That kind of study has been done, and has been discussed fairly extensively on CC. http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/117/4/1491.short
Dale & Krueger find that, for most students, there is no significant financial return to choosing a more selective college. If you’re admitted to a selective school but choose to attend a less selective school, you’ll probably earn about as much in your lifetime as if you had chosen the more selective school. So, any apparent financial ROI associated with attending an “elite” college probably is due to selection effects, not treatment effects.
Other studies suggest that there may be a significant financial ROI from choosing a super selective school compared to choosing a much, much less selective school. Keep in mind, too, that these studies only examine the financial ROI. There may be other (non-financial) benefits to attending an elite college. But most researchers (and CC threads) seem to focus on the financial return (for which, as far as I can tell, there is not very good, consistent evidence.)
Or are we? Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis on which to conclude that HappyAlumnus should dominate this conversation.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some lovely filth (a.k.a., my job) to get back to.
A college isn’t “tops” if all of its grads held to Goldman Sachs or Blackstone or what-have-you. It’s a mark agains them, frankly, if their grads have so little imagination. I love reading in my (elite school) alumni mag about all the cool things people are doing. Two of my fellow alums run late night TV shows. That’s infinitely cooler than yet another cog at Blackstone. And how boring if that’s what everybody did.
If tomorrow GS stopped recruiting at Harvard, it wouldn’t make Harvard a “worse” school or less worth attending.
Quality education is worth striving for, not the tacky ooh-it-makes-so-much-money and it’s-presTEEEEGious.
"Look right here in the US where many of the top companies (Goldman, Silverlake, MBB, BlackRock) only recruit at a handful of schools: Ivys + other elites. "
Why do you think these are “top” companies? What makes them inherently better to work at than, oh, say, an aeronautical company or a consumer packaged goods company or an insurance company or (insert other field of your choice)? You don’t think people at all of these places do interesting, intellectual, stimulating, analytical work surrounded by other bright people? I fail to see one reason why I would root harder for one of my kids to get a job at Goldman versus, say, Procter & Gamble.
These companies are only “prestigious” to the kinds of people for whom how they are viewed in the eyes of others is of utmost importance, which is another way of saying - people I have zero desire to “impress.”
You don’t SERIOUSLY think that someone who works for Blackstone walks into a room and everyone around them oohs and aahs, do you?
A friend who went to Harvard law started her career by working at a New York law firm like Wachtell. She never planned to stay there, but did it for the experience of living in NYC and working at one of the top law firms in the country. She hated working there, but stayed two years before getting a high profile corporate law job in the south, a position she has held since then. Working in NYC for that kind of law firm was a big boost in her career, and fast-tracked her to a position she probably would not gotten so early on or may not have gotten at all if she had attended the local flagship state school.
@Bromfield2 posted a similar example of a top student at Cincy earning a clerkship and then working 5 years at a big law firm before becoming a law professor. Chances are this woman would not have been hired as a professor without the clerkship or the background in Big Law.
Smart, driven people do not look for a job after college, they look at ways to launch a career. Attending a school that is elite in their field gives them more options to strategically plan that career, and meet whatever goals or be successful however they define it.
“Why do you think these are “top” companies?”
Because even average employees there who do not stand out in the crowd get paid huge amounts of money .
This is a quote, or close paraphrase, of something I heard once, in a small room:
“For your age, experience and responsibility levels you are the highest paid people in the United States”
It’s possible that where people who have the most options tend to go may be an indicator. IIRC approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of HYPs graduating classes head off to financial services.
"What makes them inherently better to work at than, oh, say, an aeronautical company or a consumer packaged goods company or an insurance company or (insert other field of your choice)? "
Because people work to make money, Otherwise they’d be sitting on their butts at home making posts to CC.
And with respect to that particular objective, “For your age, experience and responsibility levels you are the highest paid people in the United States”.
That’s basically the main reason.
I personally have worked at both I banks and a Fortune 500 type company, and in my mind the I banks were much better places to work. They had smarter people, employees were treated better, and they had much less beaurocracy.
And the employees made more money. I think benefits and vacation packages were better too.
Regarding other stuff, IIRC some time back Goldman Sachs was routinely listed in the “100 Best Companies to Work For” book, one can read it and find out what those authors were thinking. I don’t remember.
We get it, your a provincial mom from the South, who could give a hoot about what they do on either coast–great, enjoy your life and your region of the world. The major thrust of the thread was thoroughly explored, and if I have the latitude to paraphrase, what most people said, was not that doors are closed, but that for some careers, the door was opened much wider, at least in the beginning–coming out of some undergraduate school.
There was no judgement that one school is better or for that matter one career was better, than the next. For one person, barrels of money is the height of his profession, and for another, public service is the objective–to each his own. You are prematurely pivoting to opinions and perspective most folks are not actually making. Most folks were merely providing binary examples where certain institutions created more leverage and access in the beginning–nothing more. If I said Georgetown SCS is much better than SMU for a career in diplomacy and the state department, it is fact, not a platitude. Give us a break with all the snarky attitude and tone…
Again, the whole premise of the thread has been twisted, as always happens when a few of the elite or bust crowd gets their panties in a wad when other posters refuse to bow at the alter of Ivy.
There is NO NEED to argue that going to elite schools often opens doors for its grads. Of course that is true.
That is not what the thread title implies. The thread title states that not going to an elite school CLOSES DOORS, which is just completely and patently false from anything other than an extremely narrow perspective.
One poster on this thread, who is actually yet another incarnation of a banned poster (and who is also now banned because it’s against TOS to keep registering after you’ve been banned) even went so far as to state that only one in 30,000 at Tailgate U will ever succeed and went on to blather that if you send your kid to a “non elite,” that kid is “Disadvantaged. PERIOD.” Also patently false.
It’s been shared that most members of congress did not go to an elite. Same with the majority of CEOs. It is a fact that if you look at any given state and find the movers and shakers, the successful men and women in those societies, a substantial number of them will have stayed local and gone to school at their state institutions. I’d be willing to bet that every poster chiming in on this thread knows a number of successful individuals who did not go to an elite school.
The whole premise of this thread is complete and utter BS. If one doesn’t have the stats to go elite, if one doesn’t have the money to go to one of these schools, if one doesn’t want to take on debt in order to go to one of these schools, if one’s family has a tradition of going to the big State U or the less prestigious private, one can still get a good education and go on to do great things. That person who succeeds in spite of not getting that degree from one of only a handful of schools is not some unusual outlier, they are not one in 30,000, and they are not horribly “disadvantaged PERIOD.”
back to the posts about law school: my sister graduated #1 in law school from a northwestern state; and started during the big tech bubble with a northwest-area giant company; and worked there until just recently. she’s now sought after by other large tech companies nationwide for her expertise.
However, she has told me how she’s glad she got in when she did; no way would her first company now hire any lawyer who wasnt from an ivy. (She was miserable working for so long at that first company though. she had no life).
“What makes them inherently better to work at than, oh, say, an aeronautical company or a consumer packaged goods company or an insurance company or (insert other field of your choice)? "
Because people work to make money”
Oh, see, I have a totally different point of view. I have elite-school grad friends who are stay-at-home mothers, who are ministers, who own yoga studios, who are big-shot lawyers, who are published authors, who teach at community colleges, who teach at prestigious / elite colleges, who are doctors, blah blah blah. I don’t have a need to rank them all as successful-or-not by the amount of money they make. If they are happy with what they do, and self-sufficient, that’s success in my book. You, of course, are free to judge everything by money; different strokes.
“We get it, your a provincial mom from the South, who could give a hoot about what they do on either coast–great, enjoy your life and your region of the world”
I’m not from the South, fwiw. I’m Northeast born and bred, though no longer live there.
It’s equally provincial to think that the world revolves around Wall Street. Well-traveled and sophisticated people don’t think that way, in my experience. There’s nothing admirable about being the kind of person who actually believes in that old New Yorker map where everything west of the Hudson is flat wasteland til you get to California. That’s not a sign of sophistication in the least if you think that’s real and not satire.
“It’s possible that where people who have the most options tend to go may be an indicator. IIRC approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of HYPs graduating classes head off to financial services.”
Yes. But you’re confused. The point of an education isn’t to make a lot of money, though a lot of money may result. It’s to become better educated and knowledgeable, which is an end in and of itself, and it’s worthwhile regardless of whether you go off to Goldman Sachs and make $4MM or open a yoga studio and make $40K.
This is a very lemming-like mentality. If, all of a sudden, oh, let’s say, insurance companies started paying starting salaries of six figures, then the top students at HYPS would flock there instead of to the financial services they currently flock to. There is nothing inherently better about financial services, so the % of people who go there isn’t a measure of anything other than who drags the dollar bill on the ground.
HYPS would not be “better” if 90% of their grads head off to financial services. It would be a shame, really. Why you think it reflects well on an institution that everyone follows the same path is beyond me.
This thread has made me wonder about the various definitions of “success” and how that is affected by one’s education. What about the majority of those graduates from elite schools who aren’t on the Supreme Court or billionaire bankers or (with a bow to the west-coast elites) a fabulously wealthy tech entrepreneur?
What about my friends who work in the midwest next to lowly public school grads and second-tier scholars? I hope my doctor with his degree from Harvard and his cozy one-person practice doesn’t feel like a failure. I hope my former business partner who recently sold his small research firm for a modest sum doesn’t feel like a failure. I hope my next door neighbor who’s starting his own one-man consulting firm because he doesn’t want to move back to the East Coast doesn’t feel like a failure.
Let’s face it, most of the people who graduate from “elite” schools live lives that are not much more spectacular than those that we pleasant peasants enjoy. At least I’m not feeling like a failure because I’m not working at a “top company.” I hope they aren’t either.
DH and I graduated from the same non-Ivy undergrad and Ivy grad institutions. He’s a CEO managing thousands for CEO pay. I manage a dinky non-profit for free. We’re both equally happy and fulfilled in our work. Go figure.
" I hope my doctor with his degree from Harvard and his cozy one-person practice doesn’t feel like a failure." - No he does not along with thousands of MDs who graduated from obscure UGs and unknown, lowest ranked Med. Schools. In fact, many times these are working side by side in the same office and the Harvard grad. may not be the best doc. there either.
“HYPS would not be “better” if 90% of their grads head off to financial services.”
I was not addressing what might make HYPS better.
I was addressing why certain employers might be considered to be “top companies”.
I will add a couple more reasons.
-Routine employees work on matters that have more financial consequence to the parties/companies involved than they likely would be if they were working elsewhere.
As an example, gabbing to a fellow former engineer regarding why he headed to investment banking, his take was something like: “as an engineer I spent a lot ot time designing part of a particular system within a particular plant. As a banker, I am involved in decisions that affect the actual existence and financial well-being of the company that was building that plant, as a whole.”
A lot of, or enough in any event, people seem to like living in or near the country’s most vibrant cities.
Judging by real estate prices.
I haven’t read the whole thread…but I would love to see a study of the original “graph” taking those same people and measuring their happiness - are they divorced? do their children love and respect them? how many early childhood memories did they miss out on when they were making their millions? you get my point - I am not saying they all would rank high on these things - but some things are more important than money and being among the “elite”.
I’m reminded of something I was told while my D1 was running the gauntlet for admission to Hunter College elementary school, before we moved to the midwest.
We were told that Hunter used to admit solely on IQ tests. But at some point they conducted research and found out that their high-IQ graduates did not go on to achieve “great things”, disproportionately. So they added all these additional tests to assess other traits that would correlate more closely with “achieving great things”.
It seemed that, absent these other tests, the highest IQ kids decided it was not worth it for them to “achieve great things”; they were better off not going that route,…