The crowd at Boston College commencement.
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A new study finds that an Ivy League degree doesn’t meaningfully increase a graduate’s future income compared to a good state school.
The study looked at wait-listed Ivy League applicants who went on to attend one of nine state universities.
See the nine universities that set students up nearly just as well as the Ivies.
You don’t have to attend an Ivy League university to have an Ivy League income. If you fit a certain profile, attending a good state university could do the trick.
That’s according to a new study by Opportunity Insights, a group of Harvard-based economists. The researchers looked at students who were wait-listed by Ivy League schools and compared the estimated future earnings of those who eventually got in with those who didn’t — and attended one of nine flagship public universities instead.
They found that attending an Ivy rather than a state flagship only had a “small and statistically insignificant impact” on graduates’ future earnings, boosting their projected income at age 33 by an average of 3%.
Their findings were consistent with a 1999 study co-authored by Princeton economist Alan Kruger, which concluded, “Students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges.”
—Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) July 24, 2023
The Harvard researchers found that attending an Ivy did offer some advantages, however, including boosting students’ odds of reaching the top 1% in income and working for an “elite” employer. But these universities’ “small and statistically insignificant impact” on average income levels suggests that it’s the quality of the student — more than their school — that is more predictive of their future earnings. So perhaps getting into an Ivy isn’t quite all that it’s cracked up to be.
In no particular order, here are the nine state universities the researchers used in the study, where the students they analyzed went on to have comparable estimated incomes to those of Ivy League graduates.