Ranking among HYPSM based on "revealed preference"

Parents Forum
101

I just read JHS’s post #73 about Wesleyan and Harvard. In my opinion, Harvard squanders some of the considerable academic talent it has among its undergrads. An undergrad can certainly flourish there and have excellent choices for future academic work, if the undergrad is extremely talented among Harvard students, independent, and well advised. An undergrad can flourish there is the undergrad is headed for a non-academic positions–and that undergrad will wind up much wealthier than the one in the academic group, barring unusual circumstances. An undergrad who is a scholar, but not such a stand-out among Harvard students will have a more difficult time, in my opinion.

Several of the Harvard professors I know are exceptional teachers, and they include an undergraduate-student focus in their approach to academics. But I have the impression that they are not representative of the entire group, who are really focused on their research field and on the grad students and post-docs who are assisting in their research.

A college such as Wesleyan will have a higher proportion of faculty who have a strong interest in developing the academic talent of the students they have, and providing appropriate advice and academic experiences. Some aspects of the experience will not be as rich as at Harvard. But in multiple cases I have known, the Harvard students seem to take advice from each other, when they could really use advice from the faculty.

102

@exlibris97 : Give me a break. I am not ignorant about the differences between a largish liberal arts college (although Wesleyan is, in fact, Wesleyan University, and grants a limited number of graduate degrees including PhDs) and a smallish research university. I have degrees from two single-initial universities (like you), myriad family connections (including both parents) at a third, and my wife and my favorite cousin taught at the fourth. What I was calling you out on was the following statement:

I regard that as not a thoughtful comment. It’s wrong as a matter of observed reality – I am happy to admit that most kids sort themselves out into LAC or uni kids and never look back, but a sizable minority don’t, and they aren’t distinguished by their limited intelligence or lack of information – and it’s wrong as a matter of theory and policy. If I posit a kid whose primary interest is in getting the best undergraduate preparation possible to go as far as possible in a field of his or her interest, it is not at all clear that that kid belongs in a research university or in a LAC. Either can work fine; I don’t think there’s a shred of evidence that either systematically works better for all kids in all fields.It depends on the kid, on the specific institution, and the specific field.

While, as I said, most kids instinctively gravitate to one type of institution or the other when they apply (I sure did), lots apply to both types and make up their minds later, based on where they are accepted and what they have learned in the interim. Honestly, lots more kids would be better served by that approach than use it. Getting mocked by exlibris97 types doesn’t improve anyone’s education.

Also, just to be clear: My instincts run to research universities, and I often argue the educational superiority of those institutions. But in all honesty, when I look at the universe of my kids’ friends and my friends’ kids, the ones who are being most successful following their own unique path, in academia or out of it, are the ones who went to high-quality LACs, and the ones who seem most to have compromised their principles and jammed themselves into lucrative employment solely to become rich have mainly gone to Harvard.

103

One thing that can sometimes produce odd result comparisons between UCs and apparently similarly selective private schools is that UCs tend to overweight grades/GPA compared to test scores. So a “test score heavy” applicant may get into some other school but be rejected at a UC that is usually regarded as similarly or less selective. But a “grades/GPA heavy” applicant may find more success at UCs than at usually similarly or less selective private schools.

Also, there appears to be a significant difference in selectivity at Berkeley between L&S versus CoE (and between majors in CoE).

104

@northwesty Or even simpler – just yield:

S, H, M, Y, P, Penn, Col, Chi.

We’ve had this argument in another thread, but the top yields, in 2015 were these colleges (US News):

S
H
BYU
MIT
Alaska-Fairbanks
P
Y
Penn
Columbia
Nebraska-Lincoln
Yeshiva
Chicago

BYU is at 80% BTW, so Chicago could have caught to them in 2017!

105

“BYU is at 80% BTW, so Chicago could have caught to them in 2017!”

Yup, BYU, UNL and Yeshiva are the yield champs. Go ahead and tell us about Berea too!

In a similar vein, most people would tell you that Ty Cobb is the all time MLB leader in batting average.

Luckily folks like Thelonius are around to point out that Cobb isn’t even close to the best all-time. Because of the dozens of guys who had a cup of coffee in the big leagues (a la Moonlight Graham) and achieved a higher BA by going 1 for 1 or 3 for 5 for their entire career.

Thanks Monk!

  8-|
106

@northwesty Ty Cobb is still the greatest of them all. At least on the field.

107

I was interested in JHS’s comment, “the ones who seem most to have compromised their principles and jammed themselves into lucrative employment solely to become rich have mainly gone to Harvard,” particularly with regard to how much the Harvard experience contributed to this.

One of my friends was an extremely talented young scientist. She went to Harvard, I believe with the intention of going into science as a career. Somewhere along the way, she observed/learned that scientists come mainly from the lower-middle to middle class. (Not saying that this is necessarily true–although there are certainly many careers where most of the people come from the middle class, just because it is so populous.) She also observed the family wealth of a number of Harvard students, and so decided on a different career path. While she might have done that anywhere, I think that her experiences at Harvard contributed to the decision: encountering persons “of wealth,” having strong insight into career futures (partly enabled by Harvard), having examples of different choices among her contemporaries, and also having the boost toward an excellent, though different career that Harvard offered. There was an era when the majority of Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa graduates went to graduate school. That has ended (sometime in the 1980’s if I recall correctly).

I am sure that someone who was deeply committed to science could have an excellent scientific career, even if the person was somewhat middling in the Harvard academic crowd. But probably the person would need a rather strong commitment, a pretty good level of resilience, and some resistance to the lures of wealth. So it would not be for everyone.

Not trying to hang a general outcome on a single instance. I certainly know of many Harvard undergrads who continued in a scientific career (and actually, for the most part, they were academic stand-outs at Harvard). But it is one scenario that could happen.

108

Re: #106

However, Harvard today is certainly not the only college whose students are skewed toward scions of wealth. Indeed, skewing toward scions of wealth is typical among highly selective private colleges (often about half getting no financial aid, and only 10-20% getting Pell grants (an indicator of below median family income)).

109

baseball has established minimum plate appearances for career stats, so Ty Cobb would still be #1 as those players wouldn’t qualify. You’re disqualifying colleges like BYU because you don’t think they belong in the conversation, which is a subjective evaluation on your part. That’s why US News didn’t eliminate those colleges when they did their list.

110

I think what makes many Harvard grads behave as @JHS describes is mostly a combination of the Harvard experience and being the sort of person who gets into and attends Harvard (and places like it, to be clear).

Having spent a lot of time at Harvard and been associated with it for decades, I can attest that it can be a fairly competitive social environment, I believe more so than comparable schools. Typically, to join a club or other organization, students have to go through a competitive process known as “comping” (see here: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/27/vassallo-quit-the-comp/), or, in the case of final clubs, “punch”, terms unique to Harvard.

The administration historically hasn’t been much interested in bending over backwards to ensure all undergraduates are having fun, either; there’s an old saying that “Mother Harvard doesn’t coddle her young” (I think the current start-stop process of trying to abolish exclusive social organizations is a recognition of this and an attempt to address it).

Most schools at this level have undercurrents of stress and competition; for the above reasons, among others, I think these are particularly strong at Harvard.

I believe what @JHS describes is also an artifact of the types of kids who apply and are admitted to Harvard; all their lives, they’ve been winning competitions. Getting into Harvard was a big prize that some of them had been gunning for over many years; once there, they compete with their fellow students in the classroom and through comping/punching organizations and clubs, which they then seek to run; after they graduate, having a successful career (often defined by money, position and power) is the next milestone. This is what they know how to do.

There are plenty of rich kids at Harvard, and some certainly will manage their lives so as to maintain or improve their position. I don’t see this so much as compromising their principles as living up to them. I think the “compromising principles and jamming themselves into lucrative employment solely to become rich”, is something you more often see in the middle-to-lower-class strivers for whom Harvard is their ticket up and out. And plenty of rich kids are totally ineffectual at the practical side of life. I certainly know a lot of examples of all these types of people.

I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t many, many pure intellectuals, artists and others at Harvard who stick to their principles, as undergraduates and afterward, or that things are entirely different at Harvard’s peer schools, where there are plenty of students always looking out for number one, who behave in similar ways to those Harvard grads @JHS was talking about. I do think, though, that the situation is more extreme at Harvard, perhaps inevitably, because Harvard is the top brand name in universities and therefore the brass ring so many students seek, but also because of the unique characteristics of the Harvard environment.

111

Interesting. Here’s a contrary perspective from a former graduate teaching assistant at Harvard who says the professor overseeing the third-year Latin class she was teaching pressured her to change a wealthy and well-connected student’s grade to A after the student complained bitterly about getting an A-minus. Apparently the professor didn’t even bother to review the student’s work before siding with the student against the TA’s grading decision. The TA says the student was “coasting” through the class, doing work that would have merited a grade of C “at an ordinary institution” but “Harvard undergraduate courses aren’t set up that way.” She expressly uses the term “coddles” to describe the kid-gloves treatment Harvard gives the wealthy and well-connected. Indeed, she goes so far as to say that the “real institutional mission” appears to be not education, but “instilling in the elite an innate sense of superiority.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/19/how-harvard-helps-its-richest-and-most-arrogant-students-get-ahead/?utm_term=.1a79f9e38274

I’m agnostic on this. I’ve been to Harvard to present papers and participate in academic conferences, but I don’t have any first-hand experience with undergraduate education there. I’d be interested to hear from others whether, and to what extent, this sort of thing goes on

112

“baseball has established minimum plate appearances for career stats, so Ty Cobb would still be #1 as those players wouldn’t qualify. You’re disqualifying colleges like BYU because you don’t think they belong in the conversation, which is a subjective evaluation on your part.”

Baseball is obviously disqualifying the Moonlight Grahams because they think (correctly and subjectively) that they don’t belong in the same conversation with Ty Cobb. Which is a common statistical technique – used to eliminate junk data.

For purpose of discussing yields of top colleges, there’s dozens of obvious screens we could all agree on to eliminate the noise/junk of BYU and UNL from this discussion. Sheesh!!

113

Notwithstanding the word choice, we’re talking about different kinds of coddling, @bclintonk, and I’m guessing you know this. It’s no secret that there’s plenty of grade inflation at Harvard, but that doesn’t alter my point, which is that there’s a certain level of institutional indifference at Harvard to undergrads that’s more pronounced than elsewhere (in part, I think, because of the relative size and importance of the graduate and professional schools).

If a wealthy but relatively disengaged parent gave their kid a large allowance but wasn’t as present for them as arguably they should have been, you might say that the kid was being coddled, but it would also be true that the parent wasn’t giving the kid some of the things they really needed, which other parents were providing to their kids, and was maybe sending them the wrong signal about what was important. That’s roughly how I feel about the Harvard administration and undergrads; the grade inflation is analogous to the excessive allowance, and there’s less of the right kind of love and attention than there should be.

Plenty of other places have grade inflation, by the way - I think it’s symptomatic of a larger problem in which students and their parents are treated like customers (possibly to justify the $70k/yr cost of attendance at a place like Harvard - although Princeton seems to be an honorable exception). In many ways, Harvard and its peer schools infantilize their students, in my opinion. But that’s a subject for another thread.

114

I don’t mind at all if a kid enters college saying “I want to get rich,” and then pursues that path. (I may mind if a college accepts too many of those kids, but that’s a different issue.) And I certainly don’t mind if a kid who goes to college wanting to be a poet comes out understanding that he also needs a paying job. When I wrote what I wrote about Harvard, I was really thinking of four kids I know who went there in the past 15 years:

1 -- The best at everything, first in the class by a mile, natural politician. The kind of kid where the principal writes, "I've been here 30 years and this is the most impressive student I have met." Going into college, the stated career goal was to get an MD but also to be involved in politics and health care-related public policy. Solid middle-class family, immigrant parents with low-level professional jobs. Came out of Harvard an associate at an ultra-high-end private wealth management firm.

2 -- Incredibly impressive kid who immigrated to the U.S. at 14. English the kid's 4th language. Very, very competitive, outworked everyone. STEM-oriented, wanted to get an MD/PhD and cure cancer. Parents were academics in their home country, barely-getting-by blue collar workers here. Was accepted at a top-level MD/PhD program out of Harvard, completed her Biology PhD but only one year of medical school. Went into a McKinsey summer program at one point during graduate school, and took a full-time position there.

3 -- Rich, lefty kid whose parents were a history professor and a socially-minded housing developer. A wonderful writer, full of beautiful ideas about policy, philosophy. Very academic. Won a Hoopes prize for a senior history thesis on public orphanages in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, also a secondary concentration in studio art. Took a job at Bain, then cycled into Silicon Valley venture capital.

4 -- Resident alien from a high-income, professional Japanese family. Not the best grades, but the most impressive intelligence in the high school class. Beautiful, conceptual mathematician. Went directly from Harvard to law school, working as an international business lawyer.

To be fair, I know other Harvard kids in that generation who didn’t go for the bucks, who got PhDs in academic subjects. But none of the many other kids I know from my kids’ cohort had what seemed to be such sharp deviations from who they seemed to be before college. (Sure, I know, kids change majors all the time, but they don’t change personalities.) And in almost all other cases where a kid did something surprising out of college, it was a swerve away from the mainstream and comfort.

None of these kids had to worry about making a living. Rich or poor, they were (are) so far outside the norm in terms of intelligence and capacity for work that employability was simply never an issue. It is a little disappointing to see them cashing in on their talents so aggressively. Now, it may be unfair to say Harvard made them do it, but I just didn’t see that kind of flip in anyone who went elsewhere.

In contrast, I can think of four or five kids who went to LACs with “impossible dream” ambitions, and dang if 5-8 years out of college they aren’t out there pursuing those very ambitions, and with traction, too.

115

Grade inflation may also be motivated by such things as medical and law school placement. A college with less grade inflation may be disadvantageous to its pre-med and pre-law students when they apply to medical and law schools that are very GPA-sensitive.

116

Re: #113 @JHS

Harvard is known as a feeder for finance and consulting, so your anecdotal examples are consistent with that.
https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/out-of-harvard-and-into-finance/

117

I think DeepBlue is right about the atmosphere at Harvard, in post #112. I actually think something is lost by this, in the sciences. There are a number of large public research universities that would be really glad to have grad students of the caliber of the average Harvard undergrad. On the one hand, I understand that the average Harvard undergrad may prefer a more remunerative career than academic science (or NASA or NIST or JPL). On the other hand, the “import very intelligent foreign students for grad school and keep them” or “import foreign researchers and keep them” strategy is not likely to work in the long run. The circumstances in the period about 6-7 years ahead of WW II through the second half of the twentieth century were unusual. In the interests of the country, money has strategic significance, but science has strategic significance as well, and in some eras it may be the more important.

I think that JHS’s post #113 illustrates what “looks like winning.” A student at Harvard from anywhere below the top 0.05% is likely to be somewhat surprised to see the range of experiences and opportunities that real wealth can buy, and it is pretty hard to resist its allure. (Personally, I would like to purchase original art work of very high quality–unlikely to happen.) There was a line in the Sunday New York Times not long ago, where a child in elementary school responded to a question about a vacation by saying that it was nice, but next time he wanted to “fly private, like everyone else.”

There are trade-offs, of course. My career suits me, my curiosity, and my consumption requirements very well (aside from that one artwork-thing). I don’t think I would actually enjoy careers 1-4 in that post, though they have a certain amount of glamor, and my work also has its down side.

To connect back to the actual thread topic: I suppose the reaction of most students to the idea that Harvard might shift their aspirations strongly in the direction of wealth acquisition would be to say, “Well, that sounds okay,” rather to shift university preferences.

118

But how is the SES distribution at Harvard significantly different from that of other super-selective private schools (universities and LACs)? I.e. any student who attends any such school may find that many of his/her fellow students are scions of wealth that may seem unimaginable to those from middle income, or even upper income mainly through labor, families.

119

ucbalumnus, the SES distribution probably is not much different at Y or P (though perhaps a little), and it does raise issues elsewhere, too.

On the other hand, I think that Harvard culture probably leads to a little more emphasis on “winning” than at other schools. Competing to get into EC groups? I have heard students express frustration that after a long slog of competition, they reach Harvard and find yet more competition. Others could correct this view, if it is a misperception. Also, I think that Harvard students are advised to a slightly greater extent by each other, rather than by the faculty or other experienced advisors (relative to students at Y or P). This could be wrong, too–my sample size is pretty small, but this is what I have seen.

120

@ucbalumnus - the difference, imo, is that Harvard’s going to have somewhat more wealthy students, and their wealth is going to be somewhat greater on average, because the admitted legacies are more likely to be superwealthy than at many comparable schools and there’ll be somewhat more development cases, who are also likely to be wealthier than many other schools’ development cases, since they’re drawn from the richest of the rich all over the world by the Harvard brand.

I remember a while back there was a thread where someone was talking about how Villanova had so many rich kids, and another person responded, in effect, “yeah, but they’re not Harvard rich - they’re the children of prominent local businesspeople, not Gulf sheiks or oligarchs”.

There are certainly people like this at peer schools, but I think Harvard’s are greater in number and richer (although I think Stanford is moving up fast).