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<p>Well I found that stick I was looking for…</p>
<p>Chastising someone for asking for numbers/hard evidence is obnoxiously obtuse. That said, sometimes comprehensive, methodically sound evidence isn’t available. “The answer to everything is, ‘it depends’”. Don’t rack up a lot of debt especially if your state university doesn’t have a national or regional profile. Education is an investment and since you are without concrete data, you need to make a subjective decision about how important prestige is. I doubt that many state universities will offer a distinct advantage over a local education. Of course, we have no hard indication of what specific colleges you are considering (which might impact our assessment).</p>
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<p>Be sure you know what the true net cost after non-loan financial aid is likely to be. Try putting “financial aid estimator” and “net price calculator” in each school’s web site search box.</p>
<p>There are a lot of “it depends” factors involved, including what you mean by “local university” and “state university”. In many areas, the low cost local university is a nearby state university. One of the biggest factors besides net cost is whether each school offers the major you want to study.</p>
<p>Since you mentioned engineering, you may want to check out the listings of ABET accredited engineering programs here: <a href=“http://www.abet.org%5B/url%5D”>http://www.abet.org</a> . For any engineering major where you may want to get a Professional Engineer license (definitely civil), an ABET-accredited degree is required or very helpful. For other engineering majors and other fields like computer science, ABET accreditation may not be strictly required, but it serves as a baseline for the quality of instruction behind the degree. For lesser known schools in the subject (i.e. those which are not already well known in the subject), ABET accreditation can serve as a validation of the quality of instruction behind the degree.</p>
<p>Note that “___ Engineering” (for engineers) and “___ Engineering Technology” (for engineering technologists) majors and degrees are not the same.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Apply to any schools you want. Pick those which match your style/fit, or the location/weather you desire, etc. Make sure you include options which would be affordable, and also options which would be prestigious, and options which overlap.</p></li>
<li><p>Out of those you are accepted to, cross out any option that will take you into significant debt… no exceptions. This is really important. Avoid debt at all costs. College debt is becoming too similar to the explosive mortgage debt we saw in the 2000s (similar background too: government pushing people into houses/college by offering easy loans). You don’t want to be chained with all the other young Americans as an indentured servant. Trust me, you’ll appreciate your freedom.</p></li>
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<p>US & EU economies might be stagnating for another decade. This recession isn’t “normal”… be prepared for tougher times than your parents have ever seen.</p>
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<li><p>Now, out of those final options (if you still need to narrow down), focus purely on prestige, rankings, and the ability to make money. Yep. You’ve already chosen your pool based on fit, then on affordability, now follow the money. Talk to employers in your desired field about their opinions on those schools. Contact relevant alumni and see how they’re doing.</p></li>
<li><p>If you are still left with options (perhaps equally prestigious, and equally affordable, etc), then once again pick based on personal feeling and emotion. Visit the schools and trust your gut, and good luck.</p></li>
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<p>Every top investment bank and major consulting firm (MBB) recruits at harvard, princeton, MIT, Wharton and the likes and takes a fair amount of people. </p>
<p>Penn State is luck to send more than one or two into front office positions at any of these banks and rarely if ever sends anyone to an MBB firm. </p>
<p>These happen to be two of the highest and most sought after positions that take people straight out of undergrad. </p>
<p>Top firms in other areas (google, Microsoft, …) also recruit mostly at top schools.
Academia is another area where your school matters immensely.</p>
<p>If you have the opportunity to go to a top school and are interested in pursuing a career in a competitive area (finance, managerial consulting, engineering, academia, …) you will regret not going there.</p>
<p>No matter how great of a student you are, if the company you’re interested in does not recruit on your campus, getting a job there will be a lot harder.
If there aren’t any alums from your school at said company, getting a job there will be nearly impossible. </p>
<p>Top schools have a lot more alums at top firms.
Alums push for more people at there school to go to that company.
Therefore, it’s easier to get a job there from that particular school.</p>
<p>Even once you have an job/internship at the company, whether or not you advance or get a return offer is highly political.
Not everyone with internships get return offers and alums push for people who went to their school.
If you don’t have anyone pushing for you to get a return offer, you will not get one, no matter how good your performance is.</p>
<p>Just noticed a post in the engineering major forum. The OP is apparently in North Carolina, and is considering majoring in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or computer science at North Carolina State University, according to a post there.</p>
<p>ABET lists the following schools in NC for EE:</p>
<p>Duke, NC A&T, UNC Charlotte, NCSU, Western Carolina</p>
<p>In NC for CE (computer engineering):</p>
<p>Duke, NC A&T, UNC Charlotte, NCSU</p>
<p>In NC for CS:</p>
<p>Appalachian State, Fayetteville State, NC A&T, UNC Greensboro, NCSU, UNC Wilmington, Winston-Salem State
(Duke and UNC Chapel Hill are apparently confident that their CS degrees are well respected, since they apparently have not sought ABET accreditation.)</p>
<p>Not sure what the OP means by “local university”, but the OP ought to prefer one of the schools listed above for the major chosen over other schools in North Carolina.</p>
<p>(So yes, everyone can stop arguing about the prestige of Harvard and such and whether it matters for investment banking careers, since that seems to be irrelevant to the OP.)</p>
<p>^^Because computer science and computer engineering majors never get jobs at investment banks, consulting firms or top engineering firms…</p>
<p>That being said, it does seem like the op is considering a whole different caliber of school than was mentioned here.</p>
<p>Choosing an undergraduate institution should depend on a few factors.
- do you want to go to graduate school? if you do, you should go to the cheapest college that you feel most comfortable in. if you really hate a cheap local school, then go to another one where you will be more successful. however, if you feel fine at a local, low cost school, by all means go there. graduate schools don’t care about ratings. if you get a 4.0 from some random state school, vs a top private school, they will see them both as the same, so just save the money and go to the state school.
- If you don’t want to go to graduate school, and are majoring in something like business, go to the best school you can get into. companies hiring will be very elitist as far as hiring goes. they really will see a difference between random state school and harvard.</p>
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<p>Sometimes “common sense” needs to be tested.</p>
<p>[Estimating</a> the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables](<a href=“http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322]Estimating”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322)</p>
<p>“We find that students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges.”</p>
<p>Now, these researchers are examining earnings patterns, not hiring patterns. College choice may make a significant difference in initial hiring. Or, it may not. I suspect this varies by sector and location.</p>
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<p>Actually, neither, because professorships don’t go to students with Bachelor’s degrees. And as far as Ph.D. programs go, GPA is irrelevant because all graduates at that level have a high one. What matters is your dissertation, your area of specialty and what demand it’s in, and whom you worked with (including your outside readers), along with your publications. So the postcolonial literature specialist with a PhD. from Rutgers has a better chance of a university job than a Renaissance literature Ph.D. from Harvard. At the level of Ph.D. programs, there is no appreciable difference in quality of faculty between an Ivy League school and a major state flagship.</p>
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<p>Companies are elitist only in the sense that they like to replicate their existing corporate culture with their new hires. They don’t want to hire people who don’t fit in. For some, this means hiring from Harvard. For others, it means hiring from Texas A&M.</p>
<p>As you figure out where you want to go to college, one of the first considerations should be the size of the school. Both large universities and small colleges have their pros and cons.</p>
<p>In terms of relevance to the OP, the OP may want to investigate where employers recruit. Being either local to the employer or at a school well known for the subject does tend to attract recruiters to the school’s career center. North Carolina’s Research Triangle area has in it Duke, NCSU, and UNC Chapel Hill, although that does not mean that employers there won’t recruit at other schools.</p>
<p>Even if one attends a school not visited, one can still look for companies to apply to for jobs and apply to jobs at those companies.</p>
<p>According to the paper, Bryn Mawr had an average sat score of 1378, when princeton had an average of 1308, stanford had a 1270 and williams had an average of 1255
Pretty interesting how things have changed. </p>
<p>Interesting study. It’s too bad they cut off data at the upper end of the spectrum (i.e. those reporting earnings of more than $100,000/year).</p>
<p>Do Bryn Mawr, Stanford, Princeton, and Williams have any relevance to the OP’s question?</p>
<p>Seems like the OP wants to know about NCSU and other state universities versus unnamed “local universities” in North Carolina. Perhaps it would help if the OP specified what “local universities” are in question.</p>
<p>It looks like most of the ABET-accredited degree programs in the OP’s possible (engineering and CS) majors are at state universities (which the OP implied are not the “local universities”), other than Duke.</p>
<p>If Duke is actually the “local university” that costs less (after financial aid), then the OP should not have to worry about any loss of quality or prestige by attending.</p>
<p>I’m a HYP professional-degree graduate in a large Midwest city. Though that HYP degree “opened doors” for my initial interviews, Ivy (or flagship) degree doesn’t significantly improve employment opportunities, or careerwise development and income growth. Ivy degree is a conversation starter, but most successful career-focussed people (w/exception of Goldman Sachs perhaps) have local school degrees (Loyola, UICC, IIT/Kent, and DePaul, for instance). They still have achieved comfortable upper-middle class (and better) lifestyles.</p>
<p>Connections and networking counts for far more. Professors’ recommendations helped me greatly. Parents’ connections and resulting networking opportunities are far more important for initial job searchs than Ivy degree alone.</p>
<p>HYP graduate schools’ students come from a broad range of colleges. Sure, the Ivy League and “Top 20” schools are well represented, but so are the 2nd-tier and even 3rd-tier private and state colleges who nonetheless produced well-qualified graduates who did exceptionally well at those “ordinary” schools and then sought out a HYP graduate program. The outstanding student can succeed no matter the prestige of the school, so long as professor recommendations, scores, and GPA prove that record.</p>