
Do Elite Colleges Lead to Higher Salaries? Only for Some Professions - luu
http://www.wsj.com/articles/do-elite-colleges-lead-to-higher-salaries-only-for-some-professions-1454295674
======
jedberg
Getting a degree from an elite institution does three things:

1) It puts you in a network of other people who went to the institution,
oftentimes people who have connections that can help you in life

2) It gives you a piece of paper that shows you can follow a long term plan
and execute on it, that other people recognize as a difficult long term plan
to execute.

3) Gives you an icebreaker when going to interviews where you can talk about
either how you and the interviewer went to the same institution, or rival
institutions, or you can talk about how your elite institution was different
from theirs and the same.

What you don't get is a "better education". (Edit: Some have pointed out
rightly that I should differentiate here between top non-elite instututions
and the ones that are diploma mills, so to be clear, what I'm saying doesn't
apply to the diploma mills.) You do the same work as the folks at the less
elite institutions. Maybe you do it with slightly smarter people who help you
learn new things that you wouldn't otherwise, but most of the "less elite"
schools still use the same textbooks and materials. And heck maybe your
professor wrote the book so you can get more detailed answers, but it's
unlikely that that access gives you a significant leg up unless you take
advantage of it.

So it makes sense that in fields where skills matter, the elite college
doesn't add a lot of benefit, but where connections matter, it does.

~~~
rileymat2
"What you don't get is a "better education". You do the same work as the folks
at the less elite institutions."

Is this true? When I look at some of the prestigious universities that have
some of their coursework online, some of the courses appear more rigorous and
challenging than the large state school I went to. Perhaps this challenge does
not amount to better education, but it certainly seems more challenging.

~~~
hodwik
Judging from what I've seen on MIT's OCW and Berkeley's webcasts, students at
the best schools are getting a considerably better education in the sciences
than I did at a small state university, and students at St.John's are getting
a much better humanities education than we got.

What matters even more though is the student body. Hanging out with a bunch of
really smart and dedicated young people for 4+ years gives one a huge leg up
intellectually.

At my small school there were very few smart people to talk to, it was very
lonely and insular. By comparison, time I spent hanging out around Berkeley
and PENN were very exciting intellectually.

~~~
harryjo
Is UCB "elite"? It has a student population the size of the whole Ivy League
combined.

~~~
hodwik
Enrollment at UCB is 37k, which only puts it slightly above Harvard (21k),
Columbia (22k), Cornell (20k), and UPENN (20k).

Also, UCB outranks most of the ivyleague in the sciences, engineering and
computer science on most measures --

[http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-
uni...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-
rankings/2015#sorting=faculty_value+region=+country=+faculty=2453340+stars=false+search=)

[http://www.shanghairanking.com/FieldSCI2015.html](http://www.shanghairanking.com/FieldSCI2015.html)

[http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-
universities/ran...](http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-
universities/rankings)

------
geebee
Interesting article. This confirms something I've suspected for a while, which
is that elite colleges matter immensely if you don't study STEM.

You could turn this into a different question - is the value of an elite
college that it allows you to major in something other than STEM? And maybe
one step further - if elite colleges differentiate themselves from other
colleges through the prospects they offer non-STEM students, does that mean it
may be rational for very elite students to avoid STEM, which serves as an
equalizer?

I have noticed this anecdotally by observing the prospects of strong students
who went to good but not elite schools. You could be a very strong
international relations student from a mid-tier UC (say, UC Davis or UCSD),
but your prospects really won't be as good as they would be if you'd gone to
Yale. It isn't game over, but Yale is a huge boost. But if you major in CS,
they will be the same…

… or will they? There certainly is still a difference in kind, just not one
that is as readily apparent to people who see a bunch of squiggles, symbols,
and text flashing by on a screen. There is an easily observed difference
between being a the director of the American Music Heritage foundation (an
invented title and organization) at $130k a year and a senior crud bug fixer
for $130k a year. But these differences exist within tech as well. An
interesting data science position where you have a lot of autonomy is a very
different life from checking in with the scrum team every morning to talk
about whether you've figured out why the config file changes are making the
computer say "ERRNO 63: gcc header updater missing", even if they both pay the
same.

Do elite colleges lead to a hidden difference in kind within the tech field,
similar to what is observable outside of tech?

~~~
sotojuan
There's a difference between the prospects of an okay school vs elite school
for CS. The gap just happens to be much smaller.

In our industry there are many people who do just fine with no CS degree, CS
degree from obscure schools, or degree at all. Almost no other industry can
say that. However, in general, elite school means better opportunities, better
classmates that motivate you, better companies recruiting, etc. The difference
exists, it's just "smaller" and evens out with time.

Remember that in our industry you can move to $100k+ after 3-5 years of
experience (of course, if you put in work, network and get better, but the
demand for "mid/senior" devs is big). I've found that your background rarely
matters at that point.

~~~
geebee
I agree with you about salary. You can move up in salary and title, and the
data here seems to suggest that it won't make a huge difference whether you
majored in CS at MIT or San Jose State - you need to go to a proper program,
sure, but prestige isn't nearly as big a factor as it is in many other fields.

That said, I'm not sure you're responding to my question, which is whether
there is a hidden difference _in kind_ rather than in salary. For instance,
your background may not matter if you're moving up to what I cynically
describe as "mid/senior crud big fixer", and it may be that those jobs _pay_
as well as "mid/senior data scientist" who works in an R&Dish role without
looking deadlines or scrum tickets. Even if both earn the same salary, I
consider one role to be much more desirable than the other (though I actually
do kind of enjoy chasing down bugs sometimes).

Does the MIT grad have a better crack at the more interesting, R&Dish job with
greater autonomy, less micromanagement, fewer deadlines? It's a question, not
a conclusion (I suspect it's true, but I acknowledge that I don't have the
data to support it). If so, I wouldn't say background rarely matters - it does
matter, but it won't show up in the numbers if all you're looking at is
salary.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I went to Stanford. It doesn't get me promotion. But it _does_ get me
interviews. So indirectly yeah I earn more because of it, since I'm in the
short list for many job applications.

------
ken47
What a terribly flawed article. They choose arbitrary universities for each
major. The number of "elite" universities is small enough that the top 5 of
each could trivially be added to the article. For example, in the CS table,
where are Stanford, MIT, and CMU? Given how cherry-picked the data seems to
be, I can only infer that the data-gathering methodology was even more flawed.

That's not to say that attending a prestigious university should, in and of
itself, guarantee a higher salary. But there are so many positively
correlated, salary-increasing traits with attending an elite university, that
this article does not pass the smell test.

~~~
Ologn
[From the article:]

> For STEM-related majors, average earnings don’t vary much among the college
> categories.

Perhaps average or media earnings are not affected much, but what about the
outliers?

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard. Stanford had Larry Page,
Sergey Brin, William Hewlett, David Packard, Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner,
Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Andy Bechtolsheim and others.

One thing is good state schools have good people coming out of them as well -
Bill Joy and Eric Schmidt went to UC Berkeley, Max Levchin and Marc Andreessen
went to UIUC. There are some good state schools you see a number of successful
tech people coming out of, they're not all expensive private schools. They all
have a good reputatiion though, whether public or private.

------
no_wave
These salaries on the image on the right seem extremely high. Half of Colgate
Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? Half of Tufts
humanities majors? These are great colleges, but it doesn't pass the smell
test.

And, looking at the actual data collected, the image on the right doesn't hold
up. The study must have collected data from hundreds of colleges, yet there
were only 7,300 observations. Sounds like a lot, but assuming that there were
200 universities (probably a low estimate) and 8 categories of majors, you're
only looking at 4 to 5 observations per college per category. And these
observations were probably unevenly distributed. So it's inevitable that a few
colleges will have extreme "median" reported incomes, as the table on the
right shows the highest incomes observed in each field.

So while the percentile distinctions cited in the article between selective
and less-selective schools are likely accurate, the numbers on the image of
the right-hand side - the really striking part of the article - have almost no
statistical validity.

The WSJ is leading people to a shocking conclusion even though the real
finding - that there's a 12%-18% difference in earnings between selective and
less-selective colleges - is much less extreme. (It's also likely making a lot
of people feel poor... one of the strange selling points of the WSJ that in
this case simultaneously gets eyeballs on PayScale.com)

~~~
rchaud
>Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners?

I went to a New England liberal arts college, like Colgate, and the most
popular major at my school was Economics, which is categorized as Social
Science. Most of the Econ graduates went for jobs in management consulting or
investment banking, as those companies would come to recruit on campus, and
tend to already have a solid number of alums working there to begin with. In
fact, Dick Fuld, the ex-CEO of the infamous Lehman Brothers investment bank,
was a trustee on the board of my school, and hired many alums, as did Goldman,
Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, etc.

For banking jobs straight out of undergrad, you don't have to have a deep
understanding of quantitative finance. It's more about having a soiid GPA, a
demonstrated interest in the topic and interest in learning, and the capacity
to work very, very long hours.

~~~
no_wave
PayScale is basing its median income data for Colgate grads with 10+ years of
experience off of 16 observations. There are likely only one or two
observations going into the Colgate Social Science salary in the article.

[http://www.payscale.com/research/US/School=Colgate_Universit...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/School=Colgate_University/Salary#by_Years_Experience)

In addition, only 25% of Colgate grads go into business-related fields after
graduation and the number of those going into high-profile management
consulting or investment banking is likely under 100 people a year. The number
of people making huge piles of money in general is very small and isn't as
correlated with education as people tend to think. Hacker News has a wildly
skewed view of this and dishonest "statistics" like these generally go
unexamined.

------
wrong_variable
I sometimes feel we are trying to externalize all of society's ill on solving
it through college/education/teachers.

It seems almost ridiculous that a 17 year needs to make decisions that even
someone with a Phd with economics won't be able make.

I wish both kids and parents spent more time actually figuring out how to
optimize learning rather than spend their energy thinking about nonsense - its
almost like a gambling addiction ?

I remember when I was in school I used to watch students spend a year writing
college essays, preparing for SATs, shelling out insane amount of money for
tutors, etc.

Meanwhile I just concentrated on mathematics and programming to actually make
myself valuable to society.

Most people will be surprised when they realize how far they can get with
books.

Books are not as efficient as learning directly from Newton - but they are
1/1000 the cost.

I know the economy would collapse tomorrow if everyone just stopped going to
school and spent their evening reading books but humanity has bigger problems
to solve then the economy.

~~~
kec
The main value-add of going to a university isn't attaining an education, it's
gaining access to a strong network of educated people. This is something which
can't be replaced by self education (which, you'll actually be expected to do
at university anyway).

~~~
vonmoltke
The vast majority of universities are not going to get you a strong network.
Additionally, the vast majority of high school students are fed a line that
focuses on the academics and minimizes or ignores the networking.

~~~
rhodysurf
There are networks to be made everywhere. They arent just going to be gifted
to you no matter what school you go to.

~~~
vonmoltke
When there are only 13 EEs in your graduating class, no there aren't.

Also, I never said anything about having things "gifted", and I'm not sure how
what I said gives that impression. In fact, I was specifically complaining
that common college prep for high school students does _not_ tell them about
these tangential things they should be doing at the next level.

------
FreedomToCreate
I know for fact that engineering students who attend universities like
Carnegie Mellon, Waterloo and Stanford, receive way more opportunities to work
for major companies early on versus their peers at other public and private
universities. This is purely built on the reputation of these universities and
there history as feeder schools to Microsoft, Apple and Google. Its a self
fulfilling prophecy kind of because the top students only want to go to these
universities, keeping them the best.

------
lohengramm
One thing I always think about is to completely separate the "educational"
institutes from the "certificate emitting" ones. Currently, it is the
university's job to not only educate, but also to prove the student was
educated (through the certificate/diploma). Wouldn't it be much more flexible
if educational institutes focused only in _educating_ , while other
(unrelated) institutes focused only in testing and emitting certificates? This
way, _how_ the individual learns the subject does not matter, as long as he or
she is able to get certified.

This is what already happens in (at least part of) the technical certificate
industry: people pay to make tests and get certified. This seems like a more
intelligent approach.

~~~
sokoloff
My experiences (and intuition) suggest that you'd find a cottage industry
springing up to "teach the test (and nothing extra)". Combining the functions
of education and certification, as conflict-of-interest as that appears,
largely avoids the problem.

Any certification process for a non-trivial field is necessarily a sampling
process. If you allow students to bypass the education part and they just have
to pass the sampling test to gain some valuable credential, I think you'll
find an industry springing up to shortcut the education process in favor of
the "just barely passing the test" process.

~~~
lohengramm
When you say that any certification process (for a non-trivial field)
necessarily becomes a sampling process, it is implied that this is already
happening, i.e., there must be already a sampling process going on in the
current universities. Decoupling may not solve this "problem" (if you consider
this a problem), but it also does not create another one. It simply makes it
more flexible so people who could not afford the education process for any
reason, but were able to educate themselves by alternatives means, can also
try to get certified in the level they wish. Also, the possibility of being
certified by top tier certification emitters works as another motivator for
people to strain and study harder (as going to top universities is not even
remotely possible for most people, at least being certified by top certificate
emitting institutes is probably less expensive (given the educational process
is the more expensive one), and thus possible).

In other words, I believe you are right when you point that the educational
institutes would narrow their focus to cover only the necessary bits to get
certified, but I don't see this getting much far from what we have already;
and from the point of view of the certificate emitting institute, it is
desirable for the top ones to not emit certificates to anyone (in order to
build a valuable brand name), having them to focus on elaborating challenging
tests. Of course there may be "certificate mills", but again, this already
happens, just with less flexibility.

What really picks me is that, at the end, it is all about the value people
give to these certificates. Nothing would prevent society (including
employers) to value more the educational process than the testing one; nothing
would prevent the educational institutes to also emit certificates, thus
coming back to where we are; but employers should not rely purely on
certificates anyway, then I believe there is hope for the overall proposed
model.

~~~
sokoloff
Take a typical thermodynamics course. Right now, MIT teaches a full term
thermo course for mechanical engineers. The exams, including the final exam,
cannot possibly test all aspects of thermo, so they sample, but they sample
knowing that the students have been exposed to (via p-sets and lecture) the
parts of thermo not directly tested.

Now, decouple the exam part and have someone else issue the same exact exam as
the MIT profs give, but without requiring the lecture or p-set component. Now,
I can imagine there would be a profitable industry player, call them the
"Minimum Instructions for the Test", who might teach you only the three laws,
enough math to work out a Carnot cycle problem, and the background for one
energy balance problem, in other words, just enough to pass the certification
exam.

The students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology will have passed the
same test as the students from Minimum Instructions for the Test and yet I can
have confidence in the former's ability to solve a basic on-the-job
thermodynamics problem and not in the latter.

IOW, I think it is, in effect, creating a new problem by eliminating the
lecture, office hours, section meetings, and problem sets aspect of the
education process and focusing only on the final exam aspect. I'm really not
trying to erect and eviscerate a strawman here; apologies if it seems that
way, but I'm trying in this post to be very concrete about the problem I see
with test-only certifications.

~~~
lohengramm
You are very clear. To put in abstract terms: you argue that the education
process carry some value which is difficult (or even impossible) to test,
making it inherently more valuable than the certification process. I can't say
I completely agree with the argument, but I can understand it.

I still think that the tests, if elaborated by entities fully dedicated to
them, could grow to be way more advanced than they are today. But even in the
case where this growth does not happen, having separate entities dedicated to
perform test-only certification could be beneficial.

By the way, if you still read this: suppose you have student A and student B.
Student A attended to all classes, did exercises etc. but failed the tests.
Student B missed all classes, but passed every test. Do you think student A
should be certified? What about student B? Who would you hire?

~~~
sokoloff
Student A should not be certified.

Whether student B should be depends on the quality and thoroughness of the
test, but assuming that is high, then yes.

Whether I'd hire student B, who has shown a propensity to not show up to
classes, depends on why they missed them and whether I think that represents a
risk in the work-world. Having someone who can pass the test but can't bother
to show up to work doesn't help me very much either... ;)

------
mhuangw
I sometimes feel like I have an inferiority complex for not attending a
prestigious school. Hopefully it'll come down to my actual skills and not just
the name on my degree when it's time to find a full time job.

~~~
dev1n
Generally speaking, you won't be happy working at a place that puts too much
value into a college or university's credentials.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
Only if you're the only one that's not in the club. Else, it's just that: A
club. And it works for some.

------
paulsutter
As a guy who went to a state school, the three main benefits of attending an
elite school are:

1\. People will prejudge in your favor, the more average the individual the
more they will do this. This is a very strong effect, and the primary benefit.
I don't mean this in a cynical way. It's a great thing if you can get it.

2\. Your classmates in school will be smarter and think bigger, which has a
significant motivational effect. A larger percentage will go on to have
significant achievements. Most of your classmates at an elite school will
eventually accomplish nothing, just like a state school.

3\. Prestige-oriented institutions will favor you heavily, for example banks,
law firms, and consultancies. They really do need people with great social
skills and a strong work ethic, which is the same filter that elite schools
use.

I'm on vacation right now, lack the time to add references.

------
dcole2929
Honestly, this is about what one would expect. However it is somewhat
concerning that they are using the criteria of selectivity to define the
prestige of a school. While MIT is a very selective school, it's not a liberal
arts school. You can probably get a history degree there but the quality of
that program probably is at best on par with a less selective school, with a
strong history program. Seems like what you should be comparing is whether
going to a school with a top rated program for a given major affect future
earnings? University of Washington probably isn't a top 50 school according to
most lists. But they mint science and engineering grads. Especially CS. I'd
expect higher earning from a CS grad there than one from say Brown.

~~~
santaclaus
> University of Washington probably isn't a top 50 school according to most
> lists.

But it is pretty damn close. UW currently clocks in at number 52 [1].

[1] [http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-
colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-
colleges/rankings/national-universities/page+5)

------
xeonoex
I went to a mid-size state school in Texas for music before switching to CS.
The school isn't known for CS, but it turned out that we have a better post-
grad employment rate that UT Austin, though I'm not sure if that says much
given the size difference. Here are my thoughts based on my experience.

Pros for the more prestigious school:

1- A well-known school will mean that you're more likely to get an interview
and an offer fresh out of college, everything else being equal. There are
smart people in less-known schools, but there are more that skate by also. A
good student that went to an average school could still find a great job, but
would need to try harder (and face more rejection) to do so.

2- A well-known school will mean you will have a better network of students,
and probably be more likely to start personal and group projects that will
look good when you start the job hunt.

3- More research opportunities. Important if you plan on going to grad school.

Pros of the less prestigious school:

1- Way less money. I can't imagine that going to a great school without a ton
of help from scholarships and grants would even be remotely worth it.

2- Smaller class sizes. I could go to my professors whenever, and they knew me
quite well even though I almost never went to see them. The entire department
was on one floor of a fairly small building. You don't have to work to get
your name known or get help.

I'm sure that a prestigious college has better students and a better network,
but the education given by the institution may not be that different. The
tuition difference is huge, and I would guess that differences between two
talented students with different educations would disappear after a few years
in industry. If I did it again, I would probably go to a different school, but
not one that was much more in tuition. Although I don't think my education
held me back. I probably would have had a few more interviews and maybe one
more offer (that I did interview for) with a different school on my resume.

------
chauzer
The article leaves out a huge population of students from the elite
universities that end up going into finance. In 2014, 31% of Harvard grads
took jobs in finance
([http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2014/features/why_are_harvard_grads_still_fl051758.php?page=all))
where the salaries are higher than most other occupations straight out of
college. And then if you look at the people who are in high finance like
private equity and hedge funds where people 5 years out of college can easily
make $400k+, most of those are from elite top 10 universities.

------
rbcgerard
1\. elite schools allow for career paths outside their major, i.e. it is
common to see a history major from harvard take a job as an analyst at an
investment bank that won't even look at the resume of a business major from a
state school.

2\. if you go into a field with a low variance in pay (say teaching) an elite
degree may not make you more money, but it may dramatically increase you
likelihood of landing a job, or getting a more desirable job despite similar
(or lower pay) i.e. at a public vs. private school

------
lutusp
The article's writers say, "But for fields like science, technology, education
and math ..."

Then, later, without revisiting this term, they say, "What we found startled
us. For STEM-related majors ..."

I wonder whether these writers actually think that's how "STEM" is commonly
defined.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_Technology,_Engineeri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_Technology,_Engineering,_and_Mathematics)

~~~
dllthomas
It seems to have been corrected; it may well have just been a typo.

------
fgandiya
Interesting, although I can't help but shake that in at a pretty big
disadvantage going to my Midwestern College.

I read about how the biggest advantage to elite colleges is networking as
opposed to the actual education, but then the network itself is really
significant, like having investment firms as alumni as opposed to DevShop
founders.

Is there a way for a student who isn't at an elite college to mimic the elite
like network?

~~~
Spooky23
Talk to your friends. They may not be hanging out at top tier tech companies,
but they are doing something.

I went to school with: a DA, guy who owns an engineering firm, a big Union
lobbyist, bunch of social workers, a deputy commissioner of a large government
agency, regional bank vp and a few other things.

Not Steve Jobs, but good contacts with a good network. You can make lemonade
there.

------
Futurebot
Related:

[http://www.economist.com/news/business/21651207-book-
persist...](http://www.economist.com/news/business/21651207-book-persistence-
elites-unexpected-guide-getting-good-job-how-join)

[https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions-
recruitin...](https://hbr.org/2015/10/firms-are-wasting-millions-recruiting-
on-only-a-few-campuses)

------
rayiner
These results don't even pass the smell test. Ostensibly, going to an elite
college matters for social sciences majors, but Harvard is at the bottom of
the list?

~~~
goldbrick
You're reading it wrong. Harvard is 4th from the top.

------
jhallenworld
Well here is a list of schools vs. salary: [http://www.payscale.com/college-
salary-report/bachelors](http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-
report/bachelors)

I think there are other complicating factors: if you go to school in a high
paying area and end up staying in the area, then you get higher pay no matter
the school.

------
thesimon
So what about going to non-Elite College for Bachelors and going to a Elite
College for Masters? Seems like a better cost/benefit ratio, considering
Masters is only 1 or 2 years and thus doesn't cost as much.

~~~
dragonwriter
> So what about going to non-Elite College for Bachelors and going to a Elite
> College for Masters?

That may be problematic as a plan, if (as I've heard is the case) elite
graduate programs are somewhat biased in admissions to elite undergraduate
programs.

> Seems like a better cost/benefit ratio, considering Masters is only 1 or 2
> years and thus doesn't cost as much.

Graduate programs tend to, at similar schools, have a substantially higher
cost per year (though may also offer more opportunities to offset that cost)
than undergraduate programs; a masters, despite less time in residence, can
easily cost more after the bachelors than a bachelors at the same university
would cost.

------
danjoc
TL;DR

Not even Ivy League can prepare you for white board interviews.

;)

------
is_it_worth_it_
College degree matters way more than people like to admit. It matters in tech.
If you get hired at google out of CMU, you are going to work in a better group
with higher salary than a state school grad. Most elite finance jobs require a
top degree, as do consulting, and business development/strategy groups at
large companies. Any sort of investing job requires a good pedigree. Such a
myth to pretend otherwise. Ofcourse there are outliers, but by and large top
jobs go to top degrees, regardless of who is better than who.

I should make it clear im talking about jobs that pay 300k+. Below that and it
isnt a highly selective enough for top pedigree to be such a huge deal.

~~~
patorjk
What are you basing that on though? The article looked at "7,300 college
graduates 10 years after graduation" and found that:

> For STEM-related majors, average earnings don’t vary much among the college
> categories. For example, we find no statistically significant differences in
> average earnings for science majors between selective schools and either
> midtier or less-selective schools. Likewise, there’s no significant earnings
> difference between engineering graduates from selective and less-selective
> colleges, and only a marginally significant difference between selective and
> midtier colleges.

~~~
is_it_worth_it_
I know a good amount about the tech scene in nyc. It works like this, you can
get paid a bunch by google or fb, maybe amazon. Sure if you make it in as a
state school college grad you get paid. But developers in finance working on
the actual trading models who make 300k+ almost exclusively went to top
schools. Look at a front office development team at any quant fund.

~~~
arcanus
The guys working at quant funds tend to have ph.d.s, in my experience. Some
are certainly from state schools (UT Austin).

~~~
beisner
Anecdotally, I am currently an undergraduate in a top 10 CS department and I
have several friends who have $160k+ job offers straight out of undergrad at
quant firms.

------
dschiptsov
So one could get hired in biotech, finance, law or corporate IT without an ivy
league degree?

OK, very few people are smarter than an average (but not the best) ivy league
students, without having that exceptionally good training places like MIT or
Yale offer, but these people are outsiders, marginalized by modern practices
and social institutions.

They end up making good sandwiches, like that character from Atlas Shrugged,
because they habitually striving for an optimum, no matter what they are
doing.

In the field of OSS we have a few well-known names - recall a project with
uncommonly good theoretical understanding and exceptional attention to details
and you will find one (LuaJIT, nginx, redis, OpenBSD, good parts of Haskell
base libraries, etc, etc).

All I am trying to say is that elite colleges phenomena is a social
construction that works for society which believe in it. One has to conform if
one wishes to be a part of such a society.

Less traveled pathways are much harder and usually are leading to unexpected
and yet unknown.

------
wahsd
Is it just me or is there no discussion of the salaries being adjusted for, at
least, rough cost of living? I am guessing that all we are really looking at
is the effectiveness of the Universities placing people in high salary markets
due to cost of living.

------
sklogic
It also worth mentioning that using something as mundane and stupid as a
_salary_ as a gauge of success of the top universities alumni is totally
incorrect and defies the very purpose of the universities.

A much better way to measure the quality is by a number of papers published in
top journals (by the alumni, no the university itself), number of Nobel prizes
won, etc.

Universities must produce academics (i.e., salary is supposed to suck anyway).

