16 ms·

Do Elite Colleges Lead to Higher Salaries? Only for Some Professions

110 points by luu 11y ago

jedberg 11y ago
Getting a degree from an elite institution does three things: 1) It puts you in a network of other people who went to the institution, oftentimes people who have connections that can help you in life 2) It gives you a piece of paper that shows you can follow a long term plan and execute on it, that other people recognize as a difficult long term plan to execute. 3) Gives you an icebreaker when going to interviews where you can talk about either how you and the interviewer went to the same institution, or rival institutions, or you can talk about how your elite institution was different from theirs and the same. What you don't get is a "better education". (Edit: Some have pointed out rightly that I should differentiate here between top non-elite instututions and the ones that are diploma mills, so to be clear, what I'm saying doesn't apply to the diploma mills.) You do the same work as the folks at the less elite institutions. Maybe you do it with slightly smarter people who help you learn new things that you wouldn't otherwise, but most of the "less elite" schools still use the same textbooks and materials. And heck maybe your professor wrote the book so you can get more detailed answers, but it's unlikely that that access gives you a significant leg up unless you take advantage of it. So it makes sense that in fields where skills matter, the elite college doesn't add a lot of benefit, but where connections matter, it does.
- rileymat2 11y ago
  "What you don't get is a "better education". You do the same work as the folks at the less elite institutions." Is this true? When I look at some of the prestigious universities that have some of their coursework online, some of the courses appear more rigorous and challenging than the large state school I went to. Perhaps this challenge does not amount to better education, but it certainly seems more challenging.
  - eitally 11y ago
    It really depends (especially based on area of study). But this is something every future student should research in depth before making a decision.
  - jedberg 11y ago
    I guess it depends on where you go. My assessment has come from interviewing people and getting into a discussion about what they learned in school and finding out they used the same textbook and exercises as other people I interviewed who went to elite schools. So my assessment is admittedly anecdotal.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - nostrademons 11y ago
      It's pretty common for "elite" colleges and universities to use the same course materials as state or community colleges, but to get further into it. So the textbooks would be the same, the exercises would be the same, but students at a top school would go through them faster and have an extra 2-3 weeks at the end of the course to study material at the back of a textbook. Or the professor would interject some of his own research at points within the course, taking a week out of the "standard" syllabus to learn something cutting-edge. It's quite rare for a course anywhere to get through all of the textbook - regardless of where you go, there will still be material left unlearned. (This is why one of my favorite learning strategies is to buy the textbook and then self-teach my way through it at my own pace.)
      - nilkn 11y ago
        Also, the very exam could be the same (unlikely), but the grading standards could be much higher at one school compared to another. The class discussions could also be very different, even if they're on the same material technically. The nature of the interactions in student study groups could be completely different. At one school, the student sitting next to you just got named a Putnam Fellow for the second time. At another school, no student has ever, in all history, been named a Putnam Fellow. It's quite hard to get a sense for what a course is truly like just from glancing at the syllabus.
- rhino369 11y ago
  >What you don't get is a "better education". Comparing elite schools to flagship state public schools this essential true. But there are a lot of diploma mills that water down the curriculum so people who have no business being in college can pass. Whether a better education will actually make you a better worker or person, I'm not sure sure about that.
  - nilkn 11y ago
    Would you consider Mizzou a flagship state school? If so, I transferred from there to an "elite" school, and the difference for me was pretty huge. Then again, I was a math major, and I've traditionally believed that math is one of the subjects where the school can make the biggest difference. There's a cultural aspect to math where being surrounded by a ton of extremely passionate and talented mathematicians is just impossibly valuable. At Mizzou, even the math majors didn't seem to care. I stood out like a sore thumb just for being truly passionate about the subject.
    - nikdaheratik 11y ago
      It can vary quite a bit depending on the area of study no matter which school you choose. Different flagship universities (and elite universities) have different strengths and weaknesses based on history and the faculty they bring in for research. An aerospace engineering degree from Kansas Univ. (for example) is worth more than a Mechanical Engineering degree from the same Uni. With Univ. Missouri-Rolla (for example) that might be completely reversed.
- dhawalhs 11y ago
  I did my Masters in CS from Georgia Tech. The amount of doors that open up just by being attached to top tier brand is astonishing. Even things like visa interviews become a formality. Though I disagree with the "better education" part. There were some courses that were unique only to Georgia Tech or taught by professors who were well known in their field.
  - ralphc 11y ago
    Got my Bachelor's in ICS from Georgia Tech in 1984. After a layoff from Oracle in 2012, 28 years later, my recruiter said that the Georgia Tech degree opened doors and got me interviews. I was interviewing in the metro Atlanta area but still.
    - ap3 11y ago
      After 28 years your work history would trump whatever you did in school. Amazingly the Georgia Tech degree did not prevent a layoff
      - sokoloff 11y ago
        Nor did MIT prevent 2 of mine when the company closed an entire office or killed an entire product. It did make the landing a lot softer and quicker I think. Partial layoffs (20% of your job "family") are usually about the employee. Wholesale layoffs (all of a job type, all of a product team, all of a location) are generally completely independent of the specific employee, skills, capabilities, or performance.
    - dpeck 11y ago
      oddly enough the GT degree is probably more respected outside of Atlanta/Georgia than in it.
- sbuccini 11y ago
  In the case of UC Berkeley computer science (which be both graduated from) it also (4) puts you geographically close to the heart of our industry. I've found this to be nearly as indispensable as (1).
- serge2k 11y ago
  It also gives the ability for the company hiring you to say to their clients "We only recruit from the top 5 schools in the nation".
- SerLava 11y ago
  I feel it should be pointed out that if the industry you're in is showing up as unaffected by the eliteness of your school, then it's covering the three factors you describe. If you get the same salary then all that networking either didn't actually happen or didn't actually have any impact on your bottom line.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >What you don't get is a "better education". (Edit: Some have pointed out rightly that I should differentiate here between top non-elite instututions and the ones that are diploma mills, so to be clear, what I'm saying doesn't apply to the diploma mills.) In my experience, it is more nuanced than even that. Just take computer science. There are schools that teach languages. You'll spend a semester with C, then a semester with C++, then one with Java. And then there are colleges that teach concepts. Let's look at memory management (and pointers), then let's look at data structures, then let's look at networks. Personally, the latter seem to be a far better education even if the overall experience leads to less initial skill at any given language. Or take a look even with the same college between degrees. Some science tracks requires statistics for business majors where they will spend a day learning how to sum numbers. Other science tracks require statistics for science and engineering, where multi-variable calculus is a prerequisite. Now imagine if the degree requiring the simplified statistics was switched to requiring the harder version. (All this being said, I agree connections are a bigger deal. I think what you learn does differ between colleges, but at the end of the day it isn't what you know but who you know.)
  - exelius 11y ago
    Your peer group makes a big difference too. I attended undergrad at a big state school. My classmates were largely representative of the top 30% of my high school - people who are either gifted with raw intelligence, or who do well by working hard. My school had good sports teams, and the student body spent a lot of time and effort cheering for the teams, partying, and generally having a good time. I certainly enjoyed myself, though the academic standards were so lax that I was able to pass an entire semester where I attended no classes other than the exams. There are a lot of people who just aren't interested in the academic side of school. Some years later, I went to a much more prestigious school for my MBA. This school didn't really have an athletic department (as a Division III school they were not allowed to issue athletic scholarships) and the student body as a whole was both smart and hard-working. I mean, sure, they drank their share too -- but learning was considered cool and group projects (while drinking, of course!) were a perfectly acceptable way to spend a Friday or Saturday night. That attitude is infectious and it sticks with you. Once there is positive peer pressure to learn, suddenly everyone becomes invested in everyone else's success. You go from "I heard that class was an easy A so I'm gonna take it" to "I think that class looks really interesting. Want to take it with me?" Extrapolate that from school to life and you start to see why graduates of these elite schools on the whole tend to be more successful.
- silverlake 11y ago
  I went to a top 10 non-Ivy school still bruised from my rejection from MIT. It seems MIT would go a bit further and deeper in CS subjects than my school. They could work on cooler projects because their CS faculty is huge. And every company recruits from MIT.
  - arcanus 11y ago
    I'm surprised to hear that. It never hurts to be the best, but in my experience all the top-10 (or even top-25) programs are quite competitive. My research and summer internship opportunities were just as 'cool' as at any other program, at least in my opinion. I've always found that my degree got my foot in the door, after that it was my research experience, internships and performance in interviews/code tests. I went to a top-25 non-ivy.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Yep, when you consider points 1-3 (plus filtering for some intelligence), the schools could basically just have you memorize Pokemon esoterica all day, and it would still look like a "great education". In that case, college's apologists would still give the same rationalizations about "Pokemon dynamics teach you how to learn, and give you a broader view of the world, and the Pokemon evolution system helps you better structure your thoughts for clear communication, which is obviously why it improves your earnings and is a must-have for being a well-rounded individual who doesn't just fix toilets all day".
- zaphoyd 11y ago
  In my experience it depends greatly on which schools and which subjects you are comparing. A few [anecdotal] thoughts on "better": My wife started her degree at a community college. They had pretty decent humanities courses, kind of lousy biology courses, and downright embarrassing (or really non-existant) computer science ones. She transferred for the rest of her degree to a reasonably well known, selective, but not `elite` school (was accepted at an ivy but we turned it down due to not feeling the cost was worth it). Both the humanities courses and bio courses there were excellent. The CS courses (with the exception of one class/professor) were not great. Like in the professors teaching things that were wrong sense. =\ I attended a top 10 school and classes in every field I took were well done. Better than the Hum/Bio stuff at my wife's second school? No, not really. But I didn't experience anything anywhere near as bad as her CS classes. The community college (and to a lesser extent the mid tier school) had a lot of issues with administration. At the CC you'd have to physically wait in hour long lines for basically anything (picking up IDs, seeing your advisor, fixing class registration issues, etc). The "quiet study area" signs were completely ignored. The mid tier school was much better, still, there were issues with getting into the right classes necessary to finish majors and minors as there simply weren't enough spots in the higher level classes. There was a stressful song and dance the first week of each term trying to get off of waitlists and into classes. The elite school I attended had an absurd 3:1 student/faculty ratio. The only class I ever had trouble getting into was one video games that the entire school must have registered for. I could usually walk into my professor and advisor's offices without appointments. Does this make the education "better"? Eehhh not really, but it was way less stressful and I had more time and energy to devote to learning stuff and less to dealing with understaffed bureaucracy. Finally, the elite school had a whole lot more instructors who were well known or well connected in their fields, won Nobel prizes, etc. We got many more famous and influential guest speakers. I learned C++ from a member of the C++ standardization committee. Networking from someone who worked on ARPANET. Professors that I had classes with were referenced in popular scifi tv shows. My wife jealously (but playfully) pokes me at least weekly pointing out yet another book or paper she's been asked to read in one of her classes authored by researchers from my school or they've been mentioned in a textbook as having discovered something particularly important about her field. Does this make an education "better" or worth the price of admission? I'm not entirely convinced on that, but I think I do have a better understanding of some of the inner workings of my field because of some of the stories and asides made by instructors who were there for it.
- Outdoorsman 11y ago
  >1) It puts you in a network of other people who went to the institution, oftentimes people who have connections that can help you in life< That's not to be undervalued: Based on years of experience I would estimate that the "good" jobs, often regardless of the field, are landed as follows: Networking (60% of my "gigs":) Nepotism (10%, maybe more, much less in my case) Proven Ability to Deliver (20%) Good Luck (10%) Having said that, I believe it's very possible to leverage network contacts from a smaller school, especially if you're a member of on-campus groups that have a nation-wide presence...
- sklogic 11y ago
  Forget about textbooks, they're irrelevant. The exclusive thing some universities can offer is a direct guidance from the top academics (including Nobel prize winners). This is the main (and probably the only legitimate) reason to want to be educated in such an institution. They can provide an access to an early research material which is not even published yet, and will only get into textbooks decades later.
  - harryjo 11y ago
    For the most part, this opportunity is wholly irrelevant to undergraduates -- they aren't ready to benefit from it.
    - sklogic 11y ago
      Why? They're (a majority of them) are in exactly that age when the great minds can influence them most strongly. Later on in their career they'd have a bunch of sticky prejudices, their own solidified research interests, and so on. Meeting a great mind won't sway them as much as it can do to a young and unspoiled.
      - invalidOrTaken 11y ago
        You know, it's funny; I was an undergrad when, broken-hearted over a girl and wondering why it didn't work out, I came across a partial explanation (http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html), thought, "This guy is smart and writes well," read some more (http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html), and...well, six years of lisp later...here I am.
- maxxxxx 11y ago
  I worked at a startup where we had a few people from MIT and Stanford. When investors came visiting they would be introduced "this is Mike from MIT" where other people who were at least as qualified as the ivy leaguers would get ignored. The VCs seemed impressed. They didn't even need a network. The name of the school was enough to stand out. Result is that the Stanford and MIT guys would often start their own VC funded companies. Elite institutions are a very powerful brand. And their reputation gets amplified in the media with headlines "Yale researchers discover...", "MIT develops..."
  - santaclaus 11y ago
    MIT and Stanford are not in the Ivy League.
    - dopeboy 11y ago
      Technically they're not but they afford the same level of prestige and access that an Ivy League does. So maxxxxx's point still stands.
    - maxxxxx 11y ago
      Sorry, I am not familiar with what exactly ivy league is. I hope you will agree that they are the elite schools for tech.
      - nommm-nommm 11y ago
        The Ivy League specifically are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. The Ivy League is actually an athletic conference, but the term also refers to those schools as a group in general.
      - alistairSH 11y ago
        The Ivy League is an athletic conference. The members are historically prestigious universities on the east coast of the US. MIT and a few others are frequently confused as being members because of proximity and their own prestigious histories.
- cm2187 11y ago
  There is also one important thing: a student from a good college is no more guaranteed to be smart than a student from a mediocre college to be not so smart, but there is certainly a correlation. And many top recruiters that have to process thousands of applications every year use the college as an easy filter to get better candidates. This practice, fair or not, probably achieves its goal statistically. That makes certain professions unreachable from outside of a few colleges, like some top law firms, consultancy, banks, or even tech companies!
- tzs 11y ago
  > What you don't get is a "better education" [...] most of the "less elite" schools still use the same textbooks and materials It sounds like you are concentrating on the classroom experience, but there is more to a good education than the classroom. For instance, at schools like Caltech and MIT undergraduates have excellent opportunities to get involved with research, and have access to state of the art equipment. Such opportunities are a lot more limited at, say, a Cal State branch.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I did not go to an elite school. Most people will probably not have heard of my school ;-). With that caveat in mind, here is my experience from hiring programmers over a couple of decades. Good programmers from elite schools are in high demand and can ask for relatively high salaries. When I have been working in companies with big budgets, I can get good programmers from elite schools. When I have been working in companies with smaller budgets, I can't. However, as you infer, I don't find a big difference in the quality of new graduates based on the school that they went to. Overall they seem to have a very similar gradient of ability. The schools can differ on what they concentrate on, but I have found that good quality programmers suck up everything around them anyway. Whatever they missed at school they have either independently worked on, or are keen to learn after school. From a hiring point of view, I actually target people from lesser known schools simply because there seems to be a higher percentage of good people available. Obviously from a getting hired perspective, you will have a greater chance of working on a team with a big budget right out of school if you go to an elite school. One thing I learned when I worked as a teacher: good students need very little in the way of instruction. Point them in a direction and give them freedom to learn. That will give you the best results. In fact I have been fortunate to work with several really marvellous programmers who were self-taught (though I don't recommend that approach for most people -- it's hard to focus and to know what is best to concentrate on). From my perspective, an elite school is ideal if you are hoping to make contacts and to go to a big famous company right out of school. If your goal is to learn, then you can save a HUGE amount of money by choosing a less prestigious school. I graduated with no debt (admittedly I worked programming for various professors all through school). It takes a pretty big difference in starting salary to offset that kind of advantage.
  - taurath 11y ago
    Nice to hear that perspective. I'm self taught and don't recommend it for the same reason - its also actually quite difficult to find professional mentors if you're not already in some sort of professional field with a close link to software or coding. In most ways, having no college requires more connections than college! Still, the cost of any college is absolutely stifling unless you're willing to take on a lot of debt or have parents willing to support you - unless you have absolutely top grades. Too many very intelligent people I know growing up had social or parental problems - passed all their tests but couldn't do the homework due to trouble at home.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  > What you don't get is a "better education". I attended Caltech. In my later work experience, I clearly received a more thorough education than my peers who went to other colleges, particularly in math. And yes, it did give me a leg up.
- Nimitz14 11y ago
  > What you don't get is a "better education". (Edit: Some have pointed out rightly that I should differentiate here between top non-elite instututions and the ones that are diploma mills, so to be clear, what I'm saying doesn't apply to the diploma mills.) You do the same work as the folks at the less elite institutions. It's not just diploma mills (unless every uni outside of the top ~10 is a diploma mill for you). In my opinion you are completely wrong. Quoting myself from a similar thread: > I'm at a mediocre university and watching MIT lectures has made me realize I'm missing out on literally mountains of knowledge. Never mind the qualification process, spending several years with intelligent people (both students and faculty) [also] makes a huge difference.
  - jedberg 11y ago
    No, I don't think all Universities are diploma mills, far from it. But if you feel like the content at MIT is that much better than what you are getting, you may want to bring this up with your faculty and ask them why.
- mattlutze 11y ago
  > 1) It puts you in a network of other people who went to the institution, oftentimes people who have connections that can help you in life The caveat is that you at some point need to build personal relationships with these folks. Success in the network might be a minor influence at baseline ("ah, from my old alma mater, sure I'll take the interview...") but those choice positions come from friends offering friends' friends jobs. To boot, I think this can be true even in skill-driven fields -- unless you're intended to be a pure engineer, money comes from managing people & projects (i.e. the more work you can generate for other people, the more valuable you are). These positions requires far less technical chops than we'd maybe like.
wrong_variable 11y ago
I sometimes feel we are trying to externalize all of society's ill on solving it through college/education/teachers. It seems almost ridiculous that a 17 year needs to make decisions that even someone with a Phd with economics won't be able make. I wish both kids and parents spent more time actually figuring out how to optimize learning rather than spend their energy thinking about nonsense - its almost like a gambling addiction ? I remember when I was in school I used to watch students spend a year writing college essays, preparing for SATs, shelling out insane amount of money for tutors, etc. Meanwhile I just concentrated on mathematics and programming to actually make myself valuable to society. Most people will be surprised when they realize how far they can get with books. Books are not as efficient as learning directly from Newton - but they are 1/1000 the cost. I know the economy would collapse tomorrow if everyone just stopped going to school and spent their evening reading books but humanity has bigger problems to solve then the economy.
- kec 11y ago
  The main value-add of going to a university isn't attaining an education, it's gaining access to a strong network of educated people. This is something which can't be replaced by self education (which, you'll actually be expected to do at university anyway).
  - staunch 11y ago
    In other words, you're buying membership in a club.
    - dikdik 11y ago
      Yes, how else would we keep the poor people out?
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    The vast majority of universities are not going to get you a strong network. Additionally, the vast majority of high school students are fed a line that focuses on the academics and minimizes or ignores the networking.
mhuangw 11y ago
I sometimes feel like I have an inferiority complex for not attending a prestigious school. Hopefully it'll come down to my actual skills and not just the name on my degree when it's time to find a full time job.
- dev1n 11y ago
  Generally speaking, you won't be happy working at a place that puts too much value into a college or university's credentials.
  - FLUX-YOU 11y ago
    Only if you're the only one that's not in the club. Else, it's just that: A club. And it works for some.
- jgh 11y ago
  I have a pretty crummy education but I feel like it's really forced me to have a lot more drive in my career and as such I've been more successful (so far) than a lot of people I grew up with who went to much better schools. I don't know if that's my personality or my past that's doing that though, perhaps if I went to a prestigious school I would be the same way and would be much more successful.
- euyyn 11y ago
  Don't worry, the prestigious school I went to crushes you to the point of giving an inferiority complex, so at the end we all end up the same :)
- madengr 11y ago
  Don't sweat it. I'm making more mid career than all of the prestigious engineering schools listed a few threads below, and I have an MSEE from flyover school. Just concentrate on something you enjoy, get good at it, and you will do fine.
FreedomToCreate 11y ago
I know for fact that engineering students who attend universities like Carnegie Mellon, Waterloo and Stanford, receive way more opportunities to work for major companies early on versus their peers at other public and private universities. This is purely built on the reputation of these universities and there history as feeder schools to Microsoft, Apple and Google. Its a self fulfilling prophecy kind of because the top students only want to go to these universities, keeping them the best.
is_it_worth_it_ 11y ago
College degree matters way more than people like to admit. It matters in tech. If you get hired at google out of CMU, you are going to work in a better group with higher salary than a state school grad. Most elite finance jobs require a top degree, as do consulting, and business development/strategy groups at large companies. Any sort of investing job requires a good pedigree. Such a myth to pretend otherwise. Ofcourse there are outliers, but by and large top jobs go to top degrees, regardless of who is better than who. I should make it clear im talking about jobs that pay 300k+. Below that and it isnt a highly selective enough for top pedigree to be such a huge deal.
- patorjk 11y ago
  What are you basing that on though? The article looked at "7,300 college graduates 10 years after graduation" and found that: > For STEM-related majors, average earnings don’t vary much among the college categories. For example, we find no statistically significant differences in average earnings for science majors between selective schools and either midtier or less-selective schools. Likewise, there’s no significant earnings difference between engineering graduates from selective and less-selective colleges, and only a marginally significant difference between selective and midtier colleges.
  - is_it_worth_it_ 11y ago
    I know a good amount about the tech scene in nyc. It works like this, you can get paid a bunch by google or fb, maybe amazon. Sure if you make it in as a state school college grad you get paid. But developers in finance working on the actual trading models who make 300k+ almost exclusively went to top schools. Look at a front office development team at any quant fund.
    - arcanus 11y ago
      The guys working at quant funds tend to have ph.d.s, in my experience. Some are certainly from state schools (UT Austin).
Futurebot 11y ago
Related: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21651207-book-persistence-elites-unexpected-guide-getting-good-job-how-join http://www.economist.com/news/business/21651207-book-persist... https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions-recruiting-on-only-a-few-campuses https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions-recruitin...
rayiner 11y ago
These results don't even pass the smell test. Ostensibly, going to an elite college matters for social sciences majors, but Harvard is at the bottom of the list?
- goldbrick 11y ago
  You're reading it wrong. Harvard is 4th from the top.
lohengramm 11y ago
One thing I always think about is to completely separate the "educational" institutes from the "certificate emitting" ones. Currently, it is the university's job to not only educate, but also to prove the student was educated (through the certificate/diploma). Wouldn't it be much more flexible if educational institutes focused only in educating, while other (unrelated) institutes focused only in testing and emitting certificates? This way, _how_ the individual learns the subject does not matter, as long as he or she is able to get certified. This is what already happens in (at least part of) the technical certificate industry: people pay to make tests and get certified. This seems like a more intelligent approach.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  Are schools significantly more efficient than universities at educating? I'd argue the opposite is true.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  My experiences (and intuition) suggest that you'd find a cottage industry springing up to "teach the test (and nothing extra)". Combining the functions of education and certification, as conflict-of-interest as that appears, largely avoids the problem. Any certification process for a non-trivial field is necessarily a sampling process. If you allow students to bypass the education part and they just have to pass the sampling test to gain some valuable credential, I think you'll find an industry springing up to shortcut the education process in favor of the "just barely passing the test" process.
  - lohengramm 11y ago
    When you say that any certification process (for a non-trivial field) necessarily becomes a sampling process, it is implied that this is already happening, i.e., there must be already a sampling process going on in the current universities. Decoupling may not solve this "problem" (if you consider this a problem), but it also does not create another one. It simply makes it more flexible so people who could not afford the education process for any reason, but were able to educate themselves by alternatives means, can also try to get certified in the level they wish. Also, the possibility of being certified by top tier certification emitters works as another motivator for people to strain and study harder (as going to top universities is not even remotely possible for most people, at least being certified by top certificate emitting institutes is probably less expensive (given the educational process is the more expensive one), and thus possible). In other words, I believe you are right when you point that the educational institutes would narrow their focus to cover only the necessary bits to get certified, but I don't see this getting much far from what we have already; and from the point of view of the certificate emitting institute, it is desirable for the top ones to not emit certificates to anyone (in order to build a valuable brand name), having them to focus on elaborating challenging tests. Of course there may be "certificate mills", but again, this already happens, just with less flexibility. What really picks me is that, at the end, it is all about the value people give to these certificates. Nothing would prevent society (including employers) to value more the educational process than the testing one; nothing would prevent the educational institutes to also emit certificates, thus coming back to where we are; but employers should not rely purely on certificates anyway, then I believe there is hope for the overall proposed model.
xeonoex 11y ago
I went to a mid-size state school in Texas for music before switching to CS. The school isn't known for CS, but it turned out that we have a better post-grad employment rate that UT Austin, though I'm not sure if that says much given the size difference. Here are my thoughts based on my experience. Pros for the more prestigious school: 1- A well-known school will mean that you're more likely to get an interview and an offer fresh out of college, everything else being equal. There are smart people in less-known schools, but there are more that skate by also. A good student that went to an average school could still find a great job, but would need to try harder (and face more rejection) to do so. 2- A well-known school will mean you will have a better network of students, and probably be more likely to start personal and group projects that will look good when you start the job hunt. 3- More research opportunities. Important if you plan on going to grad school. Pros of the less prestigious school: 1- Way less money. I can't imagine that going to a great school without a ton of help from scholarships and grants would even be remotely worth it. 2- Smaller class sizes. I could go to my professors whenever, and they knew me quite well even though I almost never went to see them. The entire department was on one floor of a fairly small building. You don't have to work to get your name known or get help. I'm sure that a prestigious college has better students and a better network, but the education given by the institution may not be that different. The tuition difference is huge, and I would guess that differences between two talented students with different educations would disappear after a few years in industry. If I did it again, I would probably go to a different school, but not one that was much more in tuition. Although I don't think my education held me back. I probably would have had a few more interviews and maybe one more offer (that I did interview for) with a different school on my resume.
ken47 11y ago
What a terribly flawed article. They choose arbitrary universities for each major. The number of "elite" universities is small enough that the top 5 of each could trivially be added to the article. For example, in the CS table, where are Stanford, MIT, and CMU? Given how cherry-picked the data seems to be, I can only infer that the data-gathering methodology was even more flawed. That's not to say that attending a prestigious university should, in and of itself, guarantee a higher salary. But there are so many positively correlated, salary-increasing traits with attending an elite university, that this article does not pass the smell test.
- Ologn 11y ago
  [From the article:] > For STEM-related majors, average earnings don’t vary much among the college categories. Perhaps average or media earnings are not affected much, but what about the outliers? Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard. Stanford had Larry Page, Sergey Brin, William Hewlett, David Packard, Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Andy Bechtolsheim and others. One thing is good state schools have good people coming out of them as well - Bill Joy and Eric Schmidt went to UC Berkeley, Max Levchin and Marc Andreessen went to UIUC. There are some good state schools you see a number of successful tech people coming out of, they're not all expensive private schools. They all have a good reputatiion though, whether public or private.
rbcgerard 11y ago
1. elite schools allow for career paths outside their major, i.e. it is common to see a history major from harvard take a job as an analyst at an investment bank that won't even look at the resume of a business major from a state school. 2. if you go into a field with a low variance in pay (say teaching) an elite degree may not make you more money, but it may dramatically increase you likelihood of landing a job, or getting a more desirable job despite similar (or lower pay) i.e. at a public vs. private school
wahsd 11y ago
Is it just me or is there no discussion of the salaries being adjusted for, at least, rough cost of living? I am guessing that all we are really looking at is the effectiveness of the Universities placing people in high salary markets due to cost of living.
geebee 11y ago
Interesting article. This confirms something I've suspected for a while, which is that elite colleges matter immensely if you don't study STEM. You could turn this into a different question - is the value of an elite college that it allows you to major in something other than STEM? And maybe one step further - if elite colleges differentiate themselves from other colleges through the prospects they offer non-STEM students, does that mean it may be rational for very elite students to avoid STEM, which serves as an equalizer? I have noticed this anecdotally by observing the prospects of strong students who went to good but not elite schools. You could be a very strong international relations student from a mid-tier UC (say, UC Davis or UCSD), but your prospects really won't be as good as they would be if you'd gone to Yale. It isn't game over, but Yale is a huge boost. But if you major in CS, they will be the same… … or will they? There certainly is still a difference in kind, just not one that is as readily apparent to people who see a bunch of squiggles, symbols, and text flashing by on a screen. There is an easily observed difference between being a the director of the American Music Heritage foundation (an invented title and organization) at $130k a year and a senior crud bug fixer for $130k a year. But these differences exist within tech as well. An interesting data science position where you have a lot of autonomy is a very different life from checking in with the scrum team every morning to talk about whether you've figured out why the config file changes are making the computer say "ERRNO 63: gcc header updater missing", even if they both pay the same. Do elite colleges lead to a hidden difference in kind within the tech field, similar to what is observable outside of tech?
- sotojuan 11y ago
  There's a difference between the prospects of an okay school vs elite school for CS. The gap just happens to be much smaller. In our industry there are many people who do just fine with no CS degree, CS degree from obscure schools, or degree at all. Almost no other industry can say that. However, in general, elite school means better opportunities, better classmates that motivate you, better companies recruiting, etc. The difference exists, it's just "smaller" and evens out with time. Remember that in our industry you can move to $100k+ after 3-5 years of experience (of course, if you put in work, network and get better, but the demand for "mid/senior" devs is big). I've found that your background rarely matters at that point.
fgandiya 11y ago
Interesting, although I can't help but shake that in at a pretty big disadvantage going to my Midwestern College. I read about how the biggest advantage to elite colleges is networking as opposed to the actual education, but then the network itself is really significant, like having investment firms as alumni as opposed to DevShop founders. Is there a way for a student who isn't at an elite college to mimic the elite like network?
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Talk to your friends. They may not be hanging out at top tier tech companies, but they are doing something. I went to school with: a DA, guy who owns an engineering firm, a big Union lobbyist, bunch of social workers, a deputy commissioner of a large government agency, regional bank vp and a few other things. Not Steve Jobs, but good contacts with a good network. You can make lemonade there.
thesimon 11y ago
So what about going to non-Elite College for Bachelors and going to a Elite College for Masters? Seems like a better cost/benefit ratio, considering Masters is only 1 or 2 years and thus doesn't cost as much.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > So what about going to non-Elite College for Bachelors and going to a Elite College for Masters? That may be problematic as a plan, if (as I've heard is the case) elite graduate programs are somewhat biased in admissions to elite undergraduate programs. > Seems like a better cost/benefit ratio, considering Masters is only 1 or 2 years and thus doesn't cost as much. Graduate programs tend to, at similar schools, have a substantially higher cost per year (though may also offer more opportunities to offset that cost) than undergraduate programs; a masters, despite less time in residence, can easily cost more after the bachelors than a bachelors at the same university would cost.
jhallenworld 11y ago
Well here is a list of schools vs. salary: http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors I think there are other complicating factors: if you go to school in a high paying area and end up staying in the area, then you get higher pay no matter the school.
dcole2929 11y ago
Honestly, this is about what one would expect. However it is somewhat concerning that they are using the criteria of selectivity to define the prestige of a school. While MIT is a very selective school, it's not a liberal arts school. You can probably get a history degree there but the quality of that program probably is at best on par with a less selective school, with a strong history program. Seems like what you should be comparing is whether going to a school with a top rated program for a given major affect future earnings? University of Washington probably isn't a top 50 school according to most lists. But they mint science and engineering grads. Especially CS. I'd expect higher earning from a CS grad there than one from say Brown.
- santaclaus 11y ago
  > University of Washington probably isn't a top 50 school according to most lists. But it is pretty damn close. UW currently clocks in at number 52 [1]. [1] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/page+5 http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...
no_wave 11y ago
These salaries on the image on the right seem extremely high. Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? Half of Tufts humanities majors? These are great colleges, but it doesn't pass the smell test. And, looking at the actual data collected, the image on the right doesn't hold up. The study must have collected data from hundreds of colleges, yet there were only 7,300 observations. Sounds like a lot, but assuming that there were 200 universities (probably a low estimate) and 8 categories of majors, you're only looking at 4 to 5 observations per college per category. And these observations were probably unevenly distributed. So it's inevitable that a few colleges will have extreme "median" reported incomes, as the table on the right shows the highest incomes observed in each field. So while the percentile distinctions cited in the article between selective and less-selective schools are likely accurate, the numbers on the image of the right-hand side - the really striking part of the article - have almost no statistical validity. The WSJ is leading people to a shocking conclusion even though the real finding - that there's a 12%-18% difference in earnings between selective and less-selective colleges - is much less extreme. (It's also likely making a lot of people feel poor... one of the strange selling points of the WSJ that in this case simultaneously gets eyeballs on PayScale.com)
- hackuser 11y ago
  > Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? Half of Tufts humanities majors? Only ~30% of the population gets a college degree, and a college degree has a large impact on income. Add that these are good schools and that most students in good schools come from wealth, with all the other benefits that entails, and I don't find those numbers surprising.
- rchaud 11y ago
  >Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? I went to a New England liberal arts college, like Colgate, and the most popular major at my school was Economics, which is categorized as Social Science. Most of the Econ graduates went for jobs in management consulting or investment banking, as those companies would come to recruit on campus, and tend to already have a solid number of alums working there to begin with. In fact, Dick Fuld, the ex-CEO of the infamous Lehman Brothers investment bank, was a trustee on the board of my school, and hired many alums, as did Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, etc. For banking jobs straight out of undergrad, you don't have to have a deep understanding of quantitative finance. It's more about having a soiid GPA, a demonstrated interest in the topic and interest in learning, and the capacity to work very, very long hours.
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chauzer 11y ago
The article leaves out a huge population of students from the elite universities that end up going into finance. In 2014, 31% of Harvard grads took jobs in finance (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2014/features/why_are_harvard_grads_still_fl051758.php?page=all http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2...) where the salaries are higher than most other occupations straight out of college. And then if you look at the people who are in high finance like private equity and hedge funds where people 5 years out of college can easily make $400k+, most of those are from elite top 10 universities.
danjoc 11y ago
TL;DR Not even Ivy League can prepare you for white board interviews. ;)
dschiptsov 11y ago
So one could get hired in biotech, finance, law or corporate IT without an ivy league degree? OK, very few people are smarter than an average (but not the best) ivy league students, without having that exceptionally good training places like MIT or Yale offer, but these people are outsiders, marginalized by modern practices and social institutions. They end up making good sandwiches, like that character from Atlas Shrugged, because they habitually striving for an optimum, no matter what they are doing. In the field of OSS we have a few well-known names - recall a project with uncommonly good theoretical understanding and exceptional attention to details and you will find one (LuaJIT, nginx, redis, OpenBSD, good parts of Haskell base libraries, etc, etc). All I am trying to say is that elite colleges phenomena is a social construction that works for society which believe in it. One has to conform if one wishes to be a part of such a society. Less traveled pathways are much harder and usually are leading to unexpected and yet unknown.
lutusp 11y ago
The article's writers say, "But for fields like science, technology, education and math ..." Then, later, without revisiting this term, they say, "What we found startled us. For STEM-related majors ..." I wonder whether these writers actually think that's how "STEM" is commonly defined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_Technology,_Engineering,_and_Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_Technology,_Engineeri...
- dllthomas 11y ago
  It seems to have been corrected; it may well have just been a typo.
paulsutter 11y ago
As a guy who went to a state school, the three main benefits of attending an elite school are: 1. People will prejudge in your favor, the more average the individual the more they will do this. This is a very strong effect, and the primary benefit. I don't mean this in a cynical way. It's a great thing if you can get it. 2. Your classmates in school will be smarter and think bigger, which has a significant motivational effect. A larger percentage will go on to have significant achievements. Most of your classmates at an elite school will eventually accomplish nothing, just like a state school. 3. Prestige-oriented institutions will favor you heavily, for example banks, law firms, and consultancies. They really do need people with great social skills and a strong work ethic, which is the same filter that elite schools use. I'm on vacation right now, lack the time to add references.
sklogic 11y ago
It also worth mentioning that using something as mundane and stupid as a salary as a gauge of success of the top universities alumni is totally incorrect and defies the very purpose of the universities. A much better way to measure the quality is by a number of papers published in top journals (by the alumni, no the university itself), number of Nobel prizes won, etc. Universities must produce academics (i.e., salary is supposed to suck anyway).

110 points by luu 11y ago

Getting a degree from an elite institution does three things: 1) It puts you in a network of other people who went to the institution, oftentimes people who have connections that can help you in life 2) It gives you a piece of paper that shows you can follow a long term plan and execute on it, that other people recognize as a difficult long term plan to execute. 3) Gives you an icebreaker when going to interviews where you can talk about either how you and the interviewer went to the same institution, or rival institutions, or you can talk about how your elite institution was different from theirs and the same. What you don't get is a "better education". (Edit: Some have pointed out rightly that I should differentiate here between top non-elite instututions and the ones that are diploma mills, so to be clear, what I'm saying doesn't apply to the diploma mills.) You do the same work as the folks at the less elite institutions. Maybe you do it with slightly smarter people who help you learn new things that you wouldn't otherwise, but most of the "less elite" schools still use the same textbooks and materials. And heck maybe your professor wrote the book so you can get more detailed answers, but it's unlikely that that access gives you a significant leg up unless you take advantage of it. So it makes sense that in fields where skills matter, the elite college doesn't add a lot of benefit, but where connections matter, it does.

rileymat2 11y ago
"What you don't get is a "better education". You do the same work as the folks at the less elite institutions." Is this true? When I look at some of the prestigious universities that have some of their coursework online, some of the courses appear more rigorous and challenging than the large state school I went to. Perhaps this challenge does not amount to better education, but it certainly seems more challenging.
- eitally 11y ago
  It really depends (especially based on area of study). But this is something every future student should research in depth before making a decision.
- jedberg 11y ago
  I guess it depends on where you go. My assessment has come from interviewing people and getting into a discussion about what they learned in school and finding out they used the same textbook and exercises as other people I interviewed who went to elite schools. So my assessment is admittedly anecdotal.
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - nostrademons 11y ago
    It's pretty common for "elite" colleges and universities to use the same course materials as state or community colleges, but to get further into it. So the textbooks would be the same, the exercises would be the same, but students at a top school would go through them faster and have an extra 2-3 weeks at the end of the course to study material at the back of a textbook. Or the professor would interject some of his own research at points within the course, taking a week out of the "standard" syllabus to learn something cutting-edge. It's quite rare for a course anywhere to get through all of the textbook - regardless of where you go, there will still be material left unlearned. (This is why one of my favorite learning strategies is to buy the textbook and then self-teach my way through it at my own pace.)
    - nilkn 11y ago
      Also, the very exam could be the same (unlikely), but the grading standards could be much higher at one school compared to another. The class discussions could also be very different, even if they're on the same material technically. The nature of the interactions in student study groups could be completely different. At one school, the student sitting next to you just got named a Putnam Fellow for the second time. At another school, no student has ever, in all history, been named a Putnam Fellow. It's quite hard to get a sense for what a course is truly like just from glancing at the syllabus.
rhino369 11y ago
>What you don't get is a "better education". Comparing elite schools to flagship state public schools this essential true. But there are a lot of diploma mills that water down the curriculum so people who have no business being in college can pass. Whether a better education will actually make you a better worker or person, I'm not sure sure about that.
- nilkn 11y ago
  Would you consider Mizzou a flagship state school? If so, I transferred from there to an "elite" school, and the difference for me was pretty huge. Then again, I was a math major, and I've traditionally believed that math is one of the subjects where the school can make the biggest difference. There's a cultural aspect to math where being surrounded by a ton of extremely passionate and talented mathematicians is just impossibly valuable. At Mizzou, even the math majors didn't seem to care. I stood out like a sore thumb just for being truly passionate about the subject.
  - nikdaheratik 11y ago
    It can vary quite a bit depending on the area of study no matter which school you choose. Different flagship universities (and elite universities) have different strengths and weaknesses based on history and the faculty they bring in for research. An aerospace engineering degree from Kansas Univ. (for example) is worth more than a Mechanical Engineering degree from the same Uni. With Univ. Missouri-Rolla (for example) that might be completely reversed.
dhawalhs 11y ago
I did my Masters in CS from Georgia Tech. The amount of doors that open up just by being attached to top tier brand is astonishing. Even things like visa interviews become a formality. Though I disagree with the "better education" part. There were some courses that were unique only to Georgia Tech or taught by professors who were well known in their field.
- ralphc 11y ago
  Got my Bachelor's in ICS from Georgia Tech in 1984. After a layoff from Oracle in 2012, 28 years later, my recruiter said that the Georgia Tech degree opened doors and got me interviews. I was interviewing in the metro Atlanta area but still.
  - ap3 11y ago
    After 28 years your work history would trump whatever you did in school. Amazingly the Georgia Tech degree did not prevent a layoff
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      Nor did MIT prevent 2 of mine when the company closed an entire office or killed an entire product. It did make the landing a lot softer and quicker I think. Partial layoffs (20% of your job "family") are usually about the employee. Wholesale layoffs (all of a job type, all of a product team, all of a location) are generally completely independent of the specific employee, skills, capabilities, or performance.
  - dpeck 11y ago
    oddly enough the GT degree is probably more respected outside of Atlanta/Georgia than in it.
sbuccini 11y ago
In the case of UC Berkeley computer science (which be both graduated from) it also (4) puts you geographically close to the heart of our industry. I've found this to be nearly as indispensable as (1).
serge2k 11y ago
It also gives the ability for the company hiring you to say to their clients "We only recruit from the top 5 schools in the nation".
SerLava 11y ago
I feel it should be pointed out that if the industry you're in is showing up as unaffected by the eliteness of your school, then it's covering the three factors you describe. If you get the same salary then all that networking either didn't actually happen or didn't actually have any impact on your bottom line.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>What you don't get is a "better education". (Edit: Some have pointed out rightly that I should differentiate here between top non-elite instututions and the ones that are diploma mills, so to be clear, what I'm saying doesn't apply to the diploma mills.) In my experience, it is more nuanced than even that. Just take computer science. There are schools that teach languages. You'll spend a semester with C, then a semester with C++, then one with Java. And then there are colleges that teach concepts. Let's look at memory management (and pointers), then let's look at data structures, then let's look at networks. Personally, the latter seem to be a far better education even if the overall experience leads to less initial skill at any given language. Or take a look even with the same college between degrees. Some science tracks requires statistics for business majors where they will spend a day learning how to sum numbers. Other science tracks require statistics for science and engineering, where multi-variable calculus is a prerequisite. Now imagine if the degree requiring the simplified statistics was switched to requiring the harder version. (All this being said, I agree connections are a bigger deal. I think what you learn does differ between colleges, but at the end of the day it isn't what you know but who you know.)
- exelius 11y ago
  Your peer group makes a big difference too. I attended undergrad at a big state school. My classmates were largely representative of the top 30% of my high school - people who are either gifted with raw intelligence, or who do well by working hard. My school had good sports teams, and the student body spent a lot of time and effort cheering for the teams, partying, and generally having a good time. I certainly enjoyed myself, though the academic standards were so lax that I was able to pass an entire semester where I attended no classes other than the exams. There are a lot of people who just aren't interested in the academic side of school. Some years later, I went to a much more prestigious school for my MBA. This school didn't really have an athletic department (as a Division III school they were not allowed to issue athletic scholarships) and the student body as a whole was both smart and hard-working. I mean, sure, they drank their share too -- but learning was considered cool and group projects (while drinking, of course!) were a perfectly acceptable way to spend a Friday or Saturday night. That attitude is infectious and it sticks with you. Once there is positive peer pressure to learn, suddenly everyone becomes invested in everyone else's success. You go from "I heard that class was an easy A so I'm gonna take it" to "I think that class looks really interesting. Want to take it with me?" Extrapolate that from school to life and you start to see why graduates of these elite schools on the whole tend to be more successful.
silverlake 11y ago
I went to a top 10 non-Ivy school still bruised from my rejection from MIT. It seems MIT would go a bit further and deeper in CS subjects than my school. They could work on cooler projects because their CS faculty is huge. And every company recruits from MIT.
- arcanus 11y ago
  I'm surprised to hear that. It never hurts to be the best, but in my experience all the top-10 (or even top-25) programs are quite competitive. My research and summer internship opportunities were just as 'cool' as at any other program, at least in my opinion. I've always found that my degree got my foot in the door, after that it was my research experience, internships and performance in interviews/code tests. I went to a top-25 non-ivy.
SilasX 11y ago
Yep, when you consider points 1-3 (plus filtering for some intelligence), the schools could basically just have you memorize Pokemon esoterica all day, and it would still look like a "great education". In that case, college's apologists would still give the same rationalizations about "Pokemon dynamics teach you how to learn, and give you a broader view of the world, and the Pokemon evolution system helps you better structure your thoughts for clear communication, which is obviously why it improves your earnings and is a must-have for being a well-rounded individual who doesn't just fix toilets all day".
zaphoyd 11y ago
In my experience it depends greatly on which schools and which subjects you are comparing. A few [anecdotal] thoughts on "better": My wife started her degree at a community college. They had pretty decent humanities courses, kind of lousy biology courses, and downright embarrassing (or really non-existant) computer science ones. She transferred for the rest of her degree to a reasonably well known, selective, but not `elite` school (was accepted at an ivy but we turned it down due to not feeling the cost was worth it). Both the humanities courses and bio courses there were excellent. The CS courses (with the exception of one class/professor) were not great. Like in the professors teaching things that were wrong sense. =\ I attended a top 10 school and classes in every field I took were well done. Better than the Hum/Bio stuff at my wife's second school? No, not really. But I didn't experience anything anywhere near as bad as her CS classes. The community college (and to a lesser extent the mid tier school) had a lot of issues with administration. At the CC you'd have to physically wait in hour long lines for basically anything (picking up IDs, seeing your advisor, fixing class registration issues, etc). The "quiet study area" signs were completely ignored. The mid tier school was much better, still, there were issues with getting into the right classes necessary to finish majors and minors as there simply weren't enough spots in the higher level classes. There was a stressful song and dance the first week of each term trying to get off of waitlists and into classes. The elite school I attended had an absurd 3:1 student/faculty ratio. The only class I ever had trouble getting into was one video games that the entire school must have registered for. I could usually walk into my professor and advisor's offices without appointments. Does this make the education "better"? Eehhh not really, but it was way less stressful and I had more time and energy to devote to learning stuff and less to dealing with understaffed bureaucracy. Finally, the elite school had a whole lot more instructors who were well known or well connected in their fields, won Nobel prizes, etc. We got many more famous and influential guest speakers. I learned C++ from a member of the C++ standardization committee. Networking from someone who worked on ARPANET. Professors that I had classes with were referenced in popular scifi tv shows. My wife jealously (but playfully) pokes me at least weekly pointing out yet another book or paper she's been asked to read in one of her classes authored by researchers from my school or they've been mentioned in a textbook as having discovered something particularly important about her field. Does this make an education "better" or worth the price of admission? I'm not entirely convinced on that, but I think I do have a better understanding of some of the inner workings of my field because of some of the stories and asides made by instructors who were there for it.
Outdoorsman 11y ago
>1) It puts you in a network of other people who went to the institution, oftentimes people who have connections that can help you in life< That's not to be undervalued: Based on years of experience I would estimate that the "good" jobs, often regardless of the field, are landed as follows: Networking (60% of my "gigs":) Nepotism (10%, maybe more, much less in my case) Proven Ability to Deliver (20%) Good Luck (10%) Having said that, I believe it's very possible to leverage network contacts from a smaller school, especially if you're a member of on-campus groups that have a nation-wide presence...
sklogic 11y ago
Forget about textbooks, they're irrelevant. The exclusive thing some universities can offer is a direct guidance from the top academics (including Nobel prize winners). This is the main (and probably the only legitimate) reason to want to be educated in such an institution. They can provide an access to an early research material which is not even published yet, and will only get into textbooks decades later.
- harryjo 11y ago
  For the most part, this opportunity is wholly irrelevant to undergraduates -- they aren't ready to benefit from it.
  - sklogic 11y ago
    Why? They're (a majority of them) are in exactly that age when the great minds can influence them most strongly. Later on in their career they'd have a bunch of sticky prejudices, their own solidified research interests, and so on. Meeting a great mind won't sway them as much as it can do to a young and unspoiled.
    - invalidOrTaken 11y ago
      You know, it's funny; I was an undergrad when, broken-hearted over a girl and wondering why it didn't work out, I came across a partial explanation (http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html), thought, "This guy is smart and writes well," read some more (http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html), and...well, six years of lisp later...here I am.
maxxxxx 11y ago
I worked at a startup where we had a few people from MIT and Stanford. When investors came visiting they would be introduced "this is Mike from MIT" where other people who were at least as qualified as the ivy leaguers would get ignored. The VCs seemed impressed. They didn't even need a network. The name of the school was enough to stand out. Result is that the Stanford and MIT guys would often start their own VC funded companies. Elite institutions are a very powerful brand. And their reputation gets amplified in the media with headlines "Yale researchers discover...", "MIT develops..."
- santaclaus 11y ago
  MIT and Stanford are not in the Ivy League.
  - dopeboy 11y ago
    Technically they're not but they afford the same level of prestige and access that an Ivy League does. So maxxxxx's point still stands.
  - maxxxxx 11y ago
    Sorry, I am not familiar with what exactly ivy league is. I hope you will agree that they are the elite schools for tech.
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      The Ivy League specifically are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. The Ivy League is actually an athletic conference, but the term also refers to those schools as a group in general.
    - alistairSH 11y ago
      The Ivy League is an athletic conference. The members are historically prestigious universities on the east coast of the US. MIT and a few others are frequently confused as being members because of proximity and their own prestigious histories.
cm2187 11y ago
There is also one important thing: a student from a good college is no more guaranteed to be smart than a student from a mediocre college to be not so smart, but there is certainly a correlation. And many top recruiters that have to process thousands of applications every year use the college as an easy filter to get better candidates. This practice, fair or not, probably achieves its goal statistically. That makes certain professions unreachable from outside of a few colleges, like some top law firms, consultancy, banks, or even tech companies!
tzs 11y ago
> What you don't get is a "better education" [...] most of the "less elite" schools still use the same textbooks and materials It sounds like you are concentrating on the classroom experience, but there is more to a good education than the classroom. For instance, at schools like Caltech and MIT undergraduates have excellent opportunities to get involved with research, and have access to state of the art equipment. Such opportunities are a lot more limited at, say, a Cal State branch.
mikekchar 11y ago
I did not go to an elite school. Most people will probably not have heard of my school ;-). With that caveat in mind, here is my experience from hiring programmers over a couple of decades. Good programmers from elite schools are in high demand and can ask for relatively high salaries. When I have been working in companies with big budgets, I can get good programmers from elite schools. When I have been working in companies with smaller budgets, I can't. However, as you infer, I don't find a big difference in the quality of new graduates based on the school that they went to. Overall they seem to have a very similar gradient of ability. The schools can differ on what they concentrate on, but I have found that good quality programmers suck up everything around them anyway. Whatever they missed at school they have either independently worked on, or are keen to learn after school. From a hiring point of view, I actually target people from lesser known schools simply because there seems to be a higher percentage of good people available. Obviously from a getting hired perspective, you will have a greater chance of working on a team with a big budget right out of school if you go to an elite school. One thing I learned when I worked as a teacher: good students need very little in the way of instruction. Point them in a direction and give them freedom to learn. That will give you the best results. In fact I have been fortunate to work with several really marvellous programmers who were self-taught (though I don't recommend that approach for most people -- it's hard to focus and to know what is best to concentrate on). From my perspective, an elite school is ideal if you are hoping to make contacts and to go to a big famous company right out of school. If your goal is to learn, then you can save a HUGE amount of money by choosing a less prestigious school. I graduated with no debt (admittedly I worked programming for various professors all through school). It takes a pretty big difference in starting salary to offset that kind of advantage.
- taurath 11y ago
  Nice to hear that perspective. I'm self taught and don't recommend it for the same reason - its also actually quite difficult to find professional mentors if you're not already in some sort of professional field with a close link to software or coding. In most ways, having no college requires more connections than college! Still, the cost of any college is absolutely stifling unless you're willing to take on a lot of debt or have parents willing to support you - unless you have absolutely top grades. Too many very intelligent people I know growing up had social or parental problems - passed all their tests but couldn't do the homework due to trouble at home.
WalterBright 11y ago
> What you don't get is a "better education". I attended Caltech. In my later work experience, I clearly received a more thorough education than my peers who went to other colleges, particularly in math. And yes, it did give me a leg up.
Nimitz14 11y ago
> What you don't get is a "better education". (Edit: Some have pointed out rightly that I should differentiate here between top non-elite instututions and the ones that are diploma mills, so to be clear, what I'm saying doesn't apply to the diploma mills.) You do the same work as the folks at the less elite institutions. It's not just diploma mills (unless every uni outside of the top ~10 is a diploma mill for you). In my opinion you are completely wrong. Quoting myself from a similar thread: > I'm at a mediocre university and watching MIT lectures has made me realize I'm missing out on literally mountains of knowledge. Never mind the qualification process, spending several years with intelligent people (both students and faculty) [also] makes a huge difference.
- jedberg 11y ago
  No, I don't think all Universities are diploma mills, far from it. But if you feel like the content at MIT is that much better than what you are getting, you may want to bring this up with your faculty and ask them why.
mattlutze 11y ago
> 1) It puts you in a network of other people who went to the institution, oftentimes people who have connections that can help you in life The caveat is that you at some point need to build personal relationships with these folks. Success in the network might be a minor influence at baseline ("ah, from my old alma mater, sure I'll take the interview...") but those choice positions come from friends offering friends' friends jobs. To boot, I think this can be true even in skill-driven fields -- unless you're intended to be a pure engineer, money comes from managing people & projects (i.e. the more work you can generate for other people, the more valuable you are). These positions requires far less technical chops than we'd maybe like.

wrong_variable 11y ago

I sometimes feel we are trying to externalize all of society's ill on solving it through college/education/teachers. It seems almost ridiculous that a 17 year needs to make decisions that even someone with a Phd with economics won't be able make. I wish both kids and parents spent more time actually figuring out how to optimize learning rather than spend their energy thinking about nonsense - its almost like a gambling addiction ? I remember when I was in school I used to watch students spend a year writing college essays, preparing for SATs, shelling out insane amount of money for tutors, etc. Meanwhile I just concentrated on mathematics and programming to actually make myself valuable to society. Most people will be surprised when they realize how far they can get with books. Books are not as efficient as learning directly from Newton - but they are 1/1000 the cost. I know the economy would collapse tomorrow if everyone just stopped going to school and spent their evening reading books but humanity has bigger problems to solve then the economy.

kec 11y ago
The main value-add of going to a university isn't attaining an education, it's gaining access to a strong network of educated people. This is something which can't be replaced by self education (which, you'll actually be expected to do at university anyway).
- staunch 11y ago
  In other words, you're buying membership in a club.
  - dikdik 11y ago
    Yes, how else would we keep the poor people out?
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  The vast majority of universities are not going to get you a strong network. Additionally, the vast majority of high school students are fed a line that focuses on the academics and minimizes or ignores the networking.

mhuangw 11y ago

I sometimes feel like I have an inferiority complex for not attending a prestigious school. Hopefully it'll come down to my actual skills and not just the name on my degree when it's time to find a full time job.

dev1n 11y ago
Generally speaking, you won't be happy working at a place that puts too much value into a college or university's credentials.
- FLUX-YOU 11y ago
  Only if you're the only one that's not in the club. Else, it's just that: A club. And it works for some.
jgh 11y ago
I have a pretty crummy education but I feel like it's really forced me to have a lot more drive in my career and as such I've been more successful (so far) than a lot of people I grew up with who went to much better schools. I don't know if that's my personality or my past that's doing that though, perhaps if I went to a prestigious school I would be the same way and would be much more successful.
euyyn 11y ago
Don't worry, the prestigious school I went to crushes you to the point of giving an inferiority complex, so at the end we all end up the same :)
madengr 11y ago
Don't sweat it. I'm making more mid career than all of the prestigious engineering schools listed a few threads below, and I have an MSEE from flyover school. Just concentrate on something you enjoy, get good at it, and you will do fine.

FreedomToCreate 11y ago

I know for fact that engineering students who attend universities like Carnegie Mellon, Waterloo and Stanford, receive way more opportunities to work for major companies early on versus their peers at other public and private universities. This is purely built on the reputation of these universities and there history as feeder schools to Microsoft, Apple and Google. Its a self fulfilling prophecy kind of because the top students only want to go to these universities, keeping them the best.

is_it_worth_it_ 11y ago

College degree matters way more than people like to admit. It matters in tech. If you get hired at google out of CMU, you are going to work in a better group with higher salary than a state school grad. Most elite finance jobs require a top degree, as do consulting, and business development/strategy groups at large companies. Any sort of investing job requires a good pedigree. Such a myth to pretend otherwise. Ofcourse there are outliers, but by and large top jobs go to top degrees, regardless of who is better than who. I should make it clear im talking about jobs that pay 300k+. Below that and it isnt a highly selective enough for top pedigree to be such a huge deal.

patorjk 11y ago
What are you basing that on though? The article looked at "7,300 college graduates 10 years after graduation" and found that: > For STEM-related majors, average earnings don’t vary much among the college categories. For example, we find no statistically significant differences in average earnings for science majors between selective schools and either midtier or less-selective schools. Likewise, there’s no significant earnings difference between engineering graduates from selective and less-selective colleges, and only a marginally significant difference between selective and midtier colleges.
- is_it_worth_it_ 11y ago
  I know a good amount about the tech scene in nyc. It works like this, you can get paid a bunch by google or fb, maybe amazon. Sure if you make it in as a state school college grad you get paid. But developers in finance working on the actual trading models who make 300k+ almost exclusively went to top schools. Look at a front office development team at any quant fund.
  - arcanus 11y ago
    The guys working at quant funds tend to have ph.d.s, in my experience. Some are certainly from state schools (UT Austin).

Futurebot 11y ago

Related: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21651207-book-persistence-elites-unexpected-guide-getting-good-job-how-join http://www.economist.com/news/business/21651207-book-persist... https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions-recruiting-on-only-a-few-campuses https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions-recruitin...

rayiner 11y ago

These results don't even pass the smell test. Ostensibly, going to an elite college matters for social sciences majors, but Harvard is at the bottom of the list?

goldbrick 11y ago
You're reading it wrong. Harvard is 4th from the top.

lohengramm 11y ago

One thing I always think about is to completely separate the "educational" institutes from the "certificate emitting" ones. Currently, it is the university's job to not only educate, but also to prove the student was educated (through the certificate/diploma). Wouldn't it be much more flexible if educational institutes focused only in educating, while other (unrelated) institutes focused only in testing and emitting certificates? This way, _how_ the individual learns the subject does not matter, as long as he or she is able to get certified. This is what already happens in (at least part of) the technical certificate industry: people pay to make tests and get certified. This seems like a more intelligent approach.

crdoconnor 11y ago
Are schools significantly more efficient than universities at educating? I'd argue the opposite is true.
sokoloff 11y ago
My experiences (and intuition) suggest that you'd find a cottage industry springing up to "teach the test (and nothing extra)". Combining the functions of education and certification, as conflict-of-interest as that appears, largely avoids the problem. Any certification process for a non-trivial field is necessarily a sampling process. If you allow students to bypass the education part and they just have to pass the sampling test to gain some valuable credential, I think you'll find an industry springing up to shortcut the education process in favor of the "just barely passing the test" process.
- lohengramm 11y ago
  When you say that any certification process (for a non-trivial field) necessarily becomes a sampling process, it is implied that this is already happening, i.e., there must be already a sampling process going on in the current universities. Decoupling may not solve this "problem" (if you consider this a problem), but it also does not create another one. It simply makes it more flexible so people who could not afford the education process for any reason, but were able to educate themselves by alternatives means, can also try to get certified in the level they wish. Also, the possibility of being certified by top tier certification emitters works as another motivator for people to strain and study harder (as going to top universities is not even remotely possible for most people, at least being certified by top certificate emitting institutes is probably less expensive (given the educational process is the more expensive one), and thus possible). In other words, I believe you are right when you point that the educational institutes would narrow their focus to cover only the necessary bits to get certified, but I don't see this getting much far from what we have already; and from the point of view of the certificate emitting institute, it is desirable for the top ones to not emit certificates to anyone (in order to build a valuable brand name), having them to focus on elaborating challenging tests. Of course there may be "certificate mills", but again, this already happens, just with less flexibility. What really picks me is that, at the end, it is all about the value people give to these certificates. Nothing would prevent society (including employers) to value more the educational process than the testing one; nothing would prevent the educational institutes to also emit certificates, thus coming back to where we are; but employers should not rely purely on certificates anyway, then I believe there is hope for the overall proposed model.

xeonoex 11y ago

I went to a mid-size state school in Texas for music before switching to CS. The school isn't known for CS, but it turned out that we have a better post-grad employment rate that UT Austin, though I'm not sure if that says much given the size difference. Here are my thoughts based on my experience. Pros for the more prestigious school: 1- A well-known school will mean that you're more likely to get an interview and an offer fresh out of college, everything else being equal. There are smart people in less-known schools, but there are more that skate by also. A good student that went to an average school could still find a great job, but would need to try harder (and face more rejection) to do so. 2- A well-known school will mean you will have a better network of students, and probably be more likely to start personal and group projects that will look good when you start the job hunt. 3- More research opportunities. Important if you plan on going to grad school. Pros of the less prestigious school: 1- Way less money. I can't imagine that going to a great school without a ton of help from scholarships and grants would even be remotely worth it. 2- Smaller class sizes. I could go to my professors whenever, and they knew me quite well even though I almost never went to see them. The entire department was on one floor of a fairly small building. You don't have to work to get your name known or get help. I'm sure that a prestigious college has better students and a better network, but the education given by the institution may not be that different. The tuition difference is huge, and I would guess that differences between two talented students with different educations would disappear after a few years in industry. If I did it again, I would probably go to a different school, but not one that was much more in tuition. Although I don't think my education held me back. I probably would have had a few more interviews and maybe one more offer (that I did interview for) with a different school on my resume.

ken47 11y ago

What a terribly flawed article. They choose arbitrary universities for each major. The number of "elite" universities is small enough that the top 5 of each could trivially be added to the article. For example, in the CS table, where are Stanford, MIT, and CMU? Given how cherry-picked the data seems to be, I can only infer that the data-gathering methodology was even more flawed. That's not to say that attending a prestigious university should, in and of itself, guarantee a higher salary. But there are so many positively correlated, salary-increasing traits with attending an elite university, that this article does not pass the smell test.

Ologn 11y ago
[From the article:] > For STEM-related majors, average earnings don’t vary much among the college categories. Perhaps average or media earnings are not affected much, but what about the outliers? Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard. Stanford had Larry Page, Sergey Brin, William Hewlett, David Packard, Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Andy Bechtolsheim and others. One thing is good state schools have good people coming out of them as well - Bill Joy and Eric Schmidt went to UC Berkeley, Max Levchin and Marc Andreessen went to UIUC. There are some good state schools you see a number of successful tech people coming out of, they're not all expensive private schools. They all have a good reputatiion though, whether public or private.

rbcgerard 11y ago

1. elite schools allow for career paths outside their major, i.e. it is common to see a history major from harvard take a job as an analyst at an investment bank that won't even look at the resume of a business major from a state school. 2. if you go into a field with a low variance in pay (say teaching) an elite degree may not make you more money, but it may dramatically increase you likelihood of landing a job, or getting a more desirable job despite similar (or lower pay) i.e. at a public vs. private school

wahsd 11y ago

Is it just me or is there no discussion of the salaries being adjusted for, at least, rough cost of living? I am guessing that all we are really looking at is the effectiveness of the Universities placing people in high salary markets due to cost of living.

geebee 11y ago

Interesting article. This confirms something I've suspected for a while, which is that elite colleges matter immensely if you don't study STEM. You could turn this into a different question - is the value of an elite college that it allows you to major in something other than STEM? And maybe one step further - if elite colleges differentiate themselves from other colleges through the prospects they offer non-STEM students, does that mean it may be rational for very elite students to avoid STEM, which serves as an equalizer? I have noticed this anecdotally by observing the prospects of strong students who went to good but not elite schools. You could be a very strong international relations student from a mid-tier UC (say, UC Davis or UCSD), but your prospects really won't be as good as they would be if you'd gone to Yale. It isn't game over, but Yale is a huge boost. But if you major in CS, they will be the same… … or will they? There certainly is still a difference in kind, just not one that is as readily apparent to people who see a bunch of squiggles, symbols, and text flashing by on a screen. There is an easily observed difference between being a the director of the American Music Heritage foundation (an invented title and organization) at $130k a year and a senior crud bug fixer for $130k a year. But these differences exist within tech as well. An interesting data science position where you have a lot of autonomy is a very different life from checking in with the scrum team every morning to talk about whether you've figured out why the config file changes are making the computer say "ERRNO 63: gcc header updater missing", even if they both pay the same. Do elite colleges lead to a hidden difference in kind within the tech field, similar to what is observable outside of tech?

sotojuan 11y ago
There's a difference between the prospects of an okay school vs elite school for CS. The gap just happens to be much smaller. In our industry there are many people who do just fine with no CS degree, CS degree from obscure schools, or degree at all. Almost no other industry can say that. However, in general, elite school means better opportunities, better classmates that motivate you, better companies recruiting, etc. The difference exists, it's just "smaller" and evens out with time. Remember that in our industry you can move to $100k+ after 3-5 years of experience (of course, if you put in work, network and get better, but the demand for "mid/senior" devs is big). I've found that your background rarely matters at that point.

fgandiya 11y ago

Interesting, although I can't help but shake that in at a pretty big disadvantage going to my Midwestern College. I read about how the biggest advantage to elite colleges is networking as opposed to the actual education, but then the network itself is really significant, like having investment firms as alumni as opposed to DevShop founders. Is there a way for a student who isn't at an elite college to mimic the elite like network?

Spooky23 11y ago
Talk to your friends. They may not be hanging out at top tier tech companies, but they are doing something. I went to school with: a DA, guy who owns an engineering firm, a big Union lobbyist, bunch of social workers, a deputy commissioner of a large government agency, regional bank vp and a few other things. Not Steve Jobs, but good contacts with a good network. You can make lemonade there.

thesimon 11y ago

So what about going to non-Elite College for Bachelors and going to a Elite College for Masters? Seems like a better cost/benefit ratio, considering Masters is only 1 or 2 years and thus doesn't cost as much.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> So what about going to non-Elite College for Bachelors and going to a Elite College for Masters? That may be problematic as a plan, if (as I've heard is the case) elite graduate programs are somewhat biased in admissions to elite undergraduate programs. > Seems like a better cost/benefit ratio, considering Masters is only 1 or 2 years and thus doesn't cost as much. Graduate programs tend to, at similar schools, have a substantially higher cost per year (though may also offer more opportunities to offset that cost) than undergraduate programs; a masters, despite less time in residence, can easily cost more after the bachelors than a bachelors at the same university would cost.

jhallenworld 11y ago

Well here is a list of schools vs. salary: http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors I think there are other complicating factors: if you go to school in a high paying area and end up staying in the area, then you get higher pay no matter the school.

dcole2929 11y ago

Honestly, this is about what one would expect. However it is somewhat concerning that they are using the criteria of selectivity to define the prestige of a school. While MIT is a very selective school, it's not a liberal arts school. You can probably get a history degree there but the quality of that program probably is at best on par with a less selective school, with a strong history program. Seems like what you should be comparing is whether going to a school with a top rated program for a given major affect future earnings? University of Washington probably isn't a top 50 school according to most lists. But they mint science and engineering grads. Especially CS. I'd expect higher earning from a CS grad there than one from say Brown.

santaclaus 11y ago
> University of Washington probably isn't a top 50 school according to most lists. But it is pretty damn close. UW currently clocks in at number 52 [1]. [1] http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/page+5 http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/...

no_wave 11y ago

These salaries on the image on the right seem extremely high. Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? Half of Tufts humanities majors? These are great colleges, but it doesn't pass the smell test. And, looking at the actual data collected, the image on the right doesn't hold up. The study must have collected data from hundreds of colleges, yet there were only 7,300 observations. Sounds like a lot, but assuming that there were 200 universities (probably a low estimate) and 8 categories of majors, you're only looking at 4 to 5 observations per college per category. And these observations were probably unevenly distributed. So it's inevitable that a few colleges will have extreme "median" reported incomes, as the table on the right shows the highest incomes observed in each field. So while the percentile distinctions cited in the article between selective and less-selective schools are likely accurate, the numbers on the image of the right-hand side - the really striking part of the article - have almost no statistical validity. The WSJ is leading people to a shocking conclusion even though the real finding - that there's a 12%-18% difference in earnings between selective and less-selective colleges - is much less extreme. (It's also likely making a lot of people feel poor... one of the strange selling points of the WSJ that in this case simultaneously gets eyeballs on PayScale.com)

hackuser 11y ago
> Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? Half of Tufts humanities majors? Only ~30% of the population gets a college degree, and a college degree has a large impact on income. Add that these are good schools and that most students in good schools come from wealth, with all the other benefits that entails, and I don't find those numbers surprising.
rchaud 11y ago
>Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? I went to a New England liberal arts college, like Colgate, and the most popular major at my school was Economics, which is categorized as Social Science. Most of the Econ graduates went for jobs in management consulting or investment banking, as those companies would come to recruit on campus, and tend to already have a solid number of alums working there to begin with. In fact, Dick Fuld, the ex-CEO of the infamous Lehman Brothers investment bank, was a trustee on the board of my school, and hired many alums, as did Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, etc. For banking jobs straight out of undergrad, you don't have to have a deep understanding of quantitative finance. It's more about having a soiid GPA, a demonstrated interest in the topic and interest in learning, and the capacity to work very, very long hours.

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chauzer 11y ago

The article leaves out a huge population of students from the elite universities that end up going into finance. In 2014, 31% of Harvard grads took jobs in finance (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2014/features/why_are_harvard_grads_still_fl051758.php?page=all http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2...) where the salaries are higher than most other occupations straight out of college. And then if you look at the people who are in high finance like private equity and hedge funds where people 5 years out of college can easily make $400k+, most of those are from elite top 10 universities.

danjoc 11y ago

TL;DR Not even Ivy League can prepare you for white board interviews. ;)

dschiptsov 11y ago

So one could get hired in biotech, finance, law or corporate IT without an ivy league degree? OK, very few people are smarter than an average (but not the best) ivy league students, without having that exceptionally good training places like MIT or Yale offer, but these people are outsiders, marginalized by modern practices and social institutions. They end up making good sandwiches, like that character from Atlas Shrugged, because they habitually striving for an optimum, no matter what they are doing. In the field of OSS we have a few well-known names - recall a project with uncommonly good theoretical understanding and exceptional attention to details and you will find one (LuaJIT, nginx, redis, OpenBSD, good parts of Haskell base libraries, etc, etc). All I am trying to say is that elite colleges phenomena is a social construction that works for society which believe in it. One has to conform if one wishes to be a part of such a society. Less traveled pathways are much harder and usually are leading to unexpected and yet unknown.

lutusp 11y ago

The article's writers say, "But for fields like science, technology, education and math ..." Then, later, without revisiting this term, they say, "What we found startled us. For STEM-related majors ..." I wonder whether these writers actually think that's how "STEM" is commonly defined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_Technology,_Engineering,_and_Mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_Technology,_Engineeri...

dllthomas 11y ago
It seems to have been corrected; it may well have just been a typo.

paulsutter 11y ago

As a guy who went to a state school, the three main benefits of attending an elite school are: 1. People will prejudge in your favor, the more average the individual the more they will do this. This is a very strong effect, and the primary benefit. I don't mean this in a cynical way. It's a great thing if you can get it. 2. Your classmates in school will be smarter and think bigger, which has a significant motivational effect. A larger percentage will go on to have significant achievements. Most of your classmates at an elite school will eventually accomplish nothing, just like a state school. 3. Prestige-oriented institutions will favor you heavily, for example banks, law firms, and consultancies. They really do need people with great social skills and a strong work ethic, which is the same filter that elite schools use. I'm on vacation right now, lack the time to add references.

sklogic 11y ago

It also worth mentioning that using something as mundane and stupid as a salary as a gauge of success of the top universities alumni is totally incorrect and defies the very purpose of the universities. A much better way to measure the quality is by a number of papers published in top journals (by the alumni, no the university itself), number of Nobel prizes won, etc. Universities must produce academics (i.e., salary is supposed to suck anyway).