The topflight Ivy engineering departments for hiring in competitive tech firms I know of tended to be Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia. Even so, one could have comparable/stronger engineering educations/support from Georgia Tech, UMich, UW Seattle, UIUC, or USC.
In any event, it’s irrelevant for OP as he/she later posted his/her prospective major isn’t in CS or engineering.
If there’s going to be any differences beyond gunning for wall street or organizational private consulting firms like BCG, it’s more likely to be in the humanities/social science areas or natural sciences than engineering/technical STEM. And even then…the differences for the latter aren’t likely to make much of a difference in most cases.
thank you @Much2learn! 1) Interested in the humanities, but considering at least a minor in STEM.
I’m sorry to be frustrating, but I want to keep personally identifying info to a minimum as I don’t have the official scholarship or admission yet. One concern I had about USC was that aside from scholarship students, there is not a lot of FA. When I visited I definitely noticed a lot of designer this and that around. My family is not in the “jetting off to Europe and buying designer clothes” income bracket, and I wonder if this would alienate me from social life at USC.
There are rich kids at the ivies as well, or so I’ve heard ;). Although the stupid rich kids (they’re not stupid, “stupid rich” means obscenely wealthy) don’t always flaunt it like the bougie rich or the China rich do.
This is LA. The presentation means probably more than in different regions. Still many buy designer’s clothes on a very rare occasions and don’t jet off to Europe on weekends.
Congrats on the great options. You can launch into a successful career and/or additional education from either school. If I were you, I’d be asking myself who do I want to be four years (plus a few months) from now? What experiences do I yearn for that I have yet to experience? Will I benefit from moving outside my comfort zone or am I the type of person who blossoms in familiarity? What scares me the most and what excites me the most about each choice?
Although your monetary situation attracts a lot of attention on CC, the universal truth is if you go into college with a great attitude and desire to make the most of your time there, you can succeed. That is the advice I give my aid needed to be able to accept daughter and you. No difference.
I never had any opinion one way or the other on USC but I’ve now come to know several USC grads and they are outstanding, smart, great leadership skills, the whole package. The perception that the Ivy League carries magic dust is found among those people who are insular enough that they believe the world starts and ends in the northeast corridor - in other words, people who are low on the sophistication scale but believe they are high. I’m not a fan of USC campus because I personally don’t like that style of campus, and I’m not a big fan of LA, but that falls under personal preference and there is no reason not to consider it if those aren’t issues for you.
Don’t assume this. If you are interested in pursuing this possibility, talk about it with your parents. You may be surprised by what they have to say.
There are parents who feel that a young person should be independent after college graduation. In those cases (and our family is one of them because my husband feels very strongly about this), no matter whether you choose the more expensive college or the less expensive one, you’re not getting a dime for graduate school.
There are also parents who feel that young people should be independent if they’re married, even if they marry young. My own parents are among them. I sabotaged any chance I might have had of getting graduate school support from my parents by getting married immediately after college graduation.
I’m not saying that your parents have either of these (probably peculiar) opinions. But until you talk to them, you can’t be sure what their views are about contributing to graduate school costs.
" is all about major. I do not think too many employers will get excited hiring engineering graduate from Yale."
I did not see if OP is in fact planning on engineering. However, if it is engineering, it is ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT MATTER which UG to attend and Graduate School is not needed. My own H. and most of our friends are engineers working for various engineering companies, many international with great opportunities for the young engineer straight from college. All of them hire from the local unknown low ranked college, none of them recruit from Harvard, Yale, etc. It is foolish to pay for Ivy for engineering degree. IMO, it is foolish to pay 250k for college, period, but for engineering degree it does not make any sense at all.
However, I would also consider the location. In fact, location was at the top of my own kid criteria when she was choosing her college. I would consider safety to be of the major concern when choosing college. In fact, the great impression of the campus was a major factor for my D. when she was choosing her UG.
Over 4 years, USC will be more like $280K. But my main question is how you are able to predict that you will be receiving a trustee scholarship? Even after getting the interview, the scholarship is incredibly competitive. They don’t give those to chimps.
The result for the scholarship will come out tomorrow. OP doesn’t know yet. There is a good chance he / she will get at least half if not full tuition paid.
I have never seen this. My husband has never seen this. My daughter has never seen this. We all have Ivy League degrees, either graduate or undergraduate.
It might be relevant, though, that our degrees are from Cornell, which is perhaps perceived as less snooty than some of the schools it competes with in football.
It stands to reason that you wouldn’t have been hired by such companies, then, so you’d be less aware of their existence.
It’s the same reasoning as those who insist that going to a lower tier school dooms you for life. They tend to be employed by companies/in fields that are brand- name-focused, so they never actually see the existence of other companies/fields who hire from both Ivies and lower tier schools.
@marian Cornell happens to be the only Ivy League school in the top 25 list for recruiters according to WSJ. In the world of engineering especially, an Ivy League education does not appear to be of much value. In my world, it has diminished substantially over the past 25 years to the point it doesn’t matter much.
It is futile arguments based on our personal experiences. The fact is that all are happy graduates having great jobs, they could have graduated from MIT, Princeton or unknown local college. So, Princeton graduates may be looking down on others, so what? Let them feel whatever they want to feel, it does not make any difference in others’ lives, they are still happy and with the great jobs and nothing can change it. The same goes another way. The graduates of the local unknown college may feel that others wasted the family resources attending at Princeton. The Princeton graduates do not care about this opinion either. We are not proving anything here, we are just stating our opinions based on our personal experiences.
so depending on what s/he picks, there may be a difference - Film, USC; business: depends on the Ivy (some don’t have it); English, probably an Ivy (depending on degree orientation and which Ivy), etc, etc…