Yeah, could be something like that going on. It’s odd the student didn’t share any info about the family financial picture or their EFC. Odder still that they’d take out private loans when Princeton has their own parent loan program that has much lower rates, and ideally suited for the sort of beach house situation you mention.
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I’m complicit in this, but we’re pretty tangential to the original question. I certainly didn’t intend it to devolve into a debate about the affordability of a specific school. 
20 posts were merged into an existing topic: Princeton Tops LinkedIN’s Top 50 Best Colleges for Career Success
My original point in posting this and in the post that inspired this thread, is that kids (and parents) need to consider different things than prestige in their college search journey. Some of the questions in the follow-up article just aren’t asked. They should be.
Also, for the prestige-worshippers, turns out that these rankings still have many of the fancy-named schools at the top. It’s just interesting that many of the names you’d expect aren’t.
The methodology is what the methodology is, and one can quibble with that, but it’s amusing to me that even at LAC’s, places like Trinity and W&L come out ahead of your Amherst, Williams and Wesleyans.
Career outcomes is always a dicey measure to use.
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Is it just brand & prestige that people are buying?
The Ivies, Ivy+, Little Ivies and their peers are offering a different kind of education. Just start that discussion with class size and then move on to the other percs that come with that kind of education. It’s qualitatively different
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It is as simple as: The job market looks dramatically different for today’s graduates, compared to the cohort that the linkedin ranking is looking at.
For example look at the recent data from Purdue, Cornell, and UCB in the job prospects thread, starting with this post: Job Prospects for ‘24, ‘25 Grads and beyond? - #905 by momofboiler1
What will the job market look like in five years when my D26 is a new grad? I don’t know… but I think it’s unlikely to look like the job market of a few years ago that is driving linkedin’s ranking.
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I asked both of my kids if they have ever sent their undergrad, grad or professional schools their salaries. Both had the same response. “NO, it’s none of their business”
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That’s them. They are two of many. Many send. Schools report the amounts.
I’ve never even been asked. I have degrees from an Ivy and two Big 10 schools. So if I’ve never been asked my salary, that’s a whole lot of other people not asked, either (I do list my job in my alum profile of my undergrad school, but that’s voluntary, and if that’s how schools are collecting information, it’s a pretty random and unscientific way to do it).
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The schools send the surveys. Many also have links on their reports for new grads to fill out.
I can’t imagine today a school not asking. They all have the data. They all need the data and all will use it when they benefit.
I’ve not looked at all big 10 schools but every I’ve looked at has salary data. May not have a dashboard like Purdue but if you want know business at OSU or engineering at UMN, it’s out there.
Both my kids, Alabama and Charleston, were sent surveys multiple times. You can see the first link below on UNC is for new grads.
I would add those on this website appear to be 50+, some appear to be 65+ years old. Different eras when you and I were in school from today.
My undergrad has a private alum directory where we can choose to list our advanced degrees, professions, etc. There had been a private group to help alums with career opportunities, but I’m not sure that is still active. Point being many of us have not been asked, nor have many chosen to disclose, and it’s been reported over and over that early starting salaries are not particularly helpful for overall career planning and success. And it’s kind of ironic that one would minimize those many of us who haven’t been asked or chose not to respond, but want at other times to give a one off example of something else as somehow meaningful. When it comes to long-term career successes or “return on investment” it has been shown over and over that these data are not much more than useless or self aggrandizing. Or publishing somewhat useless lists for Clickbait. Statistically it’s been clear that those lists are not much more than meaningless, or a way to give too much information to the development office at one’s college so they know who to hit up for donations and how much to ask for.
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I’d add I don’t see salaries but no chance to look right now and it’s a few years old but.. @Shelby_Balik you might have interest.
Never got a survey (I have graduate degrees from Michigan and Wisconsin, so if they publish data, I’m not sure whom they’re asking - maybe just undergrads). Maybe that’s because of when I graduated, not where.
But I do think the surveys offer distorted information. Consider my own career path: after undergrad, a one-year MA program. Then teaching HS for four years. Then an MA/Ph.D. program. Then a few years of adjunct teaching as my (academic, same discipline) spouse and I tried to navigate our way to a pair of tenure-track jobs in the same metro area. Jobs acquired! But the path towards that career success and stability was … indirect. My tenure-track (now tenured) job would be considered a successful outcome, but it didn’t start till nearly 20 years after I finished my BA. Most careers aren’t like that, but a lot of them require some meandering.
My path was not unusual for a Ph.D. Obviously atypical for other fields. But not in one sense – sometimes it takes years for finally land on a path of long-term career stability, whatever your career might be. Internships, entry-level jobs, short-term jobs while going to grad school or figuring things out, low-paid medical residencies, etc. All of that speaks to the demands of different career trajectories, and not to the failure of a school to place students in lucrative jobs right off the bat. The job situation for the first five years (or so) after graduation is really not the most important part of the long-term picture, but that’s the part post-grad surveys are likely to capture.
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First destination surveys are not the same thing as asking for older alumni information for networking or fundraising. Most universities only provide data in their first destination surveys for the most current 5 years of graduates, some only do the current year!
IMO, it is interesting to see the trends, especially in today’s economy, of the % of the class are still looking for work, the top employers, top industries, and job locations.
Some schools do a much better job of being transparent with their data than others (and listing how many students actually responded to the survey and calls).
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And yet people do in fact pick based on prestige within those groups. I doubt the “experience” at W&L and Trinity is different based on class size, Liberal Arts focus, or whatever than Williams, WesU or Amherst, but kids and parents on these boards will pick those three over the other two nine times out of ten.
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Yes, this was the case for us. Our kid did apply to our state’s flagship which was a safety for him, and it would have served just fine. But he got a merit offer at a much better fit school that brought the price down to what we would have paid at the flagship. He also got some offers of admission that in our view offered “less” at a higher price; we rejected these.
For those of us who are full pay, but not independently wealthy, it can be difficult to predict what offers might be.
ETA: I will say that the calculus changes depending on major and depending on flagship. Some flagships are very strong, others are less so. Some majors have at least some guarantee of rigor (e.g. ABET accredited engineering majors) while others (e.g. Arts and humanities degrees) can vary widely in rigor/resources.
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But will it not be ever thus? I’m not sure how you get around it without a crystal ball.
Ditto. Older s got a handful of small merit scholarships, but younger s hit paydirt. It actually cost us less to send him to his private U (that is ridiculously overpriced for full pay students) than it would have been to send him to the state flagship (where he didn’t even apply b/c he didn’t want a huge U).
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