Does college selection make a big difference?

The podcast episode explores the claim made in a previous episode that the college you attend does not significantly impact your life and job outcomes. Dr. Elizabeth Deitch, an expert in organizational psychology, conducted extensive research to investigate this claim. The research is based on two studies conducted by Stacy Dale and Paul Kruger that used the college and beyond survey data set. The first study, published in 2002, analyzed data from people who entered college in 1976, and the second study, published in 2014, also included a cohort that entered college in 1989. The studies aimed to determine if college selectivity has an impact on future earnings, taking into account factors such as SAT scores, parental income, and other observable characteristics of students. The results suggest that after controlling for these factors, the selectivity of the college attended does not significantly affect future earnings. However, the studies show that college selectivity can have a positive impact on the likelihood of obtaining a postgraduate degree, and lower-income students may benefit more from attending highly selective schools in terms of future earnings.