<p>This is probably a common question, but I wanted to ask it with regards to my personal situation. I am looking at several "prestigious" schools such as Notre Dame, Northwestern and Cornell. My question is whether it is worth paying a much higher tuition to go to one of these schools as compared to going to University of Wisconsin-Madison, a in-state college that is a high ranking public school. </p>
<p>I am uncertain about what I will be majoring in, but I am interested in Chemistry as well as History/Political Science. Is it worth paying a lot more money to receive the same level Degree in Chemistry from one of the top schools than from Madison? Is there a large difference in material taught?</p>
<p>The difference will not be in the material taught.</p>
<p>If you use the US News grad school rankings as a proxy for the undergrad schools, then for chemistry Northwestern is #7 (4.6/5.0), Wisconsin is #9 (4.5), Cornell is #10 (4.4), and Notre Dame is #60. For political science, there’s Wisconsin at #15 (3.9), Cornell at #19 (3.8), Northwestern at #21 (3.6), and Notre Dame at #36 (3.1). In history, it’s Cornell #11 (4.4), Northwestern #14 (4.3), Wisconsin #14 (4.3), and Notre Dame #36 (3.5)</p>
<p>Now, it may NOT be the best proxy to use grad school ratings for undergrad, but it’s a start. Further, there are sub-specialties in each of the areas that if you are interested in, one school may definitely be better than another. And there are other things to consider like learning environment, location, social life, etc. But we aren’t talking LAC vs. University here, so all things being equal, Notre Dame should probably not be on your list, and you might be able to make the case for Cornell or Northwestern, but given the bang for the buck, Wisconsin seems to be a heck of a bargain for you.</p>
<p>However, if you’re undecided about major, it doesn’t make much sense to weigh departmental rankings that heavily.</p>
<p>The privates you mentioned will offer more opportunities in certain industries (investment banks and consulting; at least Northwestern and Cornell would). In some circles, prestige is a bigger deal than others. However, if you become a chemist, a chemistry major from UW-Madison will be just as highly respected as those from some other schools (just as an example where UW-Madison would be in the top tier).</p>
<p>In general, UW-Madison is held in high esteem in many fields, so if you are full-pay (no fin aid) and undecided, I think you would need a pretty compelling reason to choose a school that costs a lot more if your family isn’t loaded.</p>
<p>It’s more what you DO, OP, than where you do it. Save your money for grad school. You might get tuition and living expenses, but it won’t pay the whole taquito. </p>
<p>It may be, however, that some of these schools will be cheaper than u/g Wisconsin. Run the net price calculators at each school and figure out what your family would be expected to pay.</p>
<p>A thing that seems to come along with many prestigious universities is good financial aid. While I am not saying prestige goes correlationaly with the % of need met, universities like Ivy League, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, WashU, etc. give great financial aid for those who qualify. This means that these elite selective private schools can end up being cheaper than in-state publics for those who don’t receive large merit scholarships. Then, it becomes very appealing to take that need-based aid from the “expensive” OOS private.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for replying! Is it common for those schools to give a large amount of finacial aid? I had read that Notre Dame was not as generous as other schools, and I haven’t seen in terms of like a percent helped or amount given for the other two. Is that listed on their websites? </p>
<p>Also, I have a brother who is currently going to Madison. He is going into business and was able to enter the business school as a freshman due to his ACT score and GPA ( 33, 4.1). I have slightly higher scores (34, 4.2) and similar other stats. Any ideas if there is a similar progam like this for other departments at Madison or other schools?</p>
<p>I do not know what you mean by your last question. Your brother was admitted to business but business at Madison is hard to get into, so bully to your brother. What other schools are hard to direct admit into besides business, is that what you’re asking? Well, engineering, but not chemistry or history.</p>
<p>As for FA, it all depends on your stats, your family’s ability to pay, how much a school wants you, etc. Why don’t you read the first post on this ural and respond:</p>
<p><a href=“Before you ask which colleges to apply to, please consider - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1621234-before-you-ask-which-colleges-to-apply-to-please-consider-p1.html</a></p>
<p>We’ll get back to you.</p>
<p>Well, at the full-need need-blind schools, stats don’t matter once you’re in. Getting in is generally hard, however.</p>
<p>And ND is not known for great fin aid (WashU doesn’t promise to cover full need, BTW). But NU and Cornell do.</p>
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<p>Go to each school’s web site and find the net price calculator. Use it to get a financial aid estimate from each school.</p>
<p>“Prestige” is hard to measure directly. What observable, measurable features do the most prestigious colleges tend to have that differentiate them from other schools? Usually, the top 20 universities do have excellent need-based aid, relatively small average class sizes, many distinguished professors, good facilities, and top students. These qualities may or may not be very important to you.</p>
<p>Average class size and student selectivity may be the two measurable features that most clearly differentiate highly-regarded state schools like Wisconsin from prestigious private universities like ND and Cornell. A higher concentration of top students may tend to influence the pace of instruction. Along with smaller classes, it may tend to result in higher-quality classroom discsussion. However, Wisconsin has many small classes, as well as many students who enter with high test scores and GPAs. The impact on student outcomes of greater selectivity, smaller average class sizes, etc. is very hard to measure (since you need to tease out the confounding effects of cherry-picking stronger students in admissions.) Some researchers have measured the impact on career earnings and found that after controlling for admissions selectivity, there does not appear to be a significant earnings pay-off from attending a more selective university (<a href=“Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables | NBER”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322</a>).</p>
<p>Cornell and Northwestern graduates might be favored over Wisconsin graduates by some specific, apparently prestige-conscious investment banks or consulting firms (Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Bain, etc.) At least, that’s what many CC posts suggest (often without citing any data to quantify the claims.) However, banking, finance and business consulting comprise a rather large economic sector (with career opportunities all over the world). There are not enough Ivy/Top-20 graduates to shut all other graduates out of all these opportunities thoughout the sector. </p>
<p>In other kinds of outcomes (besides earnings and hiring), there may be measurable benefits to attending certain kinds of schools. The top private universities seem to out-perform the top public universities in per capita alumni PhD completions. Small liberal arts colleges seem to out-perform both public and private research universities (other than technical institutes) by this measure. “Prestige”, per se, does not seem to have much if any impact on per capita PhD completion rates. It may have some impact on graduate program admissions, but so far I have not seen good data on CC that clearly demonstrates this, after controlling for selection effects. </p>
<p>Personally, I do not think it makes much sense to pay a big price premium for “prestige” (per se).</p>
<p>Don’t worry about whether other people get good aid or not, worry about your own numbers and run the NPC. I know someone going to ND on basically a full ride this year. But they are high need.</p>