Time article- title says it all........"My son was accepted to a College he can't afford- now what?"

[LucieTheLakie]

Child of privilege shares anecdote, suggests undergrad prestige is irrelevant. Unfortunately the data shows students with weaker undergrad pedigrees very rarely catch up to their graduate school peers: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238

Yes, and some would interpret those findings to mean that it's all over in high school too:

Even though some elite institutions are using their vast resources to recruit low-income applicants, a majority of their students come from well-off backgrounds. Tier 1 and 2 graduates are about twice as likely to have parents who graduated from college than students who went to Tier 4 institutions. Their children are instructed from a young age not only in academics but also in the social nuances of making contacts and building relationships. …

“What’s disturbing about this research is that it shows that even if you distinguish yourself as a great student at a Tier 4 school, and by some miracle you get into a good grad program, you aren’t likely to wind up with the tools you need to ever catch up to those people who went to a more selective four-year college,” Dr. Avery said. “You want to think that at some point the playing field is level, but the truth is increasingly clear that the answer is it probably never is. By high school, it’s pretty much over.”

http://nyti.ms/1m7nZWs

So, again, how much of this has to do with differences in grad school student “inputs,” rather than the “outputs”?

Also, I didn’t read through the entire paper, but according to that New York Times article, it sounds like a huge range of schools are lumped into “Tier 4”:

Tier 1 consists of major private research institutions like Yale, Johns Hopkins and New York University. Tier 2 schools are selective private liberal arts colleges like Middlebury and Vassar. Tier 3 are major public research universities, among them most of the University of California system. The remainder — less research intensive and selective, like Middle Tennessee State, Golden Gate University or the for-profit Grand Canyon University — fall into Tier 4.

Where are the majority of state flagships located? Tier 3 or Tier 4? What if you broke it down into 10 Tiers? Would the findings be as notable?

And did Prof. Hersch factor in any debt the student graduated with when she measured success, or was it just earnings and positions ultimately attained in “prestige” firms?

Also, I had to chuckle at the irony of her own educational background:

Education
Ph.D. (Economics) Northwestern University
B.A. (Mathematics) University of South Florida

http://law.vanderbilt.edu/bio/joni-hersch

■■■■■■ undergrad school didn’t seem to have hurt her!