On Rankings
It's back to school time, which also means it's college ranking season.
I think ranking colleges is a pretty silly exercise, but I understand that we humans are wired to compare A to B to C and so forth. And I read them too.
To me, one of the most striking things about the various and sundry rankings is what they leave out. Probably because it is unrankable:
Student effort
A couple of the Big Rankers measure average salaries, post-graduation, at each college. Fine. But here's what does not go into those rankings, as far as I can tell:
- Elite colleges generally get the highest marks. But elite colleges are heavily populated by kids from wealthy families. It's great that Chip graduated from Princeton (and Exeter/Andover/Choate/
Fieldston) and is pulling down $125K in his first year in consulting, but is that really because he went to Princeton? Or that Chip's old man (also Chip) called in a favor for his boy. - The aforementioned effort. What kids put INTO college, not get OUT of college If your college career consists mostly of going to class, then coming back to the dorm to play video games for six hours while tapping the bong periodically, you won't do as well, outcome-wise, as a student who joins clubs, networks with other students, professors and alumni, interviews for internships and summer jobs, etc.
- Entitlement. Closely-related to the previous point so I won't belabor it. I meet too many kids who think, just because they managed to get into their Dream School, that the rest of their lives are set. That they can sit back with a catcher's mitt and field job offers based on where they graduated. Yes, having a diploma from a certain college can get your foot in the door, but not always, and even if it does, you'd better PRODUCE for your employer. The economy is shifting. Trends like AI are enabling companies to cut large amounts of fat from their payrolls. It's going to get a lot hard to get paid for just showing up and sucking up. We're headed into a Production Economy, where more and more people will be paid for their value, not how long they've sat a their desks and how many meetings to have meetings they've attended.
- Statistics. An oft-cited study by the economists Dale and Krueger tracked 1. students who got into Ivies and similarly elite colleges, but half chose to attend their state's flagship public university instead, and then 2. students with similar SATs and GPAs, one set who was admitted to Ivies/Elites, the other set denied. Their conclusions for each study: same earnings.
I'll stop here but I could go on and on. I'm sure you, like I, know complete duds who can barely walk and chew gum, but somehow graduated from an Ivy League college.
And I'm sure you also know wildly successful people who barely went to college or didn't go at all.
The point: take any college rank with a YUGE grain of salt. There's a lot more to think about.
Carpe college, babe.
-Andy Lockwood
P.S. Need last-minute essays and applications help (class of 2024 families)? I'll be sending out a special offer tomorrow for our November Sprint program. Keep your eyes peeled!
