<p>
Why is there a brightline at #25?</p>
<p>supposing you choose either a State Flagship that will cost you $100,000 all in, or a private with Merit Aid that will cost you $140,000 all in. Full freight all in at most privates now is $220,000 (2010 dollars). Further suppose you decide not to attend graduate or professional school after graduating.</p>
<p>1) who pays the $20,000 shortfall between your $200,000 fund and the $220,000 cost?
2) would you get to use the saved money ($120,000 Flagship Public, or $80,000 Merit Based Private) in any way you saw fit? i.e. downpayment on a house?</p>
<p>When Williams sent my son his acceptance letter, I read in the information folder that even if you pay full price at Williams, you are only paying half of the cost of educating a single student. I think other colleges, like Harvard, state the same thing on their websites. Wouldn’t that make attending such colleges a good deal ? Any thoughts on this?</p>
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<p>Creative accountants can find employment other than on Wall Street.</p>
<p>It depends upon what you want from college. The academic delivery part of the college experience is 15 hours a week. There are another 153 hours a week that are what you make of them. To me, college is a time to develop as a person, to be influenced by talented and motivated peers, to prepare yourself for a lifetime of interests and values that make your life not merely manageable but joyful and fascinating. Large, less selective commuter schools are not the optimal setting in which to immerse yourself in a heady atmosphere of engagement with ideas and with one another. They’re not likely to create a tight-knit community of peers who go through college as a cohort, keep in touch after graduation, and return frequently to reconnect at alumni reunions. Williamsdad can probably attest to the fact that a college like Williams can offer a once-in-a-lifetime, intensely enriching, life-changing experience. But large, less selective commuter schools can certainly allow you to accumulate 120 credit hours in order to earn a degree that will allow you to become employed or go on to graduate or professional school, if that’s your goal. </p>
<p>So if you’re about more than the academic credits, are there acceptable middle grounds between non-selective commuter-focused and top private universities? Again, that’ll be a personal choice based upon what you’re expecting from your college experience. You’ll have to visit, try on the campus feel that you perceive, and decide what fits your needs.</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, can someone explain to me the difference between graduate school and professional school?</p>
<p>^^^ What I mean is getting a graduate degree in an academic discipline vs. going to med school, law school, etc.</p>
<p>Ah thank you</p>
<p>Well the thing is that even if choose to pay for top school, graduate school still wont be a problem, my parents will be able to pay for education through PhD without financially being stressed at all. The thing is i’m starting to wonder the value of undergraduate education. I am fairly decent in stats (2200 sat, 3.9uw, top 2% out of 800, national recognition in economics, 600+ hours cs). I want to go to Harvard for graduate school and major in econ, but Idk what I want for undergraduate. I would rather have the money with me and save it for later, becasue my dad was telling me that once you get the job your degree isn’t really considered much when you climb the ladder. I really like Cornell, Northwestern, and Rice, but what I think seems sensible is to go to a school where I get a good merit scholarship.
Honestly I really do not want to go in state. I live in Arizona so I only have ASU and U of A. These schools have like a 90% acceptance rate and people with straight C’s get in… I would consider myself a failure to work so hard in HS for that. Every moment would be horrible for me.
ALSO +++++ To get into schools like Harvard for graduate, How hard is it? Do I need to go to a top school to be considered, can someone explain?</p>
<p>I think gadad explained it pretty well. No you don’t have to go to Rice or Cornell to go to Harvard for grad school. You could go to a good state school OOS (UVA maybe?) if you really don’t want to go to ASU. </p>
<p>Are you a Senior this year? Talk to your guidance counselor and he/she can point you towards some schools that might fit your criteria.</p>
<p>BTW, is your dad giving you whatever money is saved on your undergrad program? If so, I can understand your wanting to save the money to use it later. If not, and your parents are willing to pay for a top school, then why not go?</p>
<p>Man, you’re sitting on 200K?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t use it all on an Ivy. I mean, you could get a really good education at a less expensive school, and still have 100K left over to invest - talk about a win-win.</p>
<p>However, I’m assuming that since your parents were able to save up 200K, you are pretty well off, so it might not be as big as a deal to you.</p>
<p>I mean hell, if I had 200K, I wouldn’t even use it on college. I’d go buy a house, and just find a good way to finance education like everyone else at a less expensive school.</p>
<p>College Degree + 100K = Good start in life.</p>
<p>College Degree - 200K = I don’t like it.</p>
<p>Which I graduate I have the choice whether to spend it or save it for something.</p>
<p>
Precisely. Let’s look where the econ grad students at Harvard did their undergrad:</p>
<p>Berkeley 1
Boston College 1
Boston U 2
Brandeis 1
Chicago 1
Cornell 2
Harvard 9
Michigan 1
Northwestern 1
NYU Stern 1
Princeton 1
Stanford 1
Swarthmore 1
Tufts 1
Wesleyan 1
Williams 3
Wisconsin 1
Yale 1</p>
<p>The international students also studied at prestigious universities – Cambridge (2), Oxford, Tel Aviv, Trinity College Dublin, U Tokyo (2), etc. </p>
<p>Boston U is the outlier on the list, but with a top 25 econ department and the advantage of a Boston location, it’s not hard to understand why it does well. Virtually all of the others are top 25-30 schools.</p>
<p>Sure, these schools have a lot of smart students. Are we to believe that such schools have a monopoly on smart students, however? Of course not. Consider ASU, which has more NMFs than even Stanford. Why, then, is the Harvard econ department entirely filled with graduates of elite colleges?</p>
<p>Graduate admissions is incredibly competitive these days. Application numbers are way up, and funding and available spots are way down. Econ at Yale has an admit rate under 3%. You’d have to be an absolute fool to think that attending a top school doesn’t provide a major – perhaps even a crucial – leg up over the competition.</p>
<p>LOL cause maybe ASU has like 60 million people, and stanford has like 5. I also heard that going to a good undergraduate school gives you good connections. I am looking at the situation in a downmarket, with my fund being in stocks, hopefully they will go up. I know it started out a long time ago at like 20k and then skyrocketed. Hopefully the market will go up and I will not have to be so stressed in these decisions.</p>
<p>@warblers: I’m not disagreeing with your thesis, but unless you can provide evidence of statistically significant disparities between schools based on that data you are presenting nothing but extrapolation. Considering the small size of your dataset, I don’t think we should reach hasty conclusions without further evidence.</p>