The fact that people believe it doesn't make it true. It is natural when people are paying a quarter of a million dollars for a degree that someone else is paying $70,000 they are going to believe they've purchased some exclusive privilege. What the research shows is that when you look at similar candidates who attended an Ivy versus a less selective public university the outcomes are very similar. The key is to compare apples to apples - look at selective school students versus students who were accepted to selective schools but opted for state universities.

When we are talking about acceleration and students in the league of students who attend the Davidson Academy we are talking about outliers. Success for this group doesn't depend on an Ivy League education. I agree with the other poster who suggested you look at top flight grad programs and look where students are coming from. Sure, you'll see Ivies, but also plenty of state school grads as well as grads from small liberal arts colleges you've probably never heard of. They most important thing is what students do with their education while they are in college. Lazy students don't do well no matter where they go. Smart, go getters can do amazing things at all sorts of schools. It is that undergraduate record, research, scores that get students into grad school.

Yes! Some kids need a lot more than acceleration in one or two subjects. Making up a lot of rules in your mind about how it will need to play out in order for the child to be happy isn't really worth anyone's time.

Agreed.

Also, and I'm only speculating here... but I expect that some DA graduates are very young and may not want to move thousands of miles away.

I disagree with one thing you said potatoes. The kids in Davidson Academy are outliers. Just being PG doesn't make you an outlier.

And I am not sure about outcomes from state colleges and Harvard or Yale. They wouldn't have the endowments they have if their grads had the same outcomes. The endowments are just donations from their alumni.

Haven't heard of a state school getting those kinds of returns from its graduates, even with the greater numbers.

Ren

Note: I was referring to Outliers as referenced by the book. Not statistical ones, because then PG kids are just as much outliers as kids with an IQ of 50. You can group them together as outliers.

Ren

It makes you a statistical outlier. DA has strict admission requirements. Students who are capable of being admitted there are exactly the same sort of students who end up with great college prospects.



Of course we know that there is a long legacy of privilege associated with the Ivy League. I'd suggest you take a look at the book The Price of Admission.

I'm not talking about the average graduate of each school. I won't argue that the average graduate of Ohio State and the average graduate of Harvard are likely to make the same amount of money. Rather, that the student who could have been admitted to Harvard but chose to attend Ohio State is likely to have the same outcome. In other words, it isn't something about about attending a college in the Ivy League athletic conference that is changing students into people with top prospects. And, of course that isn't even to get into the many fantastic liberal arts colleges (Kenyon, Macalester, Reed, etc.) that many people on the East Coast have never heard of. Graduate school admissions from these colleges are fantastic probably in large part because in an undergraduate only environment students are in small classes, no TAs and plenty of nurturing. These are factors that parents may assume their child will be getting for their $50,000 at an Ivy League college but it depends greatly on the school. At some students will be in large classes and get very little attention from faculty.

Totally agree! I know it's anecdotal, but I started a top-10 economics phD program (never finished), and none of the American students were from Ivies. I went to Pitt for undergrad, the other two from my class went to University of Miami (Ohio) and Northwestern (and the other 15 were from other countries). Going to an Ivy for undergrad matters more to the student who is probably not going to be a stand-out in academics and is very interested in making connections.

College is what you make of it.

Here's some anecdotal evidence from my life:

I know 5 students who were radically accelerated. 2 went to Ivies, the other 3 went to very well recognized schools that were not Ivies (one for sure didn't go for financial reasons because his family was extremely well-off and the other two had full-scholarships). The two who went to Ivies I have not kept in touch with so I'm not sure about their success but the other three have gone on to top graduate schools (not Ivies either but top for their respective fields).

Also, DH and I both worked at an Ivy for some time (neither of us ever studied at an Ivy, though) and I only knew one student there who did her undergraduate at an Ivy, the rest were either from small well-recognized private colleges, state schools, or from abroad.

I've found in my field, at least, that connections/references/pure motivation leads much more to success than the school choice. I have a feeling that's probably different in larger fields like medicine/law/business where you just have a massive pool of candidates but in my field it seems to be the case.

I think passthepotatoes is correct that most of the difference in outcomes between Ivy League and public college graduates is due to student characteristics present at matriculation. Some research has found that

Children smart enough to get into elite schools may not need to bother
by ALAN B. KRUEGER
New York Times
April 27, 2000
http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/04_27_2000.htm

The working paper version of the article reported above,

Dale, Stacy Berg and Alan B. Krueger. "Estimating The Payoff Of Attending A More Selective College: An Application Of Selection On Observables And Unobservables," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002, v107(4,Nov), 1491-1527.

is at http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/409revised.pdf .

An update of the original study, "Estimating the Return to College Selectivity over the Career Using Administrative Earning Data" is at http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/563.pdf .

I think that is absolutely correct.

The biggest differences between two college students (or graduates) is not where they went to school-- but how.

I'd also say that, in terms of HIRING decisions in academia, once you are outside of the Ivies, then 'diversity' of experience (ie-- different undergrad and grad schools) still really matters.

This is a very real consideration in hiring in most colleges and universities, and the insular thinking promoted by staying in the same ivory tower for seven to twelve years is regarded as somewhat unhealthy-- even within the Academy.