> It seems like you’re saying the ultimate value of a person’s accomplishments is decided when they choose a college. That certainly has disturbing implications for me if that’s the case!

That's nonsense. I never said anything of the sort.

I've been engaged in another debate here concurrently, which you can easily track down. The originator of that debate posted about a study showing that where you go to school has little impact on your lifetime income. My response argued that income isn't the only benefit that one gets from an education. But I'd readily admit that income is certainly one of the most important benefits.

Unless you have a hankering to work on a small team developing, maintaining, and operating an X-ray space telescope, or to become a prestigious researcher, I'm sure that your education is just fine. That's what the data shows. Also, if you go to graduate school for a PhD, the graduate school you go to is way more important than the undergraduate school you go to. There are plenty of people I know who went to non-elite undergraduate schools but then went on to elite graduate schools.

Personally, I wanted to go to MIT for CS grad school, but I didn't get in. (Despite good grades and excellent GRE scores. How unfair!) I got into BU's PhD program, but BU wasn't doing the kind of research I wanted to do. So I bailed and just got a job at MIT. Though I learned incredible stuff as an undergrad at MIT, it was also difficult to distinguish myself, other than in a few classes for which I was particularly well-suited. Why? Because before I went to MIT, I was the best student out of a thousand. And my SAT scores were the best out of 5,000.

At MIT, though, I was just average. If I had gone to a school where I could have been a bigger fish, maybe I would have gotten into MIT's CS Phd program. Or maybe not. Life is too short to try to second-guess all the maybes. But I have a friend who went to UMD for both undergraduate and graduate school and now he's an Associate Professor at UPenn. Now that he's doing scientific research and applying for grants, etc., it certainly helps him to be a professor in a research lab that has some other very fine minds working with him.

> Society should start considering the value of the P50 instead of only lionizing the contributions of the P99.

Society values research universities based on the quality of the research they do. This is determined largely by the volume and quality of their peer-reviewed publications. Also, I imagine by the publication of influential textbooks, like SICP. Etc.

When the P99 produce results that match that of the P50, then your dream will come true, and not before that. But that's unlikely to happen since universities that are more selective are more likely to attract higher quality researchers. Which will affect their ability to get research grants. Etc.

As for where one should get an education, this is clearly a personal choice. I've gotten to do some interesting things in life due to my education and by staying at or near MIT. But my brother, who went to BU, and never worked on anything of note (other than running Westchester's slam poetry team) is a lot happier than I am, no doubt. Why? Because he found a loving, supportive relationship with a great woman.

This has alluded me. At this point, I'd trade everything I've ever done in life for a job that pays me well enough and a lasting, harmonious relationship.

Did my brother going to BU and me going to MIT result in him ending up happier? Who knows? But ultimately, he's won. At least for what's most important in life.

Regarding my suggestion for where kids should go to school today, I'd probably recommend that if they have enough discipline, they should just get their education from Coursera and/or edX. For whatever reasons, a college education has just become too expensive these days, leaving many students with a terrible debt load that will harm their wellbeing for decades. Whatever benefit you'd get from MIT or Harvard or even University of Arizona might be offset by suffering from crushing debt.

I've taken a bunch of classes on Coursera and edX (including the original machine learning and database classes that were offered online by Stanford for free before there was a Coursera), and they were excellent experiences.

Though actually going to college has a lot of benefits that self-learning in your parents' basement doesn't have. E.g., making life-long friends, getting nookie and learning to navigate sexual/romantic relationships, developing relationships with professors and other researchers, etc. It would be interesting to see data on how the lives of people who take these two different approaches turn out comparatively.