Sadly, there is very little research to indicate how much you could expect to earn after gaining a degree from this, that, or the other college. We do have statistics reports of averages. This one at Payscale.com is an example. But an average is not a prediction of what your son or daughter will make upon graduation. About half the kids make more than that. And half make less. Which will be your child? Above or below the average?

Even with salary averages by college, educational ROI would not be predictive for an individual student. An average is an average, after all, and how could we predict that Susie would earn above the average and that Sam would earn below that average? (Unless, of course, Susie were from Lake Wobegon…where all the children are above average…).

Plus there are kids at cheaper schools that make way more than the averages for those expensive private schools. Who made the better bet: the kid who paid less for college, or the one who paid more?

The fact is that aggregate data is unhelpful in providing clear guidance to individual high school graduates. Would you buy a Harvard degree if you were destined to earn below the salary average for that institution? What crystal ball will tell us where we will end up five, ten, or twenty-five years after graduation?

The reason for the dearth of the sort of solid research for which we all pine is that it cannot be done. Solid, scientific, and predictive research requires double-blind experiments with variables that can be controlled. When it comes to educational ROI, such controlled experiments would be impossible.

Why? Because human beings are darned complex, and too many uncontrollable variables enter the equation. What are the variables that have an impact on one’s financial success in life (other than the name of the university on one’s diploma)?

Let’s start a list.

• Educational background prior to entering college (e.g., Philips Exeter vs PS 142)
• Socio-economic status prior to entering college (e.g., New England blueblood vs. first-generation Sudanese)
• Grades earned in college (e.g., a studious 3.5 GPA or a slacker 2.4
• Major in college (e.g., engineering vs. education)
• Location a person chooses to live in after college (e.g., Santa Barbara vs. Omaha)
• The type of profession one seeks (e.g., teacher vs. neurosurgeon)
• Other skills a student develops beyond the major (e.g., the philosophy major who also studies organic chemistry)
• Jobs or internships the student might have had during college (e.g., dishing ice cream on Cape Cod vs. doing an accounting gig with PriceWaterhouseCoopers)
• Absence or presence of well-connected family members (e.g., a mom who CEO of Acme Technology and raised gobs of dough for a presidential campaign vs. a dad who drives a cab in Brooklyn)

Get the picture? Controlling for all these variables so that we could develop a scientific study that gave us meaningful comparisons to help us predict educational ROI for a particular student is virtually impossible. No aspiring academic with an understanding of research methodology would take this on.

But the biggest problem is that we can never compare a single kid who had two lives one in which he went to a high-priced college and one in which he went to a community college and later transferred to the state school.

Or the student who majored in business in his first life and then majored in English in his second.

Or the student who earned good grades in his first life, and then floated by with a C-average in his second.

Now, if we could clone people and set the clones off in two different directions that would be really cool. And conclusive. We could see which genetically identical person earned the most after having attended this school or the other. As long as those genetically identical individuals had lived identical lives in the same household to the age of 18 (if, however, the clones were “separated at birth,” we’d see our research devolve into the nature vs. nurture morass).

The fact is, folks, that we all want to be able to scientifically tote up the numbers to come up with a predictive return on our educational investment.

Can’t be done.

So we’re left with a silly, vapid argument between those who say “spend the money” and those who say “save your money.” Both are right.  Both are wrong. The argument gets us nowhere.

Fundamental principles we can consider in making the decision

Still, might there be some fundamental principles we can consider in making the decision about whether to spend tons of money on a college education? Let’s see if we can’t come up with some.

1.  How big an investment is the price tag, relative to current family income? Some can easily afford a quarter of a million dollars for an education. Some cannot. So if you have the money, it’s worth it. If you don’t have it, it’s not worth it. (Remember Aesop’s fable of the “Fox and the Grapes”?). Hmmm…this is not a very satisfying fundamental principle. Next!

2.  Will you have to go into debt to finance this expensive degree? The bigger the debt burden, the less likely the return on the investment will cancel out that debt. Then again, it depends on what you end up doing after that degree. If you’re a brain surgeon or a successful venture capitalist, then who cares? You’ll be able to pay off that debt in the blink of an eye. But if you become a teacher or an unsuccessful venture capitalist, then clearly the investment wasn’t worth it. But notice: you can’t know whether the investment was worth it until AFTER you have a successful–or unsuccessful career! This is getting frustrating, isn’t it?

3.  Speaking of which, your professional aspirations do play a role. If you plan to be a kindergarten teacher or an orchestral musician, then spending a quarter of a million bucks for an education isn’t worth it. However, if you want to be a brain surgeon, you have no choice but to go to college…and then go into debt for medical school. But here’s a contrarian thought: do you have to go to college to be a successful business executive?

Not necessarily, of course (we all know the story of Bill Gates, for whom Harvard “wasn’t worth it”). To go a step further, do you really have to go to college at all to make a lot of money? I have a cousin who went to school to learn how to do auto body work. He can now buy and sell me several times over, sends his kids to elite private schools, drives a brand new Mercedes, and has a vacation home in Vermont. Where did I go wrong….?

4.  Savvy shoppers for educational services should do some price comparisons. But the fact is that very few students pay the actual tuition sticker price. You see, because of the way financial aid (both merit-based and need-based) is allocated, each individual pays a different price for that education–especially at the colleges with heavy price tags.

So here again we have another variable for which we much provide some scientific control in our research: we need to compare students who paid full price or students who received a full scholarship. Or half a scholarship. Or something. (Oh my:  not another variable for which we need a control!)

5.  There are aspects of education that do not boil down to dollars and cents. For some, education is not merely about preparing for a profession. For some, it’s also about intellectual inquiry–pushing your capacities to the limit. There is a spiritual element to education that transcends a “market price.” This is all well and good: but it certainly doesn’t get us any closer to calculating our educational ROI. To do a calculation, we need numbers, and these folks who find an intrinsic value in education just aren’t numbers people.

The fact is that the argument as to whether or not an expensive private education is “worth it” simply cannot be won. The argument isn’t really an argument: it all boils down to one’s personal values and preferences.

Can people who go to state universities have satisfying, successful careers?

You bet. Can Ivy League graduates end up earning less than $40k per year for the past 25 years? You bet (I have a Dartmouth friend who is a respected ornithologist who lives in the Amazon, has discovered many new species, and has never made more than $40k in a year: was his Ivy League investment “worth it”?).

Advice on the worth of an expensive private college education

So in the absence of research, we need a crystal ball. Or we need good, solid, personalized advice from someone who can help a family identify their priorities. Perhaps a professional guidance counselor who can help a student explore his or her academic strengths and weaknesses.

Who can discuss “educational philosophy” with a family to find out whether the educational priority is on “getting a job” or on “leading the examined life.” What it all amounts to is “different strokes for different folks.” My job is not to win an argument. My job is to figure out which stroke you’re swimming and help keep you moving in your chosen direction.

Great College Advice

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As a response, many high schools have instituted community service requirements for graduation.  Similarly, one of the main attractions of the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum is its emphasis on community action through its CAS program (“Creativity, Action, Service).

Coincident with these trend is the rise of “voluntourism”, by which well-off adults travel to Africa or Latin America or Southeast Asia to do “good works” in a poor community during their vacations.  These programs also build upon similar efforts organized by churches and other religious organizations.  This demand has created a significant niche of the international travel industry that caters to altruistic adventures.

To grossly oversimplify, the idea is for folks in wealthy countries like the United States to see how others live and to contribute in some way to the development of a less well-off community. From the standpoint of college admissions, these sorts of “voluntourism” programs have become increasingly common.  Many affluent families routinely send their kids off on some sort of community service adventure to work in an orphanage, dig latrines, or paint school buildings in poverty-stricken communities around the world.  Invariably, these experiences become fodder for college essays.

From the admissions standpoint, these pay-to-play experiences are so common–and so superficial–that their impact in the admissions process is negligible.  Given that so many kids write about such experiences, the resulting essays can even become a strike against the student.  I’ve heard admissions officers crack jokes about the insipid essays that emanate from these international volunteer experiencs.

To give you an idea of the essays I’ve seen kids write about such experiences, I offer the following made-up example (warning: I am exaggerating for effect…):

“My life changed when I spent two weeks digging ditches in Upper Slobovia last summer.  I never knew that people who were so poor, who ate bugs for dinner, and who used a tin can as a potty could be so happy and generous.  These unfortunate people taught me so much about life: especially, how lucky I am not to be one of them.”

Obviously, I’m not really a fan of these “voluntourism” programs.  I studied international relations in graduate school, and spent a good deal of my time thinking about poverty alleviation in developing countries.  I also have many very close friends who spent years of their lives doing “real” development work, living in hardship in places like Guyana, Malawi, and Laos, actually delivering well-developed, well-funded development aid.  And many of these friends will confide that they were never too sure that their efforts really amounted to much.  So how could a teen with a shovel actually do any real and lasting good during a two week drive-by trip to the Dominican Republic?

Actually, these teens could be doing do more harm than good.  A recent article published on Al-Jazeera America caught my eye.  It highlights the growing demand in the rich world for altruistic vacation opportunities.  Both in the teen and adult markets, scads of companies have cropped up to feed this demand, and more and more rich white folks are traveling to poor places where the dominant skin tones are several shades darker.

The overall tone of the article is fairly critical of “voluntourism” The author cites several egregious examples of voluntourism gone wrong in South Africa and Haiti and elsewhere.  However, the author does soften the critique a bit by saying that such volunteer experiences abroad can be improved through due diligence, better awareness, and a more realistic attitude on the part of the tourists that what they are doing can have negative as well as positive consequences for a community.

When asked by parents whether such volunteer opportunities for teens are really worth it, I tell them that they have become virtually worthless in the admissions process. The only people who can really go are those who can afford to fly to Timbuktu and back again.  Colleges might actually prefer to hear from applicants who have done something significant and important in their own local communities.  Certainly, such efforts may lack the “wow!” appeal of teaching English to kids in South Sudan, but what colleges want to see  is an activity that has a measurable impact–and not the experience that took place that even Google Maps cannot find.

To be fair, I have had a small handful of kids write excellent, reflective, and balanced essays on their time abroad as volunteers.  Generally, the best ones are written by kids who spend four or more weeks in a community, during which time they actually begin to see beyond the superficial level of what poverty means, and begin to connect with people in a more interesting and fundamental way.  Not all “voluntourism” is horrible.

But don’t latch on to such opportunities as the quick way into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.  These universities will be much more impressed your impact, your capacity for reflection, and your intellectual and personal curiosity much more than the stamps in your passport.

Great College Advice

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With the exception of Dartmouth, which saw a decrease in its applications of ~12.5% (which we hypothesize is due to the relatively recent bad press that the school received about its Greek life), and Cornell, who has not reported final numbers, yet, the balance of the Ivy League schools saw an increase in early applications over last year.  Harvard, for example, reported a whopping 15% more applications for the Class of 2017 than for the Class of 2016.  Other highly selective schools such as MIT (up 9%) and Northwestern (up 7%) also saw a significant increase in their early application numbers year over year.

While many schools haven’t reported their early results, here is a chart that we pulled together to give you a flavor of what’s been happening out there.  It details selected highly competitive schools and their early admissions acceptance rates.  If you follow overall admissions rates at these types of schools, you’ll see that the Early Admit Rates noted below are significantly higher than each school’s historic overall admit rates.

In doing my research, I also noted that a number of the schools deferred a significant portion of their early applicants to the Regular Decision pool.  Yale, for example, deferred over 55% of its early applicants, Brown seems to have deferred around 70% and Dartmouth 35%.  Anecdotally, it seems that MIT has also deferred a tremendous number of its applicants, but we don’t have any firm numbers.
These deferral numbers indicate that the schools are getting early applications from large numbers of qualified candidates, and the schools are not prepared to say “no” until they see what the Regular Decision pool brings.  Still, the schools are also not prepared to say “yes” to these applicants, either, and historically, the number of deferred applicants who ultimately get admitted are few.
The schools that offer an Early Decision plan seem to be filling an unbelievable 40%+ of their freshman class from their early applications.  This means that students who apply Regular Decision to these very selective schools will have an even tougher go of it simply because there are fewer slots to fill.  A while ago, I wrote a blog post trying to answer the question:  Is it easier to get in if you apply early?  Many of the points in that post are relevant here.  Essentially, early applicants most definitely benefit from indicating that a school is their top pick and applying early, but only if the candidate meets the admissions standards of the school in the first place.
The sad part about this current situation is that because qualified students appear to have an advantage if they apply early to these highly competitive institutions, candidates are using early application plans as a strategy to gain admission, even if they are not sure that a given school is actually where they want or ought to go.  Especially if they apply as part of a binding ED program, then whether they are sure or not, if they get in, that’s where they will have to go.  These dynamics are forcing students to make their decisions about college several months earlier in their high schools careers when, perhaps, they haven’t had time to fully explore their options and figure out what is best for them.
The lesson is that if students believe that they might be interested in applying to highly selective schools, they should start their research early.  Applying early can be advantageous, but don’t apply early to a school simply because it is a name brand.  In doing so, other options might be shut out that would ultimately be more suitable.
Andrea Aronson
College Admissions Consultant
Westfield, NJ

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If for no other reason you should watch it for the pure entertainment value.

Read our advice on how to best position yourself to apply to Yale.

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Unsurprisingly, students offered admission to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Pomona are accepting those offers at more or less the same rates as in years past. All of these schools have increased their financial aid budgets this year over last to ensure that yields stay constant.

But as Steinberg admits, only a small fraction of colleges have reported yield rates, and many colleges (including the likes of Georgetown) still have room in their freshman classes. The effects of the economic meltdown on college enrollments still remain to be seen, and we’re several weeks from having a full understanding of how the economy will affect both college budgets and the experience of the students who do matriculate.

Stay tuned.

Great College Advice
Independent College Consultant

May 11 UPDATE:  According to an article in today’s issue of The Dartmouth, Dartmouth College’s yield was 2% lower than last year, forcing the admissions office to pull 50-60 students off the wait list. This is not a huge decline, and probably something that would have made the news, were it not for the kooky economic situation.

The post Top Colleges See Little Fall in Freshman Commitments first appeared on Great College Advice.

I hope Peter won’t need heavy duty psychotherapy if his son is not accepted to his first choice colleges.

Peter Schwartz: Low-Down, Dirt-Poor, Hands-to-Heaven College Application Parental Blues.

Mark Montgomery
College Counselor

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Check it out – here are some excerpts:

How well do the criteria used in the admissions process predict future college success? Do colleges track their students’ four-year GPAs and such and look for correlations with admissions data? If so, what kinds of trends do you see?
—Jen

What procedures do you have in place to measure the fairness of your process? What kind of follow-up do you do on your decisions? In what circumstances would you consider one of your decisions to be a failure?
—Margaret Heisel

Mr. Syverson of Lawrence: Most colleges periodically conduct research to correlate the data they collect during the admissions process with the outcomes experienced by their students. The two “outcomes” typically assessed are GPAs at the college and graduation rates. Not surprisingly, in the majority of studies, high school grades have the strongest correlation with college grades. The SAT and ACT have the next strongest correlation, but this too is not surprising because they have a strong correlation with high school grades.

I believe that defining “success in college” as the college GPA is too limited a definition, as there are many students who have marginal college GPAs but have had very successful college experiences in terms of their personal growth and the things they go on to accomplish after college. Assessing those other types of success are much more difficult than just tracking GPAs and graduation rates, so studies traditionally focus on grades as the measure of success. Most of us can agree, though, that a student who flunks out of college did not have a successful experience, so we conduct studies to try to identify the characteristics of students who have been unsuccessful.

Our application review process is designed to ensure that we give every applicant a thoughtful review and the opportunity to “rise to the surface” of the applicant pool. Some candidates clearly demonstrate are insufficiently prepared academically to be successful in our program, so the rest of their application may receive a less thorough review. If a student fails here academically, due to lack of preparation or ability, we would question whether or not we made the best decision.

Since 2007, the expert team of college admissions consultants at Great College Advice has provided comprehensive guidance to thousands of students from across the United States and over 45 countries across the world. Great College Advice has offices in Colorado, New Jersey, Chicago, North Carolina and Massachusetts.  

In addition to our one-on-one counseling, Great College Advice extends its support through one of the most active and resource-rich Facebook Groups for college-bound students and their families: College Admissions Experts. With over 100,000 members—students, parents, and experienced counselors—this vibrant forum offers peer support and expert advice like no other. 

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Now with the economic downturn, I expect the outrage about ballooning college endowments will subside–because they’re not ballooning very much right now.  Up until the past few weeks, the “American Way” has been characterized by debt burdens, excessive leverage, and wanton spending.  Our collective profligacy has caught up with us, and the immediate future doesn’t appear very rosy.

If we remember Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ants, we can think of Congress and the rest of the outraged public (or, the grasshoppers) complaining that private colleges (the ants) were unnecessarily stuffing their mattresses with investments.  Well, winter has now come, and the ants are sighing with relief that they made some good decisions.

Congressional grasshoppers, left out in the cold, how have to turn their attention to the messes they neglected, rather than continuing to complain about the apparent wisdom of the ants.  Most private colleges have weathered economic storms for decades, if not centuries in some cases.  While some colleges have gone under (and a few of the more spendhrift colleges may lose their shirts in this downturn), we don’t hear about Harvard or Yale or Vanderbilt going belly up like AIG, Lehman Brothers, or Washington Mutual.

Undoubtedly well-endowed colleges and universities will feel the economic pain of the current crisis, and while many (like Amherst) will try to continue to offer large financial aid packages to those who need them.  It will be interesting to see, however,  if all of them will be able to make good on every pledge they made a few months ago when their endowments were at record highs.  If university endowments have shrunk by 40% in the past year (as has the average portfolio), we may see some colleges backtracking.

Ants will be ants.

College Admissions Consultant

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