'Evening everyone,
I thought I would share an excerpt from a book that I'm currently reading, Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. This is mainly a post to share my own anecdotal advice in context of an excerpt from the book.
I had the choice of attending a top 20 university in the US, or a "solid (public) school". Financially speaking, the public school would've been a clear choice. I faced a lot of pressure from family, school counselors, and other adults to attend the "better" university, in spite of the fact that it would cost me many, many thousands more in eventual student debt. I could happily tell more of my story over PM for those interested, but attending that top 20 university might have been one of my biggest regrets. Obviously, I can't know how life would be different if I had gone to the public school, but I can guarantee that I wouldn't be as deeply indebted as I am after graduating from that top 20 university.
This excerpt might have changed my mind, had I been able to read it before making that decision. I'm hoping that it'll reach someone out there that will be making the choice within the next few years.
"Take college. Does it matter if you go to one of the best universities in the world, such as Harvard, or a solid school such as Penn State? Once again, there is a clear correlation between the ranking of one’s school and how much money people make. Ten years into their careers, the average graduate of Harvard makes $123,000. The average graduate of Penn State makes $87,800. But this correlation does not imply causation. Two economists, Stacy Dale and Alan B. Krueger, thought of an ingenious way to test the causal role of elite universities on the future earning potential of their graduates. They had a large dataset that tracked a whole host of information on high school students, including where they applied to college, where they were accepted to college, where they attended college, their family background, and their income as adults. To get a treatment and control group, Dale and Krueger compared students with similar backgrounds who were accepted by the same schools but chose different ones. Some students who got into Harvard attended Penn State—perhaps to be nearer to a girlfriend or boyfriend or because there was a professor they wanted to study under. These students, in other words, were just as talented, according to admissions committees, as those who went to Harvard. But they had different educational experiences. So when two students, from similar backgrounds, both got into Harvard but one chose Penn State, what happened? The researchers’ results were just as stunning as those on Stuyvesant High School. Those students ended up with more or less the same incomes in their careers. If future salary is the measure, similar students accepted to similarly prestigious schools who choose to attend different schools end up in about the same place. Our newspapers are peppered with articles about hugely successful people who attended Ivy League schools: people like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, all of whom attended Harvard. (Granted, they all dropped out, raising additional questions about the value of an Ivy League education.) There are also stories of people who were talented enough to get accepted to an Ivy League school, chose to attend a less prestigious school, and had extremely successful lives: people like Warren Buffett, who started at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League business school, but transferred to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln because it was cheaper, he hated Philadelphia, and he thought the Wharton classes were boring. The data suggests, earnings-wise at least, that choosing to attend a less prestigious school is a fine decision, for Buffett and others." -Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Anyway, I won't discuss my experience and personal life in a public forum, but happy to answer questions over PM.
Submitted June 09, 2018 at 10:12PM by Elrondel https://ift.tt/2LFirq7
