Attending an elite college such as Harvard or Yale is viewed as a path to success, but a new study finds that women enjoy the financial dividends more than men. 

Female graduates of the most competitive schools earn 14 percent more than women with comparable entrance-exam scores who went to less selective colleges, researchers at the University of Virginia and Tulane University found. Men, on the other hand, earned about the same regardless of their college decision, according to the working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

Women who attended elite institutions -- defined as having average entrance-exam scores 100 points higher than less selective schools -- were more likely to remain in the workforce compared with women who attended the less competitive schools, the researchers found. 

But when it comes to their personal lives, women grads of elite colleges were 3.9 percentage points less likely to be married two decades later, and those that did marry tended to do so later in in life. They also delayed having children, a trend with financial implications.

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