<p>Well, to be fair, MIT is one of the wealthiest universities in the world and can thereby provide an excellent education for poorer students for a cut-rate price. For example, I can think of plenty of people who found it cheaper to attend MIT than to attend their flagship state university. </p>
<p>But I agree that if you don’t qualify for aid, and you’re sure about working as an engineer (and don’t care about those ‘specialty’ engineering career paths mentioned above), then you may want to attend a cheaper school. Perhaps better yet, you may want to attend Olin or Cooper Union that, as a matter of policy, offer partial/full tuition scholarships to every student.</p>