Comments on: ELITE SCHOOLS AND MONEY

By: melvin toast

melvin toast — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 +0000

James, I agree 100,000% When I went to Caltech, a lot of the students wanted to be academics. Fair to say that those of us who became academics make less money than those that didn't. Seems to me top caliber schools yield a higher percentage of people that go into academia. Another aspect is that extremely bright people often end up doing quirky things. I have a classmate who ended up becoming a dog musher.

I never thought of my experience as being contingent on a monetary pay back. It was kind of like people who were in the military. They had an experience that granted them wisdom and wisdom like that pays off in a non-monetary way.

By: Director Mitch

Director Mitch — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 +0000

In over a decade in the high-tech industry, the brightest engineers I have run into have been from schools I never heard of or "run-of-the-mill" state schools. It took a while to figure out that MIT and Stanford don't have any secret engineering or science classes that aren't taught everywhere else, and that an engineering degree from one of the "top' schools doesn't make these people smarter or better engineers. What they DO is provide a better network, especially if you are going into business or the like. So if all you are going to do is sit behind a computer and design, or come up with exotic recipes for building semiconductors, etc. then it really doesn't matter where you get your degree. If you are going to start a business or go into a field where networking is an advantage, then these schools will be more helpful.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 +0000

I earned my BSC at DePaul and my MBA at Stanford, so I've had experience with both an elite university and a non-elite university. I agree that the network is a very important advantage of an elite school, both in that there are fellow alumni who will answer e-mails, etc., and in that the name of the school itself opens doors even with non-alumni.

With regard to the quality of education itself, DePaul was far more demanding in the sense that the university had no hesitation to fail a student whose work wasn't up to par, while Stanford was quite reluctant to. On the other hand, the material itself was more difficult at Stanford, and I learned far more from my classmates there, because they were both smarter and better-educated.

My experience accords with the observation that graduates of elite schools are more likely to give less weight to income in making career choices, but I'm dealing with a small sample.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 +0000

Jim: Also, you're comparing graduate and undergraduate education. My limited experience is that, even at the same institution, professors will grade undergraduates more rigorously. Indeed, it's very, very hard to get less than a "B" in a graduate course. The trick is to get admitted to the program.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 +0000

Fair point, James, although it seemed to be nigh impossible for an undergraduate to flunk out of Stanford thirty years ago when I was in graduate school there, and the situation seems to be the same today. In fairness, I don't have any direct experience on this, and I'm not quite sure whether statistics would be a lot of help, either.

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