Consider the source. The two studies that you quoted were done by professors at two elite private universities, do you really think the findings will say it makes no difference ? The average starting salary for a CS grad at Microsoft or Amazon is over $100k, and majority of these are graduates of public universities in WA state, not just UW but also WSU and regional publics like Western. The top feeder school to Apple is San Jose State, to Facebook: UC Berkeley. In fact all IT firms out west recruit mostly from public schools, with starting salaries as high as $150k. Even business undergrads from public universities out west start at $65k. After your first job, no one cares where you went to school. I know of Harvard grads who were turned down at top IT firms, Harvard grads who were fired and Harvard grads who were among the first to be let go when the layoffs came.
My brother went to law school in the late 1980s. His then girlfriend, already a lawyer, pushed him to go to a highly ranked private school, saying a degree from there would give him more opportunities, because he’d have an easier time getting a job at a big firm. My parents encouraged him to go to the in-state public law school, saying a degree from there, with no debt attached (they could afford the in-state tuition), would give him more opportunities, because he wouldn’t feel as though he had to take a big-firm job. They were both right, but my parents knew my brother better. He wanted to do public-interest law and was able to afford to do so, because he went to the in-state public, loan-free.
Here’s a kid from Chicago staring at 170k in debt for Williams College
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102056583
Really dumb move. Like he wouldn’t have had plenty of job or grad school opportunities graduating from UIUC.
@boolaHI, c’mon, I expect better from your arguments.
The inputs in to H have just a tad more potential than the average American male, wouldn’t you agree?
Now if H just blindly admitted random teenagers off the street and we see the same results, then you’d have a convincing argument.
I’m not validating it one way or another. But if the original posit has a lesser, than it stands to reason that there must be an entity that it is being judged against. So, perhaps H is a vast outlier, but we need some baseline to judge against…
@boolaHI, but how do you judge if the inputs are different?
There is more than one variable at play here (so there’s no one “baseline”).
True. I was more playing agent provocateur to allow a counter argument develop in the discussion, e.g I realize it is a rather extreme example.
“Just knowing the kid, he’ll be more than fine because he’s that kind of person.”
This. I spent 5 years as a career counselor at a national law school. Despite the fact that everyone there was a high achiever, the career staff could pick out a number of future stars and future stragglers when we met them in the fall of their first year, before they’d earned any grades. We (mostly) didn’t know who was going to be an A student, but there were plenty of people whose personalities/presentation, or lack thereof, made it clear that they would or would not land on their feet.
D. never felt that she went to a “lesser college”. She is still believing that she went to a “grand” place where she found much more than she expected to have in her 4 years at college. She just graduated from the Med. School and still feels that her college was not only the perfect place for her, but also the one that made positive contribution to her success and not only academically. D. took a very serious look at her choices, researched closely, visited many times at several places, stayed overnights, talked to current students, walked the campuses. At the end, the most appealing happened to be one of our in-state public that accepted D. to a very selective program that had only 10 spots and offerred her a full tuition Merit scholarship. Looking back and being more familiar with many other places (after Medical School interviews and talking to many friends about their UG experiences and knowing that some of her Med. School classmates regret attending Ivy / Elite colleges that gave them no advantages over others), she is saying that her college was indeed a perfect place for her.
Many of her college friends with non-pre-med majors are working in their fields and happy with their jobs and those who were not satisfied with the first job, are already at the next place of employment.
Most students feel the school they attended was the perfect place for them. Most grow where they are planted.
It is a big country/world with lots of opportunities. The kid who snags a full ride and could have gone to a Big Name School will do fine at either.
I look at my neighbors and friends. A few Ivy Leaguers, but most of us are graduates of state schools. Yet, we are all financially comfortable.
I’m still nodding my head that this was a subject of conversation at a BBQ.
Probably a graduation party BBQ.
I’m just going to recycle some advice I offered up on this scenario last May.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/17282695#Comment_17282695
Tons of great advice in the “smile and nod” thread of a few years ago on how to handle dumb comments http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/926354-just-smile-and-nod-smile-and-nod-p1.html
I would be curious if one were average at Harvard etc. vs. at the top of the graduating student body at a school one received a full ride scholarship from would the outcomes be that much different other the debt. I would think job and salary wise one would need to look at what the top tier students at the full ride schools are achieving. Regardless of where they attend, the ability to communicate, network, develop relationships and show leadership among other things are at least as important as academic ability in procuring meaningful work after college. I believe others have studies to show that. Perhaps being a top student at a top school might garner some advantage for some. That will be much harder since nearly everyone comes in with high potential. Whether it would be worth the additional money is up to the person footing the bill. The Hyundai will get me to the market just as well as the Rolls Royce, but hey, it’s a Roll Royce!
That is certainly one vantage, but it does not consider or perhaps give sufficient weight to the fact, that at the top Ivy plus schools, an average student, (average based on national family median income levels) would in many instances, be in an equal and/or better financial aid situation. By way of example, at a family income of the mid 80s, or about 20% over the national mean, a student attending Yale, would pay literally nothing out of pocket, on the full retail price (tuition plus R&B) of about 62k, which also would include RT airfare and a laptop. FA is exclusively via grant.
Further, they would have two other relevant features to their education: one, attrition that is under 2%; and two, an assurance, that nears 98% that the student will graduate in 4 years. So, as with anything, it just depends on the individual and your preference.
^ Actually, one of my sons read two studies on this topic a few years ago. I don’t know any more about the studies than what he told me, but apparently, both concluded that students who graduate towards the top of their class seem to be the “most successful” and/or have the highest “happy quotient” sort-of-thing in the years following college graduation, no matter where they go to school. Can’t remember the details right now, but all that he told me made perfect sense to me at the time. Common sense, really. That is: top of the heap State U or LAC or whatever kids fared better than middle- or bottom-of-the-heap ivy league kids in terms of various quantifiable measures of success (like published more often, or whatever) and in terms of the factors they used to rate happiness. (Sorry I can’t be more helpful with the details! Foggy brain today.)
Hanna: were you usually right in your assessment of future stars and stragglers or did some kids surprise you one way or the other?
Dickinson is in no real way a “lesser” school, unless you are talking about a super elite. Kids from Dickinson do fine, but probably having a harder time getting a foot in the door at a Wall St. Investment bank straight out of college. If that is the kid’s goal, the extra money may be well spent, For most other fields, probably not. And if the kid is not a superstar student, getting Bs at a super elite may be looked at more favorably than at Dickinson. But again, won’t matter in most cases.
I find it hard to believe that all graduates of “lower” schools cannot find jobs.