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There is at least one interesting study that tried to test this. They took students who were admitted to prestigious universities. They tracked those who attend

by bumby 3y ago

There is at least one interesting study that tried to test this. They took students who were admitted to prestigious universities. They tracked those who attended as well as those who attended "lesser" schools instead. They found no real difference in success later in life, so it may be confusing cause and effect. People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school. In other words, prestigious schools are good at selecting for people who would be 'successful' regardless. The one caveat that did get a benefit were low socio-economic students, who did see a measurable difference in success. That's a class you didn't mention in your post. The thought is that it's precisely due to the network effects.

Infinitesimus 3y ago
Can you link to the study? I'd be curious about how success is defined here. Career is a pretty narrow lens to define it by so I'd hope for something more expansive. Many of the benefits of having friends in high places are outside of traditional career ladder. The expedited (insert annoying process here), the vacation you're invited on, the unintentional influence you have on some big thing because you happen to be an ear to the decider, etc etc.
- bumby 3y ago
  There's been a few studies. [1] is one framed in economics, so it measures earnings. You're right, though, that earnings is probably an overly blunt measure of success at best. I think the difficulty in measuring quality of life statistics is that much of it is difficult to quantify, so studies fall back to easily quantifiable metrics. Edit: [2] expands the measures to include educational attainment and family outcomes. Reference [3] relates to socio-economic class, while [1] relates to race/ethnicity. [3] was the one I had in mind during my original comment. [1] Krueger, A., 2012. Estimating the Effects of College Characteristics over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data Stacy Dale Mathematica Policy Research. [2] Ge, S., Isaac, E. and Miller, A., 2022. Elite schools and opting in: Effects of college selectivity on career and family outcomes. Journal of Labor Economics, 40(S1), pp.S383-S427. [3] Dale, S.B. and Krueger, A.B., 2002. Estimating the payoff to attending a more selective college: An application of selection on observables and unobservables. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), pp.1491-1527
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Earnings is probably a reasonable proxy for something like a business school. I'm not sure it's great for a liberal arts college. Way back when, I looked at some of this stuff and you're right that figuring out what outcome(s) to fit to is challenging. Undergrad GPA is pretty clearly not what you want either but generalized career or life success is pretty hard to quantify.
ghaff 3y ago
>People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school. It also depends on what the "lesser" schools are. I expect that if someone missed out on the significantly random admissions lottery to get into Harvard but were admitted to Dartmouth, Cornell, or Williams (or even UMass Amherst) instead, I expect that if they'd have done well at Harvard they'll do just fine. I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would.
- bumby 3y ago
  >I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would. That's one explanation, but not the guess that the study's authors had: >"One possible explanation for this pattern of results is that highly selective colleges provide access to networks for minority students and for students from disadvantaged family backgrounds that are otherwise not available to them."[1] [1] Dale, S.B. and Krueger, A.B., 2014. Estimating the effects of college characteristics over the career using administrative earnings data. Journal of human resources, 49(2), pp.323-358.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I could see that from the list of the colleges. Certainly it would be a lot easier to fall through the cracks at Penn State than at more elite schools. It's probably also true that your experience at large state schools in general is probably more a function of what you make of it than smaller, more selective schools.

by bumby 3y ago

Infinitesimus 3y ago

Can you link to the study? I'd be curious about how success is defined here. Career is a pretty narrow lens to define it by so I'd hope for something more expansive. Many of the benefits of having friends in high places are outside of traditional career ladder. The expedited (insert annoying process here), the vacation you're invited on, the unintentional influence you have on some big thing because you happen to be an ear to the decider, etc etc.

bumby 3y ago
There's been a few studies. [1] is one framed in economics, so it measures earnings. You're right, though, that earnings is probably an overly blunt measure of success at best. I think the difficulty in measuring quality of life statistics is that much of it is difficult to quantify, so studies fall back to easily quantifiable metrics. Edit: [2] expands the measures to include educational attainment and family outcomes. Reference [3] relates to socio-economic class, while [1] relates to race/ethnicity. [3] was the one I had in mind during my original comment. [1] Krueger, A., 2012. Estimating the Effects of College Characteristics over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data Stacy Dale Mathematica Policy Research. [2] Ge, S., Isaac, E. and Miller, A., 2022. Elite schools and opting in: Effects of college selectivity on career and family outcomes. Journal of Labor Economics, 40(S1), pp.S383-S427. [3] Dale, S.B. and Krueger, A.B., 2002. Estimating the payoff to attending a more selective college: An application of selection on observables and unobservables. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), pp.1491-1527
- ghaff 3y ago
  Earnings is probably a reasonable proxy for something like a business school. I'm not sure it's great for a liberal arts college. Way back when, I looked at some of this stuff and you're right that figuring out what outcome(s) to fit to is challenging. Undergrad GPA is pretty clearly not what you want either but generalized career or life success is pretty hard to quantify.

ghaff 3y ago

>People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school. It also depends on what the "lesser" schools are. I expect that if someone missed out on the significantly random admissions lottery to get into Harvard but were admitted to Dartmouth, Cornell, or Williams (or even UMass Amherst) instead, I expect that if they'd have done well at Harvard they'll do just fine. I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would.

bumby 3y ago
>I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would. That's one explanation, but not the guess that the study's authors had: >"One possible explanation for this pattern of results is that highly selective colleges provide access to networks for minority students and for students from disadvantaged family backgrounds that are otherwise not available to them."[1] [1] Dale, S.B. and Krueger, A.B., 2014. Estimating the effects of college characteristics over the career using administrative earnings data. Journal of human resources, 49(2), pp.323-358.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I could see that from the list of the colleges. Certainly it would be a lot easier to fall through the cracks at Penn State than at more elite schools. It's probably also true that your experience at large state schools in general is probably more a function of what you make of it than smaller, more selective schools.