Reply to Mythbuster: "It doesn't matter where you do undergrad, only MA-JD-MBA-MD matter"

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Reply to "Mythbuster: "It doesn't matter where you do undergrad, only MA-JD-MBA-MD matter""

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not really. The articles only says that the average income for Tier 1/Tier 1 is greater than Tier 2-3/Tier 1. It doesn't compare those who do well/network aggressively at Tier 2 schools to those who sit back and wait for the phone to ring at Tier 1s. [/quote]

Well, it's dealing with aggregates, isn't it. I am Tier 1/Tier 1 but am DCUM poor. My old roommate is a partner at Bain. A state school grad could easily get my job. My roommate's job? Less likely. The point is, motivation etc. is a separate issue that you want to control for in a study like this, although it's useful in thinking about to plan your own life.

The paper's argument is that "ability should be largely equalized among those who graduate from similarly selective graduate program" - i.e. comparing Slippery Rock/Yale Law students to Yale/Yale Law students is apples to apples, as far as motivation goes.

[quote=Anonymous]As for your main point, it would be interesting to compare top tier undergrad admits who matriculated elsewhere and then attended top tier grad to Tier 1/Tier 1 grads. That would tease apart effect and selection. 
[/quote]

Agree that would be interesting.[/quote]

This study has been done:

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/revisiting-the-value-of-elite-colleges/?_r=0
[/quote]

From the article"

[i]But Ms. Dale — an economist at Mathematica, a research firm — and Mr. Krueger — a Princeton economist and former contributor to this blog — added a new variable in their research. They also controlled for the colleges that students applied to and were accepted by.

Doing so allowed them to capture much more information about the students than SAT scores and grades do. Someone who applies to Duke, Williams or Yale may be signaling that he or she is more confident and ambitious than someone with similar scores and grades who does not apply. Someone who is accepted by a highly selective school may have other skills that their scores didn’t pick up, but that the admissions officers noticed.

Once the two economists added these new variables, the earnings difference disappeared. In fact, it went away merely by including the colleges that students had applied to — and not taking into account whether they were accepted. A student with a 1,400 SAT score who went to Penn State but applied to Penn earned as much, on average, as a student with a 1,400 who went to Penn.

“Even applying to a school, even if you get rejected, says a lot about you,” Mr. Krueger told me. He points out that the average SAT score at the most selective college students apply to turns out to be a better predictor of their earnings than the average SAT score at the college they attended. (The study measured a college’s selectivity by the average SAT score of admitted students as well as by a selectivity score that the publisher Barron’s gives to colleges.)

It’s important to note, though, that a few major groups did not fit the pattern: black students, Latino students, low-income students and students whose parents did not graduate from college. “For them, attending a more selective school increased earnings significantly,” Mr. Krueger has written. Why? Perhaps they benefit from professional connections they would not otherwise have. Perhaps they acquire habits or skills that middle-class and affluent students have already acquired in high school or at home.[/i][/quote]

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