Flying economy class defines almost everyone except for folks on an expense account!
It’s quite common for students to favor their flagship over HYPSM. However, students who favor their flagship over HYPSM rarely apply to HYPSM. Why waste many hours of time and a $70 application fee, if you don’t plan to attend if accepted? HYPSM… type colleges aren’t good choices for backup safeties, in case you get rejected from the flagship.
When my daughter was a senior in HS, she, along with the salutatorian, was invited to an awards dinner that included students living in several counties throughout our northeast state. She came home with a brochure indicating the colleges that all of the students would be attending. To my surprise, there weren’t many “ top” schools listed. Most of the schools were instate colleges, along with regular private schools that most likely awarded these kids large merit scholarships.
Here is two pieces of data to digest on the undergraduate schools of Fortune 500 and S&P 500 Companies CEOs and CFOs:
- CEOs (679 Sitting CEOs; 651 Known Education Backgrounds) 347 Public Schools; 291 Private Schools.
- CFOs (670 Sitting CFOs; 637 Known Education Backgrounds) 358 Public Schools; 277 Private Schools.
http://www.cristkolder.com/volatility-report/
Let the discussion continue.
Re: “Are there any real examples of kids turning down Stanford or Yale, with full-pay parents, and instead attending a middling flagship for free, and getting that saved 300K at age 22 to buy a condo or start a business?”
As @Corraleno stated in post #152:
“My son chose a near-full-ride (full OOS tuition plus partial R&B) at one of USNWR’s “Top 20 Publics,” which is ranked in the top 10 for his major, over an Ivy and a couple of other elite privates that would have cost up to $250K more. Funding was not an issue, thanks to an investment account his grandparents set up when he was born, but he can use that money for whatever he wants if he doesn’t use it for college: grad school, home ownership, investment/retirement account, world travel, supplemental income allowing him to take an interesting but low-paying job/internship, etc… He felt that a degree from a strong public flagship with a highly ranked department + a $250K nest egg easily trumped an Ivy degree and an empty bank account.”
This argument is basically “chocolate is better than vanilla”.
Any family who has the choice between full-ride/great-but-cheap and full-pay/elite is a lucky family indeed. Most families would give anything to have one of those options, let alone a choice.
When you think of it that way, we all agree.
ps - the answer is good vanilla is better than any chocolate, but average chocolate is better than average vanilla
Eeyore123 Yes, but there are close to 15 million students in public colleges, vs 5 million in private schools.
“Are there any real examples of kids turning down Stanford or Yale, with full-pay parents, and instead attending a middling flagship for free, and getting that saved 300K at age 22 to buy a condo or start a business? (A supremely stupid idea. At least tie that wealth up in a trust till the Ivy-refusnik is 40).”
You have to separate out Stanford and Yale in this, there are very few applicants and families that turn down Stanford in the bay area, if they do it’s for Harvard, maybe MIT or Berkeley for one program, EECS. That’s it, if you’re in the bay area and you get into Stanford, you go. Yale, people do turn down for a number of reasons, and the $300K is not for a condo but for med or other grad school if they don’t get any merit aid. Note, I recall hearing second hand of someone choosing Swarthmore over Stanford.
My D chose her public university over Vanderbilt ( a great school) and 2 other similar schools. Two of them had lottery merit scholarships ( didn’t get) and she knew that these schools would have cost us a lot of money…despite getting some FA. She came to us and told us that for that kind of money… the fit would really, really have to be there for her…and it wasn’t. She felt that 2 of these schools did not have enough economic diversity, and after her HS experience she didn’t want to go through that again ( we saw students driving very expensive cars at one of the colleges, and that turned her off even if it wasn’t common practice). She also felt that the schools were way too academically intense ( her perception… ).
We were willing to pay for 1 of the 3 schools noted above because it came in at a cost that was affordable. She turned it down because of the perceived intensity along with a few other reasons. She is happy at her public school and never looked back.
Her public school is less money than the school we offered to pay for. We will not be giving her a check for a condo…we will be putting that money toward future grad school.
@Eeyore123 interesting study. Thanks for sharing.
“The path to the C-Suite runs through eight leading MBA programs (Page 55)“
The report does support the basic premise though that top schools may give a slight edge for these super successful executives.
Listed as the most attended MBA programs were… ( though only about 50% did an mba)
Harvard
UChicago
Northwestern
Penn
Stanford
Columbia
Michigan
NYU
Most top execs had degrees in engineering, economics, and accounting. Makes sense.
Public schools with most bachelors were Michigan, UVA, UT Austin, etc… again top public schools. Penn State looked like the most accessible school on the list that performed well in delivering these execs. Well done Penn State!!
I echo @theoloniusmonk 's post in #262. Harvard had a 82% yield rate for its most recent class. So only about 400 students turned down Harvard. Of those students, maybe 60% were full pay. And of that 60%, I would imagine that many chose MIT, Stanford, Yale, or Princeton rather than a “full-ride” merit scholarship. In short, I think very few students (maybe less than 100) annually turn down Harvard for a “full-ride” elsewhere.
As I touched on in my earlier post, yield is primarily a measure of selectivity and early admission policies. Students whose first choice is a moderately selective public rarely apply to HYPSM or other highly selective private as a backup/safety in case they don’t get in to the moderately selective public; so they don’t show up in yield or cross admit stats. However, that does not mean such students do not exist. The forums on this site are full of students who dream of get accepted to HYPSM…, but they are not a good reflection of the general population. In many areas, the vast majority of high achieving students do not apply to any HYPSM… type private and instead usually favor a public in their state.
That is not my experience at all, as a long time resident of the bay area. The local kids here don’t even apply to Stanford. The only local kid I know who went to Stanford was a recruited athlete with an admissions preread and early admit. (And while I don’t know details, Stanford does offer athletic scholarships, so there very well may have been a financial incentive as well).
I could write a very long post about why Stanford is not viewed as particularly desirable locally – but the main issue is geographic and costs. The kids who want to stay nearby for college are looking at Berkeley. For a full cost payer, it is extremely difficult to justify Stanford over Berkeley.
Full cost payer here, and our S chose Stanford over Berkeley. While it was his decision to make, my wife and I breathed a sigh of relief that day. Berkeley is a great fit for many students. Ours, not so much 
There are plenty of people out there who have a mental “cap” on what they are willing to pay, regardless of whether they could pay more or not.
We do. We will pay “more” for the right fit, which is not ranking based, but only to a point.
That’s our choice and others have different viewpoints. For us, there is a threshold above which I struggle to think any school is worth 70k a year. For us. Times 4 kids, that’s a million dollars and for us, no, I won’t. Even if we could, we will not.
Absolutely fine with others doing so but we am not a fan of perceived implications of not saving enough or the like. We saved what we wanted to spend. Choosing an amount that is less than full pay at 70k doesn’t mean we value education less than anyone else. And, truth be told, so far each child has chosen the best school for them, fit wise, and not necessarily their cheapest option. For the 3 so far even if I was willing to spend 70 per year I can’t honestly think of better fits.
For the 4th, we are debating “what price fit” and the jury is still out. I do believe he’s found the perfect fit. I’m not entirely convinced it’s worth the 10k premium over the 2nd choice but we will see.
One of my bike friends’ daughters is at Stanford. The family lives an easy bike ride from Stanford, so they’re hyper-local. I’m guessing this family is full pay, and happy to have their daughter there.
@Rivet2000 - I don’t doubt that SOME local families will choose Stanford over Berkeley - I’m just taking issue with the assertion that there are “very few” who would turn Stanford down. I do think that the decision is often made at the outset with an application list – I know plenty of kids who applied to multiple out of state colleges and/or to in-state private LAC’s like Pomona but not to Stanford. I think it is more accurate to say that there are “very few” overall who are applying to Stanford in the first place and/or are admitted – the number of in-state residents who apply to Berkeley is well above the total number of all applications to Stanford. Not applying is essentially a decision early on to “turn down” Stanford – because for all of those students, Stanford hasn’t made their first cut. For kids aspiring to elite colleges, there often is a choice that needs to be made early on for ED or SCEA-- so that in itself is an expression of which schools are the preferred choice in the applicant’s mind.
The Val at my kids’ school turned down Dartmouth and Stanford for Santa Clara. He wanted to play soccer and the offer came from SC. His father was head of a hospital network so money wasn’t an issue. I also think he wanted a Catholic school.
I agree that Stanford is rarely passed up by students in the west. It is very common that Stanford is the top choice and the second choice is a state flagship - either their own state’s or CU, Cal, UCLA, Arizona. We like Pac 12 schools in the west.
I have no idea whether there are lots of full pay kids from the West who could get into Stanford and choose not to apply as some on this post have suggested (I’m sure there are many East Coast kids who would be candidates that don’t apply because they want to stay on the East Coast) and also lots of full pay students who go to Cal over Stanford after having been admitted to both (though I think the data probably doesn’t support the latter contention).
The ecosystem in and around Stanford to support the creation of entrepreneurial ventures is remarkable and I don’t see anyplace else as a close second (MIT is likely be second, but the infrastructure is not the same --could Cal be a competitor to MIT because of the location?). I have secondhand and firsthand experience with the opportunities that kids from Stanford have to get involved in excited, cutting edge startups (and VC firms) and get access to VC funding and high quality mentoring. If I had a kid who thought the tech entrepreneurial path would fit (and I do), as a full-pay parent, I would strongly urge him or her to give strong consideration to Stanford.
It’s amazing how much tension this discussion seems to cause when it comes up on this website.