<p>You have to be able to pay the cost of attendance to attend a college. If you cannot afford the cost (after aid is factored in), you cannot attend the school. Period.</p>
<p>So, yes, there are students who apply to expensive colleges that their families cannot afford. And therefore they cannot matriculate at those schools.</p>
<p>Re: job prospects…do the math. There are 3000 colleges and only a teeny number are the ivy League. Do you think that the rest of the colleges don’t have graduates who are successful? Think about that. There are a small number of fields where the college recruiting and networking will get you an interview (investment banking,for example), but even in those fields there are folks with degrees outside of the Ivy League.</p>
<p>The Ivy League has terrific schools, but you are making it sound like the folks who attend the other 2990 plus colleges are slackers and are going to get nowhere in life. The Ivy League doesn’t have THAT kind of magic. It’s a group of colleges, not a wizards den.</p>