What an Ivy league education gets you - the Atlantic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Neither me nor my DH attended an ivy league school. We both have flexible well paying jobs with good work life balance. We have a great life and it's what we want for our kid. Not a crazy high pressure job that will destroy their health.

Another low iq person exposed.

DP. Nothing about that post is low IQ. It is simply stating a different preference.

Low IQ is not being able to understand the difference.

Trying is inference using anecdotal instead of statistical evidence IS low iq.

Except, again, that’s not what that poster was doing.

This whole discussion seems to be going over your head so you may want to bow out gracefully.

I am the PP with the flexible well paying job. I often encounter Ivy League grads with attitudes like the "low IQ" poster. They don't do well and don't last in my sector.

I doubt the “low IQ” poster attended an Ivy League school. More likely a striver parent on the low end of the Dunning-Kruger curve.

It was a general comment on people using anecdotal evidence to infer. It has nothing to do with whether an Ivy League grad is actually superior, one way or the other. Once again, comments in this thread fully show the low iq nature of DCUM. Reddit, although full of high school and college kids, is actually much smarter.

You clearly misunderstood the post you responded to. The thesis of the original article is "that these schools [are] really unparalleled training grounds to be in these upper-echelon professional jobs." The post you responded to was pointing out that they aren't in one of these stressful upper-echelon jobs, and they have a good life. It wasn't an anecdote about CEO-level professional success without ivy league attendance; it was making the point that the definition of success as laid out in the article is very narrow and not something that everyone is seeking.

up to 80% of Ivy+ grads are working in business, not helping uplift anyone but their wallets

ofc.... why we haven't cured cancer after we have so many genius for so many years....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The study cited in the Atlantic article states:

we show that attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average flagship public college
increases students’ chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 50%, nearly doubles
their chances of attending an elite graduate school, and almost triples their chances of working at a
prestigious firm.

Some questions I have are:
1. What does this article actually mean? How common are these outcomes? Should a parent who sends their child to an Ivy League school expect them to achieve the outcomes listed above? Does the article show that an Ivy League education makes a person more capable? Or does it show that just having an Ivy League degree confers favorable treatment from certain employers?

2. Do I want these specific outcomes for my kid? I mean obviously it's better than being unemployed and destitute, but this level of wealth is not something I personally strive for nor do I think it is what is best for my kid. I truly have no.regrets about not working for a "prestigious firm". F that ish

[Anonymous]

Selling prestige has reached tipping points. So many truly intelligent folks started their own companies bypass colleges. The real capable ones don't need to buy in these vanity lies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The study findings are what I intuitively would have said was the thing an elite institution gets you. I was a small town girl from a MC high school. Living in a dorm with heiresses and UMC girls acclimated me to the life I lived "ever after."

I would say the same but with regard to academic and intellectual firepower rather than lifestyle factors.

I managed to get to a T10 school without working hard or challenging myself much in high school. I knew I was very smart, so though I engaged when I wanted to, I mostly coasted through.

My T10 college changed that immediately. The environment stimulated and challenged me - to dig deeper, work harder, and push myself to the learning edge again and again. The discourse was more complex and sophisticated, and the “average” performance was astronomical compared to my previous environments. My classmates were truely impressive, and being around them helped me grow more than any concept or material I learned in a book or from a lecture.

It’s always about the people. Our peers help frame our daily lives and influence us so much more than we often realize.

And you get the exact same peer profile at another 20 or so universities and dozen or so SLACs.

No, you do not. The ivy+ schools as well as a couple of others JHU, Caltech, CMU, Rice, WashU, Vanderbilt all had roughly 75%* or more with 98-99%ile scores, based on matriculated students in the pre-TO years. Williams was in this range, Amherst and Swarthmore a little lower, more like 50% with 98-99%ile scores, similar to Northwestern, Notre Dame and a few others, by the time you get to the 25th best SAT range it was more like 25% of the class in the 98-99%ile range: ie. UVA, Georgetown, Emory, and many SLACs between #5 and 13, some of those start to drop even lower.
Having 75% of the class at 98-99%ile is not at all the same as 25%.
Time will tell but now that almost all are back to test required, the same players will likely be up at the top again, ivies plus 7-10 more schools, presumably Williams will remain the top LAC for this stat.
Vanderbilt has moved away from caring about scores, they may not remain in that group as they once were. They used to brag at info sessions and post score tables showing only 4 ivies were higher than their ranges.
SAT scores are of course not the only indicators of a driven, motivated peer group. Vanderbilt for one used to take top-scoring kids who did not quite have top-10% grades from the private schools and top public magnet in our area: maybe Vanderbilt never

TLDR there are not 30 unis and 12 SLACs that have equivalent peers to the ivy+ schools studied. There are maybe 5-8 more in addition to the 12 studied. By the time you get to the 30th uni and 12th SLAC the talent is significantly diluted.

*Cornell was always the lowest, with about 50% 98-99%ile, likely related to the in-state admissions for CALS. Chicago and Columbia never used to report. Presumably they were lower than many peers in the ivy+.

This PP managed to write a super long post about Ivies’ superior test scores without mentioning the school with the best scores: Harvey Mudd, which coincidentally also has the highest post-undergrad starting salary.

Ivies are now 50-60+% athletes, legacies, VIPs/donors and first-gen/low income; overwhelming majority of them could not survive HM’s 1st year core requirements let alone 4 years.

Drop the Mudd nonsense, it's a great school but nothing special relative to the Ivy+ or a dozen other SLACs. It's a bunch of engineers which his why their undergrad starting salary is high. It will stay high too but if you look at mid-career salaries it's tail is likely quite different than that of the top NESCAC SLACs and CMC because they don't send many kids into IB, top consulting and big law which is where the later career stage money is.

The PP wrote a novel without saying anything substantive. Yes, the tails might look a bit different among the schools but the overlap is huge. And somehow in their world there is a significant difference between 97th percentile and the 98th but the world and admissions knows that it isn't true. There are over 60,000 kids with 97%+ scores every year and they have to go somewhere. The idea that somehow only the T10 create critical mass is dim at best.

The study that is referenced is also misleading. The reason for the additional movement into the top 1% can virtually entirely be attributed to career gatekeeping. Access to IB, MBB, big law careers is what gets people into the top 1% and access is highly restricted to a certain set of schools. If you back those careers out of the data set I suspect you would see a reversion to mean for top 1% achievement. That means there are about 20 top schools SLACs and Universities which will drive overperformance when it comes to reaching the top 1%. Research using proxies like F1000 board seats per capita strongly supports this hypothesis as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The study findings are what I intuitively would have said was the thing an elite institution gets you. I was a small town girl from a MC high school. Living in a dorm with heiresses and UMC girls acclimated me to the life I lived "ever after."

I would say the same but with regard to academic and intellectual firepower rather than lifestyle factors.

I managed to get to a T10 school without working hard or challenging myself much in high school. I knew I was very smart, so though I engaged when I wanted to, I mostly coasted through.

My T10 college changed that immediately. The environment stimulated and challenged me - to dig deeper, work harder, and push myself to the learning edge again and again. The discourse was more complex and sophisticated, and the “average” performance was astronomical compared to my previous environments. My classmates were truely impressive, and being around them helped me grow more than any concept or material I learned in a book or from a lecture.

It’s always about the people. Our peers help frame our daily lives and influence us so much more than we often realize.

And you get the exact same peer profile at another 20 or so universities and dozen or so SLACs.

No, you do not. The ivy+ schools as well as a couple of others JHU, Caltech, CMU, Rice, WashU, Vanderbilt all had roughly 75%* or more with 98-99%ile scores, based on matriculated students in the pre-TO years. Williams was in this range, Amherst and Swarthmore a little lower, more like 50% with 98-99%ile scores, similar to Northwestern, Notre Dame and a few others, by the time you get to the 25th best SAT range it was more like 25% of the class in the 98-99%ile range: ie. UVA, Georgetown, Emory, and many SLACs between #5 and 13, some of those start to drop even lower.
Having 75% of the class at 98-99%ile is not at all the same as 25%.
Time will tell but now that almost all are back to test required, the same players will likely be up at the top again, ivies plus 7-10 more schools, presumably Williams will remain the top LAC for this stat.
Vanderbilt has moved away from caring about scores, they may not remain in that group as they once were. They used to brag at info sessions and post score tables showing only 4 ivies were higher than their ranges.
SAT scores are of course not the only indicators of a driven, motivated peer group. Vanderbilt for one used to take top-scoring kids who did not quite have top-10% grades from the private schools and top public magnet in our area: maybe Vanderbilt never

TLDR there are not 30 unis and 12 SLACs that have equivalent peers to the ivy+ schools studied. There are maybe 5-8 more in addition to the 12 studied. By the time you get to the 30th uni and 12th SLAC the talent is significantly diluted.

*Cornell was always the lowest, with about 50% 98-99%ile, likely related to the in-state admissions for CALS. Chicago and Columbia never used to report. Presumably they were lower than many peers in the ivy+.

This PP managed to write a super long post about Ivies’ superior test scores without mentioning the school with the best scores: Harvey Mudd, which coincidentally also has the highest post-undergrad starting salary.

Ivies are now 50-60+% athletes, legacies, VIPs/donors and first-gen/low income; overwhelming majority of them could not survive HM’s 1st year core requirements let alone 4 years.

Drop the Mudd nonsense, it's a great school but nothing special relative to the Ivy+ or a dozen other SLACs. It's a bunch of engineers which his why their undergrad starting salary is high. It will stay high too but if you look at mid-career salaries it's tail is likely quite different than that of the top NESCAC SLACs and CMC because they don't send many kids into IB, top consulting and big law which is where the later career stage money is.

The PP wrote a novel without saying anything substantive. Yes, the tails might look a bit different among the schools but the overlap is huge. And somehow in their world there is a significant difference between 97th percentile and the 98th but the world and admissions knows that it isn't true. There are over 60,000 kids with 97%+ scores every year and they have to go somewhere. The idea that somehow only the T10 create critical mass is dim at best.

The study that is referenced is also misleading. The reason for the additional movement into the top 1% can virtually entirely be attributed to career gatekeeping. Access to IB, MBB, big law careers is what gets people into the top 1% and access is highly restricted to a certain set of schools. If you back those careers out of the data set I suspect you would see a reversion to mean for top 1% achievement. That means there are about 20 top schools SLACs and Universities which will drive overperformance when it comes to reaching the top 1%. Research using proxies like F1000 board seats per capita strongly supports this hypothesis as well.

Ding ding ding

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/ivy-league-education-income/686682/?gift=2104cHYqEyxQuK2PwywZF7-YEJE1w30W8CBwJeAa-x4

New research dropped - yes, elite schools matter

- Students at Ivy League schools and the similarly selective University of Chicago, Duke, Stanford, and MIT together comprise less than half a percent of America’s undergraduate population. Yet their alumni represent more than 12 percent of all Fortune 500 CEOs, 32 percent of all New York Times journalists, and 13 percent of the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the population.

- the most important thing a student gets from an Ivy Plus education isn’t instruction or prestige or even connections. It’s the opportunity to learn how to succeed in an environment filled with the world’s most talented and ambitious people. “Being in the classroom with all these folks, doing homework assignments, having to cooperate with them in your club, sitting around the dining table with them, figuring out who’s going to live with whom—all that stuff comes together to make these schools really unparalleled training grounds to be in these upper-echelon professional jobs

- it’s worth every penny.

- economists used a clever study design. They looked only at applicants who were wait-listed. The ones who ultimately were admitted were virtually indistinguishable from the ones who weren’t, meaning that the first group’s superior career performance was almost certainly caused by attending the more selective school. “Sending someone to an Ivy Plus school instead of to one of these top flagship schools is per se a transformational opportunity,” Friedman said. “It’s not that they were always on that path to begin with.”

- that the most important thing about top colleges is the people who attend them—and the transformation that occurs when a critical mass of such high-achieving people are put together in one place. That young people’s peers affect their life trajectories is well established. Chetty’s research has found that “economic connectedness”—people forming friendships across class lines—is one of the strongest predictors of upward mobility.

- he thinks that what’s going on is more complex and harder to define: an implicit education in how to succeed in an environment full of some of the world’s most gifted, determined people. There’s no class that can really teach someone how to collaborate in a highly competitive environment or emerge as a leader among their peers. “It’s very difficult to develop this leadership skill without the opportunity to be in a community with lots of other ambitious and talented individuals, which is exactly what the Ivy Plus schools are providing,” Friedman said. Steel sharpens steel.

- The hypothesis is that exposure, not just to so many great students, but in such a compact space—that’s really what makes these Ivy Plus and other highly selective schools stand out in ways that are even different from those top flagship schools,” Friedman said.

Concentration of top peers matters, thus elite schools that have the max concentration matter, and can affect students in positive ways.

The sky is blue.

None of this is unexpected at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The study findings are what I intuitively would have said was the thing an elite institution gets you. I was a small town girl from a MC high school. Living in a dorm with heiresses and UMC girls acclimated me to the life I lived "ever after."

I would say the same but with regard to academic and intellectual firepower rather than lifestyle factors.

I managed to get to a T10 school without working hard or challenging myself much in high school. I knew I was very smart, so though I engaged when I wanted to, I mostly coasted through.

My T10 college changed that immediately. The environment stimulated and challenged me - to dig deeper, work harder, and push myself to the learning edge again and again. The discourse was more complex and sophisticated, and the “average” performance was astronomical compared to my previous environments. My classmates were truely impressive, and being around them helped me grow more than any concept or material I learned in a book or from a lecture.

It’s always about the people. Our peers help frame our daily lives and influence us so much more than we often realize.

And you get the exact same peer profile at another 20 or so universities and dozen or so SLACs.

No, you do not. The ivy+ schools as well as a couple of others JHU, Caltech, CMU, Rice, WashU, Vanderbilt all had roughly 75%* or more with 98-99%ile scores, based on matriculated students in the pre-TO years. Williams was in this range, Amherst and Swarthmore a little lower, more like 50% with 98-99%ile scores, similar to Northwestern, Notre Dame and a few others, by the time you get to the 25th best SAT range it was more like 25% of the class in the 98-99%ile range: ie. UVA, Georgetown, Emory, and many SLACs between #5 and 13, some of those start to drop even lower.
Having 75% of the class at 98-99%ile is not at all the same as 25%.
Time will tell but now that almost all are back to test required, the same players will likely be up at the top again, ivies plus 7-10 more schools, presumably Williams will remain the top LAC for this stat.
Vanderbilt has moved away from caring about scores, they may not remain in that group as they once were. They used to brag at info sessions and post score tables showing only 4 ivies were higher than their ranges.
SAT scores are of course not the only indicators of a driven, motivated peer group. Vanderbilt for one used to take top-scoring kids who did not quite have top-10% grades from the private schools and top public magnet in our area: maybe Vanderbilt never

TLDR there are not 30 unis and 12 SLACs that have equivalent peers to the ivy+ schools studied. There are maybe 5-8 more in addition to the 12 studied. By the time you get to the 30th uni and 12th SLAC the talent is significantly diluted.

*Cornell was always the lowest, with about 50% 98-99%ile, likely related to the in-state admissions for CALS. Chicago and Columbia never used to report. Presumably they were lower than many peers in the ivy+.

This PP managed to write a super long post about Ivies’ superior test scores without mentioning the school with the best scores: Harvey Mudd, which coincidentally also has the highest post-undergrad starting salary.

Ivies are now 50-60+% athletes, legacies, VIPs/donors and first-gen/low income; overwhelming majority of them could not survive HM’s 1st year core requirements let alone 4 years.

Drop the Mudd nonsense, it's a great school but nothing special relative to the Ivy+ or a dozen other SLACs. It's a bunch of engineers which his why their undergrad starting salary is high. It will stay high too but if you look at mid-career salaries it's tail is likely quite different than that of the top NESCAC SLACs and CMC because they don't send many kids into IB, top consulting and big law which is where the later career stage money is.

The PP wrote a novel without saying anything substantive. Yes, the tails might look a bit different among the schools but the overlap is huge. And somehow in their world there is a significant difference between 97th percentile and the 98th but the world and admissions knows that it isn't true. There are over 60,000 kids with 97%+ scores every year and they have to go somewhere. The idea that somehow only the T10 create critical mass is dim at best.

The study that is referenced is also misleading. The reason for the additional movement into the top 1% can virtually entirely be attributed to career gatekeeping. Access to IB, MBB, big law careers is what gets people into the top 1% and access is highly restricted to a certain set of schools. If you back those careers out of the data set I suspect you would see a reversion to mean for top 1% achievement. That means there are about 20 top schools SLACs and Universities which will drive overperformance when it comes to reaching the top 1%. Research using proxies like F1000 board seats per capita strongly supports this hypothesis as well.

Great but bamboo ceiling is real plus competent kids should start their own companies for that elite colleges matter less.

[Anonymous]

To be rich all you need is basic good math to gamble in stock market, many people do it without expensive elite school education lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most sure thing you get from an Ivy degree (really only HPY) is bragging rights. In most circles it is shorthand for I’m smart.

But, it also comes with a lot of baggage, especially outside Ivy circles. Many think that Ivy “normals” rest on their laurels and think too highly of themselves. Some normals are so intoxicated by their supposed sophistication that they are tone-deaf to their obnoxiousness. The worst is when Ivy normals level-up by name-dropping notable alumni, especially ones who attended school at the same time but didn’t interact with them. In other words, for many Ivy graduates, the diploma becomes a burden that many don’t wear well. With great opportunities come great, perhaps insurmountable, expectations.

I think one exception might be Cornell.

If you say you went to Cornell, you are signaling that you are smart but nobody thinks you're bragging.

I actually think Cornell says "I'm a slave to the Ivy brand but this is the best I could do." It's kind of embarrassing.
This describes many kids I know who are there.

Or you think the other Ivies are too pretentious.

Or you want to study engineering.

Or you live in NY and one of the land grant schools at Cornell aligns with your interests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The study findings are what I intuitively would have said was the thing an elite institution gets you. I was a small town girl from a MC high school. Living in a dorm with heiresses and UMC girls acclimated me to the life I lived "ever after."

I would say the same but with regard to academic and intellectual firepower rather than lifestyle factors.

I managed to get to a T10 school without working hard or challenging myself much in high school. I knew I was very smart, so though I engaged when I wanted to, I mostly coasted through.

My T10 college changed that immediately. The environment stimulated and challenged me - to dig deeper, work harder, and push myself to the learning edge again and again. The discourse was more complex and sophisticated, and the “average” performance was astronomical compared to my previous environments. My classmates were truely impressive, and being around them helped me grow more than any concept or material I learned in a book or from a lecture.

It’s always about the people. Our peers help frame our daily lives and influence us so much more than we often realize.

And you get the exact same peer profile at another 20 or so universities and dozen or so SLACs.

No, you do not. The ivy+ schools as well as a couple of others JHU, Caltech, CMU, Rice, WashU, Vanderbilt all had roughly 75%* or more with 98-99%ile scores, based on matriculated students in the pre-TO years. Williams was in this range, Amherst and Swarthmore a little lower, more like 50% with 98-99%ile scores, similar to Northwestern, Notre Dame and a few others, by the time you get to the 25th best SAT range it was more like 25% of the class in the 98-99%ile range: ie. UVA, Georgetown, Emory, and many SLACs between #5 and 13, some of those start to drop even lower.
Having 75% of the class at 98-99%ile is not at all the same as 25%.
Time will tell but now that almost all are back to test required, the same players will likely be up at the top again, ivies plus 7-10 more schools, presumably Williams will remain the top LAC for this stat.
Vanderbilt has moved away from caring about scores, they may not remain in that group as they once were. They used to brag at info sessions and post score tables showing only 4 ivies were higher than their ranges.
SAT scores are of course not the only indicators of a driven, motivated peer group. Vanderbilt for one used to take top-scoring kids who did not quite have top-10% grades from the private schools and top public magnet in our area: maybe Vanderbilt never

TLDR there are not 30 unis and 12 SLACs that have equivalent peers to the ivy+ schools studied. There are maybe 5-8 more in addition to the 12 studied. By the time you get to the 30th uni and 12th SLAC the talent is significantly diluted.

*Cornell was always the lowest, with about 50% 98-99%ile, likely related to the in-state admissions for CALS. Chicago and Columbia never used to report. Presumably they were lower than many peers in the ivy+.

This PP managed to write a super long post about Ivies’ superior test scores without mentioning the school with the best scores: Harvey Mudd, which coincidentally also has the highest post-undergrad starting salary.

Ivies are now 50-60+% athletes, legacies, VIPs/donors and first-gen/low income; overwhelming majority of them could not survive HM’s 1st year core requirements let alone 4 years.

Drop the Mudd nonsense, it's a great school but nothing special relative to the Ivy+ or a dozen other SLACs. It's a bunch of engineers which his why their undergrad starting salary is high. It will stay high too but if you look at mid-career salaries it's tail is likely quite different than that of the top NESCAC SLACs and CMC because they don't send many kids into IB, top consulting and big law which is where the later career stage money is.

The PP wrote a novel without saying anything substantive. Yes, the tails might look a bit different among the schools but the overlap is huge. And somehow in their world there is a significant difference between 97th percentile and the 98th but the world and admissions knows that it isn't true. There are over 60,000 kids with 97%+ scores every year and they have to go somewhere. The idea that somehow only the T10 create critical mass is dim at best.

The study that is referenced is also misleading. The reason for the additional movement into the top 1% can virtually entirely be attributed to career gatekeeping. Access to IB, MBB, big law careers is what gets people into the top 1% and access is highly restricted to a certain set of schools. If you back those careers out of the data set I suspect you would see a reversion to mean for top 1% achievement. That means there are about 20 top schools SLACs and Universities which will drive overperformance when it comes to reaching the top 1%. Research using proxies like F1000 board seats per capita strongly supports this hypothesis as well.

Great but bamboo ceiling is real plus competent kids should start their own companies for that elite colleges matter less.

Actually, the opposite is even more true. Elite school dropouts and grads have a far easier time raising capital vs all others.

The last Y Combinator class was over 85% from just like 15 schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The study findings are what I intuitively would have said was the thing an elite institution gets you. I was a small town girl from a MC high school. Living in a dorm with heiresses and UMC girls acclimated me to the life I lived "ever after."

I would say the same but with regard to academic and intellectual firepower rather than lifestyle factors.

I managed to get to a T10 school without working hard or challenging myself much in high school. I knew I was very smart, so though I engaged when I wanted to, I mostly coasted through.

My T10 college changed that immediately. The environment stimulated and challenged me - to dig deeper, work harder, and push myself to the learning edge again and again. The discourse was more complex and sophisticated, and the “average” performance was astronomical compared to my previous environments. My classmates were truely impressive, and being around them helped me grow more than any concept or material I learned in a book or from a lecture.

It’s always about the people. Our peers help frame our daily lives and influence us so much more than we often realize.

And you get the exact same peer profile at another 20 or so universities and dozen or so SLACs.

No, you do not. The ivy+ schools as well as a couple of others JHU, Caltech, CMU, Rice, WashU, Vanderbilt all had roughly 75%* or more with 98-99%ile scores, based on matriculated students in the pre-TO years. Williams was in this range, Amherst and Swarthmore a little lower, more like 50% with 98-99%ile scores, similar to Northwestern, Notre Dame and a few others, by the time you get to the 25th best SAT range it was more like 25% of the class in the 98-99%ile range: ie. UVA, Georgetown, Emory, and many SLACs between #5 and 13, some of those start to drop even lower.
Having 75% of the class at 98-99%ile is not at all the same as 25%.
Time will tell but now that almost all are back to test required, the same players will likely be up at the top again, ivies plus 7-10 more schools, presumably Williams will remain the top LAC for this stat.
Vanderbilt has moved away from caring about scores, they may not remain in that group as they once were. They used to brag at info sessions and post score tables showing only 4 ivies were higher than their ranges.
SAT scores are of course not the only indicators of a driven, motivated peer group. Vanderbilt for one used to take top-scoring kids who did not quite have top-10% grades from the private schools and top public magnet in our area: maybe Vanderbilt never

TLDR there are not 30 unis and 12 SLACs that have equivalent peers to the ivy+ schools studied. There are maybe 5-8 more in addition to the 12 studied. By the time you get to the 30th uni and 12th SLAC the talent is significantly diluted.

*Cornell was always the lowest, with about 50% 98-99%ile, likely related to the in-state admissions for CALS. Chicago and Columbia never used to report. Presumably they were lower than many peers in the ivy+.

This PP managed to write a super long post about Ivies’ superior test scores without mentioning the school with the best scores: Harvey Mudd, which coincidentally also has the highest post-undergrad starting salary.

Ivies are now 50-60+% athletes, legacies, VIPs/donors and first-gen/low income; overwhelming majority of them could not survive HM’s 1st year core requirements let alone 4 years.

Drop the Mudd nonsense, it's a great school but nothing special relative to the Ivy+ or a dozen other SLACs. It's a bunch of engineers which his why their undergrad starting salary is high. It will stay high too but if you look at mid-career salaries it's tail is likely quite different than that of the top NESCAC SLACs and CMC because they don't send many kids into IB, top consulting and big law which is where the later career stage money is.

The PP wrote a novel without saying anything substantive. Yes, the tails might look a bit different among the schools but the overlap is huge. And somehow in their world there is a significant difference between 97th percentile and the 98th but the world and admissions knows that it isn't true. There are over 60,000 kids with 97%+ scores every year and they have to go somewhere. The idea that somehow only the T10 create critical mass is dim at best.

The study that is referenced is also misleading. The reason for the additional movement into the top 1% can virtually entirely be attributed to career gatekeeping. Access to IB, MBB, big law careers is what gets people into the top 1% and access is highly restricted to a certain set of schools. If you back those careers out of the data set I suspect you would see a reversion to mean for top 1% achievement. That means there are about 20 top schools SLACs and Universities which will drive overperformance when it comes to reaching the top 1%. Research using proxies like F1000 board seats per capita strongly supports this hypothesis as well.

Great but bamboo ceiling is real plus competent kids should start their own companies for that elite colleges matter less.

Actually, the opposite is even more true. Elite school dropouts and grads have a far easier time raising capital vs all others.

The last Y Combinator class was over 85% from just like 15 schools.

Doesn't mean you can't if you don't attend expensive schools, point is that is not a must. Everything is about opportunity cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The study findings are what I intuitively would have said was the thing an elite institution gets you. I was a small town girl from a MC high school. Living in a dorm with heiresses and UMC girls acclimated me to the life I lived "ever after."

I would say the same but with regard to academic and intellectual firepower rather than lifestyle factors.

I managed to get to a T10 school without working hard or challenging myself much in high school. I knew I was very smart, so though I engaged when I wanted to, I mostly coasted through.

My T10 college changed that immediately. The environment stimulated and challenged me - to dig deeper, work harder, and push myself to the learning edge again and again. The discourse was more complex and sophisticated, and the “average” performance was astronomical compared to my previous environments. My classmates were truely impressive, and being around them helped me grow more than any concept or material I learned in a book or from a lecture.

It’s always about the people. Our peers help frame our daily lives and influence us so much more than we often realize.

And you get the exact same peer profile at another 20 or so universities and dozen or so SLACs.

No, you do not. The ivy+ schools as well as a couple of others JHU, Caltech, CMU, Rice, WashU, Vanderbilt all had roughly 75%* or more with 98-99%ile scores, based on matriculated students in the pre-TO years. Williams was in this range, Amherst and Swarthmore a little lower, more like 50% with 98-99%ile scores, similar to Northwestern, Notre Dame and a few others, by the time you get to the 25th best SAT range it was more like 25% of the class in the 98-99%ile range: ie. UVA, Georgetown, Emory, and many SLACs between #5 and 13, some of those start to drop even lower.
Having 75% of the class at 98-99%ile is not at all the same as 25%.
Time will tell but now that almost all are back to test required, the same players will likely be up at the top again, ivies plus 7-10 more schools, presumably Williams will remain the top LAC for this stat.
Vanderbilt has moved away from caring about scores, they may not remain in that group as they once were. They used to brag at info sessions and post score tables showing only 4 ivies were higher than their ranges.
SAT scores are of course not the only indicators of a driven, motivated peer group. Vanderbilt for one used to take top-scoring kids who did not quite have top-10% grades from the private schools and top public magnet in our area: maybe Vanderbilt never

TLDR there are not 30 unis and 12 SLACs that have equivalent peers to the ivy+ schools studied. There are maybe 5-8 more in addition to the 12 studied. By the time you get to the 30th uni and 12th SLAC the talent is significantly diluted.

*Cornell was always the lowest, with about 50% 98-99%ile, likely related to the in-state admissions for CALS. Chicago and Columbia never used to report. Presumably they were lower than many peers in the ivy+.

This PP managed to write a super long post about Ivies’ superior test scores without mentioning the school with the best scores: Harvey Mudd, which coincidentally also has the highest post-undergrad starting salary.

Ivies are now 50-60+% athletes, legacies, VIPs/donors and first-gen/low income; overwhelming majority of them could not survive HM’s 1st year core requirements let alone 4 years.

Drop the Mudd nonsense, it's a great school but nothing special relative to the Ivy+ or a dozen other SLACs. It's a bunch of engineers which his why their undergrad starting salary is high. It will stay high too but if you look at mid-career salaries it's tail is likely quite different than that of the top NESCAC SLACs and CMC because they don't send many kids into IB, top consulting and big law which is where the later career stage money is.

The PP wrote a novel without saying anything substantive. Yes, the tails might look a bit different among the schools but the overlap is huge. And somehow in their world there is a significant difference between 97th percentile and the 98th but the world and admissions knows that it isn't true. There are over 60,000 kids with 97%+ scores every year and they have to go somewhere. The idea that somehow only the T10 create critical mass is dim at best.

The study that is referenced is also misleading. The reason for the additional movement into the top 1% can virtually entirely be attributed to career gatekeeping. Access to IB, MBB, big law careers is what gets people into the top 1% and access is highly restricted to a certain set of schools. If you back those careers out of the data set I suspect you would see a reversion to mean for top 1% achievement. That means there are about 20 top schools SLACs and Universities which will drive overperformance when it comes to reaching the top 1%. Research using proxies like F1000 board seats per capita strongly supports this hypothesis as well.

Great but bamboo ceiling is real plus competent kids should start their own companies for that elite colleges matter less.

Actually, the opposite is even more true. Elite school dropouts and grads have a far easier time raising capital vs all others.

The last Y Combinator class was over 85% from just like 15 schools.

WSJ article this week on this

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To be rich all you need is basic good math to gamble in stock market, many people do it without expensive elite school education lol

Says someone without basic common sense. Why is DCUM so dumb? It’s just beyond my imagination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a bunch of new ivies including Emory, Vandy, Rice. They can simulate a similar environment.

Ha, nope. Look at parchment match ups, while those are great schools, they are full of kids who didn't get into an Ivy and would have picked it if they had.

We did
Emory vs Dartmouth
https://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Emory+University&with=Dartmouth+


Rice vs Cornell
https://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Rice+University&with=Cornell+

Vanderbilt vs Cornell
https://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Vanderbilt+University&with=Cornell+University

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys aren't getting it. It's the expectations you develop for yourself and what your life will be like that matters long after you graduate. Yes, you work hard, are challenged academically. But that's not all. You learn how people from more successful backgrounds think and act. How smarter and academically more accomplished people think and act. You change.
--small town girl from MC high school

It evens out more once people hit middle age. You can’t tell by outcomes. For every tech millionaire or billionaire there’s a random [insert job].

-HYP grad

+1. The Economist had a thing on this recently about how early elite performance disproportionately fails to translate to top performance later on.

That article illustrated the same statistical phenomenon - there is no contradiction in saying that those who are Y disproportionately come from X even though most X will not become Y (because the funnel is so narrow at the top).