Interesting when the state flagship is considered a top school (UCB, UVA, UNC, UMich, GT, W&M, etc). For those that aren’t as fortunate to have these as in state options, it’s a more difficult decision.
Unfortunately, geography can be fairly immutable
I’ve never understood why many posters on this site seem to focus on the highest salary in a range, rather than the mean or median. Perhaps the student who received a $180k salary has several years of work experience in CS. Perhaps he filled out the survey inaccurately and listed his bonus and/or perceived value of stock options. Perhaps he exaggerated when filling out the survey, as he does when bragging about salary to friends and family. It’s no where near the average or median, suggesting that there was some unusual circumstance for that student, and other students should not expect to receive starting salaries anywhere near that one outlier. Instead the average salary for CS majors was $94k. If you break it down further, I’d expect you’d find the bulk of the $100k+ starting salaries are for grads working in areas with a very high cost of living, particularly Silicon Valley. $100k starting salaries for CS majors in software engineer type position is the norm in SV, regardless of school prestige. This no doubt contributes to why UCB was so high and tops the Payscale ROI report. I expect you’d find UM grads who choose to stay near Michigan tend to have lower average starting salaries than the average, as do most other in state public school grads from states not near Silicon Valley.
This hints at why it is difficult to quantify the extra ROI for a particular college. You certainly need to control for major. You also need to control for field of work. It’s important to control for location as well, particularly in CS. It’s also relevant to apply some controls for the individual student. For example, comparing UM CS majors to students at other colleges who had HS stats like those of the UM CS majors. With all of these controls, I expect you’ll little difference between UM/UCB and most others we regularly discuss on here.
We anticipated being full pay. Both of our kids got merit scholarships with their acceptances…and neither one took the least costly for us option.
One kid got a huge scholarship that would have made her cost to attend $10,000 a year or so. The school she attended cost four times that much for us…maybe more.
But we established the budget prior to applications being sent…and we did not ever tell our kids they had to follow the most money. If that had been our plan…the kids would have known it before applications were sent.
As a reminder to folks who don’t know the Thumper family. Both parents worked full time well paying jobs. This made it possible for us to be full pay at the schools of our kid’s choice. We had zippo in college savings…and my income fully funded college costs.
In my case, I’m pointing this out because it was reported by a reputable university, the report was presented on this forum as support for making important decisions and it must have some effect on the reported mean and median. Since you mentioned it, are all the new hires in Silicon Valley living there and paying the high cost of living or is there telecommuting or satellite offices in other areas?
My own opinion is that people talk to each other too much anyway. Keep your business to yourself and do what’s right for your own situation. What other people do is their own business. Don’t engage.
“So is there anyone out there who’d like to volunteer that they spent less on college and their kid didn’t go to as highly ranked school as they could, not because they couldn’t afford it, but because they just didn’t see the value for money?”
I’m raising my hand! We’ve got one in college and another one on the way next year. We started saving for college early on and we let them see the quarterly 529 statements. The goal had always been to save enough to get them through graduate school at one of our very good instate schools. Anything costing more than what we’ve saved would need to be covered by merit aid. We don’t believe in paying more for high priced colleges when we have money to cover expenses at perfectly good schools.
My husband and I have managed to do quite well, personally and financially, with our public college educations. There’s no guarantee that graduating from any one type of school is THE ticket for success. Being full pay and with frugal tendencies means that $70k a year for college is something I could never justify.
We’re all different and have our own priorities. I have a dear friend with two in private colleges (a year apart), who can barely afford living expenses. She and her husband have taken out loans to cover tuition, but they can’t afford new tires for their fifteen year old car. Great family with no ability to ever say no to their kids. I hope it pays off in the long run.
Another very tricky (and potentially misleading) aspect of an ROI analysis is whether the data includes unemployed or underemployed graduates even when we segregate by major. We can note that the range, mean, or median salary of CS grads of State U is the same/similar as Private Elite U, but unless we also include and factor in grads who were unemployed, underemployed or employed in another field, that comparison is incomplete. Similar to engineering, at my former law firm and investment bank, we paid first year associates/analysts the same no matter if they were graduates of HYS or State U, but the percentage of hires from the elite schools dwarfed all but the very top State schools. Granted, Wall Street is different from Main Street, but all employers use the reputation of schools as one of their filters for entry level hires.
I also think that the analysis is very different for technically specialized high demand majors/careers, like engineering vs soft social science/humanities majors. For the former group, compensation and opportunity probably fall into relatively narrower bands (a top engineering student from State U is going to have similar opportunities as the top Cornell engineer). For the latter group, I suspect that the opportunities are going to be much broader in terms of type of jobs, compensation and geography for graduates of the top schools. The “Amherst art history” major has a much different set of opportunities than the art history grad from avg State U. Sure, maybe we can find the exceptional State U grad that gets a job on Wall Street or some well known art gallery in LA, but more likely his/her opportunity will be limited to something regional to his/her university or hometown. The State U kids may still end up with great careers and life successes, but some families are willing to pay up for the wider opportunities a selective private degree offers. Who are outsiders to criticize their choice? Conversely, a family who chooses to minimize college expenses based on their means and priorities are doing the right thing for them.
My daughter chose to attend a school that was not the highest ranked or most prestigious of her acceptances, although it is a well known and selective school. She got a full tuition ride.
The ROI model does not work well for a variety of reasons, many of which have already been discussed (starting vs. later career salaries, the need to account for different fields of study and the need to control other variables such as prior work experience, etc.).
To begin with, I don’t believe that “return” can be qualified without being qualified. To me, a great “return” on our “investment” would be that my kiddo – who is passionate about the humanities and would ideally like to be in academia and/or at a museum – gets into a fully funded PhD program at a top university. In order to do so, where, with, and under whom she does her undergraduate work will influence the types of programs she will get into. I’m not saying that she wouldn’t be able to get into a top program from a lower-ranked school, but coming from a top-ranked school certainly won’t hurt.
The “investment” in her undergraduate education won’t reap quantifiable returns for many years after she finishes her undergraduate work, but without a doubt, the education she’s getting is worth every penny.
(And yes, we absolutely did “think much about what (our) kid could do with $100K or $200K extra if it hadn’t been spent on college” and discussed all of the options quite candidly with our D. We decided as a family that turning down less expensive options, including state flagships and top 20 schools with full tuition scholarships, while difficult, ultimately made sense). And is worth driving 10 year old cars and skipping out on the Taj Majal.
My D1 went to her safety with merit aid. She decided she liked it just as well as the higher ranked (and higher priced) schools she got into, and decided to attend it. Worked out great for her.
Sometimes full pay students don’t pick the highest ranked school, either. My second kid went to a highly respected school, but turned down 3 higher ranked schools for the one she picked. She had an amazing undergrad experience and has no regrets.
@rickie1 Even in states with great public schools, it can be a difficult decision with how to proceed. Oldest was a top student , went to UVA
full pay , instate. Time of his life, lifelong friends and a great career out of it. We could just not justify the cost for a private when we had UVA , William & Mary and Virginia Tech available. He was free to apply anywhere but the budget from us remained the cost of an instate education. Other Virginia families can and do make other decisions though and are willing or able to pay for higher priced privates, get need based aid elsewhere, or may look for merit aid .
@coolguy40 ““With a degree from Duke, I would get a bigger salary.” Would you? If both applicants applied in the same city with the same level of experience, then the answer would be no. The higher employers go on salary, the easier it is to attract an experienced professional to do the job. Once you build experience, your education becomes more and more meaningless.”
Again, you are only talking about salary in the future. IMO, some top schools offer so much more than just earning potential. There is something to be said about being with an exceptional group of peers, professors best in class, outstanding curriculum, excellent internships, alumni connections, school pride, location, family legacy, etc.
Case in point, close friend’s kid is a freshman at Harvard (ACT 36, 4.7 GPA, all 5’s on APs, great ECs, Sal, etc). H gets all kinds of dignitaries giving speeches at campus often (presidents of foreign countries and senators like Nancy Pelosi). They even had an impromptu dinner with a congressman the first 3 weeks of school. This freshman is a political science/government major which is an awesome experience for her but she is also taking a c/s class and if she likes this discipline better, she can easily change majors. There are no bell curves on grading as they know every kid that got in is exceptional in academics. She attended the Harvard v Yale game last weekend which is one of the oldest rivalries in college. The tradition and overall experience is off the charts. For this brilliant kid, this is the best environment for her, hands down, even though she could have received numerous full rides to 2nd and 3rd tier colleges. You tell me if this full pay student made the right choice, its not always about future earning potential but the education one receives?
Did you know that H spends 3x as much on each student as they charge for tuition. With $38 billion in endowment they are doing something right…
You quoted general statistics - obviously Stevens’ stats are heavily influenced with its engineering/CS-heavy body. This is exactly the point my post was making in the first place.
As for the Payscale stats focusing on engineering - I encourage you to look into their methods for collecting them. It is done through an online survey and comparing means between schools without being sure of equal variance is faulty. Let’s also not forget the heavy response bias (people using Payscale are inherently more concerned and obsessive about their salaries).
“Case in point,” Other anecdotes - nephew from HYP school doing very well but no better than my kids are doing that went to instate schools. Valedictorian from younger kid’s high school class also went to an HYP school. State school grad son ended up at same company out of undergrad and has moved onto a successful startup. Don’t underestimate your kids and opportunities they can get from many places it they and you are open to them. Be happy for the kids , no matter where they end up for school. Even I got to meet people like Jimmy Stewart and Bob Clampett at my state school. Not exactly Nancy Pelosi though. 
It’s a Wonderful Life!
Also, the engineering rankings for Payscale are not comparing engineering/related majors’ outcomes between schools but comparing schools that are made up mostly of engineering/related majors - which explains why schools like Michigan are not even on the list (the vast majority of students at Michigan are not engineering/cs/math majors). Please refer to their methodology, once again:
Pelosi is a representative, not a senator.
We haven’t made financial considerations part of the mix for our D19’s college process. We’re going to be full-pay anywhere, and as we’re just moving back to the States next year after years overseas, we don’t have in-state status in any state. D is URM (black), 1490 SAT, high projected IB score at a rigorous international school, modest ECs (she’s taking Mandarin with a tutor after taking it at schools for many years, and she’s compiling a literary/arts magazine at her school). She wants to work as a gallerist or curator. After visiting several schools and considering more, she decided to apply only to Parsons, EA. We’re awaiting the decision, but it should be a safety for her. It’s one of the most expensive schools in the country, but we’re hoping she’ll get a good merit package–they seem to go up to about half of tuition. Like @thumper1’s family, we don’t have much saved specifically for college but are fortunate to be able to cover the costs from annual compensation, mainly my wife’s.
We have similar considerations or non-considerations going on with our S22, who’ll be going into 10th grade when we move to the Boston area. We’re considering private day schools and good public schools, and while we’d love not to shell out another $50,000 a year, if he likes a private school best and gets in, we’ll send him there. We realize we’re lucky to have the luxury of that choice.
@yikesyikesyikes - Payscale is just one source of data. It’s not perfect of course, but it is a representation with some degree of objectivity. The data that is self-reported by the schools also suffers from a certain degree of “cherry picking” likely as well. Payscale’s data comparing engineering outcomes excludes the effect of non-engineering outcomes on the result, so they are attempting to compare the outcomes of engineering majors as a cohort from different schools, thus, this should be more of an apples-to-apples comparison. If you know of other sources of outcome information besides Payscale and the schools’ outcomes reports, it would be interesting to compare them.
“Again, you are only talking about salary in the future. IMO, some top schools offer so much more than just earning potential. There is something to be said about being with an exceptional group of peers, professors best in class, outstanding curriculum, excellent internships, alumni connections, school pride, location, family legacy, etc.”
Sure, but the OP is asking for examples that are the exact opposite of what you’re saying, i.e. students/parents who ended up choosing a lower ranked, more affordable school. The mainstream thinking is to attend the higher ranked school, even if full pay, are there people that don’t think like that? To my surprise, there actually quite a few in this thread. And many people in CA select Berkeley and UCLA over Duke, not only for cost but campus feel, diversity, engineering and computer science majors.
“Case in point, close friend’s kid is a freshman at Harvard (ACT 36, 4.7 GPA, all 5’s on APs, great ECs, Sal, etc). H gets all kinds of dignitaries giving speeches at campus often (presidents of foreign countries and senators like Nancy Pelosi).”
Sounds like its more the student and the school, and as ucbalum said, she’s a congresswoman from SF.