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[quote=Anonymous]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. “[b]Sending someone to an Ivy Plus school instead of to one of these top flagship schools is per se a transformational opportunity[/b],” Friedman said. “[b]It’s not that they were always on that path to begin with[/b].”

- [b]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. [/b]

- 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.

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