| 643 Students, of the years 1833-1859 | Per Cent Judged by Faculty to be of Who's Who Rank |
| Honor Men (53) | 50 |
| P.B.K. Men (167) | 32 |
| Remainder (476) | 6 |
| 604 Students of the Years 1860-1889 | Per Cent Found in 1914-15 Edition of Who's Who |
| Honor Men (59) | 48 |
| P.B.K. Men (185) | 31 |
| Remainder (419) | 10 |
| 420 Students of the Years 1890-1899 | Per Cent in Who's Who or Judged by Classmates as about to be There. |
| Honor Men (28) | 50 |
| P.B.K. Men (109) | 30 |
| Remainder (311) | 11 |
| Total of 1667 Students | Per Cent with Distinction Entitling to Inclusion in Who's Who. |
| Honor Men (140) | 50 |
| P.B.K. Men (461) | 31 |
| Remainder (1206) | 9 |
Referring to these results, Nicholson remarks, "From this study of the careers of sixteen hundred and sixty-seven graduates, living and dead, where three different methods are employed in determining distinction in after life, it appears that the results are fairly constant, and we are justified in assuming that, for this college at least, the chances of distinction for a high honor graduate, one of the two or three leading scholars of the class, are just even; that one out of three of those elected to Phi Beta Kappa is likely to achieve pronounced success in life; and that each of the remaining members of the class has less than one chance in ten to become famous. In other words, roughly speaking, the quarter (or the fifth) of the class elected to Phi Beta Kappa are likely to supply just as many distinguished men as are the remaining three-quarters (now four-fifths) of the class."
The study of Nicholson includes only that type of success which would be likely to lead to inclusion in Who's Who, viz., the more strictly literary, professional, political, and academic success. The commercial, industrial and business careers are not so likely to lead to inclusion in this directory, and yet success in them is no less definite than in the professional work. It is rather difficult to determine the degree to which success in these fields is determined by ability alone, and to what degree it is a function of chance, inheritance, social charm, prestige, and geographical and economic circumstance. Nevertheless it would be interesting to know whether such measure of success as can be secured correlates in any way with success in the work of school years.
In an unpublished study of the graduates of Pratt Institute, Dr. D. E. Rice has compared the grades achieved by students in the courses in Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering with the salaries the men were receiving several years after graduation. There were in all six classes of men, numbering about forty each—three classes from Mechanical Engineering and three from Electrical Engineering, for the years of 1907, 1908, 1909. The salary reports were asked for in 1913, four to six years after graduation.
The men were ranked according to the grades they received in the eight different subjects included in the curriculum, the grades being 10, 9, 8, and 7, corresponding to the ordinary grade system of A, B, C, D. They were then ranked according to the salary reported at the time of the investigation. Results for each class were treated separately so that the time elapsing since graduation was not a factor in the results. The following table gives the results when these two rankings were correlated by two statistical methods of computing correlation.
In every case the correlation between grades and salary is positive, although the coefficients are all small. This means that in the long run there is a general tendency for the good salaries to go to the men whose grades were high, but that there are many exceptions to the rule. Certainly in no class is the opposite tendency shown, for the good salaries to go to the poor students. It is probable that the correlations found here are as low as they are partly because in this technical school there is no special effort made to encourage high grades for their own sake, the emphasis being rather on getting a good average rating.
TABLE 18
Showing the Correlation between School Standing and Salaries Earned in Later Life (Rice)
See Text for Explanation
| Class and Year | Cases | Correlation by Pearson Method, and P.E. | Correlation by Per Cent of Unlike Signs, and P.E. |
| Mechanical '07 | 35 | .36 .08 | .22 .09 |
| Mechanical '08 | 41 | .25 .09 | .34 .08 |
| Mechanical '09 | 39 | .21 .09 | .06 .10 |
| Electrical '07 | 26 | .16 .13 | .25 .12 |
| Electrical '08 | 36 | .46 .08 | .51 .08 |
| Electrical '09 | 41 | .16 .10 | .28 .09 |
| Averages | .267 | .277 |