Many of us want to know whether it’s “worth it” to send our kid to an elite school.
But rather than asking ourselves about the difference between going to an $80k/year elite school and a $30k/year state school, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves,
What would be the difference for our kid between going to an elite school and spending an extra $200k on additional opportunities if they go the state school?
eg our kid could pay their living expenses during fancy unpaid summer internships and then get a freaking graduate degree. Surely they’d be better set for life than a new grad from an elite college? Not saying we could or should do this, but maybe it helps answer the original question. Replace $200k with the price difference for you.
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It depends upon what the graduate degree is in, where it is from, etc. Not all graduate degrees have a positive return on investment. One can certainly do very well from a state flagship; the opportunities at either school are more likely to be up to the individual student’s initiative and talent than parent-funded activities in college.
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I don’t think you can buy some of the benefits of an elite school.
Most particularly the alumni network/connections. It can be a different world of funded opportunities because most of the elite schools have huge endowments.
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Doesn’t need to be grad school at all, just an example of the many possible uses of $200k.
Could be funding for a startup. Fancy summer programs. Condo purchase so they never have to pay rent and can work in an NGO and save the world. Keep it invested and they can fund a college education for all their kids.
Maybe we don’t spend it on them at all. Maybe we can retire years earlier. Maybe we pay off our mortgage and we get to work in an NGO and save the world.
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Everyone has different priorities for how they spend their money.
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When you say funded opportunities, how much funding is that?
Eg As a Stanford student I was awarded a $7k grant for a summer program abroad. Would be more in today’s dollars but it’s not like these funded opportunities come close to closing the tuition gap, and most students have zero of them.
If what you value is an elite alumni social network, then it seems you should be saving your dough for an MBA program.
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Your ability to be admitted to an elite MBA program depends heavily upon your employment immediately prior to entering, so likely your first or at most second job. The holders of those jobs are more likely to be elite college students.
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For sure!
I hope I’m not coming across as judgy, it just pains me to see families taking on mountains of debt without thinking through all the opportunity costs. You and plenty of others here are thinking soooooooooooo hard about this stuff already.
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I never claimed debt was a good idea for anyone. I valued my elite education; it sounds like you valued yours less. That is fine. Different strokes for different folks.
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It really depends on each student’s particular circumstances. My one son in investment banking does not need an MBA and has no intention of getting one. So saving money for an MBA would not “make up for” choosing a different school. (That son did not go to a super elite school, I should say, though it’s in the T50, and costs the same as a T10 school).
By funded, I was not thinking it would meaningfully pay tuition; the OP gave the example of using the money saved by going to a cheaper school to pay expenses while participating in an unpaid internship. I was thinking of a Harvard student I knew who wanted to go to Japan and teach soccer for the summer. Harvard paid all his expenses. Or another son who’s prof tapped him for a summer job studying coral reefs in the Caribbean, all expenses paid plus earnings of $4,000 over the summer.
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Also, it seems to surprise some people on this forum (not necessarily this thread) that some families can pay for college without loans. So, choosing an elite school does not necessarily mean people are borrowing heavily.
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I happen to teach in an elite MBA program. The advantages of going to a fancy school are smaller than most people think. (Test scores, on the other hand, are a bigger deal than most people think.)
You’re right that helps a lot, not just for MBA admissions, to have worked for a well known organization. But all big schools have great campus recruiting opportunities, and all entrepreneurial students can get experience in a well known organization. They might not get paid but it goes on the resume and helps with the next step.
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I value it a great deal, because I’m am academic.
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Maybe that qualifier is not sufficiently explored?
Could it be that for the vast majority of graduates, their long term career and income outcome (hm, reads funny), would be no different regardless of the college’s brand name/recognition. Which is of course why the common wisdom that it’s not worth the extra money, is not wrong.
But, for some subset of graduates, possibly their majors, their career ambitions, their exceptional circumstances, etc. the alumni connections and other hard-to-measure benefits are indeed crucial? Which is why the opposite common wisdom that it’s worth every penny can also be true?
So the correct answer is, that it depends on the individual student (and of course parent finances), if in their case it indeed was “worth it”?
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Sort of a false premise here, no? Debt levels of graduates of what most consider elite schools are relatively low. We could argue about the so-called donut hole but at schools like HYPSM it’s less of an issue for the vast majority who attend.
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I agree. My youngest son just did a soph → junior transfer from UF to an “Ivy +” school (I just learned that term from another thread). His current ideas for a career, and the network that will come from attending this university, make it worth the money. It is also more than worth the money to get him the hell out of Florida and away from a university being severely damaged by DeSantis & Ben Sasse.
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…which any other public, but out-of-state school, would have accomplished, so maybe not a relevant tangent?
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Some can spend $90k and still do all this.
It’s really up to each person what matters to them. I’m more in your camp but how I see the value of a full pay elite school is different than others see it. I am full pay but set a limit (50k) and spent less than that across two kids.
I see hustle being the main thing. My daughter had a great internship this summer and so far has 6 intern offers, 4 of which are paid for the fall in DC. She’ll be at an elite think tank. She’s an intl studies and Poli Sci major. Her school is a regional public. She hustled. This summer works for our state. Btw they have a program to supplement unpaid interns with a stipend.
My low ranked, public school engineering son had 20 interviews and 5 offers when he stopped at Xmas. He interned and works with ranked school students including Purdue.
Many believe in elite schools. I would too. Not at full pay though. That’s just how I see it. My kid got into W&L but with no aid, I was out. I’d have loved to send her.
Others see it as they do.
As for MBA - I’ve seen many at top tier programs. I truly believe where you go undergrad matters little. I also don’t think they necessarily weight quality of work experience. Yes top schools will have consultants or I bankers. But they’ll also have the route salesperson, marketing analyst and Gap store manager.
This is a topic that if you have 100 people, you’ll have 100 different opinions.
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I think there are two different ways to look at the value of an elite education:
- direct networking opportunities with contacts you make there and alumni of the institution
- indirect benefits from the statement value of the credential (“he/she graduated with a degree from X so must be smart”).
I’ve only ever used the second of these and it has been a huge help, but that’s because my qualification is not just “BA from T10 school”.
My feeling is that the second is definitely possible to achieve with less costly options (eg a 4.0 GPA from Berkeley makes a similar statement). The first is considerably harder to emulate (though a Rhodes scholarship would certainly do it, and is easier to win by being singled out as the top student in a less competitive pool), but the need for it very much depends on your career ambitions. The value associated with spending the extra time needed to build that network (eg the elite MBA suggested above) also needs to be taken into account.
A corollary to the original question is how many people are prepared to let their kid make this choice and keep the difference in cost? If you don’t offer that then why wouldn’t your kid choose the elite school?
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That’s definitely true, and it’s also really hard to predict who those kids will be. You’ve probably seen that studies show up to 80% of kids switch out of their intended major. Don’t know about your friends, but only few of the parents I know are working in the field they majored in.
If the money doesn’t matter, the math doesn’t matter. If the money matters, then (in my nerdy opinion) we should at least be assigning probabilities and values to the benefits we hope for.
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