This paper analyzes the impact of university quality, family background and mismatch on the wages of young Italian graduates. An empirical analysis is undertaken using a representative sample of graduates merged with a dataset containing information on the characteristics of universities. By utilizing quantile regression techniques, some evidence of the impact of factors that may explain the differentials of earnings among individuals with a similar educational attainment is reported. Significant differences in the impact of explanatory variables across the quantiles of wage distribution are found and the role played by educational quality, family background and educational mismatch is stressed. These findings are consistent with a polarized view of the labor market where some educated workers earn a wage premium deriving from their specific educational choices, while others are confined to occupations at the bottom end of the wage distribution.