Difference between an Ivy and a Top Public School?

College Search & Selection
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<p>@rhandco Where did you get an estimate of 33k for Columbia? Our household income is less than 150k and my NPC came to $59,000 (65k with a 6k estimated grant). </p>

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<p>Madaboutx, I like the comment the sky is the limit. If you have that attitude, you will do well regardless.</p>

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<p>@rhandco‌ </p>

<p>“Much much cheaper if you are a full pay is usually $20,000 per year between Ivies and top publics, at best. If you are full pay, there is NO WAY that $80,000 over four years will mean diddly versus the money your mom and dad has (and possibly you already have).” </p>

<p>That is most definitely not true. It depends on where you live. You could easily be full pay at an ivy league college and be considered in the “middle class”, depending on your region. And that 80k could be a lot of money (although I think it is worth going to an ivy regardless): </p>

<p>Check this out:
<a href=“Cost of Living Index for Selected U.S. Cities, 2010”>http://www.infoplease.com/business/economy/cost-living-index-us-cities.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Based on CPI, living in the bay area is about 1.5 times as expensive as most other places in the country!</p>

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<p>I think the main reason SJSU gets hired so much is because its full of immigrants from India/China who go there on study visas- they are probably qualified to attend more prestigious universities, but need an affordable education so they pick SJSU. They have a very strong technical background and are willing to work for lower pay than normal, so they fit right into the Silicon Valley industries. </p>

<p>I am pretty surprised to see that Google hires more from Cal than Stanford though. From my experiences interning in the SV, Stanford students were revered. A rising senior intern from Stanford would often make more per month than a full time employee. For the startups, some even gave Stanford interns equity! </p>

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<p>@rhandco:</p>

<p>COA at the top privates are now roughly $65K a year. At what publics is COA $45K a year for in-state students?</p>

<p>I believe that on the high-end, COA at in-state publics are more around $35K (at most). To a family making $225K annually or so (which would make you full-pay at almost all privates if you have even some assets), $120K certainly is a chunk of money.</p>

<p>Mind you, if you’re going to be full-pay, I don’t think that OOS at a public over an elite private that is on the same tier or better makes sense.</p>

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<p>@coolweather:</p>

<p>I’m not sure why you think the per capita numbers (which is what you seem to be asking for) matter. I think most people agree that there is a comparatively bigger percentage of students on a lower tier in even the top publics compared to elite privates, but McKinsey and Goldman aren’t looking to hire the 50th percentile students at each school. VC’s aren’t looking to back the average ideas that come from the average students at each school. They’re looking for the best in all cases.</p>

<p>@tk21769:
Be careful about comparing across majors. So, for example, Yale’s overall per capita startup generation rate is way higher than UIUC’s. However, that’s because Yale’s liberal arts majors are far more likely to launch startups than UIUC’s liberal arts (and other non-engineering) majors. If you compare between majors, UIUC CS majors appear to generate startups at the same rate as Yale CS majors (or the CS majors of other Ivies outside of Harvard), and UIUC CS has a far higher startup generation rate than Yale’s overall startup generation rate.</p>

<p>BTW, while Harvard’s class of CS students (and probably Yale’s) is far smaller than UIUC’s, Cornell’s, Columbia’s, & Stanford’s are only a little smaller (I believe that MIT’s is a little smaller than those 3).</p>

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<p>Post #123,your comment does not make sense. SJSU is only affordable to in-state, not students from China/India on student visas. They have to pay international or OOS rate.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://iea.sjsu.edu/cognos/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi”>http://iea.sjsu.edu/cognos/cgi-bin/cognos.cgi&lt;/a&gt; San Jose State Applied, Admitted & Enrolled by Residence Status</p>

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<p>The link in post 127 does not work for me. Hopefully this one does for everyone.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.iea.sjsu.edu/Students/QuickFacts/20142QuickFacts.cfm”>http://www.iea.sjsu.edu/Students/QuickFacts/20142QuickFacts.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It is interesting to see graduate students are 50%+ foreigners. It is also interesting to see there is a large shift in undergrad to grad for the popularity of the majors (24.5% or over 1000 people pursue software or electrical engineering at grad level). </p>

<p>There is also a large Asian population attending SJSU at the undergrad level (25%) which probably makes people think they are immigrants but apparently they are mostly local Californians.</p>

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<p>" That is most definitely not true. It depends on where you live. You could easily be full pay at an ivy league college and be considered in the “middle class”, depending on your region. And that 80k could be a lot of money (although I think it is worth going to an ivy regardless):"</p>

<p>“easily”? Really? Please define “easily”.</p>

<p>$343,927 is the cutoff for the fabled “top 1% of US household salaries”.
$154,643 is the cutoff for the top 5% of US household salaries.</p>

<p>source: <a href=“Top 1 Percent: How Much Do They Earn?”>http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/top-1-percent-earn.aspx&lt;/a&gt; (2011 data)</p>

<p>My family makes around $150,000 per year. I can tell you that handling the $35,000 EFC will hurt us quite a bit - no, we aren’t going to lose our house, but we are going to have to take out $100,000 worth of loans over four years. Unless my kid can graduate in two years, we can’t pay $65,000 per year, and again that’s with a lot of extra loans. (so you don’t think we are splurgers: our mortgage is 24% of our gross salaries but we do have two car payments totaling $800 per month)</p>

<p>I live near NYC. Some analysis about Manhattan’s middle class.
" But if you are defining middle class by lifestyle, to accommodate the cost of living in Manhattan, that salary would have to fall between $80,000 and $235,000. This means someone making $70,000 a year in other parts of the country would need to make $166,000 in Manhattan to enjoy the same purchasing power. "</p>

<p><a href=“What Is Middle Class in Manhattan? - The New York Times”>What Is Middle Class in Manhattan? - The New York Times;

<p>We live in the suburbs, not even Manhattan, so we’d possibly be considered upper middle class. </p>

<p>I do understand that people might say “so make him go to a CC for two years and transfer to a state school”, but if we are doing that, with a $150,000 salary, what hope do others making less have? Is the point to have the degree with the name on it or get the experience?</p>

<p>Are the Ivies really full of kids whose parents make $250,000 per year or more? And looking at this EFC table, even if we made $250,000 per year together, with three kids we would not have to pay 100% at any Ivy:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.stratagee.com/resources/efc_quick_reference/1213_efc_quick_reference.html”>http://www.stratagee.com/resources/efc_quick_reference/1213_efc_quick_reference.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Everyone should run NPCs for whichever colleges their child is looking at. They should get a few EFC estimates, as there is more than one method to calculate it. If money is the only issue, not the “college experience at an Ivy compared to a top public university”, then find out which schools are the most cost-effective for your child and stick to them.</p>

<p>(I did over-estimate U Maryland for us in a previous post, but it is still more than Ivies would be, about $42,000 per year which is the full cost of attending. We are “rich” in their minds.)</p>

<p>All IMHO and backed up as cited, YMMV. If you can pay $65,000 per year on a middle class income, more power to you.</p>

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<p>@rhandco‌:
“Are the Ivies really full of kids who parents make $250,000 per year or more?”</p>

<p>Yes. Roughly half the student body, in general.</p>

<p>BTW, UMaryland doesn’t think you’re rich. UMaryland just thinks that you’re not a MD resident. UMaryland may also think it doesn’t have enough money. Among publics, only UNC and UVa promise to meet full need for OOS students, and most publics are poor at meeting need even for in-state students.</p>

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<p>@texaspg From this page click Class Level and Resident Status: <a href=“http://www.iea.sjsu.edu/Students/enrollment/default.cfm?version=graphic”>http://www.iea.sjsu.edu/Students/enrollment/default.cfm?version=graphic&lt;/a&gt; Foreign students make up under 10% of students overall. Something seems wrong in the page you sent as it shows in column First TIme Freshman 84% for row Foreign Nationals and 61% Grad. I’m sure that’s not the case. Looks like it’s typically around 15% foreign national for grad students.</p>

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<p>@DrGoogle‌ </p>

<p>My bad. The majority of them are probably not on student visas (although I know a few people who did do that). Looking at Linkedin though, you will see that many of the SJSU people seem to be qualified immigrants (prestigious undergrad in other country, grad in SJSU), although proximity is most likely a factor as well. </p>

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<p>I’ll assume no one posted this yet:
<a href=“Why Ivy League Schools Are So Bad at Economic Diversity - The Atlantic”>Why Ivy League Schools Are So Bad at Economic Diversity - The Atlantic;

<p>The comments amuse greatly.</p>

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<p>@rhandco:</p>

<p>BTW, most kids who can get in to an Ivy/Ivy-equivalent can also get a full-tuition scholarship from some other school (or at least a half-tuition scholarship). Possible a pretty decent state school or other private.</p>

<p>So if you are full-pay, full-pay at Columbia/Duke (total cost of around $250K) or full-tuition scholarship to UMD honors or Pitt honors or Richmond or Bard (total cost of around $50K)?
Keep in mind that there’s still the possibility of graduating from Columbia if you choose Richmond/Bard through their 3-2 program.</p>

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<p>OP - Forget about UCB and private colleges. Apply to SJSU to work for Apple.</p>

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<p>@rhandco‌ My view on why wealthy kids get in so often is smart involved parents who have achieved degrees professional position and money themselves and know what needs to be done to succeed. The analogy I use is there was a boy where I grew up whose uncle played for the A’s and his dad played for the Pirates. Our friend had it in his head from an early age that these were achievable goals and he was supported along the way towards them. He made it into the Yankee farm system at varying levels (and later went on to a successful business career). Being someone who was not from a sports family I could never fathom making the Yankees at any level to be an achievable goal that would make sense pursuing. Now suppose the Yankees farm system decided they wanted to diversify their players because too many were coming from legacy families. I guess they could send a kid like me (right field swatting mosquitoes in the 6th inning) to an intensive camp. But I don’t think I could be brought to the standard of kids who’d been honing their game from elementary school.</p>

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<p>" BTW, most kids who can get in to an Ivy/Ivy-equivalent can also get a full-tuition scholarship from some other school (or at least a half-tuition scholarship). Possible a pretty decent state school or other private."</p>

<p>Like where? </p>

<p>And if we start comparing Ivies to top public schools, but then reduce it to “your in-state school” let alone “pretty decent”, I think the comparison starts to fail. I know that where I teach, it is nothing like an Ivy. And I know some really smart kids who have come through, some on full scholarship and some not because the honors college program is onerous.</p>

<p>I know that where I went to school, the Ivy I went to, I felt that I was where I wanted to be. It was far more than “ooh, lookie at the pretty Ivy League diploma and where it will get you!”. The trick is that if my son doesn’t get into an Ivy, how he can get that kind of experience, that history, that level of making going to college an experience rather than four more years of classes. And I know darn straight that there is <em>not ONE</em> in-state public college in my state that can give him ANYTHING near that. We’ve made a few visits, and by far the colleges he likes have been established in the early 1800s or before. </p>

<p>Here’s another SJSU link:
<a href=“History”>History;

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<p>One issue I have with top publics is that many of them are top because of the demand to get accepted is greater than the supply and a lot of that is related to the combination of alumni passion for the school, athletics and academics. Some of these schools have a mix of weak and strong academic programs that range from very strong to very weak but combined with the football, basketball reputation and many in-state alumni and sometimes really cheap in-state tuition, the school is now ranked among top publics.</p>

<p>Ivies have more modest sports programs, lots of alumni love and really strong academic programs, pretty much across the board.</p>

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<p>

Apple gets a large number of hires/interns from SJSU because SJSU is located less than 10 miles away from Apple headquarters (much closer than Stanford or Cal). The same pattern emerges with most other tech companies. For example, in one survey of new engineering grads, the second most desired company was Microsoft. Microsoft’s largest division is located in Washington, so it gets the largest numbers of engineering hires from University of Washington (as suggested by LinkedIn). IBM was ranked 3rd in the survey. IBM has large divisions all over the country. The divisions generally get the most hires from colleges located near that division. For example, the NYC division gets the most engineer job title hires from RPI, Marist, and NJIT (Marist school of CS/math has partnership with IBM). The Texas division gets the most engineer job title hires from UT-Austin, Texas A&M, and Texas State. In general, if a tech grad wants to work in a particular location, the colleges with the best networking and recruiting opportunities will be well known colleges located in that area that offer decent engineering/CS programs, rather than an ivy, Stanford, or similar extremely selective college.</p>