Deciding on a program: how bad could it be?

[gilbertrollins]

I just got off the phone with a friend who is deciding between two MPP programs, one which is lower status and giving her a lot of money; one which is higher status and charging her as much as a couple luxury vehicles. 

 

I ended up saying that she ought to consider what her career outcomes will look like if she is two standard deviations below the mean outcome at either program, and what that will mean for her in terms of career fulfillment and the expected salary she will receive less her loan payments.

 

I think that is decent advice for deciding where to apply as well: "if I end up at the bottom of my class, struggling through my program, and really sucking it up on the job market compared to my peers, will I still be happy with the life I'm living and feel like I've achieved upward mobility compared to my current situation?"

[faculty]

To be able to accurately assess what this would be, we need much better measures of student outcomes than we currently have. Think about Berkeley, or the old Wisconsin model, with enormous cohort sizes. Successful students are very successful, but there are plenty of not only less successful, but "unsuccessful" in the eyes of academia today, students. When we talk about our graduates, regardless of where we might be ranked, departments tend to use the "model to be copied" version of exemplary student rather than the "typical" version. They highlight their superstars. This is as true at the top as it is in the middle. I appreciate your reframing to not look at the top, but at the bottom, but students who end up in the very bottom of their class anywhere - even Chicago or Princeton or <insert sought-after program here> - are in the same boat. If anything, it could be even more difficult psychologically or financially for those people in the higher ranked programs because of reference groups, expectations, and the fact that they're more likely to be in an expensive city and the department is less likely to have institutional structures to help them find a job outside of academia.

[gilbertrollins]

We're saying the same thing largely.  "Model to be copied" = "right tail of the distribution."  "Typical student" = "mode or mean of the distribution."  So I'm saying, like you, that people should ignore the superstar bid, because both they and the department have mutually reinforcing incentives to focus on the right tail.  You want to dream big and think you're above average, departments want to sell you on the program.  But the chances are best, actually, that you will fail the program and not even end up on the market, or land on the left tail of the distribution of the department's placements.  So I think you really want to focus on how bad it could be, and if you'd still be happy with that -- then go for it.  You marry someone who you're pretty sure you can still love even when you're out of control angry.  Etc.  

 

I think the point about reference groups is overstated, but this I'm sure links back to a theoretical disposition about where agents derive their welfare from that we probably disagree on.  Even still, your point I think adds to mine rather than contradicts it: if you end up at an SLAC or bean counting job in the government after struggling at Princeton, can you still be happy?  If you can -- then go for it.