Choosing Your College - How College Rankings Affect Your Future Income

Choosing Your College - How College Rankings Affect Your Future Income

This is part one of a three-part series centered around "Choosing Your College"...

Please subscribe to make sure you don't miss part two and part three (I would also greatly appreciate it!).

Timestamps:
00:00 The Excitement Factor - Your Dream School
01:45 College Rankings influence us
03:20 College Rankings Examined
07:00 A helpful example…
09:17 Regression Analysis On Earnings Difference

What college will give me the best career opportunities?

Well, College rankings are supposed to help us with this. Used by millions of Americans every year...college rankings, like the US News College Rankings, Forbes College Rankings, and many others, are designed to help us sort through the noise and pick a great college.

So, how do college rankings correlate with future income? For example, if private school graduates make more, should one attend a higher ranked, more expensive private school?

Definitely worth the consideration…maybe it’s because higher ranked schools have more talented, driven kids, and by surrounding yourself with that student body, one increases the likelihood of success. That’s an easy story to get behind…

Maybe the graduates are making more because they enjoy a smaller class size, and/or better Professors. Maybe the brand name gets them better interviews…whatever the reason, the difference is there - but, how big of an income difference is it? And what exactly causes it?

In this video, we will examine this using the data...not just opinions or anecdotal stories.

Michael MacKelvie
Founder, College Guide Pro

KEYWORDS
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[papulrocks]

I got the grades for ivy league but ended up choosing a lower ranked university for full ride. Class sizes were small, people were less egotistical and professors remembered you. I ended up working with the same Ivy league folks who have student loans to pay off.

[michaellyga]

RPI was the best school that would take me, and with a good financial aid package. Easy to get into, hard as balls to stay at. What’s funny is that none of the people I knew in high school could even tell you what RPI was. Still think it was the right choice for me.

[brandong]

Rankings are reinforced by the same institutions that sit at the top of them. Great video

[joshjohnson]

It's actually insane how high quality these videos are in comparison to the subscriber count

[weksauce]

This is also what's going on with people who rail against taxes. They're ignoring the benefits side of the ROI equation.

[bob]

Great choice of paper. I had to read the Dale Krueger paper and explain it to an economics class as the paper I selected this spring.

This is in fact considered the key paper on this topic. I would mention that the data it uses is very old, at least 20 years old if not more. The impact might be slowly increasing of going to a top school because network effects are growing in all fields as breaking into just about any field is becoming more competitive.

Also, most of the paper is secondary tests. Notable exceptions were found for certain subgroups, such as black and Hispanic students and those from less-educated families. For these groups, the return to college selectivity remained significant even after adjusting for unobserved student characteristics. Also I think for poor families, getting a big discount/full ride changes the equation.

[sebastianruesta]

I love your videos man dont stop uploading because you truly have something special here.

[eyeanmorris]

Just shows how "Does where you go to college matter?" is subtly a very different question than "Does where you choose to go to college matter?"

[cheng]

Great content! keep the work up these are some high quality videos

[dannybennett]

Such a well produced and intriguing channel, keep it up!

[craigcman]

First time viewer here. It's not the college you go to, it is the hard work you put in. Good lesson.

[abhinavs]

Great video mike❤️... I genuinely believe that you deserve more subscribers.

[MeJonTheDon]

88% of people CAN (but probably aren't) better than you AVERAGE driver. it depends how bad that other 12% are and what the metrics are.

I think what you mean is 88% can't be great than the MEDIAN because that explicitly means 50% mark, whereas AVERAGE can be skewed by extremes (i.e. the avegerage person may make a alot of money, but thats just becuase the extremely wealthy make so many times the money of most people, where the median and mean are very different numbers)

[sarayusarayu]

I come for the data and stay for the narrative!

[dvdv]

9:05 LMAO get out of the restricted area and TAKE THE CHARGE! 😅😂

[cheble]

Interesting that identical students at different schools (ie. Ivy vs. respectable public school) have zero difference in income. I wouldn't have guessed that not because of one school being better than another regarding pure academics, but rather environment. By nature, you are going to be around other ambitious students at an Ivy whereas at a state school the average student isn't going to be as driven. You are a product of the people around you.

[paulbuono]

I think what you're failing to mention regarding professor salary and ratio is the reputation of these professors. Yes, a lot of the highly paid ones are not good teachers or even interested in teaching (you probably will never meet them because their TA is doing everything while they're helping design a new satellite for NASA).
So, what's the benefit of this from a student's perspective? Well, when those professors are looking for research assistants and such you could be asked.
Obviously, there are caveats to that (and you can argue that a small student ratio gives you a better chance of standing out). You're definitely right that cream rises to the top in life if you're in a certain field and you've got a certain kind of ambition, those schools could pay off in dividends.

[natelatham]

I wonder how the conclusions drawn in this video would change when comparing students from different socioeconomic backgrounds

[PaulGaither]

With all due respect, you are talking about college sports. Malcolm Gladwell had a 2 part [or more?] podcast of the impact of college choice and success with *very* different conclusions.

[ctk]

I know plenty of people that got degrees at mediocre universities that make more than people that got the same degrees and attended t20 institutions