Varsity Blues wrote:
degrees 4 $ale wrote:
The irony is that the signaling value of elite colleges is quite misplaced: if your child is smart enough to get into an elite college, but chose not to go, he or she will still end up making approximately the same as a similarly qualified applicant who did go to an elite college.
That is unquestionably false. Good luck getting an analyst position at Goldman after you decide to pass on going to Harvard. Can you get the same job waiting on tables or working in construction if you pass on going to Harvard (and college altogether?), sure, but you are insane if you think that going to a top school has no impact on getting a top job or into a top grad school.
Actual Research (NBER) says otherwise...
when we adjust for unobserved student ability by controlling for the average SAT score of the colleges that students applied to, our estimates of the return to college selectivity fall substantially and are generally indistinguishable from zero.
They do discuss "notable exceptions for certain subgroups", which includes (surprise!) blacks, Hispanics, etc. (but not legacies). So only if you are poor, black, or Hispanic in the first place, will getting a novelty degree actually matter.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w17159