Revisiting the Value of Elite Colleges

This seems crazy, but interesting. Revisiting the Value of Elite Colleges "Once the two economists added these new variables, the earnings difference disappeared. In fact, it went away merely by including the colleges that students had applied to — and not taking into account whether they were accepted. A student with a 1,400 SAT score who went to Penn State but applied to Penn earned as much, on average, as a student with a 1,400 who went to Penn.

‘Even applying to a school, even if you get rejected, says a lot about you,’ Mr. Krueger told me. He points out that the average SAT score at the most selective college students apply to turns out to be a better predictor of their earnings than the average SAT score at the college they attended."