Indeed. That is why I used the term “extraordinary advancement”. Most PhDs from even top PhD programs are lucky to get any tenure-track position from a decent college or university, and most will then spend their careers at that institution or similar. Only a relative few academics become the sort of research all-stars that either start at, or more likely can transition up to, the most prominent research universities.
All I was really pointing out is I don’t think where you go for undergrad really has much direct impact on any of this, at least not in many fields. Again it is not entirely possible to rule out that in some deep way, competing with your fellow students at a highly selective private college somehow prepares you better to compete with your future fellow PhD students, future fellow young tenure-track professors, or so on. But in terms of credentials, I really don’t think your undergrad plays a significant role once you are a PhD.
Agreed. In “defense” of Chetty et al, to the extent they have more of a rhetorical focus sometimes on tail outcomes, it isn’t because they are trying to actually promote that kids should choose these colleges for that reason. Instead, they are concerned about the overall societal implications of all this.
And it is a concern with multiple steps. As in, they explore the ways in which already very wealthy and powerful families are improving the odds of their kids going to these colleges, and then showing that improves their odds of joining the next cohort of the very wealthy and powerful. The bigger effect in terms of numbers is in fact the kids of upper middle class parents becoming upper middle class themselves, but that isn’t a concern of theirs since plenty of other colleges do that as well.
Unfortunately, in the context of college choice conversations, people sometimes take some bits of that chain of reasoning out of full context and suggest this is showing everyone should want to go to an Ivy Plus if they can, regardless of actual life goals, or what sort of college experience would actually be best for them, or what financial costs they would face, or so on. The authors themselves are not in fact arguing that, however.
Thank you for this response. I appreciate it. And, to be clear, I have always thought the academics at U Chicago as well as the students are superb. But I think that is true of the LACs I mentioned with under 10% admissions rates as well.
However, you make a compelling case that my perception is misguided based on the ease with which people in my social circle get into Chicago compared to other schools on that list. It may be an anomaly particular to said circle. Thank you again. Very helpful.
I note at least during the period of this study, Chicago was actually one of the least-skewed among the Ivy Plus. To be sure, they were all skewed toward higher income families, but Chicago and MIT were on the low end in that grouping. For other selective privates, CMU was in a similar range, and then Rice and Caltech even less skewed.
I also agree Chicago is very much “Ivy Plus” in terms of academics. And at the undergrad level, broader in focus than MIT, or Caltech. Rice might be a little more in the same category as Chicago.
For good or ill, though, I get the sense Chicago has decided to try to become a little more like most of the other Ivy Plus/highly selective private colleges at the undergrad level. I understand they were experiencing various institutional pressures involving yield, finances, and so on that contributed to that strategy. But it is a bit of a bummer to me in that I kinda like their old approach as an option for a certain sort of kid.
There are absolutely some LACs that count as “Ivy Plus” at the undergrad level, in the same way Chicago does, and some more that count as whatever you would call the next academic grouping after Chicago (which in my mind might include some actual Ivies, but that is a whole other conversation). There are actually some hints of that in some of Chetty et al’s work, but again they simply are not focused on that issue because they are mostly interested in the biggest pipelines connecting the already very wealthy and powerful to the next rounds of high wealth and power. And while certainly various LACs are part of those pipelines, in terms of sheer scale they cannot compete with the midsize research universities which are providing the widest such pipelines.
People often forget that the Ivy League is fundamentally just a sports league. So, there are significant differences amongst the schools that don’t map perfectly onto the other categories people like to use it for. But, the academic brand is incredibly powerful, which may transcend whatever difference one may believe exists in trying to tier them beyond the HYPSM one that is fairly common.
Agree. UChicago is very much a “fit” school. Students should apply because they want the intense academics, a heavy required Core, and the libertarian culture. And when they only offered EA, that’s who did apply because they made a conscious choice to give up all the HYPS options.
Now with the various flavors of ED, some students apply because they believe it is the highest rank college that would accept them. Then they are accepted and find out they really don’t want the intense academics or Core at all.
Yes. It’s particularly difficult counseling students who may be a good fit for Chicago on how to approach their application strategy. My first cut…if the student doesn’t get really excited about the U Chicago supplemental essays, it’s probably not a fit. I agree with everything you said about Nondorf too, yet he is heralded by many in that community.
Like certainly at the PhD level, people in a given field will have whatever hierarchy they see fit, and it won’t matter to them at all if some of the top programs in their field are publics, non-Ivy privates, or so on.
Even if you, say, dig into the Peer Rankings at US News, last I knew it was clear some publics (and a few privates not considered traditional Ivy-Plus) were considered in the same range as some Ivies. And probably some LACs, and perhaps service academies as well, although comparing between the peer surveys is a bit problematic.
To be sure, there is no not-highly-regarded undergrad program in the Ivy League. I just think academically, it is a less exclusive peer grouping from the perspective of other academics and academic institutions than some seem to think.
However, what defines MOST of the Ivy League is they are old-money colleges in the Northeast, and specifically ones that transitioned to research universities (unlike some of their former peers that stayed LACs). Cornell being the big exception as it was founded much later as a “modern” university. And for a variety of reasons, there remains a certain socioeconomic “prestige”/desirability factor associated with old money Northeast undergrad programs, in both university and in fact LAC form.
And again, it is not like these are not AMONG the very good undergrads academically. But my two cents is any special “Ivy” prestige/desirability effect is more about that other socioeconomic stuff, not so much the academics per se.
Two points. You put too much emphasis on “academic” in my statement and not enough on “brand.” I can think of no other collective that has branding of its academic reputation like/as good as the Ivy League is what I was saying. Millions and millions of top students and parents want to go to “the Ivy League” because it has been branded as the pinnacle for academically top high school students. That is what I was referring to, it has an academic brand regardless of the reality of the nuances of said academics (which to be clear, for undergrads are in fact top shelf, even if not the exclusive set of schools where that is true).
Second, I was not talking about the Ivy League’s reputation amongst “academics” or peer “academic” institutions. That is a niche group who has way more actual knowledge and understanding of educational institutions, the distinctions between departmental strengths, etc. I was also focused on undergrad, and PHDs had nothing to do with my focus here.
I don’t disagree with you that there are socioeconomic appeals to the Ivy League, but I 100% stand by my opinion that its academic branding attracts a lot of high achieving high schoolers. When people learn I went to an Ivy, their reaction is more you must be smart than you must be rich. I don’t think that is unique to my experience. Many view it as a signifier of merit based on their academic and other achievements, and admission as demonstrating their academic excellence. Whether that is accurate or not is beside the point of the academic branding of the Ivys being strong and real.
Sure there is also a “socioeconomic brand” if you want to call it that, but that is not mutually exclusive from the Ivy League having an academic brand.
I wonder about this for myself—tho my issues are irrelevant to the important sociopolitical points that I understand the Chetty study to be getting at, except to the point that privilege is real. I attended Yale College and Harvard Law School ages ago. I didn’t need to take out any loans to do so. I went to an academic private school in the South for high school and chose Yale bc it seemed cool and different from where I was raised. My family didn’t love it—even 40 years ago, at least in my family’s social circles, some of the ivies were seen as too political and not that great. And my parents had attended elite Ivy and non-Ivy schools, so they weren’t without some personal experience. Yale did expose me to different ways of being—not by opening doors to big $$ careers, but by opening doors to the wide array of public interest work, in part bc/o the academic, New England-y friend group I self-selected into. Years later, at Harvard Law, I took full advantage of their office of public interest advising, was able to get cool fellowships, and started out on my career. I do think the Harvard Law degree was—at that time — a help at getting my foot in door when I returned back to communities where those degrees are NOT over represented. (There wasn’t financial risk for me—but those schools, esp HLS, offer a ton of financial support and loan forgiveness if you want to do lower paying public interest work…but they don’t make it any easier to save for a home purchase, or pay for your own kids’ college. Financial tradeoffs remain significant.)
I haven’t read the study update but I want to, and to focus on the measures it uses and the time period it encompasses. In my tiny slice of the world—community-based, public interest— I am seeing a move away from what I might think of as a starry-eyed approach to elite school grads and a greater appreciation for a broader cross section of schools. Many reasons, probably, that I haven’t had time to think about. But it does make me interested in the Chetty study.
I guess I would suggest that perhaps there is a range of different attitudes even among the people who start off putting a strong value on admissions to Ivies. For sure it might in large part be academic for some. I do think for others is more about the idea these are a golden ticket to $$$. I think for others is most about impressing peers, parents, parents’ peers, and so on.
At the risk of offending some people, in my experience the people who start with a genuine interest in academics are typically pretty open to learning more about other academic options worth considering. These are the sorts of people who may still apply to some Ivies, but at some point they might start striking some other Ivies from their list, and replacing them with other options that might actually make more sense for them as an individual, for both academic and non-academic reasons.
Again, in my experience the people who were more thinking Ivy=$$$ and/or were thinking Ivy offers would impress peers/family are perhaps a little harder to shift. Like in practice, these people may be more likely to stick to a plan to “shotgun” all the Ivies, automatically choose an Ivy offer if available, and so on.
Yeah, a very long-standing concern in public interest circles has been that some of the most prominent entry-level public interest positions were not only going to highly credentialed applicants, but applicants who were able to get those credentials without a lot of debt. Sometimes that meant family money, sometimes that meant going to select educational institutions with the means to subsidize a few such individuals, but lots of other potentially great candidates were being filtered out.
As you point out, some organizations have been trying to consciously fight back on these effects, understanding they would benefit from drawing from a broader pool if possible. But budgets can still limit what they can practically offer in terms of compensation. So this is one of those observable problems without an obvious and easy solution.
Yes, this is def part of it. I see efforts to increase salaries and benefits, and esp add summer intern stipends that cover costs – but the bigger organizations are able to do that better, and it can also be field-specific.
I haven’t focused on this enough to be able to state anything with confidence, but anecdotally, I feel like candidates from those institutions are – even as they apply to public interest orgs like mine – chasing a certain kind of prestige (beyond just $$) in ways that make them worse fits for us/what we do (and more so than candidates from other places). This may well have always been the case, and I just did not see it, but it feels like there is a trend line there. Could be many reasons for this, and it is at best uncertain anecdata.
I don’t disagree with any of that, and, it changes nothing on my perspective that the Ivys have an incredible academic brand. All those other things you say are also true.
I’m not sure I follow. Your quote doesn’t discuss the negligible impact on mean/median income of students after graduating that I mentioned being hard to find. It instead only lists the difference in portion with top 1% earnings at age 33.
The NESCACs typify this. Amherst (the Beechers, the Merrills, the Morrows) comes immediately to mind. But there’s also the case of Wesleyan (the Freeman family, the Wristons, the Andrus family) whose allegiances were bound by longstanding ties to the northern branch of the Methodist Church.
Well, I can at least contribute that is far from the first time I have seen that sort of sentiment expressed by someone in a public interest field!
Of course I think most people I know would agree this isn’t true of EVERY applicant from these most-selective colleges. On the other hand, I have heard repeatedly the sentiment that this has been getting worse over time. And it is sort of just a fact that what it took to get admitted to these colleges even just a generation ago, let alone more, was pretty different.
And so I have repeatedly heard a sort of hypothesis–which sounds rather plausible to me–that these colleges in their admissions processes are at least inadvertently selecting for people who maybe do not actually share relevant values and priorities on a deep, committed level. Indeed, again at the risk of offending some people, I have heard a rather cynical sentiment that their admissions processes these days may too often select for kids good at faking values they don’t really have.
I am not sure I am quite that cynical, but on the other hand, it is hard not to see there are certainly a lot of kids in college admissions social media and such essentially sharing tips and strategies for trying to do that. I am not sure all that works as reliably as they claim, indeed I suspect it sometimes backfires, but does it also sometimes work? Probably.