Reply to Everyone on DCUM should read Frank Bruni's recent book on colleges

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"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." This was the finding of a couple researchers, Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger. One was, ironically, a Harvard grad and a current Princeton professor. So there's that.

This was a key finding: "He points out that the average SAT score at the most selective college students [b][i]apply to[/i][/b] turns out to be a better predictor of their earnings than the average SAT score at the college [b][i]they attended[/i][/b]."

This matches the point Bruni makes in his excellent book. Perhaps the fixation with prestige is actually a positive marker in its own way. But the disparaging of schools outside the most prestigious is unfortunate. Because it ultimately doesn't matter nearly so much as many think. Sure, shoot for the elite schools. Just don't make it the be-all and end-all. There really is life outside the elite schools.

Now when you read the summary of the study, it does find that selective schools make a difference for these groups: black students, Latino students, low-income students and students whose parents did not graduate from college. Note: these represent some of what are called URMs and/or hooks when it comes to college admissions.

Link to story about the study: 
https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/revisiting-the-value-of-elite-colleges/[/quote]
The benefit of selective schools for URMs seems to be a huge asterisk that really weakens the study's conclusions, especially given that now they're nearly half of the under age 18 population in this country.  Once you add in students whose parents did not graduate from college, that may take the percentage of students for whom selective schools making a difference to over 50 percent.  What you seem to be portraying as the exception is actually swallowing the rule.

Also, this study covered a cohort that attended undergrad 40 years ago.[/quote]

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