Obviously, everyone wants a good education. But how much does a name brand school really mean? What about all of the other great schools out there? This article helps dispell the myth guiding our college search criteria
https://beta.theodysseyonline.com/one-word-college
This data is just plain false. Colleges werent truly selective until the seventies. The most recent study that that article can post was done in 2011 that researched self-reported incomes from 1996, which would mean that the people got their degrees in the early or mid seventies. That is not a good indicator of how selection works in the status quo, nor whether or not selectivity is beneficial for income. I /sincerely/ doubt this evidence.
Additionally, i think that the approach comes from a misguided disposition. The question should not be whether or not graduates from more selective schools enjoy their careers more, people don’t try to get into selective schools because otherwise they would be miserable with their careers.
People make due with the cards that life hands them. The point is that selective schools hand you a different set of cards, and it would be expected that students of selective schools would be satisfied with careers that correlate with their level of education. Additionally, students of less selective schools would also be satisfied with careers that correlate with that education. I would probably say that the reason why both ivy league graduates and state school graduates are equally happy with their career is because it suits their level of education and their goals. This does not mean, however, that school selectivity is bad or is a farce at all.
@Foodoos did you look at the studies which were done multiple times and show similar results?
But the issue in question is not whether the selectivity or acceptance rate of a college affects your post-graduation outcomes. The issue in question is whether the prestige and reputation of a university affects your post-graduation outcomes, and there definitely were clear differences in prestige in universities in the 1970s. (Furthermore, it’s sill kind of silly to suggest that colleges weren’t truly selective until the 1970s. Of course they were selective before then; they had higher acceptance rates, but there were also entire swaths of the population who couldn’t even apply because they were legally or practically not allowed to attend the school anyway.)
There’s really no evidence for this assertion that people who go to less selective schools expect less out of life. Many competitive high school students go to less selective schools, either because of what their family could afford or because they simply didn’t know about or believe that they could go to elite schools. When studies are done comparing students who were admitted to the selective schools, but didn’t attend, to students who actually did attend - it’s not just that there were no differences in satisfaction; it’s that there was very little difference in salary and type of career achieved, too.
It’s not that elite schools aren’t good at what they do; there are many reasons they became elite. But seriously, it’s not hard to guess that a school that overindexes on hypercompetitive, high-achieving, primarily wealthy undergraduates is going to turn out many successful graduates. That’s because those students probably would’ve been successful anywhere.
The exception, of course, is students from low SES backgrounds. Going to elite schools helps them tremendously.
@Foodoos wrote
Wow, I had no idea that I am happy in life because I have low standards.
Look, my comment was trying to establish that ivy league students and state school students probably have different career paths that suit their interests, plain and simple. It isn’t trying to say that you’re happy because of low standards whatsoever. The original post about ivy league and non-ivy students being equally happy with their career only means that they took career paths that suited their education and goals, not that being in an ivy league doesn’t make you any happier in your career. It likely prepares you to take different paths in life than a state school graduate, a path that directly suits ivy league students and makes them just as happy with their careers as a path that a state school provides to students.
I’m sorry if the way I worded it offended anybody because that wasn’t the message.
In my circle of friends from high school, the most successful friends ( in regards to wealth) went to the least prestigious colleges and universities. The most successful kid in that group was actually taking remedial classes in high school. He has a great story of figuring it all out without some fancy degree.
I go against many people’s opinion on CC and hopefully this comment will be respected as it comes from my experience. In my field (I’m a CPA) there is an advantage to being at certain schools. At the top schools the large firms (Big 4) tend to scoop up the vast majority of graduates, while at some other schools a much smaller percentage of students get these plum jobs. The GPA cutoff of who will be accepted for an interview by these firms is different for different schools. Now many colleges including a number of state flagships that have excellent accounting programs and will get many many graduates into top firms. But just keep in mind that questions about job placement are worth asking, especially if you are considering attending a school without a strong program in the field.
In addition, getting into the top MBA programs is helped by being at a top undergrad school. I saw something a bit old on poets & quants saying that 18% of the Harvard MBA class came from Ivy schools and 6% came from the “public Ivys”
So I’m definitely not saying that you need to be at any one certain school or group of schools to succeed in business, but I it is one factor in job and grad school placement.
I work w one MIT engineer. His boss graduated from State U, as did his boss’ boss, and as did the boss’s boss’s boss.
That article is surprisingly superficial to head this thread. There are some strong articles out there about the same topic that may be more insightful about these complex relationships.
This has been my experience as well. However, once you have that first job, the undergraduate school matters much less. One example that sticks in my mind was the experience of two consulting hires we made in the same year. The inexperienced hire was straight out of the University of Michigan, while the experienced hire was from a small private university in the rural Midwest who had a number of years of experience at smaller firms. Seven years later, both ended up at stable mid-career positions as consultants that paid $250K or so. The difference was that the UM hire achieved that level of earnings when he was 30, while the other guy was nearly 40. For business majors, earning a high GPA at a high quality undergraduate institution can pay off.
Wait, so the name of the undergrad school DOES matter when pursuing your MBA?
My impression (on the question “Does it matter where you go to college?”) is that “It depends” – and potentially on so many factors that it’s hard to draw any general conclusions, and hard to evaluate for any particular situation. People point to studies that seem to say it doesn’t matter, but such studies are just pieces of evidence on one side of the question, and, if you look at the details, what they’re supporting is usually much more specific than the general question. For instance, one study (or set of studies) people like to mention says that for students who get accepted to an elite college but instead go to a lower level college (perhaps a state school), their outcomes are the same. Well, perhaps that’s true. But it’s a big leap from that to the general conclusion “It doesn’t matter where you go to college!!”.
Also, when I see a comment from someone with a very small number of posts to this site linking to an unfamiliar website, I wonder if it’s just clickbait. In that light, perhaps their use of such an extreme, controversial generalization as the thread title is just a further attempt to draw people in. Still, as what happens with many threads on this site, it can lead to some interesting (and sometimes not interesting 
) discussion.
Does anyone else see the irony in how much students and parents focus on getting into good colleges vs how little time they spend career planning ?
An engineer from Po Dunk U is goign to make 50% more on average than an Ivy league english major. It seems like if we were really worried about getting a good start in life we wouldnt have half the students in any given class showing up with no idea what to major in.
@mitchklong All of my comments were directed towards a person going into a business career. I do agree with your comments that a career oriented major will can lead to an excellent outcome. But liberal arts majors from top schools can also do well in terms of a career or grad school admissions. I feel that my D (liberal arts/science major undergrad) benefited in terms of grad school admissions (she is going for a Master degree towards her chosen career) by doing very well at a highly respected LAC. I think that one’s undergrad school is one of many factors that go into the grad school admissions process.
@LBad96 Going to a well-respected undergrad looks like it can help in terms of MBA admissions. It is a little old, but look at this. http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/07/top-feeder-schools-to-whartons-mba-program/ However, an applicants undergraduate school is one of many factors (which include GPA, GMAT, meaningful work experience, recommendations, essays etc.) that are considered.
I agree with the post about click bait.
There is something else here willing to consider. Many people who don’t believe that the school you attend matters very much are quick to point out that beyond the first job, it does not matter. Since, they point out, things like “what you can do and what you have achieved” become more important. These people fail to see that their own points make the “college you attend” more and not less important over time. That isn’t opinion. It is a statistical reality. Do the math!
And that reality/concept (the formula for calculating impact that shows increasing impact of early contributors) is illustrated by salary trajectories. If you look across time, starting salaries have an enormous impact on life time earnings-and that turns out to be true for individuals and for large cohorts. Those who graduate during bad economic times end up doing worse than those who graduate during good economic times even if the good times follow by only one year. That is because (generally speaking) that first salary impacts on salary for each and every year thereafter. Same with the impact of genetics on outcome-it increases over time-something that is a statistical reality but not intuitively obvious. Same for college. If it does impact on first job, and if second job is dependent upon first job, college is impacting on every year from there onward.
@happy1 Accounting is tricky when it comes to top school. What’s top school in Accounting may not be considered a top school in general. Baruch is a good example of this. Baruch is considered a target school for the Big 4 and other accounting firms.
I don’t really understand your question. Baruch gets its top students into the Big 4.
@happy1 It’s wasn’t really a question it was more of a statement. Baruch is considered a target school for the Big 4. Not only the Big 4 but other respected CPA firms recruit from there. It’s not a top school in general but, Baruch accounting program is respected in the industry.
sensation723, I don’t doubt that at all. The question is whether or not the particular school you attend makes a difference. And, by that I take it to mean that the top school in that field-rather than simply a top school overall. And by not mattering, the OP appears to be suggesting that career trajectory is no different for the graduate of Baruch (if top) than, say Iona which I presume isn’t top.
That idea is based largely on a study showing that students who declined admission to an elite school in favor of attending a less elite school appeared to do as well (don’t know what was regressed out) as those who attended the elite school. But, I bet if you took a random group of students intending to attend a low rated school and placed them in a top school their career trajectories would look different than a matched sample that stayed put. And, to anticipate snide comments, I’d guess those catapulted to top schools would do better than those that stayed in the original schools-even with lower grades-something I bet they’d have.
But I also think many students can reach the top ranks of whatever career they choose even if they graduate from a very low ranked school. It just makes it less likely and harder.