I don’t have a gift link but thought some might or may be interested in discussing the article since it deals with colleges well known on CC
1 Like
Here’s a gift link…I haven’t read this article yet, will get to it this weekend!
12 Likes
This was super interesting, thanks for the gift link… and honestly should be required reading for some on CC who say where you go does not matter at all.
11 Likes
Well being around high achieving peers can certainly raise expectations. A mix of talents and deep interests can be stimulating. But the competitiveness among students, in clubs, in classrooms, and the job market has pros and cons and can be detrimental to some, even toxic. This article may take a negative and make it too much of a positive. Quality of life isn’t all about money. ps The reporter, Rose Horowitch, went to Yale, maybe fairly recently, so is, I guess, a case in point.
7 Likes
I haven’t read the article (yet), but I thought it was pretty well-established back in the nineteen-nineties that elite education conferred definite advantages and that single conclusion was what underpinned much of the litigation around affirmative action.
2 Likes
Some of the things they describe happen at many schools - finding roommates etc.
There are many studies on Ivy jumping to different conclusions - and ultimately outcomes will depend on careers pursued.
This is one study/article and they came to a conclusion about it’s the company you keep. It may be right, somewhat right, somewhat wrong or wrong.
Doesn’t make their study right…just because they did it and jumped to a conclusion.
And let’s be honest - most of us and our kids never had any chance to go to Ivy, so it’s defining a very narrow group of people.
You may be more up on long-term scholarship than I am! I feel like in recent years I see most things implying it is more about kids starting almost at home base (.1%ers) and less mixing of income w/i the schools and advantages of recruiting mattering less and kids who could get in do the same everywhere, blah, blah, etc., etc. To be honest, that never felt right to me, personally….
If I’m understanding you correctly, I think the Wm. Bowen, Derek Bok study, “The Shape of the River” (Princeton University Press) was saying the same (or similar) things back in 1998. Ivy kids from poor and working-class backgrounds were certainly applying to grad schools and pursuing ambitious careers in greater numbers than their peers at other universities. That was their basic conclusion and it applied to a whole host of what they called, “elite colleges”.
2 Likes
Interesting, but the article didn’t provide any data to back up their conclusions. And what about the other Chetty study that concluded that attending an Ivy mostly conferred benefits to the far right tail and to students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds? I’m not disputing that there are benefits to attending an Ivy, but haven’t seen the effect among my personal friends (most of whom attended Ivy/Ivy+ schools).
5 Likes
Interesting article. Thank you for sharing.
I agree with the author’s conclusion, but wish that state flagship honors college students could be integrated into a similar study. Same sentiment regarding elite prep boarding schools.
4 Likes
Looks like it is based on updates of his work w/ Chetty and revised last year and is evolving..(there is a link in the article..which TBF I haven’t dug in to..)
https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CollegeAdmissions_Paper.pdf (TBF I didn’t read it yet…)
This is clearly a deep area of interest in economist referenced.
And this is obviously all VERY hard to tease out.
2 Likes
Which itself is based on work they did two years ago, basically saying the rich get richer:
1 Like
exactly what I said, no?
1 Like
I thought the one you posted was from last year.
Weirdly, the link /url name says 2023, but the actual article is dated 2025.
Did I post the wrong link? This one says 2023:
Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges
Raj Chetty, David J. Deming, John Friedman
Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics
July 2023
Leadership positions in the U.S. are disproportionately held by graduates of a few highly selective private colleges. Could such colleges — which currently have many more students from high-income families than low-income families — increase the socioeconomic diversity of America’s leaders by changing their admissions policies? We use anonymized admissions data from several private and public colleges linked to income tax records and SAT and ACT test scores to study this question.
Children from families in the top 1% are twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago) as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. Two-thirds of this gap is due to higher admissions rates for students with comparable test scores from high-income families; the remaining third is due to differences in rates of application and matriculation. In contrast, children from high-income families have no admissions advantage at flagship public colleges. The high-income admissions advantage at private colleges is driven by three factors: (1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic ratings, which tend to be higher for students applying from private high schools that have affluent student bodies, and (3) recruitment of athletes, who tend to come from higher-income families.
Using a new research design that isolates idiosyncratic variation in admissions decisions for waitlisted applicants, we show that attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average highly selective public flagship institution increases students’ chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 60%, nearly doubles their chances of attending an elite graduate school, and triples their chances of working at a prestigious firm. Ivy-Plus colleges have much smaller causal effects on average earnings, reconciling our findings with prior work that found smaller causal effects using variation in matriculation decisions conditional on admission. Adjusting for the value-added of the colleges that students attend, the three key factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas SAT/ACT scores and academic ratings are highly predictive of post-college success.
We conclude that highly selective private colleges currently amplify the persistence of privilege across generations, but could diversify the socioeconomic backgrounds of America’s leaders by changing their admissions practices.
1 Like
Actually, it should be pointed out that Bowen and Bok’s study was restricted to African American students who were the main focus of all the pearl clutching at the time. Subsequent studies were broader, I’m sure.
1 Like
While all of this is interesting, it affects a really limited group of students. Many (if not most) kids who are Ivy caliber never get the chance to attend - they are rejected or never apply or can’t afford it because they are in the donut hole. I don’t think the finding that it isn’t what you know but who you know will come as a surprise to many people. Why do you think so many kids apply in the first place - with a few exceptions, it isn’t just for the academics (because you can certainly get a similar education at other selective schools).
6 Likes
But, Ivy League caliber students all do have opportunities at state flagship honors colleges. And there are other colleges & universities similar to the Ivy League & Ivy Plus (MIT, Stanford, U Chicago, & Duke) schools such as Amherst, Williams, Northwestern, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Claremont McKenna, Georgetown, Notre Dame, and several others.
So, yes, the group of students is limited, but not as limited as the article’s authors suggest. In my view, the article is too limited in the scope of the schools studied.
3 Likes
They do have opportunities, but the same/comparable opportunities? Can you quantify that or support that with a paper outside of pure SAT scores being potentially similar? If nothing else peers at a state flagship are mainly from one’s state which is dramatically different experience. I think we can all agree ivy-level (and I agree it is more than just the pure ivy in this category) students are far more than just their SAT scores. We all say over and over again SAT/ACT isn’t enough in chancing threads. IME I don’t see the kids going to our local flagship honors’ colleges (I mean, my state and surrounding ones) being the same kids considering attending the tippy top schools.
Obviously, this varies widely from state to state flagship. Honors at UVA is different than URI. Just like acceptance (at all) to UCLA is different to U Maine.
4 Likes