You guys are ignoring the difference between treatment effect and selection effect.
For some professions and jobs, the employer could care less what happens once the kid starts college (absent pathological or criminal behavior). The employer recruits at those colleges because they know enough about the admissions process there to realize that an Adcom has already done the hard part- winnowed the field down to a manageable number. So I’m recruiting for entry level roles at a management training program for a large industrial corporation. Once the new hires complete their rotations, we split them up into functions and businesses- so the “mathier” kids may end up in operations research, and the kids who are great writers and synthesizers of information may end up in strategy or human resources. But as long as everyone walks in with (using this as a proxy only) over 700-ish SAT scores both math and verbal, our program can teach all of them what they need to know. We develop our own curriculum, we have fantastic instructors (some are the top professors at universities), and we know how to teach. We are not set up to do remedial work- so a kid with great math skills who can’t write a three paragraph executive summary of a research report isn’t our target hire. But an overall “strong athlete”- works for us.
Bingo- recruit at Swarthmore and Princeton (or Rice and Pomona or Williams and JHU depending on your geography.) Employer doesn’t care if you majored in history or linguistics or psychology-- the selection effect here. The adcom’s have already screened for what you need.
For other professions and jobs, the content matters quite a bit (i.e. ABET accredited engineering programs). So that’s the treatment effect- what happens once the kid gets to college is very meaningful. So you’re recruiting at MST (formerly U Missouri at Rolla)- a school which the average Joe outside of Missouri may never have heard of. But a top notch Mech E program and extremely rigorous. Sure- the fact that a kid with a 450 SAT isn’t getting into MST is important, so you are relying on the selection effect to some extent. But you care about the content, grade inflation, knowing who the key professors are who track and mentor top talent, etc. far more than your colleague down the block who is happy with virtually any Princeton grad, regardless of major.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but if parents REALLY want to help their kids launch, they’d spend more time learning about how real life companies hire- and less time putting forth their own political agendas (like: only a moron pays full freight. You’d have to be a prestige %^&* to pay for Amherst when your kid could attend U Mass Lowell for free. Google doesn’t care where you go to college. It’s better to major in STEM than anything else even if you hate STEM. etc.)
You guys can pontificate all you want but this doesn’t help your kid get a job. (or get into grad school). A neighbor’s kid asked me during the last admissions cycle to write a recommendation for Business School. Kid has no work experience to speak of. I explained that the likelihood of getting admitted to the programs on his list was close to zero- applicants need 2+ years of quality work experience post grad to be considered.
He insisted, I complied, he was rejected everywhere.
This stuff ain’t rocket science, but it also isn’t that hard to do your homework. What a waste of time and cash.