<p>monstor344 wrote: </p>
<h2>“I was pretty sure that the starting salary for Wharton was a 6-digit number; I guess I was wrong.”</h2>
<p>You are sooo not alone in that. If I had a dime for every 16-18 year old that thought that graduating from (fill in the blank Top 10 school)means a likely $100k+ starting salary in the first job out of school …</p>
<p>Acceptance to an elite school is not a meal ticket, free lunch, jackpot, lottery ticket, etc. etc. etc. People who are admitted to those schools have ALREADY demonstrated they are in the top 0.1 - 1% of the high school graduates for that year on a combined evaluation of academic/intellectual/drive/leadership/creative accomplishments. Yet, it can often take 3-5 years in the workforce for those qualities to really pay off in terms of earned salary… or in many cases, in demonstrated accomplishment not measured in salary such as non-profit leadership, teaching skill, parenting, religious employment, and other accomplishments not correlated to earnings.</p>
<p>Anyway… go to college where you will thrive intellectually, aesthetically, socially, emotionally.</p>
<p>P.S. I have close family members who graduated Penn-Wharton undergrad, and top 12 MBA programs, and don’t see a significant difference in perception in the marketplace ten years into a career.</p>