Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion which college and does it matter

Really is that new? Is that even legal? I talked with a google recruiter last year and that wasn't the official line, nor one that other were talking about. In addition I have friend who were hired by google in the past year that went to university with me. I have no idea if it's on the list but it's not a "top" rated university. Now this was someone with 20+ years experience and not someone fresh out of university. Perhaps that is what they are talking about.

There is no question that elites give advantages. In addition to the more tangible ones you suggest, there is simply the fact of being surrounded by people who got into elite schools.

In a famous study, two economists tackled this question nearly a decade ago and concluded that Ivy League graduates did not enjoy an earnings advantage monopoly. And now the same economists—Alan Krueger at Princeton University and Stacy Dale at Mathematica Policy Research—have revisited the question with even more compelling data that has led them to an even stronger conclusion.

To appreciate the researchers' latest findings, you need to understand why the original study, which has been cited repeatedly over the years, caused such a commotion. In the first study, the economists noted that students who graduated from elite schools like Swarthmore College and University of Pennsylvania earned higher salaries than students from less selective schools. This conclusion was no different from conventional wisdom.

Here, however, is what was explosive: Dale and Krueger concluded that students, who were accepted into elite schools, but went to less selective institutions, earned salaries just as high as Ivy League grads. For instance, if a teenager gained entry to Harvard, but ended up attending Penn State, his or her salary prospects would be the same.

In the pair's newest study, the findings are even more amazing. Applicants, who shared similar high SAT scores with Ivy League applicants could have been rejected from the elite schools that they applied to and yet they still enjoyed similar average salaries as the graduates from elite schools. In the study, the better predictor of earnings was the average SAT scores of the most selective school a teenager applied to and not the typical scores of the institution the student attended.

The researchers originally looked at students who started college in 1976, and in the new study they revisited what happened to these graduates. With the passing time, the salary advantage for the now middle-aged graduates, who attended elite schools, as well as those who gained admission, but passed on the chance, remained. The new study also looked at students who entered college in 1989.

In an E-mail exchange with Krueger and Dale, the researchers made this observation: "The consistency of our findings across nearly 30 years and for two cohorts makes the findings more compelling. In contrast, our earlier study was based on the earnings of students during a single year for those who attended colleges during the 1970s."

As with the earlier study, there were some students who did fare better financially if they attended elite schools. The students who fell into this category were Latino, black, and low-income students, as well as those whose parents did not graduate from college.

In an E-mail, the researchers explained these exceptions: "While most students who apply to selective colleges may be able to rely on their families and friends to provide job-networking opportunities, networking opportunities that become available from attending a selective college may be particularly valuable for black and Hispanic students and for students who come from families with a lower level of parental education."

When I asked Dale and Krueger whether the latest research would quell the pervasive belief that the Ivy League schools represent the ticket to a prosperous life, they responded: "It certainly might make some parents and students less anxious about the admissions process."

Let's hope so.

Whether those advantages translate into higher income is debatable. A recent paper found that controlling for an applicant's SAT scores, the SAT scores of the most selective schools he or she applies to -- a measure of ambition according to the authors -- predicts future earnings, but actually getting in does not.

I have heard Harvard and Yale have 2 tracks: 1 for those who pay the bills and the other for those who deserve to be there.

On average, freshman respondents took the SAT 1.85 times, earning an average highest composite score of 2237. Students were more likely to take the SAT, and most respondents never took the ACT.

Standardized test scores varied along racial lines. East Asian and Indian respondents reported SAT averages of 2299, the two highest of the seven ethnic groups considered in the survey. Respondents who identified as Black and Native American reported the lowest average scores, 2107 and 2142, respectively.

Respondents’ highest SAT scores tended to go up with an increase in income bracket. Of the six income brackets represented in the survey, respondents who reported household incomes of more than $500,000 or between $250,000 and $500,000 earned the highest average SAT composite scores.

Q. Other insights from the data you’ve gathered about Google employees?

A. One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.

What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.

We see K-12 schools and colleges differently because we’re looking at two different yardsticks: the academic performance of the whole population of students in one case, the research performance of a small number of institutions in the other.


Instead, Piaac suggests that the wide disparities of knowledge and skill present among American schoolchildren are not ameliorated by higher education. If anything, they are magnified. In 2000, American 15-year-olds scored slightly above the international average. ... While American college graduates are far more knowledgeable than American nongraduates, creating a substantial “wage premium” for diploma holders, they look mediocre or worse compared to their college-educated peers in other nations.

While American college graduates are far more knowledgeable than American nongraduates, creating a substantial “wage premium” for diploma holders, they look mediocre or worse compared to their college-educated peers in other nations.

This article in today's NY Times seems to be appropriate for this thread.