In the admissions context, “yield protection” schools perhaps adopt Nash’ approach as well.
It is actually really hard to run into a new Harvard graduate in most parts of the country. Here is the breakdown of number of students going to each state in 2019:
100+: (3) MA,NY, CA
50-99: (1) DC
10-49: (11) CT, NJ, PA, OH, IL, NC, GA, FL, TX, CO, WA
1-9: (24) ME, VT, NH, RI, MD, WV, VA, SC, MI, WI. MN, IA, MO, IN, AL, MS, LA, OK, WY, UT, AZ, NM, OR, AK
0: (12) DE, KY, TN, AR, KS, NB, SD, ND, MT, ID, NV, HI
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My background is similar. I attended a state flagship on a full-ride scholarship and then went to a HYPSM for grad school. My school offered a special set of core classes for those that received this scholarship, and these students were overall brighter than my grad school peers. In fact, most of us were accepted into a HYPSM for grad school. Even today, I strongly believe there are many very bright kids at state flagships.
That said, the situation has changed since I attended college some 30 years ago. The college sorting process has become more efficient, by which I mean that stronger students are more likely to end up at elite colleges today than in the past, for the following reasons.
- Better information: I grew up in the midwest in a small town. I had heard of Harvard, Yale and MIT, but had no idea what the Ivy League was. Never heard of Stanford. I didn’t know some, like Cornell, had very good engineering programs that were a potential fit for me. Today, we have information sources like CC and Reddit’s A2C, and online access to college ratings from US News and other sources. It is easier for strong kids to find potential fits beyond their state flagship.
- Better aid: There was no way my family could afford a private college at the time. But colleges are quite generous today for families with low income, and in some cases cheaper than the state flagship (yes, I know that donut hole families still struggle).
A recent National Merit Scholarship Corporation showed that winners ended up most often at the following colleges:
- USC
- University of Chicago
- University of Florida
- Harvard
- University of Alabama
In summary, these students ended up either where they were offered money, or at the most selective private colleges. Among the most elite public colleges, Berkeley was 16th, and Michigan didn’t make the top 20.
When it comes to highly competitive prizes, the situation is even more pronounced. Harvard and MIT by themselves often end up with 40% or more of the Regeneron STS finalists with the rest mostly scattered among other top 10 schools.
This concentration of talent changes the nature of the university considerably from a state flagship. At a state flagship, a smart kid can find his intellectual peers within the honors program, but less so outside. At an elite college, most kids are intellectual peers. This means that classes can move at a faster pace because the median student is much stronger.
In other words, you hustled for the opportunities and did well. Same story here.
But at the elite colleges, the concentration of talent among students and faculty means that its students have access to opportunities that you may not hear about in many places. I had never heard of venture capital at my state flagship. At Harvard and MIT, not only have students heard of it, but the clubs provide coaching on what VCs look for and how to create a pitch, and social events where VCs can be met in a casual setting. Twenty years ago, most Boston area VCs were in a suburb in Waltham. Today, many of them are now in Cambridge, right across from the MIT campus.
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A couple of things.
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The peer community at an elite school like Harvard (or any top school) can be quite motivating and inspiring. Raw intelligence aside, if one finds that peer group stimulating, it’s very easy to get sucked up into the “success vortex” whether it be academic or professional based. When everyone around you is pursuing their X, it becomes an expectation for you to pursue yours. Of course you can do quite well without that, but the mindset becomes institutional which is helpful.
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In certain areas (some would argue many), Harvard has world renowned professors. One of my HS buddies puts it this way, “If you’re going to study X and use the resources available, Harvard is the best place in the world. If you’re course of study doesn’t involve their strength and/or if you fail to capitalize on it, you’re just around a lot of smart kids but that can happen anywhere.” He uses himself and another HS classmate as examples. He majored in Politics / Government but went into the business world and has had a nice career but nothing amazing. Doesn’t think he particularly benefited from all that H offers although thought it was great just being around the environment. The other classmate, however, was a brilliant history major and was mentored by one of the top, if not the top, constitutional history profs in the country. He ( the student) now sits as the Dean of that department at another world class university. Is frequently quoted and published, etc. In his case, H made a huge difference.
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You have to be careful with the National Merit Winners data. At places like Alabama that give scholarships to finalists, every finalist becomes a winner. At a place like Harvard, less than 50% of the finalists convert to winners. I wish the would publish NMF by college. That would be a better comparison.
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NMF does list the number sponsored by the college. If you exclude the NMSs that were sponsored by the college, then the order for changes to the following (for the year referenced in the earlier post). Harvard comes in first by this metric every year, often by a wide margin.
1 . Harvard – 195
2. Stanford – 157
3. MIT – 147
4. Berkeley – 124
4. Yale – 124
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What is the source of this data, and for what year? It doesn’t match the 2019 entering class numbers from the National Merit organization annual report. And why exclude the NMFs sponsored by the college? They are still NMFs.
The original list was based on the 2017-18, so I continued using that same year for the college sponsored excluded.
Suppose you have 2 students with the same NMS score from the same state. One attends Harvard, and one attends USC. USC sponsors the kid, so he gets the scholarship and is included in the total. Harvard does not sponsor the kid, so he may not be included in the total, in spite of having an identical NMS score to the USC kid. A similar pattern occurs for many kids such that I expect Harvard has more kids who are NMS eligible based on PSAT score than USC, yet USC has more NMSs because USC sponsored the NMS-eligible kids and Harvard did not.
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I got my data from Wikipedia and used the latest information there which was for 2017-2018.
The colleges that offer scholarships for national merit vary quite a bit. At the time UChicago offered a token amount of $2k per year, whereas USC offered a half-tuition scholarship, and I think Alabama at the time offered a full ride.
How does the data account for kids who get corporate sponsored scholarships vs. those who don’t?
One of my kids got a corporate award; the next one did not, despite having higher scores (and being designated a finalist) because the parent had changed jobs to a company which did not have the program.
I suspect there is a lot of noise in the data about who gets and does not get a scholarship… and thus it’s hard to compare college to college…
I think the root of the issue is the NMS list is not intended to identify the number of students at particular colleges who get outstanding top 1% PSAT eligible scores and/or are NMS finalists. Instead it’s intended to identify the number of students who get NMS awards. The (majority?) of NMS finalists who don’t attend a sponsoring college, don’t get a corporate sponsor, and don’t get a special scholarship are not included. This makes it unmeaningful to compare the number of NMS scholars at colleges that convert all attending NMS finalists to award winners via sponsorship to colleges that do not convert any attending NMS finalists to award winners.
In any case, it’s clear that Harvard has a lot of high scoring kids – both high PSAT scores and high SAT/ACT scores. One difference between Harvard and “typical universities” is a higher concentration of high scoring kids.
Harvard doesn’t sponsor any NMFs. The National Merit org and schools track NMF matriculation very closely. What the data show is that NMF merit aid is important to many NMF students, and is partially why they choose schools that give merit aid rather than those that only give need-based aid (like Harvard).
In my experience, albeit limited, the fields that really care about college prestige are often the ones that pay very little, such as book and magazine publishing or private schools looking to hire teachers.
These “pay very little”?
Management consulting
Investment banking
Law (with respect to one’s law school)
Tenure track college faculty (with respect to one’s PhD school within the particular subject)
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Here’s a field where prestige meant nothing: My father teaches surgical residents. He would often tell me that the medical students from Harvard know a lot, but if they cannot tie a knot, they are not going to be surgeons. You know what - a lot of them could not tie knots, but the residents from medical schools that were not as prestigious who could - he would hire them.
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I’ve already interviewed at Google. My degree is not prestigious by a long shot, but they liked my experience. Same story with a number of fortune 500 companies. I’ve had big corporate jobs before and I can tell you they’re overrated. They pay well, but a lot, if not, most of them are like working at gunpoint with zero job security. If the goal is to get a big name job coming out of a big name university, it’s a fast track to a miserable career. The best thing is to find an affordable fit. That’s a life lesson for your your career too.
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I was talking about a BA degree. Graduate degrees are where it matters and arguably it’s easier to get into a good Law, Med or PhD program from a school where you really stand out. In terms of BAs, it is true that investment banks can be snobby but I know from experience they also like to hire from the flagship state schools and have a fondness for Baruch in NYC, which is a public city college so being hungry is also a predicate. Management Consultants certainly show up to recruit at state schools outside of the USNWR top 25 and have done so for decades. But trying to get a foot in the door at The New Yorker or Conde Nast without an Ivy degree can be a little trickier. Not saying anyone should aspire to that. Just a fairly light observation.
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This is a broad question, as there are countless differences from Harvard and “typical universities.” Some of the differences include:
- History and Reputation – Harvard was established in 1636, making it the oldest college in the United States, with a long history of traditions. Harvard probably has a greater name recognition among the general population than any other US college. Some people react positively to the name, and some react negatively; but most people react in some way to “dropping the H-bomb.” There are many well known alumni, and the college regularly is mentioned in TV/movies.
- Endowment – Harvard’s endowment is over $40 billion, which is larger than any other college in the United States. The huge endowment has a wide range of indirect influences on things like financial aid and USNWR ranking.
- Cost / FA – Harvard is one of the least expensive colleges in the United States for typical lower and middle income families after FA. With typical assets, Harvard has ~$0 expected cost to parents for families earning under ~median US income, and is quite low cost to parents for families earning up to over $150k income. Harvard claims they are less expensive than state schools for over 90% of US families.
- SES – One of the reasons Harvard can offer such excellent FA is the bulk of the entering class is not in the lower/middle income range for which there is excellent FA. Public and less selective colleges tend to have a much better representation of lower income, URM, rural, … students. However, Harvard is better than many other highly selective private colleges in this respect.
- Athletics – Harvard has ~42 Div I varsity sports teams, which is I believe is more than any other college. Harvard has a huge number of athletes and a huge athletics budget. However, what differs from big publics is the degree of emphasis or existence of less popular sports among the general population (not football, basketball, baseball, soccer, …).
- Selectivity/Student Body – Harvard is extremely selective. 57k students applied to Harvard this year. It will probably have an acceptance rate of 4% or less, which will probably be the among the 2-3 lowest acceptance rate academic colleges . The student body tends to be full of students who excel academically as well as excel on other criteria used in their admission system. There is a higher concentration of academically stellar students than at “typical universities”
- Classes – The higher concentration of academically stellar students above results in an opportunity for especially advanced classes, such as Math 55, which some consider among the most challenging undergraduate math classes in the United States. Harvard also offers slow and less rigorous math tracks, such as Ma/Mb, but students have the opportunity for more rigorous math classes than at most “typical universities.” Typical class size is smaller than most large publics, although bigger than typical smaller LACs. It varies by major.
- Professors – Harvard professors are often well known experts in their field. I expect many wrote the textbook, rather than teach from others’ textbook.
- Major distribution – For many years… possibly decades, Harvard’s most popular major has been economics. The most popular major in the United States overall (business) is not offered at Harvard. Historically Harvard has emphasized liberal arts over more vocational fields like business, engineering and CS. However, this seems to be changing. CS is becoming and increasingly popular major, and Harvard has been improving their engineering program.
- Outcomes and First Jobs – In the most recent senior survey, 45% of seniors entering the work force said they planned to work in finance or consulting. Wall Street finance and consulting type positions are far more common among Harvard grads than grads from “typical universities” “Elite” finance and consulting is one of the few fields where Harvard grads are likely to have a major advantage over “typical universities” in obtaining first jobs, and this seems to be a common path among Harvard grads.
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And even google’s initial round of tests are just that - an initial screen. If your goal is with a research group the tests gets increasingly harder. On top of that google’s code tests are considered easy compared to tests from some other companies.
Writing a textbook would actually be below most of them.