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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I happen to know a lot of people with PhDs from top schools and most of them did not go to HYPSM for their undergrad degrees. Just a personal anecdote but I suspect it mirrors whats out there. Perhaps all the HYPSM students are headed off to lucrative banking or consulting firm careers instead of aiming for intellectual prestige.[/quote]

Two (maybe 3) factors at work here. (1) a few prestigious/relatively small schools (like HYPS) can be grossly overrepresented in PhD admissions and still constitute a minority of all PhD students (globally, at elite schools, or in a particular program) (2) admissions (which is where the prestige advantage functions most strongly) does not = outcome (who finishes, who gets which jobs). Once you’re in grad school, you’re on your own wrt performance. (3) depending on where you are in your profession, who you see/what seems normal might be skewed. A Big Law firm, for example, may have a different mix of undergrad degrees than a DA’s office, even if both have lots of (or the same percentage of) JDs from prestigious law schools.[/quote]

I think that this is true, but that students who do well in the honors program at their state flagship, or at some place like Alabama or Arizona State, if they come from a state with a weak state flagship, may do almost as well in serious Ph.D. programs, because, first, the stats for the students in solid state flagship honors programs are at least as good as the stats for HYPSM students.

Second, grad school admissions people will see that a lot of the Top 30 school admissions process was based on nonsense, and that it's insane for most families to spend $280,000 to send their bright kids to, say, Washington University, rather paying, maybe, $60,000 all in to send their kids to the Good State U Honors College.

And I went to Washington University. I loved Washington University. I have a nice career. A lot of the people I went to Wash. U. have amazing careers. It's probably a lot more comfortable to go there than to go to the University of Maryland. But, in general, no way can it be worth $220,000 for a donut-hole-type family to send a typical great kid to Wash. U. rather than to the University of Maryland. [/quote]

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