<p>Not disputing that at all (you are talking about mathmom’s older son, right?). But it is not provable that “elite” schools categorically produce better results for their graduates than “lesser” institutions. Yes, in some fields there are clear leaders for certain subject areas, but they are NOT always the “well-known, expensive private schools” that the OP in this thread is referring to. While it very well might be better to go to HYP if one is interested in investment banking, it might also be better to go to University of Illinois for computer science or St. Olaf to study Norwegian.</p>
<p>I don’t think all the languages at Tufts are equally tough - just Arabic. Everyone at Tufts agrees who has taken other languages at Tufts. Of course there are other ways to learn languages, that’s why my son is doing a junior year abroad in Jordan - he’s actually not at all gifted at language learning and felt he needed an immersion experience. But since this is is third program in Jordan he’s seen first hand how much other students learn with two years preparation compared to what he had learned. I don’t know how you prove it, but he has a friend who is spending a year in Cairo, writing for an Egyptian newspaper, in Arabic. That’s how good her Arabic is.</p>
<p>I’m not arguing private schools are always better, or that state schools are always better. Really that you have to look at it on a department by department basis and even then there are no guarantees your kid will stick to the intended major. </p>
<p>For a high paying field, why not go to the “best” school and get an education where you are pushed by your fellow students to be the best you can be? </p>
<p>I’m not a big believer in the Return on Investment Model, but I do understand perfectly that you have to be able to afford the school you send your kid to.</p>
<p>Theoretically, CS majors have higher income and some schools producing them enable them to make even more based on their placements. Other majors within the same school will not necessarily have better outcomes.</p>
<p>CMU could help if you had a kid who was very interested in Google as they have a presence in Pittsburgh and CMU is a target school. Doesn’t mean kids from other schools can’t get hired but the process might be tougher. For other fields (like most engineering), it probably wouldn’t make as much of a difference in employment and pay. My engineer husband went to CMU but when it came time for my sons to look at schools for engineering, he felt our instate choices were fine. He did not feel we needed to pay a premium for CMU or other privates.</p>
<p>Sevmom, I’m not sure the CMU link to Google is an outlier. There were many kids in DS’s graduating class who started with a 6 figure salary. We will never know how he would have done had be gone to Penn State, but our experience has been that CMU students interned around the country to a much greater extent than the flagship students I was familiar with. I’m sure there’re articles like this that show many schools in a positive light, but what I can say was that our personal experience was way better than stated:
[The</a> 10 Best Colleges For Your Bank Account - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/10/15/the-10-best-colleges-for-your-bank-account/]The”>The 10 Best Colleges For Your Bank Account)</p>
<p>As to the question of the thread, it really is very much depends on the family’s priorities and finances - we are fortunate enough to have money to afford some luxuries and choose to drive Hyundais and Tauruses instead of Beamers, but feel the full-pay money spent here was worth it. We’re less pleased with the outcome of D1’s private results, but we still think she had a better experience than D2 in a state school mainly because the students came from a much wider geographic area.</p>
<p>Dad<em>of</em>3, That is what I said. For something like computer science, a degree from a place like CMU could make a difference. If a family has the resources to pay for an expensive private, that is great. It may or not make a difference ,depending on the field of study. How much to pay for college is a personal choice. </p>
<p>The link you provided also details engineering salaries. My kid’s starting salaries were/are on par with the salaries in that article. Younger kid (who graduates next month), interned last summer with kids from other state schools, along with kids from Cornell ,Yale,etc .</p>