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> The top schools can be pretty darn great I've seen research suggesting that the schools aren't necessarily great, the students are. They were already great w

> The top schools can be pretty darn great I've seen research suggesting that the schools aren't necessarily great, the students are. They were already great which is how they passed the admissions criteria, and their career success can be attributed to the qualities that they arrived at e.g. Harvard with. They would have been as successful regardless of where they attended. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle.

komali2 3y ago
Given the argument that the wait-list students that didn't get to actually attend did worse in life than wait-list students that did get to attend, how does your implication that the "students were already good and that's why they did well in life" hold up?
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Is that what the data shows, though? I've read summaries of papers describing the exact opposite and linked them here before. Here's one such example, with a followup comment describing a study that contradicts the argument you lead with. (I'm merely saying it contradicts it; I'm not vouching that the contradiction is correct.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30748063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30748063 , summarized as: > For most students, the salary boost from going to a super-selective school is “generally indistinguishable from zero” after adjusting for student characteristics, such as test scores. In other words, if Mike and Drew have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn’t, they can still expect to earn the same income throughout their careers. Despite Harvard’s international fame and energetic alumni outreach, somebody like Mike would not experience an observable “Harvard effect.” Dale and Krueger even found that the average SAT scores of all the schools a student applies to is a more powerful predictor of success than the school that student actually attends. The link to the article and the followup is in the only 2-deep chain linked above.
  - amluto 3y ago
    “For most students” can potentially obscure an enormous difference between mean and median income.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      The mean is pulled up substantially by a few famous Harvard drop-outs.
- deleted 3y ago
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komali2 3y ago

Given the argument that the wait-list students that didn't get to actually attend did worse in life than wait-list students that did get to attend, how does your implication that the "students were already good and that's why they did well in life" hold up?

sokoloff 3y ago
Is that what the data shows, though? I've read summaries of papers describing the exact opposite and linked them here before. Here's one such example, with a followup comment describing a study that contradicts the argument you lead with. (I'm merely saying it contradicts it; I'm not vouching that the contradiction is correct.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30748063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30748063 , summarized as: > For most students, the salary boost from going to a super-selective school is “generally indistinguishable from zero” after adjusting for student characteristics, such as test scores. In other words, if Mike and Drew have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn’t, they can still expect to earn the same income throughout their careers. Despite Harvard’s international fame and energetic alumni outreach, somebody like Mike would not experience an observable “Harvard effect.” Dale and Krueger even found that the average SAT scores of all the schools a student applies to is a more powerful predictor of success than the school that student actually attends. The link to the article and the followup is in the only 2-deep chain linked above.
- amluto 3y ago
  “For most students” can potentially obscure an enormous difference between mean and median income.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    The mean is pulled up substantially by a few famous Harvard drop-outs.
deleted 3y ago
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