[BostonCard]

This might be a good time to post a reminder about the rather serious issues with studies such as these.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/scien...ility.html

A few further comments:

"Getting straight A's requires conformity."
The basis for that statement seems to be the writers own head.
In my experience there are areas where there is some tendency in that direction, others not at all.

"For most students, the salary boost from going to a super-selective school is “generally indistinguishable from zero” after adjusting for student characteristics, such as test scores."
My understanding is that the salary information data bases that exist are unreliable to the extreme. And from this article, who knows if "adjusting for student characteristics" is done effectively or not.
[Though I have no particular reason to doubt the conclusion. It does, however, imply that the SAT actually measures something real - which counters a different but very large theme of social science research.]

Helpfully, the Atlantic actually has a link to the Dale/Kruger article:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322.pdf

They also cited a second paper, which partially replicates the findings (in men, but seems to find an effect of selectivity on women), also helpfully linked (at least the abstract is):

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25315

Using College and Beyond data and a variant on Dale and Krueger's (2002) matched-applicant approach, this paper revisits the question of how attending an elite college affects later-life outcomes. We expand the scope along two dimensions: we do not restrict the sample to full-time full-year workers and we examine labor force participation, human capital, and family formation. For men, our findings echo those in Dale and Krueger (2002): controlling for selection eliminates the positive relationship between college selectivity and earnings. We also find no significant effects on men's educational or family outcomes. The results are quite different for women: we find effects on both career and family outcomes. Attending a school with a 100-point higher average SAT score increases women's probability of advanced degree attainment by 5 percentage points and earnings by 14 percent, while reducing their likelihood of marriage by 4 percentage points. The effect of college selectivity on own earnings is significantly larger for married than for single women. Among married women, selective college attendance significantly increases spousal education.

I tried to find other sources of replication, just in case the Atlantic article was cherry picking their results.  This paper suggests that an effect exists, but is small

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/dow...1&type=pdf

Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we estimate various early, mid-, and late career outcomes. Results suggest that any premium associated with elite college attendance occurs in the early career, and wanes thereafter. 

My instinct is that this is right, given other literature that I've seen about, for example, elite high schools in New York on college admissions (comparing students just above and just below the exam score cutline)

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/...7_2013.pdf

Applicants just eligible for an exam school have peers that score 0.17 to 0.36 standard deviations higher on eighth grade state tests and that are 6.4 to 9.5 percentage points less likely to be black or Hispanic. However, exposure to these higher-achieving and more homogeneous peers has little impact on college enrollment, college graduation, or college quality.

There are two ways to look at the data.  The first is to say that there is very little difference between the students admitted to an elite school and those who just miss whatever cutoff is needed to make it.  This makes sense given the fact that most elite schools have more applicants that could thrive than they have spots in their admitting class.

The second way to look at the data is that anyone good enough to get into an elite school is good enough to thrive in college, no matter where they actually go. That's not answered directly by the studies above, but it is a plausible conclusion from them and it would be interesting, if one had individual level data, to see what happens to students who chose a second tier school over an elite college.  My guess is that those students would do just fine as well.

BC

[BostonCard]

This might be a good time to post a reminder about the rather serious issues with studies such as these.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/scien...ility.html

A few further comments:

"Getting straight A's requires conformity."
The basis for that statement seems to be the writers own head.
In my experience there are areas where there is some tendency in that direction, others not at all.

"For most students, the salary boost from going to a super-selective school is “generally indistinguishable from zero” after adjusting for student characteristics, such as test scores."
My understanding is that the salary information data bases that exist are unreliable to the extreme. And from this article, who knows if "adjusting for student characteristics" is done effectively or not.
[Though I have no particular reason to doubt the conclusion. It does, however, imply that the SAT actually measures something real - which counters a different but very large theme of social science research.]

Helpfully, the Atlantic actually has a link to the Dale/Kruger article:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322.pdf

They also cited a second paper, which partially replicates the findings (in men, but seems to find an effect of selectivity on women), also helpfully linked (at least the abstract is):

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25315

Using College and Beyond data and a variant on Dale and Krueger's (2002) matched-applicant approach, this paper revisits the question of how attending an elite college affects later-life outcomes. We expand the scope along two dimensions: we do not restrict the sample to full-time full-year workers and we examine labor force participation, human capital, and family formation. For men, our findings echo those in Dale and Krueger (2002): controlling for selection eliminates the positive relationship between college selectivity and earnings. We also find no significant effects on men's educational or family outcomes. The results are quite different for women: we find effects on both career and family outcomes. Attending a school with a 100-point higher average SAT score increases women's probability of advanced degree attainment by 5 percentage points and earnings by 14 percent, while reducing their likelihood of marriage by 4 percentage points. The effect of college selectivity on own earnings is significantly larger for married than for single women. Among married women, selective college attendance significantly increases spousal education.

I tried to find other sources of replication, just in case the Atlantic article was cherry picking their results.  This paper suggests that an effect exists, but is small

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/dow...1&type=pdf

Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we estimate various early, mid-, and late career outcomes. Results suggest that any premium associated with elite college attendance occurs in the early career, and wanes thereafter. 

My instinct is that this is right, given other literature that I've seen about, for example, elite high schools in New York on college admissions (comparing students just above and just below the exam score cutline)

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/...7_2013.pdf

Applicants just eligible for an exam school have peers that score 0.17 to 0.36 standard deviations higher on eighth grade state tests and that are 6.4 to 9.5 percentage points less likely to be black or Hispanic. However, exposure to these higher-achieving and more homogeneous peers has little impact on college enrollment, college graduation, or college quality.

There are two ways to look at the data.  The first is to say that there is very little difference between the students admitted to an elite school and those who just miss whatever cutoff is needed to make it.  This makes sense given the fact that most elite schools have more applicants that could thrive than they have spots in their admitting class.

The second way to look at the data is that anyone good enough to get into an elite school is good enough to thrive in college, no matter where they actually go. That's not answered directly by the studies above, but it is a plausible conclusion from them and it would be interesting, if one had individual level data, to see what happens to students who chose a second tier school over an elite college.  My guess is that those students would do just fine as well.

BC