Undergrad school really matter?

tk21769
Sat, 18 Jun 2016 11:32:34 +0000

Regarding the impact of college choice on future earnings, the research findings are mixed.
Dale & Krueger conclude that for most students, attending a more selective college is unlikely to have a very big impact on career earnings (http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/117/4/1491.short). Other researchers reach different conclusions. Example: https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0002s.pdf.
It may matter how great the differences are in selectivity/prestige (and cost) among the schools you’re comparing.

In my opinion, a difference of 10, 20, or even 50 positions in the major college rankings probably is not worth a big price premium (one resulting in above-average debt at graduation) only for the sake of future earnings. CS (/computer engineering) is a very marketable major. If you do well in a reasonably strong program, you shouldn’t also need a prestigious college brand to land a good job. You may or may not want to pay more for other reasons.

As for graduate school admission, or PhD completions, there do seem to be significant outcome differences from school to school. Colleges with the highest per capita rates of alumni-earned doctorates tend to be more selective colleges, although some relatively obscure and not-too-selective colleges also do well. An NSF report identifies schools with the highest rates of alumni-earned PhDs in STEM fields. Table 4 shows a per capita ranking.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/

The following excerpted list shows the number of computer science doctorates earned by alumni of various colleges from 2005-2014. Keep in mind that these are raw numbers (not rates adjusted for school or program size).
PhDs … Alma Mater
183 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
177 University of California, Berkeley
174 Carnegie Mellon University
134 Cornell University
97 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
94 Harvard University
92 Brigham Young University, Provo
83 Stanford University
83 University of Texas at Austin, The
80 Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
73 University of Washington
69 Princeton University
68 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
67 Brown University
63 University of Maryland, College Park
58 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
57 Pennsylvania State University, The, University Park and Hershey Medical Center
54 Harvey Mudd College
53 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy
53 University of Virginia, Charlottesville
…
4 Allegheny College
4 Alma College
4 American University
4 Boston College
4 Bowie State University
4 Bradley University
4 CUNY, Baruch College
4 California State University, East Bay
…
1 CUNY, College of Staten Island
1 CUNY, Graduate Center
1 CUNY, Lehman College
1 CUNY, York College
1 California School of Professional Psychology, Fresno
1 California State University, Dominguez Hills
1 California State University, Fresno
1 California State University, Stanislaus
…
Source: https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/TableBuilderDetailed