Michael Horn argues Ivy League schools are a game changer for low-income students lacking connections, but offer smaller advantages to wealthy students already networked. Harvard's outsized impact is real, yet many top firms like McKinsey and JP Morgan hire plenty of graduates from state schools.
If you graduate from an Ivy League school, you're probably going to get two lottery tickets in the game of life, everyone else gets one.
Do Ivy League schools really matter? I think the answer is if you are a low income student, you come from a place without a lot of means, without a lot of social connections, and you go to an Ivy League school or what's often called an Ivy plus school, it's game changing. Like it will change the networks and connections you have and lead you to opportunities you never otherwise could have imagined. And it is a real game changer. I think if you come from, you know, upper class background, it's probably comparatively less important. Certainly Jeff's research, I think would point to the fact that you get in these clusters and jobs sort of tend to follow, right, the clusters that you're in. So I think it's not irrelevant. You're disproportionately present in say the Fortune 500 CEOs and sort of these outsized jobs. The bell curve maybe has shifted to the right, but it's less of a game changer. But if you're a low income student without those connections, I think it's absolutely, absolutely, you know, I think it is a game changer for those individuals not because of the learning that's going on there, but because of the networking connections and friendships and social connectivity you're making.
This is my chance to pick on my co host who went to an Ivy League because. Because when you really look at the data, there was this study last year in Nature that looked at the Ivy League and outcomes. What, you know, the one place that really mattered was Harvard, kind of above everybody else. But as Michael knows, because he read this chapter of my book that's going to be coming out in the fall, is that the thing about the Ivy League is sure it has a huge impact, there's no doubt about it, but it's also really tiny. So at the end of the day, when we looked at where graduates of all different kinds of colleges end up, if you want to work at McKinsey, if you want to work at GM, if you want to work at JP Morgan, there are students or graduates from colleges up and down the pecking order. And in fact, because big state universities, other less selective places are so much bigger, your chances of working in any company, even in the Fortune 50, you're going to have a much greater chance of working with somebody who didn't graduate from an Ivy League institution. Probably by the way, even being managed by somebody who didn't graduate from an Ivy League institution. And so as David Deming talked, talks often about this, he's an economist at Harvard. You know, he talks often about lots of tickets. Right. If you graduate from an Ivy League school, you're probably going to get two lottery tickets. In the game of life, everyone else gets one. So does that mean you're guaranteed to win the lottery? No. Do you have a better shot? Sure. But it doesn't mean you don't have any shot if you don't go to an Ivy League school.
