“there is no denying that there are personal and professional benefits of attending selective elite colleges.”
Actually I’m not so sure there are consistent or predictable benefits to sending a child to a selective/elite college. Our older son attended our large state university and our daughter just graduated from a “selective” USNWR top 30 school. We are a full-pay family and are fortunate to be able to comfortably afford to do so. After seeing both kids through two completely different schools I would agree with the poster above who says “send them to Rutgers and save the big bucks for grad school.”
There was very little difference between the educational product our son received at a state school and the product offered by our daughter’s elite college. In fact, the career advising at the state school was noticeably better than at our daughter’s school. Both kids ended up with great jobs after graduation–our daughter strictly through her own efforts and our family connections with zero help from her school, our son with significant assistance from his school’s career center. Our son was very successful at his job and clearly quite well prepared for it–our daughter seems to be doing well also.
Clearly our daughter was exposed to a different social mileu than if she had attended a state school, but it’s not clear to us that has conferred any great advantages. She certainly made some great friends in college, but a substantial portion of her social network continues to be based on our family’s network, and her middle/high school connections. I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that college students, particularly at “elite” schools tend to sort themselves out along socioeconomic lines and there is not as much social mobility as parents imagine there will be.
Another thing people overlook is that graduate and professional schools tend to look more closely at GPA than at what school the GPA is from (excepting the Ivies and very elite LACs). So, although our daughter was never seriously interested in grad school, her 3.5 from a well-regarded private university would not have been sufficient for her to successfully apply to PhD programs in her field. Had she been serious about grad school, she would have been a far stronger candidate with a 4.0 GPA from our state school.
Our younger son is applying to college right now and although with $350K left in our 529 accounts, an out of state private college would be quite manageable, we are not convinced enough of the benefit to him to insist that he look at such schools (he really wants to stay in-state).
On a related note, I went to an Ivy League medical school and there is no denying that has opened doors for me professionally. But in thirty years I can safely say it has made no difference whatsoever where I went to college.
College has become a growth industry and there is a lot of marketing, and preying on parents’ insecurities and fears. It’s easy to get sucked into the hype. For families who can easily afford it, it’s probably not a big deal. But families who subject themselves to significant deprivation, or their children to significant educational debt, to afford an “elite” private college, should maybe think twice, because it may not be worth it. Where you go to graduate school is more important than where you go undergrad.
Just my two cents.