<p>Relative to their peers, I mean. According to PayScale, which does extensive surveys of students just out of college, and then midcareer, Columbia students are the lowest earners mid-career of all Ivy grads. Columbia ranks #51 in the country, if my count is right, versus #2 for Princeton, #3 for Dartmouth, #4 for Harvard, etc. Even Brown, Cornell and Penn are way above Columbia. Columbia even trails Manhattan College and Fairfield University in the New York region. What gives?</p>
<p>I’ve seen these guys before. They don’t consider ANYONE with a post-graduate degree, bachelors degrees only. So many graduates from anywhere go on to get advanced degrees that I’m not sure how much meaning a study like this has.</p>
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<p>This begs the question because Columbia grads are not more likely to pursue post-graduate degrees than other Ivy grads. In fact, Columbia undergrad alums are LESS LIKELY to pursue PhDs:</p>
<p>[nsf.gov</a> - SRS Baccalaureate Origins of S&E Doctorate Recipients - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08311/]nsf.gov”>Archive Goodbye | NCSES | NSF)</p>
<p>Of course, the Payscale survey is fundamentally flawed in a number of ways. But there seems to be no apparent reason why these flaws would more adversely affect Columbia than other Ivies.</p>
<p>A flawed study is a flawed study. The list didn’t make that much sense to me, maybe the study is just too flawed.</p>
<p>there are so many factors that influence these stats that it’s stupid to let them have any significant impact on choosing a college.</p>
<p>sincerely,
a columbia grad pursuing a PhD</p>
<p>objobs, just because a study is unfair doesn’t mean it is equally unfair to all - maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. The study is flawed and therefore unreliable.</p>
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<p>yes and PhDs are a tiny proportion of all people who go on to get graduate degree, so bad assumption that proportion who go onto PhDs is representative of proportion who go to grad school for some thing or the other.</p>
<p>Payscale has way too many flaws, just a few:</p>
<p>1) they don’t publish how large their samples are</p>
<p>2) don’t consider graduate degrees, so schools who send more of their better alums to grad school are punished</p>
<p>3) the median does not give you an idea of the distribution of incomes, a 25th and 75th percentile, or middle 80% would be a lot better</p>
<p>4) it isn’t a scientific poll, it’s just a random survey with no verifiability, anyone can simply claim to have any level of income.</p>
<p>These are fundamental flaws which differ from flaws in normal college ranking methodologies, payscale is essentially worthless, even Dartmouth grads have agreed that payscale is worthless. Columbia also has one of the highest number of billionaires (top 3 or top 5), but even that is pretty worthless when it comes to making a college choice.</p>
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<p>Maybe it’s a bad assumption, maybe not. Except that I didn’t make this assumption. With respect to posts #2 & #7, I only committed myself to the claim that “Columbia grads are not more likely to pursue post-graduate degrees than other Ivy grads.” The claim that “Columbia undergrad alums are less likely to pursue PhDs” is an additional one.</p>
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<p>I agree that the Payscale survey is fundamentally flawed; I’ve already said that. But you’re still begging the question. Please explain why (as I asked above in post #3): “these flaws would more adversely affect Columbia than other Ivies.”</p>
<p>Any poll that requires the self-selecting of participants is flawed, and any poll that requires busy, successful people to spend time (even five minutes) away from priorities will lose the most successful people (by whatever metric, whether income–HUGELY FLAWED–or anything else, except for the old “free time” metric).</p>
<p>Any poll that requires folks to be honest about income without independent verification is not worth talking about. Witness the studies where the concept of an inch becomes lost when one is asked about one’s ***** size.</p>
<p>There are numerous other flaws in the survey, some of which are mentioned above.</p>
<p>I would hope that most successful people (by whatever metric) don’t participate in silly polls like the one mentioned.</p>
<p>More specifically, I was addressing the 2nd flaw listed in post #7 (as alluded to in post #2).</p>
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<p>Are you suggesting that other Ivy grads are less “busy, successful people” than Columbia grads?</p>
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<p>Are you suggesting that other Ivy grads are less “honest folks” than Columbia grads?</p>
<p>I think the no-BS reason is that Columbia seems to have a greater proportion of the airy-fairy starving artist/writer type than the other Ivies. I think the directionless, drifting mentality is somewhat condoned and reinforced by the notion of the Core, which sort of screams, “it’s OK if you don’t know what you want to do. Take your time to decide.”</p>
<p>It works out now and then, but I believe most people would be better served by being more focused earlier on. That said, if you have your sights set on finance, Columbia will position you well.</p>
<p>The bottom line is, this study is flawed. I found myself quite surprised that Yale was beaten out by the Colorado school of mining. You’ll find some other surprises like U of Chicago around where Columbia is, etc. By the way, there are many other statistics if you click on the actual names of the colleges/universities. They may be even less credible than the other payscale stats though.</p>
<p>We produce quite a lot of billionaires though :P</p>
<p>[billionaire-university.html:</a> Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/107531/billionaire-university.html]billionaire-university.html:”>http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/107531/billionaire-university.html)
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/471140-billionaires-according-alma-matter.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/471140-billionaires-according-alma-matter.html</a></p>
<p>Although the second one is the pre-financial meltdown data.</p>
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<p>You’re kidding. Some people might not even be trying to mislead, they might think they know what they earn but they could be wrong in either direction. The amount changes every single year, I don’t know what I earn, not really. If someone needed to know I’d look at my last year’s tax return. (My husband does our taxes which is why I can’t remember what it was).</p>
<p>Then they publish the results in a chronological list sorted by dollar amounts where $102,000 appears after $103,000 like it has some statistically significant meaning. After this sloppy data collection their margin of error would be huge.</p>
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<p>Like I said, I am fully aware that the Payscale study is flawed. But the idea that the results of the study do not conform to your pre-conceived notions is not prima facie evidence for its being flawed.</p>
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<p>What doesn’t make sense to you? The methodology or the results? If the former, then I agree. If the latter, please see above.</p>
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<p>Columbia grads are no more or less likely to “be wrong in either direction” than other Ivy grads. Still begging the question.</p>
<p>You’re asking why this affects Columbia grads more than others. It doesn’t necessarily. But the thing is that it could. There is no proof for or against.</p>
<p>I already said this earlier - just because something is flawed or unfair doesn’t mean its equally unfair to all.</p>
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<p>The results.</p>
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<p>I’m not trying to beg the question. You’re saying the study is flawed but its flaws don’t favor any particular group so we can still use the results. I’m not willing to consider the study because of its flaws. The methodology is bad so the results are meaningless.</p>
<p>A scientific study has to prove its hypothesis, not say any errors affect everyone equally so they all balance out. That’s not scientific. The relevant measure is more the size of the errors, how much of an impact does the faulty methodology have on the results. In this case I would say the sloppy data collection would lead to significant errors and is the reason why the list looks so strange.</p>
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yes this is exactly right</p>
<p>a flawed methodology can be flawed because it biases certain universities over others (like ignoring undergrads who went to grad school) or because it leaves a lot of randomness like who claims to have x, y, or z income. I’m not saying columbia grads are “more or less likely to “be wrong in either direction” than other Ivy grads” but it is random and unverified, rendering it pretty useless. If payscale repeated the study over and over again and the results were not volatile, then we can begin to say that the study is less random. Payscale has done the study exactly once.</p>
<p>Hey Objobs, I earn a million dollars a year straight out of college, do you believe me? Payscale wouldn’t question it.</p>
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<p>Sure, it could…in the sense that anything’s possible. But can you give me any plausible explanations why it would?</p>
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<p>Since when is being “scientific” a (necessary or sufficient) criterion for a ranking’s usefulness? Other than possibly the Revealed Preference ranking, no college ranking (as far as I know) could be said to be “scientific.” Does that make them all useless and meaningless? I’d be the first to say that we should take rankings, like most everything else, with a grain of salt. But it would not be unreasonable to think that (even “unscientific”) rankings can be useful to some people depending on the context.</p>
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<p>Again, it only looks “strange” because you have pre-conceived notions about what it should look like.</p>
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<p>I’d probably believe this more than I believe you learn “life lessons” from dealing with Columbia’s bureaucracy.</p>