@hopewhite25 You’re absolutely right. And as far as prestige goes, it’s not like the OP is picking between Harvard and Podunk State. It’s analogous to choosing between a McLaren and a Porsche. You’re getting a great sports car either way 
First of all, congratulations for your success. You must be an extraordinarily talented person to have been identified by so many great schools as a potential addition to their community.
You have received a lot of useful information on why one school may be better than another. Most of this information is an anecdote or an opinion and they all matter, so I’ll give mine too.
I think you should choose the school that you like the most and not worry about what comes after. All of your final choices as well as some of the schools that you are no longer considering would provide you with almost any opportunity that you could want to pursue within the finance community. I attended one of the schools you are considering, I have hired people or worked with numerous people from the others. I have worked at some of the firms referenced by a previous poster as favoring one school or another. My personal experience is that great firms hire great people, not great schools. If you continue on the path that has led you to acceptance at all of these schools, your future opportunities will be limitless. So, choose the one you truly love.
And remember, most of the people giving you advice (including me) did not have the choices that you have earned. Enjoy the next four years!
Trivia: out of the top 6 publicly traded private equity firms, the current chairman/ceo roles are occupied by 4 Penn grads, 3 Harvard grads, and 3 Duke grads.
I think Yale is off.
These are the dumbest threads, I think OP’s come on here and pick four top schools, say they have to choose between the four of them and watch the food fight begin. Anyone who could get into these schools is not coming on to CC needing help to choose.
Hey everyone! Wow, this is a lot of response that I did not expect! Thanks for chiming in guys! I would love to respond to everyone but I think that would be too much, and also thanks to everyone who sent me DMs to help walk me through things!
So I guess for a final update: I read through what people said and made sure I listened to all your thoughts (even yours @CU123 even though I actually found this helpful!), and talked to my parents when I got home from school and I just want to say this has been really useful for me, honestly. I had conflicted feelings about prestige and where I felt most at home but I read the article you mentioned @privatebanker and found two articles, one from a 15 year reunion at Harvard Business School and one from a reunion at Harvard undergrad. I think it was really eye-opening and it helped me realize that if I go into this rat race with the mindset of what looks best on paper every time I won’t necessarily be happy, and I think at the end of the day I need to live my life in a way that prioritizes what I want. My parents also were really encouraging and have been pretty hands off (which is one reason I came here for help) and ultimately told me it’s my decision and that they’ll support me with whatever school I choose. My parents immigrated here and worked pretty hard to set me up well so it feels good to know I won’t be letting them down in any way. So I’m going to be committing to Duke and couldn’t be more excited!!!
And @CU123 I’m not sure what to say to you but I didn’t find this to be a dumb thread! Quite the contrary actually, it was nice having opinions from a diversity of people! I would encourage more future seniors to do this if they are feeling conflicted, it might produce some gems like @privatebanker’s article advice!
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Congrats.Great choice.
I think (but maybe I’m projecting) that the user was commenting on the absurdity of adults who seem to come onto these threads with their own agenda to disparage certain schools, which I find unbecoming and, more importantly, unhelpful to a HS student… To that end, I deleted several posts. And since you’ve made a decision, I am closing this thread.