Thank you for this. But, I was actually wondering about a study on results/outcomes like they did for Ivy vs state flagship that would compare top ranked LACs to those outcomes in the study. Do you know if that exists?
Ha! Maybe we’re all just “back in the day, it wasn’t like…” people. But still interesting.
I agree there is more performativeness these days, but I just think that’s part of a world where social media presence looms large generally, and I wouldn’t think it is more or less an issue in the world of elite schools.
I was sort of attributing the shift I thought I might be seeing more to the sense – perhaps disproportionately in those applying and accepted to a certain subset of elite schools? and perhaps more so than a few decades ago? – that there is one hierarchy of eliteness/success or one that matters most, and we all know what it is because we talk about certain metrics that matter most, and so kids applying worry about how their choices will be perceived by their peers. “Everyone” understands certain career choices; you don’t have to explain yourself. That was always a little bit true; it seems more true now – but now I am an outsider to that world, so maybe I misunderstand the pressures students are feeling. And I do think because those schools have gotten so much harder to get into, maybe because they are so much more expensive, and probably because the student bodies are more socioeconomically diverse than they were decades ago, students there feel like they have more to lose if they step away from the subset of careers that are most traditionally elite-perceived. As the Chetty study points out (I think…since I still haven’t read the update!), there seem to be benefits that come with membership in this elite club. And on top of that, once you are accustomed to a certain kind of recognition, it may be hard to step away from?
40 years ago, I feel there were more regional differences, even in the US, about what was understood to be elite. In the more recent past, we seem to have been drinking more from the same information trough. But maybe this will shift again – for better and for worse…
Yes, as you probably have realized (for good or ill), the complicated history of US higher-education fascinates me, and really every institution ends up being an individual story. Sports conferences tend to be lumping together institutions for reasons relevant to sports, not least physical proximity (well, at least until just recently). And as such, they could end up with some institutions pretty different in various ways.
And then as you point out, organized religions and their adherents historically often played an important role in creating and/or shaping various institutions that we think of as secular today. And I do think you can sometimes see some ongoing influences. Like, I personally still think Penn has “Quaker” aspects, despite the fact it was never formally affiliated. Grinnell was founded by New England Congregationalists who were abolitionists, utopians, and so forth, and I think that is also still in some sense part of their “DNA” as an institution. And so on.
Just to put this in the context of this thread, I don’t think this undermines the basic point Chetty et al are trying to make. However, I think the complicated full truth is that social, economic, and political elites in the US are not a monolithic group, and there are in fact a variety of different sorts of elite networks, which in turn have been evolving over time. And then for sure various academic institutions are participating in those networks, but because those elite networks themselves are so complicated and evolving, so too are the relationships between academic institutions and those networks.
So really, particularly savvy and well-established elite families in the US don’t typically think in terms as crude as “Ivy Plus” or whatever. Instead, they understand the complexity of elite networking, and figure out what opportunities make the most sense for their individual kids.
And I truly believe that is perhaps one of the top few advantages they have to give. For them, giving their kids advantages it is never an all-or-nothing proposition. If one path isn’t available, or just not a good idea for their individual kid, they will identify and make ample use of some other path. Not least, but not only, when it comes to choosing colleges.
Again none of this was a focus of these authors’ research, and that’s fine. But when some people take their headline results as supporting a simplistic, all-or-nothing sort of view of college choice, well, to me that just means those well-established elite families are continuing to enjoy this particular advantage.
Again, I’ve seen quite a bit of other commentary along the lines you are suggesting, so it definitely isn’t just you (or you and me). Like a while back we discussed here this article, which I think perhaps captures some of what you are discussing as well:
Like consider this passage:
Affluent, high-achieving students are conditioned to distinguish themselves via competition—in academics, sports, and extracurriculars—a dynamic replicated in the path to their first job. “Most students haven’t been highly reflective,” Davis said. “They just know [they’re] good at competing.” Indeed, when I asked Fred what had compelled him to work at the trading firm, he replied: “I don’t think I had any real opinions. I’m just going to do what’s the most competitive.” Name brand firms further cultivate the sense of exclusivity by recruiting, as sociologist Lauren Rivera reports, only from a handful of top schools.
The effect is to make other jobs seem ordinary. Students at prestigious institutions “don’t want to lose that status,” Davis explained. At least two students told him and Binder they simply couldn’t stomach a job like teaching. “I care deeply about education and education equality,” one interviewee said, but “you can’t just be a teacher after graduating from Stanford.’’
So yes, I think this is a real thing, and I also think it may well have gotten worse in recent decades.
See the link in my earlier post. It also lists income distribution for grads at age 34 for each college. Note that these are raw income differences. There are no controls based on student differences at the respective college, so it’s not a good measure influence from college attended.
As noted earlier “prestigious firms” is defined as firms with the largest portion of employees being Ivy+ grads, not firms employing largest portion top ranked LAC grads; so I expect LACs wouldn’t do as well as Ivy+ colleges. It might be more meaningful to look at recent post grad outcome reports at the colleges that interest you. For example, an employment summary for class of 2024 Swarthmore grads is at Class of 2024 First Destinations and summarized below.
Most common majors:
1 . CS – 52 (tend to work in tech, finance, and consulting)
2. Econ – 49 (tend to work in finance, consulting, and education)
3. Math – 25 (tend to work in finance, consulting, and education/tech)
Next Destination
66% Working
26% Grad Degrees
5% Seeking Employment
Most common industries:
1 . Education – 36 students (most common employers are Swarthmore and Penn)
2. Finance – 29 students (most common employers are Chase/Citi/Sig with 2)
3. Tech – 22 students (most common employer is Microsoft with 3)
Salaries:
Tech Median = $118k (10 students)
Finance Median = $100k (20 students)
Consulting Median = $87k (9 students)
Overall Median = $60k
Education Median = $50k (15 students)
Some differences with Yale are below:
Median Salary – $60k Swarthmore, $75k Yale
% Working in Education – 17% at Swarthmore, 6% at Yale
% Working in Finance – 14% at Swarthmore, 19% at Yale
% Working in Consulting – 8% at Swarthmore, 14% at Yale
% Pursuing Grad School – 26% at Swarthmore, 17% at Yale
There was an entire thread here about a one parent’s efforts to shape her child into an applicant that would get into HYPSM instead of “just” a T20 like her other child. While the effort was successful, just reading about it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was such a cynical exercise and just reinforced the performative aspect of the whole Ivy+ admissions process.
Obviously I share your values. Of course they sometimes suggest, pretty blatantly sometimes, that kids unwilling to take such efforts lack ambition. I’d typically respond there are more and less healthy forms that ambition can take. But again that perspective is coming out of my values, and they don’t necessarily see things that way at all.
At the end of the day my one Ivy caliber kiddo was going to be himself no matter what. He would never have allowed me to tiger mom him through any of the stuff that was mentioned on that thread. I guess some could say he wasn’t ambitious enough, but I prefer to think that he was secure enough in himself to do what was right for him. If that meant he’s at UVA instead of Northwestern or Brown, so be it.
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, I think we’re essentially talking about what was once colloquially referred to (with some degree of nostalgia, IMO) as, “The Establishment”; it was overwhelmingly white, male and Protestant in origin, but not so monolithic that it couldn’t eventually make room for Kennedys and Buckleys, Lehmans and Bronfmans and more. For better or worse, they established the world order we are now busily trying to dismantle.
And the unofficial “Chairman of the Board” was a Wall Street lawyer and graduate of Amherst named, John J. McCloy (1895-1989). But that also represented the high-water mark of the influence of so-called, “white shoe” law firms whose partners made time to advise presidents and who contributed human capital heavily to both political parties.
I’ve been invited to have lunch with a few members of the Wesleyan admissions staff on Wednesday. I will be sure and ask them, “Do you ever discover that you’ve made mistakes?”
EDIT: Both factoids (the mean income effect as well as the 1% income effect) were mentioned in the summary. I only included the quotes that I did because TBH, I never thought this thread was about mean income. But here’s the wayward quote you missed:
Ivy-Plus colleges have much smaller causal effects on average earnings,
My original comment is quoted below. It says that mean income is intentionally deemphasized, while top 1% is intentionally emphasized.
“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.
…
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.”
Totally. I see one down at the local feed store, where he’s routinely getting straw bedding for a bunch of guinea pigs (don’t ask). Guess what comes up every time? Harvard. Yes!
What resonated with me in the article was not the outcomes (we can all anecdotally point to friends/acquaintances across the economic/success spectrum who are or are not Ivy plus grads) but the point, “the most important thing a student gets from an Ivy Plus education isn’t instruction or prestige or even connections. It’s the opportunity to learn how to succeed in an environment filled with the world’s most talented and ambitious people. ‘Being in the classroom with all these folks, doing homework assignments, having to cooperate with them in your club, sitting around the dining table with them…’” It’s much more about the journey than the destination.
Growing up through high school (and I attended one of the premier public high schools in my state), I always felt (with the exception of French) that I was the smartest kid in the room, and I pretty much cruised through high school. When I got to Yale, I found myself average at best. It was a kick in the butt, but a needed one. The bar was raised. Just as importantly, my classmates brought points of view and knowledge that enriched my thinking and base of knowledge. When I interview applicants for Yale, this is the “why Yale” pitch I give them. I get it that if you are full pay or close to full pay family, the $365k investment may not yield the highest probability weighted ROI, but it is also an investment in the experience.
But is that not also happening to a lot of kids at other highly selective colleges, highly selective restricted majors, maybe some honors programs, and so on? Long gone are the days when most valedictorian types with reasonably high test scores coming from a normal college prep HS would likely be able to get offers from an Ivy Plus.
Just to toss out some numbers, apparently for the class entering in 1989, Yale’s SAT medians were 670 V, 710 M, which post-recentering are equivalent to about 730 V, 700 M. These days, not only are Yale’s medians much higher (760 V and 780 M per their latest CDS), so are many other colleges’.
So I feel like a very smart kid going to, say, CMU, today (750 V and 790 M) is actually if anything more likely to experience a lot of this effect than a similarly smart kid going to Yale back in my day.
Or consider Purdue, which I am using because it is back to test required. Its medians were 660 V and 690 M, which is not quite at this level particularly after accounting for recentering. But its 75ths were 720 V and 760 M. And the top students at a university like Purdue will tend to find each other. In fact, not surprisingly, the College of Engineering has the highest distribution among its undergraduate college:
In this source, they didn’t break down the subscores, but they reported a cumulative SAT 75th of 1480 for the whole undergrad program (same as 720 + 760), and then a 1520 75th specifically for the COE.
So again, are, say, Purdue Engineering students today experiencing less, or in fact as much, or possibly more, of this “talent” concentration effect than Yale students back in my era? I’m not so sure it makes sense to bet on the Yale students from my era in such a comparison.
As a final thought, to be fair, the Chetty data set goes back quite a ways. Not as far back as my era, but things have been evolving fairly steadily. So I am actually not quite sure what will happen going forward with some of these statistics. It could well be some of these tail effects will end up a bit less concentrated in a way consistent with these observable trends in entering test scores and such.
But we may also be barking up the wrong tree. Meaning it might still be a type of concentration effect, but maybe not so much one involving more “talented” peers.
To me, the ideal college experience is about the mind expansion and being around an intellectually curious and challenging environment. I think that definitely happens at Ivy League schools. I think it also happens at places that are much less selective, whether it’s a school like St. Olaf or St. John’s or in honors seminars at big state Us.
But I think this quote from the article helps to distinguish some of what makes the Ivies unique in the current environment (emphasis added):
At the most selective universities, by contrast, hyper-ambitious people are impossible to avoid. That creates a different environment
It’s the number of people who are seeking to be on the highly-remunerative tail of Ivy outcomes that differentiates modern Ivies. From what gets posted on CC, they’re filled more with the kids who want to go to a T10 school (preferably SHYMP), but won’t even consider Amherst, Williams, or Swarthmore. And though there are surely plenty of SAW students who find their way to coveted finance or consulting jobs, my sense is that there aren’t nearly as many hyper-ambitious people at those schools. Those schools are filled with brilliant high-achievers but without the hyper-ambition for a very particular, narrow set of outcomes (i.e. not just being top 1%, but fraction of the top 1%).