the US.

Whether HYPSM… offers a notable advantage over your local public for your career goals is a different story. The answer depends on what your career goals are, but in general, I’d expect the advantage to be small in most fields. One exception is a small minority of industries that do emphasize prestige, such as elite investment banking. Another exception is wanting to work in a particular location. Colleges near that location that are well regarded by employers are likely to have special advantages, including local publics.

The survey of employers at https://www.chronicle.com/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf found college reputation was the least influential of all the listed factors for evaluating resumes. And employers as whole rated perception of “elite” colleges no different than “nationally known” colleges. Both groups were rated slightly worse than public flagships.

I would think that bright & brilliant students learning and interacting with other bright & brilliant peers would be very beneficial to each student’s growth and help them realize their full potential. No?

I didn’t go to Harvard to get wealthy and neither did any of my friends. I’m really baffled by why people care so much.

This is one of those intuitive statements that many espouse without much data to back it up. I remember a study quoted here a while ago to the effect that the outcomes for kids who were excepted to Ivy leage schools but chose to attend elsewhere were indetical to those who did actually attend. Does that refute the claim? Maybe yes, maybe no. Almost any reputable school will have a group of extremely bright peers who are there attending the honors college, saving money and avoiding loans. So, does growth require everyone to be an intellectual peer or just that there be “some” peers. A large public may actually have many more high scoring students than a small elite LAC. Of course, as a percentage of students the high stat kids will be small.

Maybe kids also benefit from being around a diverse group of peers – sometimes kids who don’t score as well have interesting things to contribute despite lower ACTs. For some careers, it probably helps a great deal to learn how to communicate with all kinds of people. Politics, medicine and entertainment come to mind.

Then, you have to think about the needs of the individual student. Some may crave an environment where every person they meet is as smart or smarter than they are. That’s fine. But others may do better in a more diverse group or by being a slightly bigger fish in the pond.

I’m not saying there is no benefit to an elite school. There clearly are. I’m only saying that it isn’t self evident that it is a far better place than other alternatives.

2016 Fortune 500 CEOs by completed undergrad degree:

Harvard 10 (6,700 undergrads)
Cornell 9 (14,500)
PSU 6 (40,000)
TAMU 6 (51,000)
USMA 6 (4,400)
ND 6 (8,500)
Wiscy 5 (32,000)
Princeton 5 (5,400)
Stanford 5 (7,100)

Given how small their classes are, seems like the Ivies and other high end schools punch pretty far above their per capita weight.

Just making the point that you need to read any ranking with a grain of salt. You can judge which of the lists posted above look the most reasonable to you based on what you are looking for.

My list is accurate and so is PB’s. But they tell very different stories. YMMV.

“This is one of those intuitive statements that many espouse without much data to back it up”

Have you ever had your above average athlete kid play on a sub par sports team vs. a team of their peers? Which team do you think stunted their athletic growth and which one challenged them to get better?

By the way, my original quote “you want to be among your (academic) peers” is directly from our PC who graduated from H and was an AO there for 3 years.

A university it not just one team. Penn State University Park has 46,000 undergrads. It has an average ACT score of 27. However, 23% of the incoming class scores between 30-36. Thats over 10,000 students. I think most bright and talented students could find a peer group somewhere in that pool.

However, I do understand your point. As I said in my post, there are kids who really need to be surrounded only by their academic equals. That is the atmosphere they crave. I know that feeling, although I experienced it in an artistic field. I know the excitement of being pushed by those around you. Can we agree that different kids, even highly talented kids, need different things? There is no one right way to get an education and that even those who might have beneffited from Harvard, will be able to find ways to grow and be challenged at Penn State?

P.S. @socaldad2002 what is “your PC?”

"P.S. @socaldad2002 what is “your PC?” = private counselor vs GC = guidance counselor

@socaldad2002 - Your PC who went to Harvard has a bias – that person did not experience the benefits of attending a public university or a less competitive private university or LAC, and has a livelihood that depends on being paid by families who want their kids to attend elite colleges. So that’s like asking the Mercedes dealer what car you should buy.

@calmom we were actually talking with her about my D20’s top picks which right now are UCB and UCLA, not private elite schools.