How your alma mater affects your salary

The Wall Street Journal today had an article about a recent survey by PayScale Inc. on the salaries of college graduates from 300 major universities in the United States. The survey is unique for in addition to recording the starting salaries of recent graduates, it also measures the salaries of graduates who are currently in their mid-career (which it defines as 10 to 20 years post graduation). Schools are divided into four categories, liberal arts, state, party, and Ivy League and respondents do not include those who have gone on to receive a more advanced degree such as an MBA.

 

“Even though graduates from all types of schools increase their earnings throughout their careers, their incomes grow at almost the same rate, according to the survey. For instance, the median starting salary for Ivy Leaguers is 32% higher than that of liberal-arts college graduates -- and at 10 or more years into graduates' working lives, the spread is 34%, according to the survey.

 

One reason why Ivy Leaguers outpace their peers may be that they tend to choose roles where they're either managing or providing advice, says David Wise, a senior consultant at Hay Group Inc., a global management-consulting firm based in Philadelphia. By contrast, state-school graduates gravitate toward individual contributor and support roles. "Ivy Leaguers probably position themselves better for job opportunities that provide them with significant upside," says Mr. Wise , adding that this is the first survey he's seen that correlates school choice to a point later in a career.

 

Also, more Ivy League graduates go into finance roles than graduates of other schools, and employers pay a premium for them, says Peter Cappelli, a professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "Dartmouth kids get paid more for the same job than kids from Rutgers are [doing]," he says.”

 

One interesting finding is that how much a professional in his mid-career gets paid has less to do with his choice of undergraduate major but more to do the industry choice and career direction that he chooses to pursue.

AOL Mail finally enters the 20th century

I was on my personal AOL webmail account tonight when I noticed something that I have not seen before, at least on AOL. On the left hand panel of the mail screen, sandwiched between the folders titled “Inbox” and “Sent” is a new folder called “Draft.” AOL webmail users can now save unfinished emails on their accounts without having to entertain complex workarounds such as saving them onto a Word document or emailing them to themselves.

 

When I went onto the AOL/AIM Mail Product Insider Blog to read the announcement, I realized that the real story is not the addition of the new functionality but the absence of it for so long. I first heard of Hotmail more than ten years ago before it was owned by Microsoft and I don’t recall it ever not having had the “Save as draft” functionality. The same can be said about other major providers of free email such as Yahoo! and Gmail. Yet AOL somehow has managed to survive for so long without adding this much needed functionality is a story within itself.

One truly “malicious web site”

At the company where I “work,” we use a service called Websense to block employees from looking at certain web sites on company time. Websense allows companies to set the desired levels of censorship, which usually depends on the corporate culture. At my company, in addition to the standard suspects such as pornographic and hateful sites, employees cannot access sites that offer other vices such as free email, streaming audio/video content, or social networking.

I first learned of this three months ago today when I started working and for the past three months, it's been interesting to learn that Websense classifies some of my regular internet destinations as "tasteless" and others as gambling sites. Yet I was still shocked the other day to learn that Websense classifies the Cavalier Daily web site as “malicious web site.” Not sure what the justification for that is, not that I disagree with the it considering how the paper used to run the nastiest quotes about me when I was in college.

Your best life now

I have been working at my new job for almost three months now and within the past month, I began to notice that I am actually beginning to like my post business school life quite a bit. Thursday night was a bit of a wild night – or about as wild as it can get for me not being in school. I kicked off the Fourth of July three day weekend by going to Bub’s for karaoke night. After two hours of watching townies and old people making an attempt to sing, me and a bunch of girls went to Lucy’s (the new name is P.T.’s Grille but I will forever call it Lucy’s) for 80s night. We had tons of fun even though we didn’t stay long enough to hear my favorite Journey song.

 

Afterwards I thought what a difference one year makes. A year ago that very same night I went out to eat by myself and afterwards drove by Franklin Street wishing I had some people to hang out with. And now for the second weeknight in the same week I went out late into the night with a bunch of people (part of the trick here is to make friends with teachers so during the summertime they don’t have to go to work).

 

I thought about this again on Sunday when I talked with a friend. He recently experienced a change of circumstances and is now in a situation where he has to make new friends. He was lamenting that because people tend to socialize within the same age group, making friends was much easier right out of college compared to now when more of his peers either have children or at least are in serious relationships.

 

Given that this friend is not that much older than I am, I consider myself  pretty lucky that I have the friends that I have in Chapel Hill.

God bless Senator Jesse Helms

I heard on the radio this morning that former U.S. Senator from North Carolina and conservative firebrand Jesse Helms died. My initial thought was how fitting it was that he, very much like others who love America such as his hero Thomas Jefferson and Charles Kuralt, died on the anniversary of the American independence.

 

When I first began following politics at a young age, Helms became an immediate hero because he was one of the few conservatives who was not afraid to speak his mind regardless of the consequences. Yet it wasn’t until I became older that I realized just how rare of a trait this is. Unlike most of his colleagues and many of the people I went on to meet later in life, Helms was more interested in following his internal compass than he was in making social and professional connections or in having people say or write nice things about him.

 

I had the chance to meet the Senator during my first semester in business school when his book came out and he had an event at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. As I was leaving the store, I held the door for a woman who attended with her two children. She was explaining to them that he was controversial and some people don’t like him. I replied that “they don’t make Senators like him anymore.”

Unfortunately they don’t.