Criticism of the traditional interpretation of Dale and Krueger study (more). I haven’t read the original paper closely; has anyone else? I don’t trust Half Sigma to give an unbiased interpretation.
Some people have suggested that being a “small fish in a big pond” reduces students’ confidence relative to being a “big fish in a small pond.” Assuming this, to the extent that confidence increase later life earnings, all else being equal, attending a more selective school will reduce expected earnings.
In addition to the power of the brand name, graduates of elite colleges have two critical qualities that plug right into the way large organizations work. They’re good at doing what they’re asked, since that’s what it takes to please the adults who judge you at seventeen. And having been to an elite college makes them more confident.
Back in the days when people might spend their whole career at one big company, these qualities must have been very valuable. Graduates of elite colleges would have been capable, yet amenable to authority. And since individual performance is so hard to measure in large organizations, their own confidence would have been the starting point for their reputation.
I read the whole of the 2011 paper. Two comments on the Half Sigma criticism:
(a) It was written with reference to the 2002 paper, not the 2011 paper.
(b) Regarding
But what it really says is that the average SAT score of a school is unimportant, what’s important is how highly “ranked” it is. I suspect that in many cases, when a student attended a school with a lower average SAT score, they did so because the school with the lower score was actually the more prestigious school.
The authors didn’t just look at average SAT scores, they also looked at selectivity (as measured by the Barron’s selectivity index). In the 2002 paper, they even matched students based on the exact schools they had been accepted to.
Criticism of the traditional interpretation of Dale and Krueger study (more). I haven’t read the original paper closely; has anyone else? I don’t trust Half Sigma to give an unbiased interpretation.
Paul Graham (Cornell + Harvard grad) thinks the opposite:
I read the whole of the 2011 paper. Two comments on the Half Sigma criticism:
(a) It was written with reference to the 2002 paper, not the 2011 paper. (b) Regarding
The authors didn’t just look at average SAT scores, they also looked at selectivity (as measured by the Barron’s selectivity index). In the 2002 paper, they even matched students based on the exact schools they had been accepted to.