Top tier college education worth it ?

<p>Please pass the popcorn salt. B-) </p>

<p>No offense, but the position of your parents may reflect a lack of understanding of college options and of the workplace in this country. It does seem that parents who are newer to this country often fixate on a short list of well-known schools.</p>

<p>GPA and AP’s may not be enough to get you in anyway.</p>

<p>I know many many students who went to state university or colleges and have great jobs. Sometimes links to jobs and internships are even better at these schools, because there are ties with local industries. Check out the bios of top MD’s for one, just as an example.</p>

<p>Perhaps there is someone like a guidance counselor who can educate your parents on college possibilities. I hope you can decrease your stress somehow, whether by adjusting your schedule, through more sophisticated support of your parents, or by realizing that things will be okay if you don’t go to a tippy top college.</p>

<p>@"vienna man"‌ </p>

<p>You do realize that a lot of public flagships are research powerhouses with faculty just as illustrious as the Ivies (at least the lesser Ivies), don’t you? The top public flagships don’t place as well as they do in the ARWU rankings (which is a purely research-oriented ranking) because they have mediocre faculty. First is Harvard, 3rd is Cal (Stanford is 2nd). then between Princeton at 7th and Brown at 67th (inclusive) are 6 Ivies and 19 publics that have undergraduates (Dartmouth is way below, in the same tier as George Mason and FSU).</p>

<p>The difference between a good flagship and Ivy is not the faculty, but the size of the school and the student body. </p>

<p>nothing I said is inconsistent with your statement. The handful of top State Flagships are on Broadway. </p>

<p>I deliberately made my statement exclusive of naming any particular institution(s). The point is that if you look, for instance, at law schools, AAAS members exist at only 20 schools at all and are concentrated in the top 5. Someone with top ability in that field will have a more expansive experience than someone at the 180 or so schools that have no one at that level of accomplishment in my opinion. You can argue that the teaching in the bottom 180 could be as good, but in my opinion, in all probability it is not.</p>

<p>I will let you sucker me into making a remark-Some of my best friends wear “Stanford, the Berkeley of the West Bay” t shirts" .</p>

<p>@"vienna man"‌ </p>

<p>Huh? And what do law school rankings have to do with undergraduate education? The OP isn’t looking at law schools, I hope you realize.</p>

<p>Also, I guess you consider 20 “a handful”, but most people don’t.</p>

<p>

These are ridiculous questions. Of course you can be successful without attending an elite college. And of course many have children with high salaries who did not attend elite colleges. For example, salary.com reports the following average mid career salaries for CS majors by school:</p>

<p>Cal State SLO – $125k
UCSB – $120k
MIT – $117k
Virgina Polytech – $117k
Cornell – $116k
Rutgers – $115k
San Jose State – $114k
University of Washington – $112k
University of Maryland – $112k
Carnegie Mellon – $111k</p>

<p>There is a correlation with selectivity, but there are not great differences in mid-career CS major salary between elite colleges like MIT and Cornell, and less elite college like Rutgers and Virginia Polytech.</p>

<p>To the OP: no, you absolutely do NOT need to graduate from a “top tier” school in order to make a good salary. Your parents are wrong about that. Finding your way into a career path that pays well is a chancy business no matter what, and going to an elite school is no guarantee of career success, which is something that depends far more on who you are as a person than on where you went to school. I’m sorry I can’t tell you what the secret is to making lots of money quickly, but I can assure you, it isn’t being an alumnus of a “top tier” school. </p>

<p>With regard to @annasdad’s link, there are a lot of assertions in that article, some of them contradictory (the LACs the author touts may be better at introducing students to the life of the mind, but they’re just as culpable of fostering the elitist educational system he complains of as large research universities). But I do agree that the arms race of training and grooming our kids to become the perfect candidates for elite colleges reached absurd levels long ago. I also think that there’s something wrong with the attitude in our society that a college degree is necessary for anything above a minimum-wage job. (Yes, I know there are exceptions to this; but most kids and parents across the country believe it, so the effect is the same.) The ironic thing is that a college degree won’t in fact guarantee you an above-minimum-wage job, so after spending all that money and time and effort, you may be right back where you were. </p>

<p>And now we have people like the author of this article sneering that those who attend college in order to further their career prospects are missing the point and that cultivating the life of the mind and broadening one’s intellectual horizons is the true meaning of a college education. It’s all very well to insult the thousands of kids who believed that they had to go to college to get a good job, and who just want to be taught what they need to know in order to land said job, but the fact is that most of these kids wouldn’t sign up for a mind-broadening experience if they didn’t think their careers demanded it.</p>

<p>Tell your parents about the WhatsApp guy, welfare to billionaire through SJSU. What? Really? No way?
<a href=“WhatsApp Founders Become Billionaires In $19 Billion Facebook Deal”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/02/19/whatsapp-founders-become-billionaires-in-19-billion-deal-with-facebook/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I doubt that more than three people reading this thread knew which ranking I was talking about until you posted that. So…thanks? :-/ </p>

<p>But I’ve wasted enough time here. The answer to the OP: don’t kill yourself to get into Stanford, some LACs are “better” and purer, some of which even cost less, but all colleges are poor value, with the possible exception of the free ones, and all are less intellectually-developing than the self-study of a clever autodidact.</p>

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<p>And not all Broadway shows are great. They have bad nights. Cast members who flake out. Annoying people in the audience. Simply being in a category does not ensure that everyone’s experience will be optimal.</p>

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<p>IF that interaction with faculty actually happens. I think people overstate the “brush with greatness” factor sometimes. In a big lecture class, students usually don’t have personal interaction with the faculty. In upper-level classes the odds are better, but at schools that emphasize research as much as or more than undergraduate teaching, the opportunities may still be limited. This is why I agree with Purple Titan that LACs tend to punch above their weight–the faculty are there to teach, not publish.</p>

<p>As for the student body being “better” at some of these places–again, there are nuances that families need to consider. Kids who are super-competitive, have never taken risks and thus have never learned from failure (because that’s what it took to get into their top schools) may not be as interesting to interact with as those in a more relaxed environment or who have taken a path based on intellectual curiosity rather than checking all the right boxes.</p>

<p>Do the best you can, apply to the best schools you can afford, and graduate from one of them in four years with the least possible debt. </p>

<p>The rest is just an argument we can have and have had on here for years. </p>

<p>Good luck to you</p>

<p>A top tier education may be a luxury good but that does NOT mean it is a waste of money. And the education at Northwestern vs Youngstown State vs Northern Illinois vs Truman State could vary was well. </p>

<p>Annasdad, I’d say welcome back but really, I’m sick of reading misinterpretations of other’s posters, and articles. About the virtues of other types of colleges.</p>

<p>@long2181998‌ I am right now reading a college ranking book called The Alumni Factor which surveys alumnis of 227 top schools on things like household income, net worth, as well as intangibles like overall happiness etc. I think you & your parents would find it interesting. See if you can borrow a copy from your library.</p>

<p>Thats vague… Can you provide a summary?</p>

<p>I don’t know not why people complain about tuition for top tier colleges. Tuition for top tier colleges, second tier colleges, and third tier colleges are almost the same, unless we are talking about private colleges vs public colleges.</p>

<p>Tuition range for private national universities:</p>

<p>Princeton University #1 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $40,170 tuition and fees
Boston University #41 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $44,910 tuition and fees
George Washington University #52 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $47,343 tuition and fees
Loyola University Chicago #101 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $35,503 tuition and fees
University of San Diego #91 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $41,392 tuition and fees
University of La Verne #161 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $35,000 tuition and fees
Pace University #173 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $38,069 tuition and fees
Andrews University #181 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $25,470 tuition and fees </p>

<p>Tuition range for private LACs:</p>

<p>Williams College # 1 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $46,600 tuition and fees
Colorado College #31 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $44,222 tuition and fees
Gettysburg College #50 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $45,870 tuition and fees
Furman University - #52 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $43,164 tuition and fees
Muhlenberg College #61 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $42,755 tuition and fees
Lewis & Clark College #74 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $41,928 tuition and fees
Ohio Wesleyan University - #100 USNWR 2013-2014 Tuition $40,510 tuition and fees </p>

<p>@coolweather: a lot more merit aid available at lower tier schools. At some of those lower tier schools, almost no one pays the list price. </p>

<p>There is another reason to avoid top tier colleges that has nothing to do with money. </p>

<p>Increasingly they wont transfer credit for freshman. </p>

<p>In order to get into these schools they all want rigor in coursework. Prep schools provide that in the form of AP and college level classes. Students in Minnesota, for example, are eligible to earn as much as 2 years of credit, for free, while in high school.</p>

<p>But top tier schools wont take those credits. They black list them and make the students retake those classes. </p>

<p>Yet transfer students taking the exact same classes can transfer them. </p>

<p>“I am right now reading a college ranking book called The Alumni Factor which surveys alumnis of 227 top schools on things like household income, net worth, as well as intangibles like overall happiness etc.”</p>

<p>Ranking schools on the income of their alumni is so pathetic, though. I mean, really. School A, everyone becomes a doctor, lawyer, engineer or WSJ financier; School B has some of those but also students who become ministers, public servants, artists, musicians, actors, etc. – and so therefore I’m supposed to believe School A is “better” than School B? Huh? What kind of dumb thinking is that? What matters is whether a school helps you get to where YOU want to go, not whether where you want to go happens to be lucrative or not.</p>

<h1>38 The alumni survey asked 19 questions, and then they gave more weight to some questions than others.</h1>

<p>The book shows the top rankings for each question as well as overall, then has a profile sheet for each school.
The top-weighted 5 questions (too much to type all 19) were: “Friendship Development, Intellectual Development, Preparation for Career Success, Would Personally Choose Again, Would Recommend to Student.”
I thought it was pretty interesting, and kind of mirrors the questions people commonly ask on CC about specific schools.
The authors in the intro explained that they were trying to take a similar tack to what JD Powers did when it first started ranking cars based on consumer satisfaction.</p>