This isn’t universally true. There are some well regarded flagships that have the majority of their students from out of state/international.
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Thank you so much for the gift link.
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I like the line that points out that while there is much more spent on faculty and education in general at the Ivys than the state publics, the faculty at the LACs actually teach the students!!
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State flagship honors college admission is primarily based on an applicant’s standardized test scores and GPA–both of which are solid indicators of future success. However, other factors are considered as well. Honors College admission is not automatic at most schools.
All I suggest is a comparison of students enrolled at the top 8 honors colleges in the US versus the 8 Ivy League schools.
Additionally, limiting schools in the study to just the Ivy League schools, MIT, Stanford, Duke, & U Chicago, is too restrictive as there are another 10 or so colleges and universities which enroll Ivy League level students not including public state flagship honors colleges.
In short, I would like to see a more comprehensive study rather than just one that feeds the Ivy League marketing machine.
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Did you become friends with them before college, or after college?
After college (I did not attend an Ivy myself - just a SLAC). I live in MA and Ivy+ grads are thick on the ground. In my close friend group, about half the people went to MIT - we’ve also got a Stanford, Dartmouth, Harvard etc. They are awesome, smart people with good jobs, but none are as professionally successful as my husband (and it isn’t close) who attended a non-selective state directional university that has never been mentioned on CC. I’ll admit, there was a time when I was a bit of a school snob but being out in the real world cured me of it. I freely admit that the Ivies can provide an outstanding education, incredible networking possibilities and all kinds of perks - including being in class with lots of super smart peers. If my kiddo had been admitted (he wasn’t - attends UVA) I would have gladly paid for him to attend. However, it’s not the only way to skin a cat and articles like the one cited above tend to reinforce the idea that it’s Ivy or bust.
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I am interested in the qualiltative data about life outcomes for students. How satisfied are they with their work life balance? I think measuring success by income or job title is easy quantitative data to collect. If your value system focuses on annual income or job title, this matters to you. For people more interested in public sector work, this doesn’t align with their values. I also worry about the continuous self segregation of people’s by income or other factors. Othering people based on an multitude of factors diminishes people’s humanity.
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Bingo. The “Ivy or bust” industrial complex has taken on a life of its own and does a disservice, and potential psychological damage to kids who get swept up in it. I recall the kid who committed suicide last year at a top BS because they didn’t get into an Ivy like some of his friends. Not to mention changing the focus of secondary school education from being about preparing for the next step to “Getting into an Ivy+ or my future is forfeit.” Which metastasizes into “I have to get into XYZ Clubs or ABC House to get a job at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or I’m a loser” if they do win the lottery and get into these places.
Going to fancy schools has many benefits. I went to fancy schools. It’s a good thing. It’s not the only thing. Most successful people didn’t go to Lawrenceville, Yale and Wharton.
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I’m from MA as well, so I see the same concentration.
But we are not seeing a full representative set of Ivy League grads. By that I mean we are not seeing those who do great in Manhattan working on Wall Street, or who head to Silicon Valley and create a successful startup. At least in my case, most of the Ivy League grads I knew before I entered finance lived normal happy upper middle class lives as working professionals or college professors.
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With respect to Work-Life-balance, for what its worth, I’d challenge anyone to find Associates at Big Banks, Big Law or Big Consulting that don’t lament it. There is none and there’s no expectation that there will be, despite the propaganda put forth by Management. Partner calls you on a Saturday to pull something together for Monday morning, you need to get it done, however apologetically they ask you. It’s not really a choice. It’s the nature of the work.
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I’m not a high priced guy. I get calls on a Saturday. And I’ve gotten calls or texts from dealer principals (owners) past midnight.
Many jobs require extra time.
When people are saying Ivy or whoever wins, they are talking about salaries. That’s what is measured.
It’s easy for people to say, what about non quantitative things. But they don’t pay the bills.
That’s why salary data is published. And the reality is when people have a choice of jobs, they’ll typically take the higher paid job.
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@Midwestcatlady was asking about work-life balance at these gigs. I was responding to that.
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Yes I’m in support of your comments.
And a lot of well to do on here talk about the non salary things, but those aren’t why kids are choosing perceived top flight schools.
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The biggest reason, in our experience, to choose Ivy schools is the generous financial aid. The article doesn’t really include this element and it is probably the kids on financial aid who benefit the most from that kind of educational opportunity.
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And it’s interesting - because at Cornell, for example, more than half the kids (55%) are full pay. At Penn, 52% are full pay. At Brown, 53% are full pay.
People talk about - kids from elite privates get in - because they’re better.
Someone said it b4 - it’s more, the rich get richer - these kids already start off in really good shape.
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I’m not sure this covers the whole picture. As you’ve noted, a disproportionate number of kids of wealthy parents go to these schools. For many, salary is not the primary reason. There are other markers of prestige and success they are looking for. Some want to become federal judges, or politicians, or academics, or other leaders in areas that are way high on the “socio” status side of things, but not necessarily on the “economic” side compared to other choices. There is more to status in the world of smart kids from wealth than just how much money one makes.
Don’t get what I’m saying wrong. I agree that earnings potential is a major factor, if not a main one, for many of these students. But, there is a whole lot that goes on there that cannot simply reduce the status and prestige sought to chasing income.
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The primary source seems to be the Chetty study. When using this reference one needs to consider the motivation of the study. Chetty’s apparent goal is to show that high income students have an admission advantage, and that admission advantage is important. To support the latter claim Chetty selectively emphasizes 3 specific dimensions where he found a benefit to attending an Ivy+ college, and deemphasizes or ignores other dimensions where Chetty found no benefit to attending an Ivy+ college. For example, Chetty found the following mean income percentiles at age 33:
Ivy+ Grads – 81.5 income percentile
Ivy+ Students Had They Attended Stated Flagships – 81.2 income percentile
Chetty finds that attending state flagship instead of Ivy+ has a negligible impact on mean income. I expect the effect would be even more negligible on median income than mean income. However, this isn’t emphasized. It’s buried in a table on page 114 that hardly anyone will notice. Instead Chetty emphasizes there is a notable difference in the small minority of students who had top 1% earnings at age 33.
I haven’t read the 2025 update, but in the original 2023 paper, the reason for the difference in portion with top 1% earnings is not analyzed. It may relate to the “elite” finance/consulting connection. Attending an Ivy+ college likely increases odds of a student choosing to pursue such career paths.
Chetty’s 2nd emphasized benefit is that attending an Ivy+ college increases odds of working at a firm that employs a disproportionately large number of Ivy+ grads (study’s definition of “prestigious”), which sounds like a circular definition.
Chetty’s 3rd and final emphasized benefit is attending an Ivy+ college increases odds of attending an Ivy+ (or 5 publics) for grad school. Chetty does not investigate how much of this is home college effect. For example, I was among the ~40% of Stanford engineering students who pursued a co-terminal masters (simultaneously work towards BS and MS), so I fall into this group attending Stanford for undergrad increasing odds of attending Ivy+ for grad school. I expect students who attend a public flagship or nearly any 4-year college are also more likely to attend their home college for grad school than would have occurred had they attended elsewhere.
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At Harvard, 25% pay nothing ($200k family income or less, typical assets), 55% receive some scholarship aid, average parental contribution is $13k, 100% graduate debt free. Families with income over $200k may receive “tailored” aid as well.
So from your figures, at Cornell, 45% receive aid, at Penn 48%, at Brown 47%. Harvard, Yale and Princeton have more students on financial aid than these schools.
So the intention of admissions doesn’t seem to help the rich get richer, though the net result may be that these schools do do that, for complex reasons, including factors not related to the schools at all.
I found the key point in the article about the concentration of high-achieving students creating a different environment and the discussion here to be really interesting.
Following my D22’s college experience over the past several years, one phenomenon that has surprised me is the extensive exchange of students among global elite universities (HYPSM-equivalent). Here’s what I mean: in my D22’s program at Oxford, up to 5 students (out of 40-45 in the program) can enroll at MIT during their final year (participating students are chosen by lottery) and vice versa; another Oxford program has a similar exchange program with Princeton; each fall, a bunch of Stanford students visit and live in my D22’s college, when D22 and her classmates in visited China for a study tour, they were hosted by Tsinghua and Peking U. students, etc.
So, the peer effect might be broader and more global than the article suggests for a smaller group of elite universities (to my knowledge, it does not appear to extend to all of the Ivy/Ivy+ and other top US colleges and universities that Publisher mentioned).
Fortunately, there are opportunities to have a similar experience (and to benefit from the boost to careers) outside of undergraduate education, such as at an MBB (which now appear to be hiring students from a broader set of colleges/universities).
To the point that “I’d challenge anyone to find Associates at Big Banks, Big Law or Big Consulting that don’t lament it“, my response is that you don’t need to stay at these places forever but the benefits of having worked there can last a long time. I exited MBB when my D22 was a toddler because I didn’t want to always be away from home. Nearly 20 years later, I remain grateful for the MBB association and network.
As pointed out in the article and by some of you, it is not necessary to attend an elite university or work at an MBB (or equivalent in other fields) to achieve career “success” (however defined). But these students do have a leg up.
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A small bit of anecdotal data:
I am Yale class of ‘94. I grew up middle class/lower middle class in a medium-sized struggling city with college-educated parents. Much of my friend group grew up in similar circumstances and in similar places. The majority of us have been “successful” but in limited ways and most of us have moved back to regions like the ones where we were raised. Our friends who have really flourished are the ones who moved to NYC or whose families were already extremely well positioned.
The conclusion of this point, I think, is that the career you choose and the place you settle significantly shape the extent of the advancement advantages an ivy education bestows.
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