The $$$ Value of an Elite College

People are starting to get the message that attending an elite school is not necessary for future success.  I just wish those “people” were students!

There is solid research out there dispelling the myth of the elite college, but it is often out of reach for the average student.  One example is a recent study by Mathematica Policy Research entitled: “Value of an Elite College.”  I found this study through an April 8 article in TIME claiming that students might be better off attending a safety school than their “dream” college (The Upside of College Rejection: Your Safety School Might be the Smarter Choice, Kayla Webley, TIME, April 8, 2011, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2063935,00.html).  

According to the article, “students rejected by highly selective schools go on to bank the same average earnings as Ivy League graduates.” 

Curious about this claim, I checked out the report.  It is very academic, full of statistical jargon like coefficients, regression models, variables, etc.  The purpose of the report was to measure “labor market return to college quality,” i.e., whether attendance at an elite college results in higher income.  The answer is no. 

There is more encouraging news for rejected students.  The study found that for students with “unobserved student characteristics” such as ambition and persistence, the elite factor had an insignificant relationship to future earnings.  Students who applied to elite schools displayed ambition, and students who applied to a long list of schools were considered persistent.  So simply applying to an elite school shows you’ve got the stuff to make it, regardless of the end result. 

According to Alan B. Krueger, Princeton economist and co-author of the study, "Even if students don't get in, the fact that they are confident enough to apply indicates they are ambitious and hardworking, which are qualities that will help them regardless of where they go to school.”

To be fair, it must be noted that there are three exceptions to the findings.  For black, Hispanic and students with parents who have little education, attending an elite college does impact their future earnings.  The authors suggest this could be because elite colleges offer these students access to connections and networks otherwise unavailable. 

The TIME article also makes the point that applying to graduate school from a safety school could be easier than from an elite school, where it is harder to stand out from the pack of overachievers. 

Getting back to my initial statement about students receiving this positive news.  The thing is, this is old news.  The researchers published another report with similar findings ten years ago, yet in the past ten years the pressure to attend an elite college has only intensified.

A New York Times blog posted the following quote from Krueger, and it is particularly applicable to students reading this blog. 

Krueger’s advice for students:  “Don’t believe that the only school worth attending is one that would not admit you. That you go to college is more important than where you go. Find a school whose academic strengths match your interests and that devotes resources to instruction in those fields. Recognize that your own motivation, ambition and talents will determine your success more than the college name on your diploma.”

Krueger’s advice for elite colleges:  “Recognize that the most disadvantaged students benefit most from your instruction. Set financial aid and admission policies accordingly.”

PDF of the report: http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/education/returntocollege.pdf

April 8, 2011 TIME article: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2063935,00.html

Feb. 21, 2011 New York Times blog post: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/revisiting-the-value-of-elite-colleges/

A Dream Deferred

On April 10 The New York Times reported that some colleges are offering “deferred admission” to candidates willing to wait a semester or a year to matriculate (Admission to College, With Catch: Year’s Wait, Lisa W. Foderaro http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/education/11accept.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp ).   I don’t recall this being an option when I applied to college, albeit that was quite some time ago.  The reason for the new trend?  Beds.

Colleges seeking to keep the beds warm in the dorms throughout the year are finding that “deferred admission” is an effective way to combat declines due to drop-outs and transfers.  When the beds are full, colleges close their doors.  As the beds begin to grow cold, the door creeps open to allow a few deferred students to sneak through.

Rejected students should take comfort that this practice, like so much of admissions, is governed by limited space on campus.  When I sought advice for this blog from a Harvard admissions counselor, she responded that students must remember Harvard is limited by the number of beds in Harvard Yard.  I question this assumption.  In the age of online courses and satellite campuses, why should any college be limited by its real estate portfolio?  I believe Harvard could find space for more students.  That is, if it wanted to. 

The second notable aspect of this article is how “deferred admission” is also a tool to boost a college’s U.S. News ranking.  U.S. News statistics are only drawn from the class of freshmen entering in the fall.  Students with lower test scores can be hidden from U.S. News if they matriculate at a later date.  Furthermore, deferred students are not counted in the total number of admitted students, thereby lowering the admission rate and creating the illusion that the college is more selective than it truly is.  Just further evidence of the gamesmanship behind the U.S. News rankings.  

Would you accept a “deferred admission”?  

The Cost of Rejection

We’ve all heard about the rising cost of college tuition.  What about the cost of rejection?  It may not be measured in dollars, but it is still very real.

Students squeezed through the sausage grinder of the college admissions process often arrive on campus jaded and burned out.  In his March 16, 2001 piece for the New York Times, Andrew DelBanco quoted a Columbia professor complaining that, “Every year I read that our incoming students have better grades and better SAT scores than in the past.  But in the classroom, I do not find a commensurate increase in the number of students who are intellectually curious, adventurous or imbued with fruitful doubt.  Many students are chronically stressed, grade-obsessed and, for fear of jeopardizing their ambitions, reluctant to explore subjects in which they doubt their proficiency.”

Similarly, Barry Schwartz wrote in a 2007 LA Times article: “By making themselves so competitive, our selective institutions are subverting their aims.”  The article by Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, was appropriately named:  “Why the Best Schools Can’t Pick the Best Kids - and Vice Versa” (http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/18/opinion/op-schwartz18). 

Perhaps the persistent branding sends the message that getting in is all that matters, not performance in college.  After all, even the worst Harvard graduate is still a Harvard graduate.  It is not surprising that students who view college as nothing more than a brand name will coast through their four years and probably not even realize what they are missing.

For rejected students, the cost is higher.  These students face the risk of not bouncing back.  I fell into this trap myself.  After pushing towards the singular goal of acceptance at Princeton, rejection left me questioning my efforts and hesitant to throw myself upon the unwelcoming world of academia.  I did not “attack” the college curriculum or outside activities with the same vigor I had in high school.  I shied away from risks like studying abroad, writing for the school newspaper or independent research.  I had a deep appreciation for learning, but couldn’t muster the energy for what seemed like jumping through even more hoops.  I looked at my fellow classmates with their eyes on graduate school, but refused to join them.  Why risk rejection again?  Why try when I was already told my best wasn’t good enough?

I doubt I’m the only student for whom the aftermath of rejection lingered throughout college.  I wish I could shake the rejection out of them and send them to college with a blank slate.  My wish for these students is that they give themselves a second chance.  Not doing so is a cost too high for any college. 

    

As Bill Mayher writes in The College Admissions Mystique, “In a generation or two, it will become clear how much we have invested in the madness surrounding selective admissions and how much we have lost.”

The Admissions Lottery

The psychologist Barry Schwartz has suggested that elite colleges would be better off conducting a lottery rather than the current admissions process.  Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this proposal in his 2008 book Outliers.  Here’s how it would work:  “Put people into two categories.  Good enough and not good enough.  The ones who are good enough get put into a hat.  And those who are not good enough get rejected.”

Gladwell calls this proposal “absolutely right.” He notes that in 2008 Harvard rejected 93 out of every 100 applicants, many of whom had identical academic records.  Of those rejected, 2,500 had perfect English SAT scores and 3,300 had perfect Math SAT scores.  Writes Gladwell: “Is it really possible to say that one student is Harvard material and another isn’t, when both have identical – and perfect – academic records?  Of course not.  Harvard is being dishonest.  Schwartz is right.  They should just have a lottery.”

This proposal would certainly save colleges the money, time and energy wasted each year on the pointless process of separating one perfect application from another.  Even more important, it would spare students from the misguided notion that their tireless efforts to achieve perfection were in vain.  A lottery doesn’t make the system any more just, but at least the randomness of the system would be clear for all to see.   

How can I be “genuine” when I don’t know who I am yet?

Admissions officers say they are looking for “authenticity” from college applicants.  This is one factor they use to sift through thousands of applications, but is it unfair to ask high school students to possess a quality that only comes with time? 

In order to be “authentic” or “genuine” (another catchphrase used by admissions officers) you have to know yourself on a level that most high school students do not.  The adults on the admissions committees may be too far removed from adolescence to remember how rare, and scary, true authenticity can be. 

I bet the Princeton admissions officers who read my application tossed it right into the “big phony” bucket.  The application asked me to describe my ideal roommate.  I answered a non-white roommate because my high school was so homogeneous.  I was writing from the heart, but looking back my stomach turns imagining how this was perceived.  My adult self knows such a statement stinks of insincerity.  The admissions officers had no way of knowing that one day I would marry outside of my race, raise bi-racial children and traverse racial boundaries in my friendships and work.  Ironically, these relationships taught me that all people are the same, but the girl filling out the Princeton application had not yet lived enough to learn that lesson. 

Students should not be penalized for submitting applications less than “genuine.”  Perhaps one reason so many applications look identical (another complaint of admissions officers) is because students are being deluged with the same advice.  Is it any surprise that these students are good at following instructions?  Must “find yourself” be added to the to-do list of overscheduled teenagers?  Isn’t that what college is for, anyway?