Where did you go to college?
One of the most famous graduates of my high school is Charlie Ergen. He was two years ahead of me, so we were in the same building for a year. I knew his name and would have recognized him (student council prez, captain of the B-ball team), but we never met. There were about 1800 students in our high school.
Charlie went on to get a BA from UT-Knoxville and an MBA from Wake Forest. Eventually, he became co-founder and chairman of Dish Network and EchoStar. He’s retired now, but is worth $2.3 billion, according to Forbes.
It turns out that if you want to be a Supreme Court justice or a US Senator, it helps to graduate from an Ivy League University. But as Charlie showed, it doesn’t make much difference where you went to college if you want to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company (data from 2019).
Top 20 CEOs and where they went to college (2019)
Vaguely related?
College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification
NY Tines – July 24
Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.
A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.
The study — by Opportunity Insights, a group of economists based at Harvard who study inequality — quantifies for the first time the extent to which being very rich is its own qualification in selective college admissions. …
… In effect, the study shows, these policies amounted to affirmative action for the children of the 1 percent, whose parents earn more than $611,000 a year. It comes as colleges are being forced to rethink their admissions processes after the Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action is unconstitutional.
“Are these highly selective private colleges in America taking kids from very high-income, influential families and basically channeling them to remain at the top in the next generation?” said Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard who directs Opportunity Insights, and an author of the paper with John N. Friedman of Brown and David J. Deming of Harvard. “Flipping that question on its head, could we potentially diversify who’s in a position of leadership in our society by changing who is admitted?” …
Dobbs
i think you overreact to this. the rich will always favor their chidren and their friends children, but there is no reason the rest of us can’t go to a decent college , or not, and still make something of ourselves.
furthermore the emphasis on tests, grades, or “finely tuned resumes” is probably more damaging than “legacy admissions.” it rewards ambition and conformity, which have nothing to do with honesty or depth or even “creativity” whatever that means.
and, let’s see: only 7% of admissions are from families in the top 1% (of income?).
so what about the other 93%? should we be surprised that rich people send their kids to “top” schools?
and, maybe, 1% is 3 million people..maybe only 1 million college age, how many of them can fit into Harvard..or how many of them does it take to make up 7% of “top school” admissions.
and, trying to avoid saying this…is there any chance that the top 1% have, you know, on average, more talent than, say, the bottom 50%..at least talent for making money?
i don’t see why the government needs to interfere with admissions to private schools. public schools is another matter. make them better? make them as much “equal opportunity” as possible? turn out graduates that do well and enhance the “marketability” of their graduates in general?
Coberly, Although I think we have clashed a few times I basically agree with most of what you opine and this is no exception. Maybe because you and Run and me are all old guys. I came from a fairly privileged background— son of a family physician in a small manufacturing town in the Midwest. I grew up well to do but not “rich”. First job was setting bowling pins. I went to a private, somewhat exclusive college and then a top 10 law school but not Ivy League. Never made a ton of money, but was like my dad reasonably well to do. Same with my kids although one married a radiation oncologist which is almost a license to print money but not in the “ wealthy” category. The point is that education at least in the past enhances one opportunity to be upper middle class, but it has little correlation with wealth. Although it seems like the elite universities are producing our politicians Joe Biden— who I think has been the best president of my lifetime since LBJ if you ignore Vietnam— went to University of Delaware and Syracuse University. Not going to did either but not elite. The failure to deal with the cost of higher education is the real way the wealthy try to keep their privileged position for their kids.
Terry
sorry for past “clashes.” i tend to forget them and don’t usually take them seriously. or at least realize i shouldn’t. it wouldn’t be the first time i ever had to change my mind when i learned more.
not my first, but nearly, i set pins in a bowling alley and nominally kept the machinery running.
I am tempted to agree with you about Biden, but I think he is not scared enough yet about the environment. only excuse i can give him is the same one i give all of us: hard to be the first kid on your block to give up gasoline. we would have the russians or someone else eating out lunch.
It’s fairly well understood in New England that Harvard (and other Ivies & ‘Little Ivies’, who are well endowed) make concerted efforts to enroll needy young people who are ‘qualified’ enough to succeed at their institutions. Wesleyan in Connecticut has gone so far, I have heard, that they will no longer do ‘legacy preference’ selection.
Admittedly, they usually enroll a lot of ‘legacies’, but that has always been the case with private higher-ed. Wesleyan is out to change that apparently.
How Big Is the Legacy Boost at Elite Colleges?
NY Times – July 27
In the same week as a civil rights inquiry into Harvard, new data shows legacies are slightly more qualified yet are four times as likely to get into top schools.
… New data shows that at elite private colleges, the children of alumni, known as legacies, are in fact slightly more qualified than typical applicants, as judged by admissions offices. Even if their legacy status weren’t considered, they would still be about 33 percent more likely to be admitted than applicants with the same test scores, based on all their other qualifications, demographic characteristics and parents’ income and education, according to an analysis conducted by Opportunity Insights, a research group at Harvard.
Researchers said that was unsurprising, given that these students grow up in more educated families. Their parents may be more able to invest in their educations, pay for things like private schools or exclusive sports, and offer insight into what the college is looking for.
Yet the admissions advantage they get at many elite colleges for being children of alumni is far greater than that. They were nearly four times as likely to be admitted as applicants with the same test scores, according to the data, released Monday. And legacy students from the richest 1 percent of families were five times as likely to be admitted. …
I had a chat with a friend the other day. The subject of her grandaughter came up, who is applying to medical school next year (Harvard). Both of her parents are Harvard-trained doctors. One is a Harvard med school faculty member. They have been told, apparently, that she will have a harder time getting into Harvard med school because she is a legacy. Exceptional abilities or not. (I told my friend not to worry. It’s just politically correct to lower expectations.)
@Fred,
If she is talented enough to get into Harvard, she’ll get into a medical school, graduate, complete her residency and practice. The difference between being a Harvard-trained doc and a graduate of any other American medical school is small compared to the difference between getting into a medical school or not. If she’s interested in an elite residency program, she should focus on doing research during med school.
I reassured my friend (whose husband is a fellow RPI grad) that her granddaughter will get into Harvard med. I expect she will, but if she doesn’t, that’s ok. Not everyone gets to go to the best school no matter what the circumstances. There just isn’t room. But there are plenty of good alternatives. And room has to be made for the Clarence Thomases of the world. Even Clarence Thomas had to go to Yale.
It seems like maybe there’s a ‘secret society’ out there that looks out for the wealthy and their children, when it comes to ‘opportunities’.
Is that so hard to believe?
But maybe not. The only anecdote I have to offer is that I invested some modest amounts for my kids in the early days of the dot.com era for the purpose of funding their college education. I chose Microsoft to invest in, for them. (Not for me. Dang!)
After a few years of share prices doubling every few months and also splitting, a modest sum turned into a not exactly small fortune for each of my two kids. When they reached college age, they had enough to pay for four years & then some. They were both smart, but they did not need any financial assistance from the colleges they chose. For my oldest, I didn’t even bother to apply for it. Some market down turns occurred when the next one was ready, so I did the FAFSA thing and was basically advised that I must be joking, asking for financial aid. She did get some, however, because the school she chose really wanted her to attend.
My point is, that Mrs Fred and I are not wealthy (comfortable perhaps), but it seemed our kids were, and they had no trouble getting into elite schools. My daughter was wait-listed at Harvard, but the alum who interviewed her was going to ‘do something about that’ because he was sure an error had been made. She did get into MIT and every other elite college she applied to. I like to think it was because she was off-the-charts brilliant, but she also did not need any financial aid at all to attend. THAT makes a difference, I think. Being smart AND not needing financial aid is quite appealing to admissions people. Go figure.
BTW, ‘Being smart’ probably means, in part, being well prepared during one’s high-school years. In short, seeming to possess the abilities needed to be successful in an academic environment.