<p>@uskoolfish:</p>
<p>Except that the unrigorous way that the author separates the schools makes such a claim suspect. For example, do Harvard and BU grads perform equally well? Do Cal and Oregon St. grads perform equally well? Do Dartmouth and Northern Iowa grads perform equally well? They’re in the same tier. So what does it mean for average TierI undergrads outperform average TierIII undergrads when Cal undergrads outperform BU undergrads?</p>
<p>The problem is that there is significant overlap between the tiers when it comes to student body quality or any other metric that you care to use due to the (intentionally, IMO) shoddy way the author separated the schools (and as I pointed out, by alumni results, Vandy is actually fairly low in TierI and below a bunch of LACs, so this study makes Vandy look better than it otherwise would if you just compared school by school rather than tiering by some fairly idiosyncratic method).</p>