The success of graduates from Ivy / Elites reflects the caliber of students who are accepted there and not the UG itself.
Many Honors colleges at in-state publics will boost very similar statistics (or higher) for this reason. They accept the cream of the crop also, they lure them by great Merit awards and other opportunities that are not available there for a general student body. Why the in-state publics are doing so? Because it is a known fact that these top caliber student are raising everybody else’s GPA, they are leading informal and formal group studies and are simply open for any help that somebody else may ask.
So, while some Ivy may put forward stats of 100% acceptance to Grad. Schools, specific and more general, the same stats are put forward by Honors colleges at in-state publics. Well, if you say that one is true and another one is a lie, you are perfectly entitled to your own opinion. Somebody else may think in reverse.
What do you mean “one day.”
Send your kid to an elite or even borderline elite school, and you’ll hear it from every neighbor or acquaintance you run into at the supermarket.
Quite agree, but . . .
. . . you completely mischaracterize the nature of ECs at a public flagship. Take my alma mater, the University of Michigan, for example. The University’s Maize Pages directory of student organizations currently lists 1,447 student organizations, not including intramural sports. It’s true that to make the varsity hockey team, you pretty much need to have NHL-caliber talent, and a very high percentage of varsity hockey players do go on to play professionally. But that doesn’t mean you’re out in the cold if you like to play hockey and you’re not NHL material. Michigan also has a club-level (non-varsity) hockey team that competes nationally in the American Collegiate Hockey Association Level 2, and a second campus-wide club-level team recently started up. Still beyond your competitive level? Well, Hillel has a hockey club that plays in a local rec league, as does the Law School. And of course, there’s intramural hockey. There’s also club basketball, club baseball, club softball, club soccer, club lacrosse, club rugby, club volleyball, club equestrian, club golf, club tennis, club swimming, club rowing, club water polo, club bowling, club fencing, club boxing, club wrestling, club gymnastics, club figure skating. There’s even club cricket and club cirque (acrobatics and circus arts).
Not good enough to make the Michigan Marching Band? Well, perhaps one of the 212 student performing arts organizations will be your cup of tea.
And the Michigan Daily, the student newspaper, is not restricted to journalism students, as the Daily itself explains:
And if that doesn’t suit you, there are numerous student literary, cultural, public affairs, and comedy magazines, journals, and publications where students may hone their writing and editing skills in collaborative, and fun, settings.
The Ivies and other elite privates do indeed offer a wealth of well-funded ECs, but it’s a serious mistake to think there aren’t similar, and quite likely even a greater variety of EC opportunities at public flagships.
This is a perennial argument at the Bogleheads forum, where many posters can analyze ROI to the third decimal place. My reaction: “knowing the price of everything, the value of nothing.”
OP, it is a difficult question, especially when your child is still so many years away from college. Fwiw, DS didn’t exhibit characteristics that would make a difference in how we would answer this question until his sophomore year of HS.
I gave my children two large gifts relating to finances.
- They will not have UG student debt. We were lucky enough that this wasn’t an issue, but had it been, we would have found a way that they would graduate UG without debt. It might not be possible for every family, but IMO it is reckless to begin adult life with a mountain of debt.
- They will not have their parents come looking for financial help, assuming that everyone isn't living in caves and using ammunition for barter.
2 means that, had we had to forgo retirement savings in order to pay for college, we would not have. There is a middle ground, where retirement savings can be put on hold during the time that children are attending college, but even that makes me nervous. It is a great budgeting technique to live sufficiently below your means that, before tuition bills arrive, you can save some money in retirement accounts, 529s, and taxable accounts. Then, during the college years, you are accustomed to LBYM, and can not only re-direct income to tuition, but have some 529s and taxable accounts to draw down.
Depends on the demographics, perhaps more so in the northeast.
Many of my neighbors or random people in my town won’t recognize the names (top privates) of the schools my kids attended and they couldn’t care less.
However, if you mention our state flagship (which my children were accepted to), everyone will acknowledge it’s an excellent school.
I am not surprised that only a handful of people would consider attending and paying full fare to elites is worth the money. It’s heavily dependent on the parents’ own experience, values and circumstances.
Sometimes you can’t win for trying - frazzled S and D were pretty high profile in their high schools and lots of folks were curious about where they would end up in college.
For every person who found out that one of my kids accepted a full-ride and needed to know if this was because no admissions offers were forthcoming from “better” schools, someone else needed to know why we were paying so much tuition to send the other to a private and offered up an anecdote about how their own kid or some other kid they knew “could have” gone to that school or a similar school but didn’t apply because it “wasn’t worth the tuition.”
I do think that private honors colleges offer terrific opportunities for students who have narrowed down what they want to study and have established that the university has ample coursework available at the upper-class/graduate level in those areas.
^^
True dat.
One of our family friends when she found out that my daughter is going to Cornell and we are full pay can’t believe that we have that high of an income and/or asset to not be qualified for any financial aid and can actually afford the 60K+ per year. And then made a comment that the local college is good enough for her own daughter because colleges are all the same anyway. She also predicted that my daughter will drop out from the Ivy and will transfer to the local college after a year. We have since avoided her.
Where is the data to support this statement? This is not a “known fact”. It sounds like an overgeneralized opinion. Sure, some of the stronger students (whether in the honors college or not) at any school may be willing, either as a paid tutor, volunteer or what have you, to help other students with their academics. But most colleges offer tutorial services. It is not the “top caliber” student that raises “everybody else’s GPA”. And one can surely find students willing to help other students at virtually any college/university. It is not specific to an in-state college/university.
I live on the west coast. I think the east coast is a foreign country…like Canada. The east coast is a first world country but is it true? Does everybody just get tattoed with their college’s name, the first day of school? Is your SAT score burned into the bottom of your foot? Is there a requirement you have to tell anybody who asks your financial situation?
“Does everybody just get tattoed with their college’s name, the first day of school?”
Only if it’s Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Of course, these kids are dead meat now that there’s a “backlash” against these schools as some claim on this thread.
@katliamom, Lol!
BTW, @dstark, when I was at Cal I dated a Penn grad who once referred to UCB as a “diploma mill.” When he and I went traveling in Europe, no one had ever heard of Penn. But Berkeley! Ooo-la-la! The French were impressed. It drove my boyfriend nuts. Outside of the east coast no one was impressed by Penn because Ivy League meant H,Y,P and Penn at most meant Penn State. Hee hee hee
No no because on the East Coast, tattoos are tacky 
Wow sounds like I left behind a lot of school bitterness on the east coast when I rode west 19 yrs ago. Much happier to be in a place where the only schools that matter are UCB, UCLA and UCSD for those “dummies” who can’t get into the first two. And even for those schools, I don’t get the allure, with their impacted programs, overcrowding and increasingly singular demographics. It’s a crazy world out there, shoulda had my kid learn a trade.
@katliamom, :). I can’t say anything negative about Penn. One of my best friends went to Penn. 
Penn is a great school. For a tier-2 Ivy…
Lol!
At the end of the day, if you are enlightened but broke, then going to the expensive prestigious school wasn’t worth it.
@2018dad, sounds like your family friend has sour grapes.