Interesting piece in the WSJ on outcomes being driven by major, internships and first jobs.
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/college-degree-jobs-unused-440b2abd?st=564yljco2p95epa&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Article gifted.
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Not sure if it comes even close to most schools that are selective at all that they are looking at ECs at all, or for more than a small portion of applicants.
Sure intrinsic motivation and oneās individual nature plays a very large part in determining success, but if the right environment didnāt also confer advantage would so many students and parents be clamoring to get into higher ranked schools? Surely thereās no question that institution brand and the resources that some schools offer can help to open doors or help to smooth pathways or at a minimum help to polish diamonds in the rough that can help contribute to future success?
And thatās why parents fight to get their kids into selective colleges because they feel they will put them in a better position to launch.
Both the classic Dale & Krueger study and recent Chetty study found no significant difference overall in average/median earnings associated with attending a more selective college over a less selective college, after controlling for individual student characteristics. However, the latter did find a difference in chance of having a >$600k/year income at a particular age (difference only occurred for certain ages), which may relate to attending the Ivy+ college being associated with an increased rate of pursuing finance. The former also found a difference for certain minority subgroups, particularly Black students.
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The WSJ piece doesnāt present evidence that selective colleges put kids in a better position to launch. Maybe youāre thinking of the Chetty study.
It does show big effects from the studentsā choice of major and whether they did an internship.
My son is at a selective university where students in his major (one of the engineering majors) are mostly on their own getting internships. Not everyone is successful and we see a lot of kids complaining on reddit about the job market.
He almost went to a much less selective school that has a well-developed co-op program where he would have been assured of multiple internships.
Heās very happy in his current school, enjoying himself and doing well, but I am not sure his career outcome will actually be any better than it would have been at the other school. Heās likely to be applying for the same type of internship at the same companies that are part of the program at the less selective school.
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Interesting article, and I wholeheartedly agree - for the most part, itās the major.
Iād add that another aspect is merit. The tippy tops donāt give out merit but going on or two steps down, there are opportunities for merit (albeit difficult to obtain) at places like Vandy, WashU, Emory, BU, USC, etc. Other schools also offer merit: Indiana, Denison, Kenyon, Whitman, St Olaf, Macalester, etc. I believe all of these will holistically review for this angle.
So, no physics olympiad medals needed here but they wonāt hurt 
And Iād like to believe all of these schools have positive ROIā¦
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Not in the Thumper household. We wanted our kids to attend the colleges of their choice, and none were in the top 50ā¦but both of them are successful.
My DH went to a college ranked very lowā¦likely 500 or even lower. A four year university. However, his engineering degree from this lowly ranked college enabled him to have a very lucrative and fulfilling career. Ohā¦and when he resumed college after a 7 year break, he started at an open enrollment community college.
He thanks both that CC and lowly ranked school for a fulfilling career.
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There was a fascinating study done byā¦ drum rollā¦ Harvard many years ago (at least a decade) which showed that for a substantial number of their alums, the most significant accomplishment of their lives wasā¦ drum rollā¦ attending Harvard.
Iāll buy dinner for anyone who can find the study and the data.
But it was a fascinating look at a phenomenon that even Harvardās alumni office hadnāt understood until they saw the numbers- why is Harvardās giving rate so high? Not the dollars. Not the mega donors and the fellowships and the named chairs and the labs and libraries. But the social workers who graduated from Radcliffe in 1955 and were dutifully sending in $25 a year for their class gift. The librarians and schoolteachers and pastors (and other religious figures) who throughout the years had consistently given. Reunion attendance- high compared with peer institutions. Volunteering for Harvard- high compared with peer institutions.
So Iām a little jaundiced (not just by this study of course) that parents want their kids at mega competitive schools because theyāve done the analysis on āwho launches and how can I get my kid that competitive advantageā. Iāve seen enough of the college admissions process and have hired enough people over the years to see that peopleās motivations are rarely as pure as GWNorth contends-
āAnd thatās why parents fight to get their kids into selective colleges because they feel they will put them in a better position to launchā.
For a not insignificant number of Harvard grads, going to Harvard gave them lifetime bragging rights. And Iāll extrapolate that to the other mega-rejectives as well. The librarian and social worker could have done just as well professionally coming out of Simmons. But then they wouldnāt be Harvard grads, would they?
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I was inferring that the ability to be able to get internships and getting the right first job would be greater at selective colleges.
And yet the study also found that:
Being admitted off the waitlist to an Ivy-Plus college greatly increases a studentās chances of post-college success. Compared to attending highly selective flagship public colleges, students who attend Ivy-Plus colleges are 60% more likely to earn in the top 1%, twice as likely to attend a graduate school ranked in the top 10, and three times more likely to work at prestigious employers in medicine, research, law, finance, and other fields (Figure 7). These large impacts underscore the outsize role that Ivy-Plus colleges have on shaping societyās leaders, who can subsequently have great influence on the lives of many others.
It also states that:
Although the average SAT score of the school a student attends does not have a robust effect on earnings once selection on unobservables is taken into account, we do find that the school a student attends is systematically related to his or her subsequent earnings
The characteristics of schools that influence studentsā subsequent income appear to be better captured by average tuition costs than by the schoolās average SAT score. Indeed, we find that students who attend colleges with higher average tuition costs tend to earn higher income years later.
Both measures of expenditures per pupil had a statistically significant and large impact on earnings in the basic model for the pooled sample of men and women. When we estimated the matched applicant model and the self-revelation model, the effect of expenditures per pupil was smaller, and less precisely estimated. Although the effect of expenditures per pupil was statistically insignificant, the coefficient was positive in all but one of the models, and implied substantial internal rates of return to school spending
So while the findings did show that the characteristics that selective universities tend to select for in their admits through their holistic admissions models accounts for the greatest difference in outcome post graduation, it also showed a positive effect for institutional spending on a per student basis as well. Attending a well resourced college appears to confer advantage which may account for the findings of the report that @tamagotchi linked to.
Wow. I actually find that sad. That someone thinks attending Harvard to be their biggest accomplishment is downright depressing. Itās an amped up version of the kid who peaked in high school. I have observed that, often, when you meet a Harvard grad they somehow find a way to get that fact into the conversation - as if it is a defining characteristic.
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Glory Days lol.
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I understand that was your inference, but I donāt think it is necessarily the case. I gave the example of two universities with very different selectivity, where the less selective university has a strong co-op program.
I actually worry a bit more about my student getting internships from the selective T20 that he attends (and which is also ranked in the top 5 for his major field), compared to the well resourced but much less selective T150 that he also considered, which has a strong and well-established co-op program that places into the top companies in the industry.
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In times like this I always seem to recall āBreaking Awayā:
āYou know what really gets me though? I mean, here I am, I gotta live in this stinkinā town and I gotta read in the newspapers about some hot shot kid- new star of the college team. Every year itās gonna be a new one. And every year itās never gonna be me. Iām just gonna be Mike. Twenty-year-old Mike. Thirty-year-old Mike. Old mean old man Mike.ā
perhaps. but i think for selective graduate schools he would have a much better chance.
Actually sometimes itās just the opposite. When you go to a very competitive undergrad, it is harder to be a superstar because you are surrounded by superstars and it may be harder to get the top grades and be at the top of your class. When you go to a less competitive undergrad, you can be the honors college, 4.0, summa cum laude, top of the class, academic award winning standout. It is the latter who often gets into selective grad schools. Being an average T 20 grad is not better than being an excellent T100 grad in terms of grad school admissions.
(And I am absolutely not saying that tamogotchiās son is any way average and not a superstar - I am speaking in generalizations, not specifically about their son ) .
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these sentimental reasons are not why school sports is such a big deal. it is due to the way sports is used in college admissions.
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@gwnorth was talking specifically about positive ROI (quite a few posts back). Spending time in grad school doesnāt necessarily result in positive ROI, compared to starting your career right away and getting work experience in industryā¦ especially if you had good internships / co-ops. This is going to depend on the field you are working in.
But they are only a hook for a handful of recruitable sports. Many sports are not recruitable and therefore no more of an advantage than any other EC.
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