<p>
In an effort to make peace here, it’s my perception that the study suggests, but does not really prove this. Flaws in the study may weaken the conclusion, but I think it does provide some evidence for the idea that there may be a long-term economic benefit to choosing the more selective school, even if it initially costs more. This is certainly better evidence than, “My cousin Earl went to Cleveland State, and now he’s a rich CEO.”</p>
<p>HUH? Seriously, stop being insulting. There’s no point in addressing your point because obviously you have all the answers. And everyone else must be in “high school.” Nothing like trying to win an argument (which I didn’t know we were having) by calling the other person uneducated.</p>
<p>I never said I was in agreement with everything said in the study or the methodology and certainly I am not extending the argument to say there is a cause and effect.</p>
<p>All I was doing in post #37 was illustrating the author’s hypothesis. I was not making data up—I was extending her idea using a possible scenario. I did not vaguely say I was verifying anything. And I purposely tried to simplify her hypothesis by using schools that most people would agree would fit into each tier.</p>
<p>And by the way, yes, the author is saying that someone who graduates the same top graduate school (Harvard), but who had a lower tier undergrad degree (Albany) will remain behind the Harvard graduate with the tier 1 undergrad degree (NYU).</p>
<p>Really you need to lighten up.</p>
<p>You should also look at the tables. They show that men who go to TierIII for undergrad and then get a TierI MBA or MD do better than men who go to TierI for undergrad and then get a TierI MBA or MD.</p>
<p>About the only safe conclusion you can draw from this study is to avoid no-name directionals if you can, but how many people are deciding between Yale and Cleveland St. anyway? Even with the poor tiering, this study doesn’t even conclusively show that undergrads at top privates do better than undergrads at state flagships if they both get in to elite grad schools in all instances(!)</p>
<p>@uskoolfish:</p>
<p>If you’re going to engage in a debate, bring the goods. It’s pretty obvious that you just bought what the author said instead of looking at her numbers and data and also that you were sloppy (to be polite) in extending her conclusion to a stronger statement than the data warranted.</p>
<p>If you look at her data, you would actually come to the conclusion that men who attend Albany undrgrad and then HBS actually do <em>better</em> than men who attend NYU undergrad and then HBS.</p>
<p>The question of “which are truly top tier schools” is one that we grapple with as parents of a rising HS junior who is still adding and subtracting from his initial target list. It’s easy enough to identify the usual suspects… HYP and the like… but the grey areas seem more difficult to pin down consistently. An example is Elon, a school that S listed initially which we discouraged after failing to see it listed highly in a few different areas (my wife and I had both considered it a “high academic” just based on general perception over the years until we dug a bit deeper. I suppose it all depends on the definition of “high academic”, as I know Elon is a fine school).</p>
<p>In light of the various opinions expressed in this thread about the tiers used in this specific study, I’d be interested to hear opinions and any direction as to what the more definitive rankings of undergraduate colleges might be. Are USNWR and Barron’s basically accurate and sufficient as a starting point for identifying (and eliminating) prospective schools? </p>
<p>Also, not sure if the list of schools used in the study was intended to be all-inclusive or not; but it seems to be. However, I noticed Dartmouth, Wake Forest, William and Mary, and Boston College missing from the list. I’m guessing this is oversight or that there is some specific reason these were excluded, and not that these are being considered as Tier IV schools(?). Many thanks.</p>
<p>Appendix Table 8 is illuminating.</p>
<p>As for rankings, I like to use the Forbes alumni results subrankings “American Leaders”, PhDs, and Student Awards as well as a WSJ ranking on elite professional school percentage rather than USN.</p>
<p>I think it depends on what your son wants to do. Elon is not a Wall Street or MBB consulting target, but the LACs seem to punch above their weight in the academic categories (student awards and PhDs). Some also have tight networks for the business world. I would not discourage Elon if cost is not a factor.</p>
<p>Hmm. Elon doesn’t rank well in those categories.</p>
<p>Yes, the MBA column in Table 8 is interesting. Not sure why there is that salary jump for Tier 2 and 3 undergrads with Tier 1 MBA’s over Tier 1 undergraduates with the same degree. Perhaps in order to get into the Tier 1 MBA program from the Tier 2 and the tier 3 school, your test scores and GPA has to be significantly higher than the Tier 1 undergrad candidate. So that may be reflected in the salary jump. They might be stronger candidates overall and their rank in the MBA program might be quite high. (Yes, this is speculation.)</p>
<p>But still, even on this table, my original example holds. For tier 4 students (Albany), there is still a significant drop in salary over Tier 1- to 3 students even for those who graduate the tier 1 MBA. </p>
<p>And for most other advanced degrees, tier one undergrads still seem ahead and tier 4 significantly behind in terms of earning power.</p>
<p>??? Which other advanced degrees. There are only 4 types listed. In 2 of them, TierIII men who attend TierI grad schools do better than TierI men who attend TierI grad schools. In the other 2, they are reversed.</p>
<p>Also, you could hypothesize about why, or you can just use common sense and realize that the terribly flawed tiering invalidates a lot of conclusions. For instance, Temple and NMSU are TierIII, but are you seriously going to tell me that they’re superior to Albany?</p>
<p>Even concerning TierIV, there are categories where they do better. For example among female MDs who go to a TierI med school, TierIV undergrads do better than anyone else.</p>
<p>One of the problems I have with this study is that the cut offs for top research U’s and top LACs seems almost random. I understand that they came from an earlier study (Herschel, 2013), but why were those cut offs chosen? For instance, the study’s author groups together the top 40 private research U’s as defined by Barron’s, with 18 defined as most competitive and 14 highly competitive. She compares them to the top 159 LACs, with 14 defined as most competitive and 40 as highly competitive. But what’s the justification for the number 159? If the study’s author were to look at the top 40 LACs and compare them to the top 40 research U’s would the results look the same or would we find that graduates of the top LACs do as well as or possibly even better than the grads of the Tier I schools? I can’t answer that question, but I’d like to see some justification for the groupings other than “selectivity is taken into account in the distinction between Liberal Arts I and Liberal Arts II.”</p>
<p>Not to mention that Barron’s doesn’t make a distinction between public and private but she does.</p>
<p>Then there’s circularity of excluding graduate programs at LACs, such as the Clark at Williams or at public research U’s, for instance the MBA programs at Ross (Michigan), Haas (UCB), Anderson (UCLA) or Darden (UVA) from the list of elite graduate programs simply because (despite their extremely high rankings) they are attached to undergraduate programs that she defines as Tier 2 or 3. </p>
<p>And Tuck@Dartmouth disappears altogether.</p>
<p>Not to mention that many of the most elite PhD programs (especially in STE fields) are in publics that she puts in TierIII.</p>
<p>First of all I was talking about tier 4 vs. tier 1 (not tier 3)–but obviously anything I bring up about the study you are going to invalidate. Whether it is due to your opposition to the tiering system that has been used or a personal agenda, I can’t say. I certainly welcome a discussion, since that was my intention when I posted the article. And as I have stated, I have no need to defend the study, but you are giving me the impression that you feel the whole hypothesis is invalid. I don’t see it that way. I also think it would be to your benefit to learn to raise your opposing views in a more respectful manner.</p>
<p>@uskoolfish: Seems that you like to make assumptions. It is true that I believe in rigor. A well-designed study can enlighten us. A poorly designed study can lead those who don’t look in to details to jump to the wrong conclusions. This study is flawed. The data also doesn’t strongly back the claim that undergraduate school is an influence for people who attend a top 10 professional school (unless maybe the difference is gigantic, as in, the difference between Yale and Cleveland St., not the difference between Albany and Syracuse, but I’m surmising, because the tiering is wacky; there is more intra-tier variability in quality than there is inter-tier variability in quality, so just because TierI schools on average do better than TierIV schools does not mean that a particular school in TierI does better than a particular school in TierIV).</p>
<p>BTW, Krugman has said that civility is the last refuge of scoundrels (I won’t go that far), but in a debate, IMO, rigor is more important than civility. Rigor can sharpen your thinking. Civility can’t.</p>
<p>Lack of civility always makes me discount the argument of the uncivil person. It’s like shouting.</p>
<p>The study’s hypothesis was to see if the prestige/status of an undergraduate program is tied to income level and whether an advanced graduate degree can equalize that disparity.</p>
<p>The study is not just trying to focus on graduate degrees from a small subset of tier 1 professional schools (top 10) to see how these degrees effects salary levels in tiers 1 to 3. And even using that subset of schools, it appears that there is an enormous salary difference in salaries for students from tier 4 schools who attend Tier 1 grad programs. (Remember that most colleges and universities in the US are tier 4.)</p>
<p>The study is addressing a much larger sample than just the top 10 grad schools. You’re right that you picked up an anomaly in the data regarding MBA students and how there is an unexplained increase in salary for tier 2 and tier 3 undergrads (Table 8). But that does not mean that the study is not rigorous nor does it mean that all of its data is flawed.</p>
<p>And talk about assumptions. For some reason from the start of this discussion you have pegged the researcher who is from Vanderbilt University as having an agenda to somehow boost Vanderbilt in some way. </p>
<p>Sheesh. </p>
<p>And by the way, I’d work on that civility thing. Arrogance is not going to help you much in life.</p>
<p>I’m use to sharp elbows. The type of place where I work values rigor more.</p>
<p>In any case, I know what the study tries to address, but the data doesn’t support its conclusions that well. You keep ignoring that it’s not just men with MBAs but also MDs where male TierIII undergrads with TierI graduate degrees do better than male TierI undergrads with TierI graduate degrees. In other words, 2 of the 4 types of graduate degrees. In other words, 50%. In other words, more than an anomaly. I find this brushing off and ignoring of what other people say to be more uncivil than anything I’ve said, frankly.</p>
<p>And the tiering being done badly <em>does</em> affect the rigor. If you have 30 schools each in 4 tiers of quality, but then put 20 T1 + 5 T2 + 5 T3 in group 1, 5 T1 + 15 T2 + 5 T3 + 5 T4 in group 2, 5 T1 + 5 T2 + 15 T3 + 5 T4 in group 3, and 5 T2 + 5 T3 + 20 T4 in group 4, what would the results of the 4 groups tell you? By using averages, you might draw the mistaken conclusion that a T3 school in group 1 does better than a T2 school in group 4 even though that specific T2 school actually does better than that specific T3 school. That seems to be what you have done with the Albany example.</p>
<p>Also, if you look at the numbers, the family aspect doesn’t change the overall results (in the specific MBA/MD/JD/PhD groupings) that much. It’s almost a non-factor.</p>
<p>In any case, I was speculating about the Vandy aspect, but even if that is baseless (and it may well be), this study is not well done.</p>
<p>BTW, @Sue22 also raised cogent points. You ignored her as well.</p>
<p>Another thing is that among men who get TierIII MBAs, the TierIV undergrads actually perform the best.</p>