I used to jokingly ask him at what point during those vaunted finance classes at Chicago did he figure out the silliness of his decision.
The vigorous defense of MIT suggests a certain level of insecurity. People who go to great schools donāt need to defend them constantly. When I was at Stanford, I never heard people quote rankings/etcācertainly not QS which is largely unknown to most of the populaceā¦ We never even talked about the other schools, but Iām sure we never looked down upon them either. MIT is a good school, but itās a technical school for sure, so it canāt be all things to all peopleā¦
Kids at schools definitely look down on other schools.
When Syracuse used to crush Cornell in hoops when I was there - we got the, itās alright, itās ok, youāre going to work for us one day chant.
Funny thing is - Iāve worked for a HS grad, a U of Phoenix, and my current is Alabama State U.
But no one who went to higher level schools than mine.
All these discussions are - not real world in so many cases.
And Iām at a salary level weād all hope our kids will be.
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You donāt generally read MIT alumni out here doing that. Most that Iāve read replies from are fond of their time at MIT, but pragmatic about its impact on their careers.
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I only cite rankings inasmuch as is necessary to illustrate that things arenāt as simple as āthey are both top 15 schools, so hey, whatās the differenceā.
I certainly do not believe MIT is all things to all people - and explicitly stated as much in this thread more than once.
ā¦Heck, I am even chiming in on this thread only because of the eerie coincidence of having logged in to CC after a very long absence and noticing having just been summoned by an old CC pal @1NJParent 
to share our thoughts process on making the exact same decision the OP is faced with (a good problem to have indeed).
Having said this, I think I have both exhausted my arguments and overstayed my welcome, so, good night and good luck! 
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Live long and prosper 
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I think this is the hardest question to answer in advance: how do you compare to the rest of the class? Maybe easy to answer for an IMO medalist, but for most people you just donāt know. I wonder how the kid from our HS who went to MIT felt: he was a great kid and had achieved a lot given his background, but he wasnāt a shining star in the class. Same with the kid who went to Stanford who got in because a parent worked there.
I didnāt go to college in the US, but went somewhere just as competitive as MIT, and I know many people in the bottom half of the class felt woefully inadequate most of the time. My sister-in-law was the top science student in her state at high school level. 30 years later she still complains about how everyone else at college was smarter than her and wonāt go back for college reunions.
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I think the truth is that every school, including MIT, has some underqualified students. Schools with broader distributions have higher proportion of underqualified students than schools with narrower distributions (e.g. Caltech). Different people will define academic fit differently, but at every school, thereāre students who are poor academic fits despite the best effort of the AOs.
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Re: the compensation statistics- GIGO, as any freshman at ANY college can tell you.
These salary surveys do not properly assign a value to stock options- so the āmillionaire by 25 years old kidsā show up at their 85K cash salary. These salary surveys improperly (imho) assign values to the kids doing an MD/PHD who are likely still doing a fellowship at the 10 year mark. Kid making 50K but already has an offer for the year AFTER the fellowship at a device company which is developing robotic limbs, or a bio-engineering company making synthetic liver enzymes-- and those offers are for 250K plus bonus.
But personally I think relying on these salary surveys is not a good way to choose. But regardless- take a look at the methodology before you assign Holy Grail status to these rankings.
And know your kid- if he/she is going to feel āimposter statusā for four years at college, then maybe no. If (like mine) he/she is going to be energized by the deep pool of talent- not just ME (everyone at MIT is NOT an engineer) but in econ, poli sci, urban planning, music, math (and lots and lots of math), bio, chemā¦ then maybe that energy is worth considering as another intangible.
YMMV. My own kid was terribly proud of the first millionaire of his friends. He opted NOT to take his startup public-- on the advice of the MIT professors who were advising him, he first licensed the technology and then sold it to a large public company. Took his stake and then started a different company. Iām sure his salary upon graduation was $40K or so- most founders pay themselves a survival salary for the first few years so as not to starve the business of the capital it needs.
Many routes to success (financially and socially beneficial).
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Iād put it differently: in every college 50% of students are in the bottom half of the class. If thatās your kid then how will they react, especially if theyāve been at the top of their class throughout high school? Some kids are motivated by competition, others discouraged by it. And the long tail of ability is incredibly obvious in subjects like math which makes it worse. I was competent (perhaps top 10-15%) and still had plenty of classmates who easily outclassed me.
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I realize this was a response to a post specifically about horsepower, but as you know, fit and under qualified are different. A student can be both, but they donāt have to be. They can be very well qualified to succeed and simply not want the experience MIT offers.
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I agree if your point is that thereāre some well qualified students who prefer other schools (including Vanderbilt).
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My S attends one of those few schools commonly considered the most academically challenging. When he made his decision to attend the school, there were family members who were concerned about this aspect. Fortunately, I knew the school well and I felt I knew my S well enough to feel confident that heād do well. It turns out he did even better in college than he did in high school, which I didnāt expect. Heās also the least ācompetitiveā person I know. He never cares about how everyone else does and he doesnāt even know how his friends do.
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Mechanical Engineering is not one of the highest paying engineering disciplines though.
I mentioned ME as a proxy for engineering in general, as the OP said their student was going into engineering, but didnāt specify what field.
EECSs get a significant earnings boost over engineering, on par with CS at schools like CMU and HMC. For quantitative analytics, MIT really doesnāt have a peer. Those degrees distort the salary data.
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Iāve never really understood the salary data. It has always seemed low to me - by quite a bit.
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I think it might help to have a less competitive personality in a competitive environment ā keeps you from getting caught up in it.
In response to other posters, the discussion of salary/jobs, etc., misses the point a little to me ā what job does OPās child WANT at the end of the day?
Just because someone CAN do something really hard that most people do not have the opportunity to do does not mean that they SHOULD.
If going to MIT would mean years of anxiety resulting from drinking from the firehose and imposter syndrome and feeling shouted down by peers convinced they are āsmarterā ā only to be followed by a āgreatā job with a high salary that requires one to outwork and out-hustle the same peers in the workplace at great expense to mental health and work-life balance ā well, then, maybe MIT and the fabulous jobs for graduates are not ideal for this student.
If spending hours solving the hardest problems and debating them with sharp-minded and assertive peers is energizing and fun to the student, then maybe you reach a different answer.
To me, it isnāt just about comparing costs of tuition versus future earnings.
Also, even if MIT is the better fit over all, taking personality into account, there are still prizewinners and geniuses at Vanderbilt, too ā it isnāt like there wonāt be a ātribeā of like-minded MIT-type students there. And I am convinced MIT-types from Vanderbilt will succeed in landing great jobs ā regardless of averages, stars will shine.
So if it comes down to finances and picking MIT would cause significant financial pain, I would still pick Vanderbilt. Too many parents put themselves in a precarious financial position to give their child the āperfectā school. To me, a more expensive school should be in play only if parents can afford it without altering their own lifestyle into retirement.
The answer is both one of āfitā and the specifics of ability to pay, I think.
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"Too many parents put themselves in a precarious financial position to give their child the āperfectā school."
This is 100% dead on and maybe people arenāt watching whatās going on in the world, but the stock market has huge volatility and maybe to the downside, recession risks are being forecasted now (depending on the source) up to 50% - and most importantly for borrowers, interest rates are projected to be raised 7-10 times over the next 18 months.
So for those who talk about borrowing (which is rarely good) - itās going to get a lot worse - and a lot of people in a year or two will be saying - my god, what have I done?
But weāve been in such a long upswing with low rates that many realities are distorted.
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How this is interpreted depends on the definition of āunderqualifiedā. If it means āhas difficulty doing the expected workā, that is not necessarily the same as ābeing in the bottom _% of the classā.
Agree that half the class will be in the bottom half. Just the way the numbers have to work out. Doesnāt necessarily mean that those in the bottom half cannot do the work. As they say, what do they call the person who graduates at the bottom of their med school class: Doctor.