Does It Matter Where You Go to College?

nytimes.com

5 points·edw519··5 comments

It matters if you want a career in a 'professional service' i.e. politics, banking, law etc and to some extent the business world purely b/c these institutions not only offer you a brand name education but the opportunities (work experience, public speakers from a range of industries, extra-curriculats etc) on offer are far far superior to lower ranked colleges.

On average it matters. But for "you" it doesn't.

My problem with college is that there aren't good metrics to judge how good a college is. The only data we really have is how good are the incoming students. If you moved the student body at Harvard to Kansas State and vice-versa (allowing for differences in population), but kept the relative reputations (so the students at KState were still considered the brightest, although now the faculty was different), what would be the result? Nothing? Severly undereducated students from KState and failing students from Harvard? Who knows?

Today people use college attended as a proxy for how smart you were at age 17. Which is unfortunate, because I think I tend to see the biggest intellectual growth from people between 21 to 30 (which is largely after grad school admissions).

Researchers found that students who applied to several elite schools but didn't attend them -- either because of rejection or by their own choice -- are more likely to earn high incomes later than students who actually attended elite schools.

Any thoughts on why this might be true?

If they just took an average, it could be that those choosing not to attend had other, much more lucrative, alternatives.

It appears for an article making such a bold claim, there's very little content or support. I was quite disappointed.

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