The fact that the average graduate of an elite college makes more money in adult life than does the average graduate of a less elite college has no bearing at all on the question of whether or not you (or your son or daughter) will make more money by going to an elite college. The only kind of research study that would help at all to answer that question is one that compares students who had equal initial academic ability and income-earning potential but chose to go to colleges differing in prestige level. Fortunately, such a study has been done; but not many people know about it.

In 2002, Stacy Berg Dale and Alan Krueger published the results of an extensive study of the relationship between college attended and subsequent income for students who, on other measures, had comparable potential.[1] They used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972. As one part of their study, they focused exclusively on those students who had applied to and been accepted by at least one highly elite college and at least one less elite college. Then, from this pool, they compared the adult incomes of those who had chosen the elite school to the adult incomes for those who had chosen the less elite school, and they found no significant difference. In another part of the study, they used statistical means to equate students for income potential, based on information about them when they were in high school (such as their SAT scores), and, again, found that students with equal initial potential did essentially equally well, income wise, regardless of the prestige level of the college they attended.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200810/reasons-consider-less-selective-less-expensive-college-saving-money-is-jus