<p>I am a senior at an Ivy who is involved in a few mentoring programs for HS students. </p>
<p>Before you shell out 40-50k a year for an Ivy, here's some advice:</p>
<p>You should pay for an Ivy if and ONLY if:</p>
<p>1) You are sure you want a job in the financial services or consulting industry.</p>
<p>2) You are sure you want a marginally higher-paying job right out of college.</p>
<p>3) You are sure you will get a lot of financial aid. </p>
<p>4) (Maybe) You want a career in academia and will make full use of a world-class faculty. I don't mean going to office hours and posing embarrassingly simple questions to people who are staggeringly overqualified to answer them. I mean research internships, papers, PhD recs, etc.</p>
<p>5) You are shamelessly addicted to prestige. </p>
<p>Thus, if you are a future lawyer from an upper middle class family, go to a state school instead, get a 4.0 GPA and spend your summers studying for the LSAT. </p>
<p>I went to an Ivy for reason #4 and am still not sure if it helped that much (though my outcome was good). </p>
<p>By the way, this can apply to a lot of private universities as well. But they're a worse investment because the banks don't even recruit as much there.</p>
<p>Erm… I think that’s a little too narrow-minded. What about med school? Harvard’s undergraduate pre-med studies are FANTASTIC. And what about the sciences? Princeton is world-renowned for its physics (and biochem too, I think…) facilities. </p>
<p>And on the money thing, the Ivies give out the BEST need-based financial aid, period. Granted this isn’t for everyone, but there are definitely people for whom this would help.</p>
<p>I remember reading somewhere on these boards that you have a better chance of getting into a top law school if you went to an Ivy undergrad. Law is one of the few careers where your alma mater will make a difference in employment opportunities.</p>
<p>No, it’s not a joke. Once you’re in college you’ll see that things like med school and law school admissions are predominantly a numbers game, not a match of prestige.</p>
<p>Bay, when you’re thinking of employment, you’re thinking of which law school one attended. That does have a huge impact on your employment opportunities, but to get into one of those law schools, you need a near-pristine GPA and high LSAT scores, and the former is likely easier to get at a less prestigious school.</p>
<p>Would a law/med school look at 2 undergrad students and say “Student A has a 3.9 GPA and high LSAT from State School, and Student B had a 3.8 GPA and equally high LSAT from Ivy . . . . I’ll take Student B!”</p>
<p>45% of people who apply to med school get in. It’s pretty much the GPA, grade in organic chem(has to be a b or better), and the MCATs plus recs that say you’re are not a psychopath, cheater, drug addict etc. Unless you want to head the NIH, it doesn’t matter where you get the letters that come after your name. I’ve been on admissions committees at 2 med schools(private and public0 and they really were the same. SUNY Geneseo, or Princeton, get the above and you’re in. There are many people applying whom aren’t good enough, so all the qualified people get in eventually.</p>
<p>ECs really don’t have much of an impact on grad school admissions, which are done much differently than UG. After your GPA, the most important factors for admission are LSAT/MCAT/whatever scores, research, and maybe internships.</p>
<p>Those 5 reasons need a little more structure and nuance. I think the Boolean logic works approximately as follows. You must satisfy BOTH one or more “Goals” AND exactly one “Means” criteria. I’ve added one reason (under Goals):</p>
<p>1) Goals (pick exactly one of “a”, AND/OR pick “b”, before proceeding to “2”)
…(a)
…(i) You are sure you want a job in high-end financial services, high-end business consulting, or high-stakes corporate law.
-OR-
…(ii) You are sure you want a marginally higher-paying job right out of college (though this is a goal you could satisfy better with an engineering or CS degree at many other schools)
-OR-
…(iii) (Maybe) You want a career in academia (or commercial research) and will make full use of a world-class faculty. I don’t mean going to office hours and posing embarrassingly simple questions to people who are staggeringly overqualified to answer them. I mean research internships, papers, PhD recs, etc. (though this is a goal you probably could facilitate just as well at a LAC)
-OR-
…(iv) You think you have what it takes, with the right nurturing and the right connections, to start the next Google or the next Teach For America</p>
<p>-AND/OR-
…(b) You are shamelessly addicted to prestige.</p>
<p>-AND-
(2) Financial Means (pick exactly one)
…(a) You are sure you will get a lot of financial aid.
-OR-
…(b) Your family is so wealthy that cost truly is not an issue.
-OR-
…(c) You are so confident you will make a fortune in your career that you are willing to take on significant debt that your parents may have to repay, if you can’t</p>
<p>Great thread. I’ve learned that by going to a prestigious prep school, the grass is not always greener on the other side. Make sure going to a top school is really worth $200k+ where your grad school prospects may be worse than if you went to a state school. You could be 90th percentile at an Ivy and top 2% at a state school. It would be easier to get a high GPA at a state school, and you could also have a life. I feel like people jump too quickly to the conclusion that they would be happier at an Ivy than a state school because they think it’s below them. It’s a huge decision and simply because an Ivy or a similarly prestigious school may be ranked higher, does not mean it will equal happiness.</p>
<p>The OP should have clarified somewhere that his advice is strictly regarding career prospects. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s what every high school student on CC will believe. But go on the graduate/professional school sections of CC or the SDN forums and you will see the same mentality as the OP.</p>
<p>if yourcan send your child to a good public state school (Uof Ill, U of Mich, UVa, UC Berkley, etc)…and pay in-state tuition and room and board, then have them graduate with little debt and if they get the grades, then go to one of the top ivies for a fully funded grad school.</p>