<p>Then, how entrepreneurial are Ivy League graduates (compared to non-elite colleges)?</p>
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A Harvard student can study “classicis” and still meet the course requirements for medical school.
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<p>Isn’t this true everywhere? many Classics depts brag that they have a 100% acceptance (or similar) rate to med school because the pre-med Classics majors just seem to have the smarts to do well GPA-wise and MCAT-wise.</p>
<p>There is much more to education than a potential salary upon graduation. OP are you assuming that those that aspire I an Ivy League/top rated college are only interested in earnings potential? My S plans to apply to several colleges in that category, and never once has he mentioned income, or even employment for that matter. Different strokes for different folks I say. Cornell engineering is an education, ITT is a trade school. Ultimately they both lead to employment of some sort, and perhaps the pay will be the same. But to imply that the Cornell education is wasted is quite a leap.</p>
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<p>It’s not easy to answer this question. Most colleges don’t have statistics on this matter. It also depends on the size of the college, majors and professional schools offered by each college, </p>
<p>I only see some spotty reports here:</p>
<p><a href=“You’ve requested a page that no longer exists | Stanford News”>You’ve requested a page that no longer exists | Stanford News;
<p><a href=“https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/about/entrepreneurial-impact-report/[/url]”>https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/about/entrepreneurial-impact-report/</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/university-entrepreneurship-report[/url]”>CB Insights Research;
<p>Also, entrepreneurship does not mean only creating businesses. It also means managing and funding businesses and we don’t have details info on these matters.</p>
<p>We should be cautious about the claim how many businesses created by alumni of each college. Undergraduate alumni of a college is also master or PhD alumni of another college. Saying Google and HP were created by Stanford alumni is stretching the truth. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are not Stanford undergraduate alumni. HP founder William Hewlett is alumni of both Stanford and MIT.</p>
<p>@planner03 I clearly stated in my second post of this thread, “the point of my post was not to downplay trying to get into a good university, the point was the angst, and the “my life is over, because I didnt get into an Ivy”, is unwarranted. Ive read several threads about how deserving a student was, and how unfair it is, when the student actually got into U Chicago, Duke, or Wash U, or a host of other tip top schools. No one can tell me that a student going to HYP is going to be anymore successful than someone coming out of U Chicago, or the other aforementioned schools. So yes, the school matters, but if your had the stats to get into an Ivy, you will be successful at a different school if you desire.”, </p>
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<p>Any engineering is more trade school than education…</p>
<p>I am struck by some of the facile assertions on this thread. I’ll mention three.</p>
<p>(1) “Top-notched scientists, researchers, professors earn very little.” By what standard are you saying “very little”? As someone who has spent his career in academia I can say that that statement is just dead wrong about top-notch university scientists and professors. At the peak of their careers they are likely to be earning salaries that are roughly in the top 10-15% of the income distribution. That is not “very little.” And of course many top-notched scientists and researchers work in industry or national institutes or labs (think NIH, CDC, Los Alamos, etc.). They, too, earn excellent salaries and generally have excellent fringe benefits as well.</p>
<p>(2) “Any engineering is more trade school than education…” This is a very uninformed statement. ANY engineering? Engineering programs are very demanding, that is for sure. But the best engineers are going to be doing a lot more than what a “technician” with a degree from a trade school or community college can do. The stronger their intellectual curiosity and ability to think creatively and theoretically about design and production problems the better engineers they are going to be.</p>
<p>(3) “The ivy league …is for the insecure who need some sort of validation” – has already been addressed by fenwaypark.</p>
<p>Finally let me add that the Dale and Krueger studies are well designed and informative pieces of research that told us something that we may have thought we knew already but nobody had been clever enough to find systematic evidence for.</p>
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<p>By the standard used by people who think monetary reward is the measure of ability, time, and invested money to obtain a college degree.</p>
<p>Researchers and college professors spend 8-13 years in college before they get their first jobs. The starting salary of many of them is lower than the salary of many money-oriented people who just have 4-6 year college degrees and 3-5 year career history.</p>
<p>I am not saying that researchers and professors are not satisfied with their compensation and I believe they are very happy with their life.</p>
<p>I used to hear one of my coworkers complain about the salary of her spouse, a full professor at top college.
But a personal anecdote is not strong argument for this discussion. I found many consistent sources about salary of researchers and professors below.</p>
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<p><a href=“http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/average-yearly-income-college-professors-5582.html[/url]”>http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/average-yearly-income-college-professors-5582.html</a></p>
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<p><a href=“2013 Life Sciences Salary Survey | The Scientist Magazine®”>2013 Life Sciences Salary Survey | The Scientist Magazine®;
<p><a href=“http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Research+Scientist&l1=United+States[/url]”>http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Research+Scientist&l1=United+States</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=24[/url]”>Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty Salaries - HigherEdJobs;
<p><a href=“What Is the Salary Range for a Research Scientist? | BioSpace”>BioSpace;
<p>Some research scientists can make several thousands per year, however these scientists are CEO of businesses.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.fiercebiotechresearch.com/special-report/top-20-research-institute-salaries/2012-09-26[/url]”>http://www.fiercebiotechresearch.com/special-report/top-20-research-institute-salaries/2012-09-26</a></p>
<p>Some top college professor salary is very high. But I think they probably earn a lot more if money is their goal.</p>
<p><a href=“Redirect Notice”>Redirect Notice;
<p>Your original statement referred to “top notch” scientists, researchers, and professors. Your numbers in your last post refer mainly to “average” salaries of persons in such occupations. An average salary is not that of “top-notch” scientists, researchers, professors. In addition, it does not take into account the salary curve associated with aging. </p>
<p>In my field, starting salaries (Assistant Professor) in a tenure track position today will earn about $75K. Top notch full professors are earning 2 to 2.5 times that amount (a few considerably more than that). I’m not in the most high-salaried field of research. But I’m at a major R1 research university that competes in the marketplace for top talent. (Yes, it’s hard work, and we have had an extended period in college to earn our PhD’s, on the order of 10 years. But I’m not complaining. We don’t have it as hard as some professions.) </p>
<p>Assuming conservatively that a “top-notch” professor is earning at just the midpoint on the salary scale that I’m referring to, they’d be making ~$150K. However, if they were “only” earning $100K they would still be within the top 10% (above the 90th percentile) of all individual income earners in the US. That is not “very little.” And if they were earning $150K, they’d be in the top 5% of all income earners.</p>
<p>Something for you to ponder: <a href=“http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-is-your-us-income-percentile.html”>http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-is-your-us-income-percentile.html</a> </p>
<p>I should have said the salary of the top notch undergraduate students who went to graduate schools to become researchers and professors should not be used as a factor to determine whether it’s worth to go to selective colleges or not because salary is not very relevant to this group of students.</p>
<p>And again, “very little” should not be interpreted by the normal population criteria. It’s the perception of the people who think money is the most important part of life.</p>
<p>How successful is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court? Is he or she more or less successful than a senior partner at a major law firm?</p>
<p>Hunt, you crack me up. Or one could add, is being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court less successful than being a tobacco litigator or personal injury lawyer? An acquaintance of mine makes a living on “slip and falls”, particularly large shopping malls, amusement parks and casinos. You can make a comfortable 7 figure income with that. Is he four times as successful as Justice Roberts since he makes four times as much money (in a bad year)???</p>
<p>Hunt</p>
<p>Most premed experts estimate that on average only 30% of college freshman interested in medicine will apply to medical school as seniors. Harvard’s Office of Career Services estimates that 25% of Harvard freshman are interested in studying medicine and 17% of Harvard seniors apply to medical school.</p>
<p>The majority of Harvard freshman interested in studying medicine define success as being accepted to medical school.</p>
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I very much doubt that. I suspect that most Harvard students define success much more broadly than by their next educational way-station.</p>
<p>^At least I’d like to believe you are correct.</p>
<p>And I would hazard a guess that the majority of Harvard Freshman interested in studying medicine define success as attaining a residency in cardiovascular surgery or dermatology, or becoming Chief of Neurology at a major teaching hospital. I’d be curious to see how many of these Harvard Freshman interested in medicine define success as becoming a primary care physician in Chester, PA teaching indigent patients how to manage their diabetes with the government reimbursing every visit at $12 a pop, or becoming a pediatrician in the South Bronx.</p>
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Well, I think some of them may be very idealistic–although they probably see themselves travelling around the world with Medecins Sans Frontieres helping the needy.</p>
<p>Sometimes it seems to me a student working very hard with the primary goal of getting into one of the most competitive colleges may have a difficult time giving up the idea that success equals gold stars. My hope would be that the college experience made those gold stars seem much less significant, that they become a means to an end rather than an end in and of themselves. However, I see a variety of results. ymmv</p>
<p>Blossom: I don’t know about Harvard pre-meds (my sample is pretty limited), but I know a number of former Yale pre-meds who are doing the kinds of thing you describe, or who have academic positions with a significant public health focus. My former roommate is Chief Quality Officer at a major urban hospital and does outcomes research. One of my wife’s former roommates is an internist in Alaska with a very diverse (economically, ethnically) patient base, and another is head of Infectious Diseases (i.e., AIDS, venereal diseases, cholera, malaria) at a top medical school. We have two close friends who serve primarily low-income patients out of clinics associated with Boston City. All but one of them went to Harvard Medical School, by the way.</p>