More thoughts about the best high schools

I guess that no 8th graders are reading my blog, so this post is aimed at parents selecting a school for their children.

What are reasonable criteria for judging the best high schools? We can’t judge them based on the high paying jobs offered to the graduates, because anyone starting their career right out of high school is most likely destined to live the life of a blue collar prole. Nearly all high paying career tracks (besides baseball player) require a college degree. So judging high schools based on results, there can’t be a better criterion than how the high school helps its students get into top colleges. The list from yesterday’s post is therefore a really good starting point.

Some commenters made the very valid point that merely looking at the percentage of a high school’s graduates who enroll at top colleges doesn’t necessarily tell us if the high school really helped get the students into such colleges. The SAT mostly measures g, and g is mostly an innate trait, so the same kid would probably get close to the same SAT score even if he went to a crappy public high school.

However, SAT is not the only thing that colleges look at. I previously blogged about the kid with the perfect SAT score who was rejected from Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. Is it any surprise that the kid went to a public high school in New Jersey? If he went to an elite private school, they would have groomed him such that his CV would have had the leadership activities that top universities are looking for. One of the differences between a top private school, and a regular public high school, is that the private schools see their mission as preparing kids for entrance to top universities, while regular public high schools just care about whether all the kids pass the reading and math test so that they don’t get dinged by NCLB.

Comments

[DML]

Half Sigma says:
"One of the differences between a top private school, and a regular public high school, is that the private schools see their mission as preparing kids for entrance to top universities, while regular public high schools just care about whether all the kids pass the reading and math test so that they don’t get dinged by NCLB."

Ding ding ding!

Your observation begs - are kids coming from these private high schools really smarter than public high school kids or is their preparation, approach to education, teacher/parental involvement just better? Jamie Escalante showed that a good system can make even a crappy public school test as well as the best ones (but of course this will be rejected by the government education
bureaucracy). OH wait, I've gone on another rant.

As far as choosing a high school, I guess the criteria are (a) Can I afford $30,000 per year to attend school (b) Does Jamie Escalante or John Taylor Gatto teach there?

[superdestoyer]

There was an article in the Washington Post several years ago about this very issue. It was written my a mother whose children had attended public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland but had done one year in pirvate new york high school while her husband worked at U.N. She stated that the private schools were organized to put everyone into some kind of leadership position. Also, if the school is 80% rich white kids, it is probably more fun being the captain of the sports team than trying to do the same thing at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.

Also, don't most of the children of the admission committees at the elite schools attend private school?

[K]

There are also social factors to consider. Similar to the school (possibly) "grooming" the student, he would benefit greatly by being surrounded by future successful people and learning how to be successful AND having a life. (Apparently servants help with this)

A smart kid in a mediocre school who doesn't know any Ivy-bound people will probably become a "Middle Class Striver" and "textureless grind." In high school, I did not know anyone who even aspired to an Ivy League education (though I did at times myself in rather impractical ways).

Granted, it takes money to "fit in" at some of these places, but, in the long run, I think the educational value of observing how the high-achievers live might outweigh the short-term pain.

[David Alexander]

Given my experiences and what some of my friends have experienced, high schools should also be forced to report how many students finish university successfully in 4 years. My high school would brag in publications to prospective parents* about how 98% of the student body went to four year colleges, but never how many would finish college on time.

*Said parents were white Catholics, foreigners, and high prole and middle class blacks who had children who were too stupid for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, or Townsend Harris, but didn't want their children to attend public high school. In effect, my younger brother and I both fell into that category. Currently, high school tuition is $7K per student or so, and for many of these parents with two children, the suburban property tax looks very, very affordable...

[K]

My point was a little muddled: I'm saying there's more to life than just getting into the best college, or even the best job. Happiness also involves knowing how to excel in one's studies and career while also enjoying other factors of life (friends, hobbies, sex*).

Being exposed to the rhythms of elite life has tremendous benefit. Being exposed to Ivy League culture at an early age might also help one fit in more easily when getting there (we've previously discussed the difficulties that transfer students have at Ivy League institutions).

I still am rather confused about the issue.

*Though the sex lives of Ivy League students are apparently substandard, according to some reports, so perhaps the "middle class striver" idea that success comes in direct proportion to sacrifices made may be mostly true.

[James D. Miller]

What college professors admire most in young people is the ability and desire to become a college professor. Since leadership skills are something that you really don't need to be a college professor, it seems inconsistent that college admission committees would place such a high value on them.

[Peter]

Admissions committees at elite colleges undoubtedly know that fancy private schools pressure their students into all sorts of leadership activities and therefore weigh those activities less heavily when evaluating applicants from private schools.

[APH]

I'm sure my attitude just reflects my HS experience and personal biases, but if I'm a college admissions officer or even a first employer, I don't give a rat's ass about "leadership activities," sports teams, or anything else. Most of that stuff is written in overblown language and fairly unremarkable once you scratch the surface. When I interview fresh-out-of-school students for my work, I usually don't even acknowledge their extracirriculars (how can you take a 22 year old with a 2.5 page resume seriouly?!). Along with SAT scores and grades, interviewing the person face-to-face is the most important part of the process - You quickly assess the person's personality, disposition, verbal intelligence, wit, and a million other things. Writing ability is something else I consider very important (for most jobs) - if you can write well and express your thoughts cogently than that's worth a lot. Before you impress me with the 6 hours you spent volunteering, let me see your MySpace or Facebook page - there's a lot of information in someone's social networking page and I'll draw my own conlusions about the kind of person you are.

We can’t judge them based on the high paying jobs offered to the graduates, because anyone starting their career right out of high school is most likely destined to live the life of a blue collar prole.

I hate to break the news to HS, but the wealthiest people I know do not have any college degrees. At most they attended some college. Some never set foot in a college class. And I even know a couple people who didn't finish high school yet in some years easily make more than most of the college grads I know.

A college degree is not a ticket to an upper middle class life, sometimes not even a middle class life, as any of my friends in IT or teaching can attest to. 4 years of college is 4 years of debt plus the opportunity cost of not being in the real world earning money, making connections, and learning real job skills (especially people and time management skills) as opposed to classroom theories. I've come to the conclusion that the pressure to attend college in the U.S. better serves the careers of educators than it does the careers of many students. We have saturated most of the fields which require a higher education while starving the traditional trades.

Looking back on my life, if I knew at 18 what I know now, I wouldn't have looked at college. I would have gone to work in the home industry (escrow, real estate, home loans) the Monday after graduation and started building my career. Eventually I would have gone to college, but on my terms, without debt, for personal growth.

Someone is going to jump in and say "...look at the housing industry right now!" Yes, look at it now. It cycles up and down. But my family members who went into that industry back when I went to college have made so much more than me over the past 15 years that the down cycles don't bother them anymore. (Not to mention they were never saddled with college debt.) Besides, a housing down cycle only lasts 2-3 years. IMHO IT has been on a down cycle for 7 years going on 8. When will it pick back up? It won't. It's going to continue to get worse. Just pretend you're an employer and post an ad on an IT project site for software developers, and look at all the foreigners willing to work for nothing to get the job done.

It's not just IT though. I'm struggling to think of anyone I know with a college degree who does as well as the people I know in fields which don't require a degree. I know a doctor who does pretty well. But once you adjust for the hours he puts in, the stress, the opportunity cost of the college tuition money, and the opportunity cost of the time in college, he's not that far ahead of some 'blue collar proles' I know, and easily behind some of the rest. (He would be behind 3 high school graduates I know regardless.)

I quite frankly don't care about status or prestige. I don't need to impress someone at a party by dropping the name of the college I went to. I would, however, love to visit a different part of the U.S. every month (my cousin), own a beach home (my other cousin), or have a mansion with a garage full of classic sports cars I'm collecting (my uncle). All without 4 or more years of college.

There's an entire world of lucrative careers without college. But it's best to jump into them the day after high school, when you have no family to support, no debt, and lots of energy. I wish somebody had told me that.

[SFG]

I do wonder if these no-college careers only work for charismatic, energetic people, though. Average Joes might be better served going the average route.

[the professor]

I hate to break the news to HS, but the wealthiest people I know do not have any college degrees. At most they attended some college. Some never set foot in a college class. And I even know a couple people who didn't finish high school yet in some years easily make more than most of the college grads I know.

...

yawn...

1. How many people without college have you seen working in the Bush administration, or any administration for that matter? (I'm talking here about secretaries, directors, etc) Well, none! In fact the vast majority have at least professional degrees (usually J.D.'s) from Ivy League schools (usually Harvard).

2. How many CEO's or C-level executives without college have you seen? Most of them have MBA and nowadays in IT some have PhD's.

-------------------------

You probably went to a crappy high school, after which people would go to a community college and major in English or Nursing. Yeah, sure, maybe you're better off economically if you don't go to college and wait tables instead.

And yes, you mentioned the nice career in real estate, probably as a broker... I remember mine... a guy who couldn't spell a sentence correctly. Yes, the ones I talked to were of the lowest kind, rivaling with old car salesmen. Obviously, there is a discrepancy between how much these people make and how much they are worth. The market will adapt. In fact, it might even disappear! Who knows, one day maybe Google will make it easier for people to circumvent the brokers. :) What will happen with you when that happens? What other career can you switch to with your high school education?

I quite frankly don't care about status or prestige. I don't need to impress someone at a party by dropping the name of the college I went to. I would, however, love to visit a different part of the U.S. every month (my cousin), own a beach home (my other cousin), or have a mansion with a garage full of classic sports cars I'm collecting (my uncle). All without 4 or more years of college.

You have to be stupid to think this is why you go to college. Status is not to drop-name it at a "party". Status opens doors socially and economically. You get to interact with smarter, more interesting people. Good luck doing that with a public high school education or maybe with a high school equivalent diploma. :)

best

[SFG]

Like I said, it depends who you are. If you have Bill Clinton's charisma, you're better off not going to college. (Except Bill Clinton had Bill Clinton's charisma, and he went to college and law school...he only got a government job though. ;) )

Seriously, while there is an argument to be made for more partying and less studying in college, it is important to get into the best one you can. So go to Harvard and major in women's studies. ;)

[Dan Kurt]

re:However, SAT is not the only thing that colleges look at. I previously blogged about the kid with the perfect SAT score who was rejected from Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. Is it any surprise that the kid went to a public high school in New Jersey? If he went to an elite private school, they would have groomed him such that his CV would have had the leadership activities that top universities are looking for."

Tell that to my nephew. SATs 800, 800, A+ essay. Waiting list for Harvard was his reward. With an IQ over 165 he has been followed by the Johns Hopkins high IQ survey since seventh grade. He is, 6 foot 2, a scratch golfer, was editor of his high school newspaper (for two years), was class president for three years and has travelled around the world with his parents. BTW, he is white: German on his mother's side and English on his father's side.

He attended an expensive private co-ed prep school. He graduated 2nd in his class. The number one student, a Chinese/White mixture also did not get into Harvard or any of the Ivys but is now attending Stanford. One student in his graduating class did get into Harvard, a girl who lost her father a few years back. She had a SAT less than a 1500 and a B+ essay. But losing a parent obviously counts as a leadership point.

My nephew is currently attending Colgate after declining Yale, Cornell, Penn and others. I asked him why did he select Colgate over the Ivys and he said that the girls were better looking at Colgate. ( I can attest that in the 60s and 70s when I spent 8 years at Penn the girls were not the best looking co-eds to be found! )

Dan Kurt

[Peter]

You probably went to a crappy high school, after which people would go to a community college and major in English or Nursing. Yeah, sure, maybe you're better off economically if you don't go to college and wait tables instead.

Have you researched what nursing salaries are like today? You might be quite $urprised.

[SFG]

I asked him why did he select Colgate over the Ivys and he said that the girls were better looking at Colgate.

And I thought I was stupid when I was younger. Hey, at least he'll have a good time.

[the professor]

My nephew is currently attending Colgate after declining Yale, Cornell, Penn and others. I asked him why did he select Colgate over the Ivys and he said that the girls were better looking at Colgate. ( I can attest that in the 60s and 70s when I spent 8 years at Penn the girls were not the best looking co-eds to be found! )

Dan,

see! Right there. Your super high IQ nephew is interested more in chasing girls than in changing the world, leadership, sciences, etc. Harvard read his application correctly, and decided accordingly.

You're in phase 1: denial. Really, I've heard so many people saying, oh, my kid is so smart, perfect SAT, perfect essay, but those snobby people in the Harvard admission board don't know what they are doing. News flash: they do! They have been doing it for such a long time, that there's very little room for mistake.

A little while ago I've heard a similar story: a kid of a top manager from JP with perfect SAT, didn't make it into Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. My guess is that he showed no leadership or he flunked the interviews, but he's no Harvard material.

I had a friend who applied only to MIT and failed. Yes, he had perfect SAT and was _first_ place at the International Olympiad in Informatics, that's the best in the world. He was such a geek, that even MIT turned their backs on him... so in the end it was his personality. (usually people from the Olympiads get into good colleges)

Btw, with enough practice everyone can get a high score at SAT.

best

[Eric Blincow]

I'm sure my attitude just reflects my HS experience and personal biases, but if I'm a college admissions officer or even a first employer, I don't give a rat's ass about "leadership activities," sports teams, or anything else. Most of that stuff is written in overblown language and fairly unremarkable once you scratch the surface.

I thought that was a very cogent and on-topic point that APH makes, it expresses something I have long thought about. Namely, that extracurriculars and hobbies are abused and overrated in the application process.

[SFG]

He was such a geek, that even MIT turned their backs on him... so in the end it was his personality.
Dumb of him to not apply at least to Stanford, Cal Tech, RPI, or some other school as well...but rather disturbing that MIT. They may not have leadership experience or polish, but the country does need new techies to invent stuff, you know...

[Eric Blincow]

see! Right there. Your super high IQ nephew is interested more in chasing girls than in changing the world, leadership, sciences, etc. Harvard read his application correctly, and decided accordingly.

The essence of this reply to Mr. Kurt is that determination beats intelligence, and the nephew was rejected because he lacked determination or purpose. I view things differently: I think determination is decisive only within the same rough intelligence bracket.

Motivation, goals and priorities change. The kid wants to chase girls– but when he's done chasing girls, he will still be able to out-think 95% of people. He will still be able to solve technical problems which many people will not even approach an understanding of. I daresay his intelligence, if reported correctly, will mean that he figures out very quickly that chasing girls is a second-order priority to the more serious business of having a career and a life for onesself. His high intelligence means he will probably be in and out of this realization within half a year.

People like this make connections faster, they recognize patterns faster. The pace of their mental processes is just simply faster: you walk, and they run. Rejecting this kid because he didn't show enough signs of "wanting to change the world", is IMO the height of folly. Give him time to learn about the world, and at some point he will decide how he wants to change it.

[Cameron]

You probably went to a crappy high school, after which people would go to a community college and major in English or Nursing.

Oh come on, that's a bit stereotypical. I know of plenty smart kids who couldn't afford universities that went to community college.

Status opens doors socially and economically. You get to interact with smarter, more interesting people. Good luck doing that with a public high school education or maybe with a high school equivalent diploma.

Some people honestly don't care. They just want money.

My nephew is currently attending Colgate after declining Yale, Cornell, Penn and others. I asked him why did he select Colgate over the Ivys and he said that the girls were better looking at Colgate. ( I can attest that in the 60s and 70s when I spent 8 years at Penn the girls were not the best looking co-eds to be found!

Most people I know who are in that range of ability aren't getting too many women anyways. I hope he transfers to one of the more prestigious schools instead of chasing around women.

[Dan Kurt]

re: Girls at Colgate, Yale, Penn, and Cornell

Check out www.collegeprowler.com/inside-the-guide/Colgate-University and then other schools.

Girls at Colgate rated A.
Girls at Penn rated C+.
Girls at Yale rated B+.
Girls at Cornell rated C+

[the professor]

Some people honestly don't care. They just want money.

Yes, vulgar people do care only about money. They will spend most of their time earning money, and then they don't know what to do with them. They will buy a house and a nice collection of cars... or wait, somebody already mentioned this as his dream.

best

[the professor]

re:high school education only

Have you ever noticed how many professors do decide to go into business, politics, etc and do very well. (politicians and high ranked industry types) Have you ever wondered how they can pull that off? I mean, you study math and know everything about some tiny field nobody cares about, and then you do something practical and do it well? How can this be possible?

News flash: it's not only because they are smart, because many people are very smart enough. The advantage of being a professor is that you're your own boss. You have time to think, time to learn whatever you want, time to pursue your dreams. The vast majority of people who go into industry early can't think outside of their job. After a year, they won't learn anything new, and will get stuck in one job. I work for a company where about 1/4 to 1/3 have PhDs, and I can see a huge difference between people with and without PhD. The ones without a PhD tend to be more closed minded. The point being that during somebody's PhD, just the fact that he's free to think it benefits his personality.

best

[shortcut]

I disagree with your premise that a high school only education leads to a blue collar existence. Perhaps the best paying career for most of those not born into money is that of the salesman. Sales of products like real estate, insurance, securities, home improvements etc, can produce huge incomes far exceeding that of doctors, lawyers or other professionals that require substantial investment in education not to mention the lost time spent in school that the non college sales person forgoes. Intelligent individuals recognizing this career path while in high school can leap frog their college going peers.

[Dan Kurt]

re: "Most people I know who are in that range of ability [>165IQ] aren't getting too many women anyways. I hope he transfers to one of the more prestigious schools instead of chasing around women.

Posted by: Cameron | December 05, 2007 at 12:44 AM"

When I was in college a guy in my year scored in the GRE 800, 800 and 960 of 970 in the Chemistry Exam. He also took the Navy Pilot aptitude exam and on the IQ test had a raw score of 116 out of 116, an unheard of result. It appeared he never studied, instead, he read novels, cruised bars with other students and chased girls. Students would go to his room and ask him to help them with Math, Physics and Chemistry problems as he could solve anything. Mainly in the evening instead of studying, he spent hours on pay phones calling girls ( He had a technique to stick a coat hanger into a pay phone and pull down a lever that caused the money inserted to drop back down into the slot where he could recover the coins ). He graduated with honors but not the highest honors. However, he did so well on the medapt test that he got into an ivy med school. He ended up as an Ophthalmologist and married a former Ballet dancer who earned a Ph.D. at the same ivy league university where he was a resident in eye surgery.

Really bright individuals exist and one has to be around one to see that they are really different but not necessarily nerds. This one excelled in Math, English, History and all of the sciences that he took. I recall he was thrown out of a Philosophy class during our senior year because he was caught reading a book during class that was not part of the class. The professor told him not to return to class until the final exam was given expecting him to fail the course I suppose. He took the exam and scored the highest in the class on the that test which was an essay ( blue book ) test. The professor gave him one of the few A grades in the class. How did he do it? He caught on that the professor was teaching the class from a different text book than the one assigned to the class to use. He read that book before the final and was able to ace the exam. He told all of his friends about this stunt at graduation.

He was a smooth guy with girls and a fun guy to drink with.

Dan

[meep]

I say kudos to the kid who went to Colgate because the women are hotter. My Ma did something similar when she picked college -- she saw that Clemson University had a 7-1 male:female ratio, and the men would be engineers and Southern gentlemen to boot.... woo hoo! She did not lack for dates from day 1, and married my dad when they both were 20. My dad was an EE major who ended up working for IBM.

The quality of the education has a gnat's-hair difference when it comes to most "brand name" liberal arts institutions. A smart person can get an excellent education if there's enough access to resources (I'm biased in that I went to a large state institution, engineering-focused. I started taking grad-level classes my sophomore year. Easier to get special perks at a lower tier school, with regards to classes, research opportunities, and jobs.) I'm sure Colgate will give just as good an education as any of the Ivies, and it sounds like the social atmosphere is more fun. There was a study around somewhere looking at the people who were admitted to Ivies but decided to go elsewhere -- they tend to do just as well, income-wise, as the people who actually go. So it's not like the nephew is giving up much by picking a place where he likes the dating opportunities better.

[Jack]

About the guy who chose Colgate over Cornell, Penn, and Yale - first of all, Colgate are Cornell are roughly equivalent. Penn is slightly higher, and Yale of course is one of the very top institutions in the country. There may have been things he liked about Colgate besides the women; from what I hear, it's a beautiful campus, with a great social scene. He also might have an opportunity to have a higher GPA there. I do remember my freshman year at Cornell that when people had friends visit from Colgate and Binghamton, the girls were always hotter than the vast majority at Cornell.

It is true that many people who don't go to college do fine financially. But I guess one of the benefits of college is the ability to interact with a higher intellect of people. I have to decide now whether or not to go to law school. I'm not going to get in a top 14 school, so there's no guarantee of six figures, but I guess the chance to enter a higher level status wise does have advantages socially that I can't get if I stay in my current field or get a teacher's certification. And it does enter my mind that even though girls in law school aren't the hottest or nicest, at least there ARE some, which is more than I can say for what I've been doing lately.

About nursing, there is a big demand and their salaries are pretty good. But no MAN gets any respect being a nurse, I imagine. Plus, I don't like dealing with bodily fluids.

[K]

I think maybe we're missing the bigger picture: the number of ultra-qualified applicants to Harvard (and other Top 10 universities) now exceeds the number of slots by a significant margin, which has dramatically increased in recent decades.

Tom & Ray from Car Talk are MIT graduates, and seem to have discussed over the years that it was not a big deal in their day.

As this woman put it in "Young, Gifted, and not Getting Into Harvard," today's rejected applicants run circles around admitted students 30 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/29Rparenting.html
There was the girl who, during summer vacation, left her house before 7 each morning to make a two-hour train ride to a major university, where she worked all day doing cutting-edge research for NASA on weightlessness in mice.

When I was in high school, my 10th-grade science project was on plant tropism — a shoebox with soil and bean sprouts bending toward the light.

These kids who don’t get into Harvard spend summers on schooners in Chesapeake Bay studying marine biology, building homes for the poor in Central America, touring Europe with all-star orchestras.

Summers, I dug trenches for my local sewer department during the day, and sold hot dogs at Fenway Park at night.

So now that the population is larger and everybody from coast-to-coast is applying and many people realize the importance of a name-brand Ivy, perhaps this is the wrong metric. It's kind of like the Olympic 100 meter dash, where the "loser" is 1/1000th of a second behind the "winner."

[ran]

"My nephew is currently attending Colgate after declining Yale, Cornell, Penn and others. I asked him why did he select Colgate over the Ivys and he said that the girls were better looking at Colgate."

I think that some of the gap between the elite and non- elite schools has closed because AA is forcing a lot of geeks to non- elite schools. Also, some of the second or third tier schools mentioned here, like G- Tech and Colgate, are going to greatly value people with Harvard like academic credentials more than the Ivies.

In these times, if one does really well at second and third tier schools like these, you will still have extremely good job prospects/ grad school prospects. I know quite a few people who went to big public schools, did really well and then went to some elite grad school, like Harvard Business, for example.

The students in question probably would do well anywhere. However, a lot of people should consider whether being a mediocre or sub-par student at an elite school would be truly better than being the academic all- star at Big State. I think an extremely cogent case could be made for the latter, even ecluding the much better social considerations and much hotter female talent pool at the Big State schools. Also, if one can't even do well at Big State then that person would have probably done much poorer at an Ivy.

If I had really smart kids, I might want them to go to a Big State school, f*&k a lot of much hotter chicks, and be an academic all-star.

[DF]

"re: Girls at Colgate, Yale, Penn, and Cornell"

There's a reason why the bus from Wellesley to Harvard Square used to be called the "fuck truck." It is well known that the quality of Ivy chicks is abysmal both in undergrad and grad. Save for Columbia, which has Barnard across the street, the composition of classes can be kept at 50/50, which makes matters worse. Every college in the nation has a favorable ratio of girls to boys.

Question: Can anyone find out how many of the world's billionaires are Ivy league grads?

[K]

DF, Buffett spent some time at Columbia and Gates hung out at Harvard briefly.

But, just like my above post, I don't really think billionaire status is a relevant metric of success; it takes intelligence, talent, connections, hard work, and a lot of luck. I am not a huge apologist for luck, but when you're talking about the top 0.00000000000001% of anything, luck matters.

Personally, I'm not satisfied with my life. I'd like to be able to live comfortably in the city of my choice. "Dreaming" of one day owning a "starter home" in the Quad Cities of Iowa, or Waco, or Dublin, OH, or Huntsville, Alabama is below my definition of "success." But once I can have a nice car, nice place to live (not even a mansion) and afford to send children to good schools, and being able travel (5 star is not necessary), and even possibly do an expensive hobby like aviation or horseback riding, I don't see much additional utility in billions.

In relational terms, I find it hard to be attracted to a walrus-like woman waddling through Wal-Mart with dental problems, but wouldn't kick a woman out of bed for being last year's Sexiest Woman Alive. "Billionaire" seems kind of like the latter.

[Half Sigma]

There was a study around somewhere looking at the people who were admitted to Ivies but decided to go elsewhere -- they tend to do just as well, income-wise, as the people who actually go.

That's one of those studies that I debunked.

Can anyone find out how many of the world's billionaires are Ivy league grads?

I wrote about this before as well. 22 of 52 self-made American billionaires went to Ivy or near-Ivy (Stanford/MIT) colleges.

[superdestroyer]

The difference between ivy and non-Ivy, or college versus non-college is the difference between normally distributed career fields and long-normal career fields. The people putting their kids in the Dalton School in hopes of getting into Yale or Harvard is that they are probably in long-normal career fields and expect their children to go into log-normal career fields.

A log-normal career field is one where the median income is much lower than the mean income due to the few outliers who are filthy rich. See professional athletes, attorneys, movie actors, finance geeks. Remember, a Harvard trained dentist gets the same reimbursement from the dental insurance company as any other dentist. He cannot say to the insurance company "Hey, I am a Harvard man, pay me more." It seems like Big Law is exactly the opposite.

A smart kid at a public school Math and Science magnet school is probably aiming at a normally distributed career field like Medicine, Engineering, Corporate management. It is fine for such students to go to the top tier or even second tier public universities, get scholarships and avoid debt.

A few non-college graduates get rich selling Amway, selling Real Estate, creating a new franchise corporation. However, the vast majority, however, do not.

[Posting Postdoc]

It would be nice if the same kind of energy that is spent on grooming highschool students to get into elite colleges would go into actual college work. Unless you are shooting for a top-end Law, B- or Med School, I suppose you are pretty much home free once you get into college. It is plain stupid that people who nail the SATs and have reasonable other credentials don't get into MIT. That just tells me that the SATs need to be made more difficult or that maybe thay should be using GRE subject(-like) tests for college entrance to top schools. That way it would also be ok if everybody just relaxes and picks up As for four years... :-)

When if comes to the B- and C-students that are pushed to attend 4-year-colleges, I think there will be a day when parents and students wake up and realize that a run-of-the-mill degree from a run-of-the-mill university no longer guarantees a safe and reasonably comfortable middle-class lifestyle. I definitely think that if you are a HS B-student you should think very carefully about other ways of spending tens of thousands of dollars and four years. Maybe you should start a business and hire 25-year-old liberal arts majors to do lawn care as a second career?

Sure, a college education is a wonderful opportunity to broaden your mind, but frankly these days there are a lot of over-educated people working out there for whom the college degree was only a necessary crediatial to prove IQ 105+. A majority of the undergrads I meet seem to primarily view their degree as a middle-class entrance exam rather than something they want to pursue to get a wrinklier brain. Since the education arms race propelled by parents who want their offspring to enjoy a more prosperous life than themselves greatly outrun the slow movement towards a knowledge-based, postindustrial society, there are lots of disgruntled, over-educated cubicle-dwellers with withering brains out there already.

yawn...

1. How many people without college have you seen working in the Bush administration, or any administration for that matter?

How many people do you see working in the Bush administration, period? Are you honestly suggesting that the average college graduate can expect to work in a president's administration? This is a star job, and unless you come from a very, very well connected family with the means to send you to only the very best schools, this is not going to happen. You might as well tell your kid to try becoming the next Hollywood star, Victoria's Secret model, or NBA MVP. Or just play the lottery. The odds are probably better with the lottery.

Talent and beauty don't necessarily have much to do with it at those levels. Luck getting noticed (and not breaking something early in life in the case of sports) is more valuable.

2. How many CEO's or C-level executives without college have you seen? Most of them have MBA and nowadays in IT some have PhD's.

I would be willing to bet that there are more millionaire small business owners with no degree or an unrelated degree than there are star CEO's of major corporations. Again, you're talking about rare job opportunities that just aren't open to most people, even those who do have the credentials.

You probably went to a crappy high school, after which people would go to a community college and major in English or Nursing. Yeah, sure, maybe you're better off economically if you don't go to college and wait tables instead.

Nope. Try again.

Do you think any of the people I mentioned as examples made their millions waiting tables? It's precisely this kind of ignorance that ends up sending students and families into debt for degrees which are worthless. I'm not saying a degree is always worthless. But you are blind to the real world if can't see that we have saturated the fields which require degrees and left the fields which do not wide open.

Obviously, there is a discrepancy between how much these people make and how much they are worth. The market will adapt. In fact, it might even disappear! Who knows, one day maybe Google will make it easier for people to circumvent the brokers. :)

Spoken by a person who is completely and utterly ignorant of what's involved legally in a home sale. I would say your job is at greater risk of being replaced by an Internet offering than the job of an escrow officer. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why there hasn't already been a mass shift of higher education to the Internet. You could afford to pay the very best professors in the world to produce video lectures, then link students and assistants together online for homework and testing. I can see a loss of educational value for post graduate work. But for many classes of undergraduate work it would probably represent an improvement. To shift the escrow world to Internet automation would require significant changes to current property law, and may simply not be feasible without a dramatic increase in corruption.

You get to interact with smarter, more interesting people. Good luck doing that with a public high school education or maybe with a high school equivalent diploma. :) Posted by: the professor

Are you suggesting that the value of a college degree is that the person holding it got to spend tens of thousands of dollars to interact with "smarter, more interesting" people for a few years? If that's the case then we should be able to replace the entire college system with some chat rooms and message boards where you are placed on a board based on your SAT and IQ scores. And save American families millions of dollars.

Yes, vulgar people do care only about money.

You spent an entire post mocking people who do not have college degrees as stupid and uninteresting, an ignorant stereotype, while simultaneously displaying your contempt and ignorance of careers outside the narrow field you consider worthy of attention. And now you are going to tell us what makes a person vulgar?

You, dear professor, are vulgar. I would never find my cousins or uncle attacking and degrading people outside their little groups the way you have here. They show respect and courtesy to everyone they meet, including those who have different opinions. Their skills in dealing with people are part of the reason why they are multi-millionaires. And I've quite frankly noticed a higher refinement of those skills, in general, among people who did not attend college. Something for you to think about given the arrogance you've put on display here.

They will spend most of their time earning money, and then they don't know what to do with them. They will buy a house and a nice collection of cars... or wait, somebody already mentioned this as his dream.

Your dream is to apparently convince people that college debt is really worth the opportunity to spend 4 years interacting with smarter, more interesting people (or in your case, simply more arrogant) so that you can have some measure of job security. Because we all know how many professors will be forced to look for real jobs if, not when, people start to realize how many college career paths are saturated and how little the average degree is often worth.

Certainly there are fields which require a higher education, and career paths which benefit from one. But a college degree in general is over valued. As my friends and family in the housing industry would say, it's time for a market correction.

[Peter]

About the guy who chose Colgate over Cornell, Penn, and Yale - first of all, Colgate are Cornell are roughly equivalent. Penn is slightly higher, and Yale of course is one of the very top institutions in the country. There may have been things he liked about Colgate besides the women; from what I hear, it's a beautiful campus, with a great social scene. He also might have an opportunity to have a higher GPA there.

Colgate's also quite a bit smaller, which many people prefer.

--

There's a reason why the bus from Wellesley to Harvard Square used to be called the "fuck truck."

A name more customarily associated with the conjugal-visit trailers found at many state prisons.

[Peter]

About nursing, there is a big demand and their salaries are pretty good. But no MAN gets any respect being a nurse, I imagine.

It used to be a not-entirely-unwarranted stereotype that most male nurses took it in the twins, as it were. Enough men have now gone into the field that such stereotyping is rapidly disappearing.

[Procrastinating Postdoc]

superdestroyer: Good point about normal vs. log-normal careers. It could also be added that there are non-monetary rewards that could also motivate going to a top school even for careers with a normal wage distribution (with a low average to boot), e. g. becoming a professor.

As far as collega graduates earning more, I would love to see some data corrected for 1. IQ, 2. family connections, 3. dedication and 4. ability to shut up and do as told. My guess is that if you have an IQ of 120, few useful family connections but are willing to work 50 hours a week while being paid for 40 and can avoid smoking weed at work or cursing you boss and customers, a fast food career has about the same chance of landing you at 70k+ at 30 as most available college tracks. (Yes, I know that is food stamp level here, but in the woods that means middle class.)

Now I just need to figure out what HS program will land my kids on the McD manager track...

[the professor]

re: all the guys with great examples of smart guys being able to be smart everywhere

Point 1: You don't get the notion of smart. Yes, for work in IT as an IBM a smart person can just pick up a few books and learn on his own. You don't even need college for that. However, to be really smart you need to have smart peers. Really!

Point 2: At MIT, many incoming freshmen are full of themselves, most of them thinking that they are the best of the best. Soon after they realize they are lucky to just be above average at MIT. Every year there's some undergrad committing suicide. Why? Because he can't deal with the fact he's not the smartest anymore, not by a long shot.

best

[the professor]

Question: Can anyone find out how many of the world's billionaires are Ivy league grads?

somewhat related...

The most famous 5 venture capitalists: 3 from HBS, 1 from Stanford Graduate School of Business and one without MBA.

best

[Sal]

Like I always say, you can join the military and get all kinds of interesting and valuable training in many fields(not just killing!) and meet fascinating, intelligent and interesting people. You can also make some good money as an officer. Not CEO rich of course, but I would say I am pretty comfortable. I get great perks and plenty of stuff that doesn't cost me anything or I get it subsidized/discounted. I have also put plenty of money away as well. This is no lie. There are risks, like getting killed, or worse, maimed horribly for the rest of your life(that is what I am afraid of most and it does make me uptight. I went to visit a friend who was wounded and being in the hospital really shook me up). Despite all the sheer madness of being in the military , believe it or not, it is undoubtedly the best decisions I ever made.

[Moi]

Spoken by a person who is completely and utterly ignorant of what's involved legally in a home sale. I would say your job is at greater risk of being replaced by an Internet offering than the job of an escrow officer. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why there hasn't already been a mass shift of higher education to the Internet. You could afford to pay the very best professors in the world to produce video lectures, then link students and assistants together online for homework and testing. I can see a loss of educational value for post graduate work. But for many classes of undergraduate work it would probably represent an improvement. To shift the escrow world to Internet automation would require significant changes to current property law, and may simply not be feasible without a dramatic increase in corruption.

The entire real estate market is based on the fact that people can't get the information unless they go through a broker. There's a law that makes the information available to people, but in practice it is well kept under key. If politicians would enforce this, the brokers will take a big hit. Now, all that remains is to put the issue on the table. Even a YouTube political debate video can do that.

More importantly, the way brokers protect themselves can be thought of unethical. (restricting access to data that should legally be accessible) This is one of the main reasons that being a broker is not a high status job.

[-]

re:More importantly, the way brokers protect themselves can be thought of unethical. (restricting access to data that should legally be accessible) This is one of the main reasons that being a broker is not a high status job.

Drug dealing doesn't require much of an education and it offers lots of money too.

[the professor]

Like I always say, you can join the military and get all kinds of interesting and valuable training in many fields(not just killing!) and meet fascinating, intelligent and interesting people. You can also make some good money as an officer. Not CEO rich of course, but I would say I am pretty comfortable. I get great perks and plenty of stuff that doesn't cost me anything or I get it subsidized/discounted. I have also put plenty of money away as well. This is no lie. There are risks, like getting killed, or worse, maimed horribly for the rest of your life(that is what I am afraid of most and it does make me uptight. I went to visit a friend who was wounded and being in the hospital really shook me up). Despite all the sheer madness of being in the military , believe it or not, it is undoubtedly the best decisions I ever made.

Sal,

I agree. I would even say more: being in the military, especially as an officer, should be a noble profession. It upsets me when I see politicians throw dirt in the military.

best

[stranger]

A college degree is more important now than it ever was. You know how I know? The tuitions (especially at good colleges) increase faster than the inflation.

There are a lot of people on wall street who make a lot of money and never went to college. However, there are very few, if any, who are junior. So in today's age you don't go far without a college degree.

The college degree is the new IQ test. After Duke Power v. Griggs most compnaies are afraid to give them to employees for fear of lawsuits and accusations of racism, etc...Of course after the college degree bcomes useless (liberal arts) because they let every idiot and unqualified minority in through quotas, a new test of some kind will be needed.

[Half Sigma]

While IQ tests would indeed be useful to give to job applicants, primarily the reason they aren't given is that HR departments don't BELIEVE in them. After all, the people who work in HR are the same people who vote for Hillary Clinton, what do you expect?

[Kirk]

A college degree is more important now than it ever was. You know how I know? The tuitions (especially at good colleges) increase faster than the inflation.

People used to say something similar about real estate.

[Michael Santomauro]

nancyspungenesq says: |

"CUNY's record of graduating the highest number of Nobel Laureates of any public university in the world (I attribute this mostly to the top of the top ethnic group (by IQ), and that other elite universities limited the number of Jewish students.)"

The problem with the above statement is the Nobel Prizes started in 1901 and the College started in 1847. The college had a well deserved reputation when Jews did not dominate the student body. The same can be said about the Ivy League schools with a sizable Jewish student body since the 1920s!

The Northern and Western European IQ (or WASP IQ is slightly higher (actually the same since anything within 4 points is considered comparable by IQ purists) than the Jewish IQ of Israel or the United States.