There was the Krueger study: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/dalekrueger_More_Selective_College.pdf http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/as

There was the Krueger study: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/dalekrueger_More_Selective_College.pdf http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/dalekru..., but it compared grads who applied to top universities (like Ivy League) and got rejected vs. those who applied and got in, and found no difference in lifetime earnings, when you adjusted for class rank.