<p>Having looked at the study, I find it extremely murky whether they found anything.</p>
<p>One problem is that the control they use isn’t convincing. They need to measure not the applicants’ admissions qualifications but their <em>yield</em> attributes, i.e. which type of college will they attend when admitted. Applicants who decline admission offers from the top schools may do so for reasons that would not be reflected in admission but are strongly influential on income, such as their level of interest in a PhD compared to investment banking, or degree of affinity for prestige and achievement, or a lack of confidence in their ability to perform at the more elite university.</p>
<p>The Dale and Krueger draft study link posted stated that there was an increase in earnings from going to an elite college. However, they also stated that the >20% rate of return was for students going to college in the late 1970s and with the increase in college tuition, the rate of return would return to “more normal levels”. The study does not seem to draw any definitive conclusion on the actual earnings value of attending an elite school vs a state school for the matched population. They find average SAT score MAY be too coarse, but don’t definitively dismiss this and do not offer another way to evaluate whether it is the instituion or the student’s ability that is more important factor in future earnings.</p>
<p>The data do not appear to be available to determine the impact of undergraduate institution on success or even earnings. Many other factors come into play. Many students at elite colleges have huge advantages over state school students in terms of parental money and connections that lead them to internships and jobs. Many of these students can take unpaid internships or research jobs in the summer while their less fortunate counterparts need a paying job, regardless of their college of attendance.</p>
<p>I don’t understand how dividing the number of PhD degrees awarded by the number of undergraduate degrees is a measure of anything meaningful. It may simply mean that the school with the lower ratio has more undergraduates, not that it is less efficient. A better measure of quality would be the percent of students finishing the PhD and their job outcomes. </p>
<p>Most undergraduates do not go on to obtain PhD degrees. For many students, free tuition and financial support are available for PhD programs but not for masters or professional degrees. Many students may go on to earn a Master’s degree in fields like education, social work, planning, international relations, or even science. Most of these are self-pay and having huge debt from undergraduate school can greatly limit a student’s ability to pay for such a degree.</p>
<p>For certain highly motivated students looking to work in finance or other fields in which connections are important, going to the elite may be worth the financial sacrifice. For many others, looking at other fields, the cost may be too high.</p>
<p>Certainly, for those very few students that can choose between an elite private and an uber-selective scholarship program at a State U, the advantages of the latter are many - particularly for those planning on further studies. The Grad School institution is more important in most fields than the undergrad school. I thank the OP for taking the time to post here.</p>
<p>But their study may not have anything to say about that. They claim that including the pool of colleges admitting or rejecting a given student serves as a control on bias from selection of applicants by the colleges. However, to draw conclusions they need to control the bias from selection of colleges by the admitted applicants. The low yield numbers at most colleges indicate that (contrary to what they assume in the study) there isn’t much relationship between these two sources of bias; admissions committees are indeed taking into account variables that the study can’t measure directly, but not in a way that has anything to do with controlling self-selection bias in the students. </p>
<p>One expects that for applicants with a given range of matriculation choices including some elite and non-elite schools, are there systematic factors driving both the choice and the later income levels (e.g. degree of ambition of the student) or influence of that choice on the income (lesser debt allowing for career in the nonprofit sector, etc).</p>
<p>i find it odd that of all the current 45 phD computer science students at stanford,NONE is from the ivy league.MIT has about three,stanford undergrad none,and IIT predominates.could someone explain to me this phenomenon?</p>
<p>“Not only are you much more likely to get into a top graduate program if you go to an elite private college, you are also much more likely to graduate in 4 years”.
i respectfully disagree.if you check Yale`s website,only one student in their computer science program went to grad school.if you check the stanford phd students(cs)NONE is from an elite ivy.MIT has a greater representation than stanford and IIT has the largest number of students</p>
<p>Getting a Ph.D. in computer science is unusual, villager - very hard to draw conclusions from that field. Check the current Stanford PhD candidates in math or physics. Are there ivy leaguers there? </p>
<p>(re: this thread - I think large state schools offer great opportunities for undergrads.)</p>
<p>Are there any reference books that profile the various honors colleges at state universities around the country? It doesn’t appear nearly as easy to learn about those as it is about the rest of the university in general, yet they seem to vary considerably in their benefits and offerings. TIA</p>
<p>^ The best advice I can offer is to do your due diligence on each individual program. The websites should make the available offerings fairly clear.</p>
<p>To make matters even more complicated, many elite schools ALSO offer ultra-selective programs such as the ISP at Northwestern, or well-known classes “on steroids” that students join on invitation only (such as the Math 55 at Harvard), so often students are not comparing “ordinary” elite school perks against those given to winners of the ultra-selective state university scholarships.</p>
<p>“My belief is that good students with drive and determination will find a way to get the most out of whatever school they attend. It sounds like that is exactly what you did.”</p>