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<p>Fit. Specific programs in the student’s major. The improved network–although I suspect the difference here is not that great. Not wanting to go to school ten minutes from your house.</p>
<p>Obviously none of these things is worth bankrupting yourself for, but there may not be a significant cost difference between Harvard and UCB. If you are poor, the generous Ivy is sometimes a better deal than the state school.</p>
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Or the fact that at an Ivy you’re likely to get significant aid. HYP are committed to meeting <em>all</em> of a student’s need, while most state schools have comparatively tiny aid budgets.</p>
<p>Looking at the numbers, for many students it’d be thousands of dollars <em>more</em> to attend a state school.</p>
<p>According to Harvard’s CDS, ~43% of Harvard students either do not qualify for need-based aid or do not apply. That’s a lot of people paying the full rack-rate.</p>
<p>^^And they probably can afford it.</p>
<p>To the OP–it all depends on what you plan or want to do in life. If you are going back to your small town or city to teach or find a local job, then a large debt to go to Harvard, etc., is probably not worth it. However, if you want to get a job in certain fields or certain cities, an Ivy degree is well worth it. </p>
<p>This is not meant to be insulting at all. I’m just talking about return on your investment.</p>
<p>Seriously? If you get into HYPS, you should go.</p>
<p>what about going OOS for Michigan instead of UW?</p>
<p>I am not actually going to any of thoose schools, I was just wondering because my friends parents want him to go to Princeton if he gets in but he wants to go to UVA.</p>
<p>my brother picked washington university in st louis over uc berkeley for the wustl premed program, among other factors. but it was a tough decision at first.</p>
<p>Because no matter what happens financially, it’s the ivy league and it will always be perceived as the best.</p>
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<p>No matter what? You can’t completely ignore the financial component, and it’s quite possible (blasphemous though it may be on this forum) that someone can actually dislike the environment of Yale and feel more comfortable at a different school.</p>
<p>It’s four years and thousands of dollars. Bragging rights aren’t worth it.</p>
<p>Just for an example of why you have to look at the Fin’l aid package and not the full sticker price when comparing schools, my daughter was accepted at Cal but would have had about $25k more in debt (total for 4 years) than the package from Brown. That enabled her to try an East Coast school like she desired.</p>
<p>And for reputation, you have to look deeper too.</p>
<p>Funny but Brown doesn’t have so much name recognition in Calif as Berkeley does, for man on the street, but grad schools and employeers like microsoft and google know of school’s reputation be it ivy or no. Probably man on the street doesn’t know that Brown has a great computer science department.</p>
<p>And she was accepted to UCLA and to UW-Madison among others, both great schools for Computer Science. But ended up at Madison. Again in Calif, UCLA name is huge, but Madison has a world class grad program. And UCLA didn’t come through with the funding and guarantees that Madison did.</p>
<p>I was a little sick at first of her not going to Cal, but I was a little worried about getting shut out of classes and wondered if they weed people out in some areas. I could see at Brown the opportunities she got for undergrad research and the access to professors, able to get into any class she wanted by asking, even if she didn’t have the prereq or if it was a grad school course.</p>
<p>Some employers are very snobbish, if you will, about hiring from top elite universities, be they public or private. Google, Goldman Saks come immediately to mind.</p>
<p>That said, watch the spending and debt kids. Now is not the time to rack up huge undergrad debt or to spend your parents retirement.</p>
<p>Soccer, regarding going to UVa instead of Princeton, why would anyone turn down Princeton?</p>
<p>"I am not actually going to any of thoose schools, I was just wondering because my friends parents want him to go to Princeton if he gets in but he wants to go to UVA. "</p>
<p>“Soccer, regarding going to UVa instead of Princeton, why would anyone turn down Princeton?”</p>
<p>I know many students who turned down HYP schools to attend Michigan (UVa is in the same league as Michigan, so I am sure my observations are common at UVa too). Most of them did so for Extra-Curricular/Financial reasons. Many of them came from well off but not wealthy families. We are talking a household income over $250,000 but well under $500,000/year. As such, they received no aid from HYP but at the same time, did not exactly think that spending $200,000+ to attend those schools was easily justified. </p>
<p>Then along came schools like Michigan and UVa, which are obviously not as good but certainly not much weaker. Michigan and UVa are definitely top 25 universities, some would even argue they are among the top 15. Either way, the gap that separates the top5 universities from the next 15-20 universities is not that significant.</p>
<p>In many instances, those students received full rides to play a sport like Soccer or Golf or whatever at Michigan…and/or they received a hefty scholarship for academic merit. Either way, attending Michigan (or UVa) would have cost them anywhere from absolutely nothing to a max of $100,000 over 4 years. To many cost conscious/sensitive families, spending $100,000-$200,000 more on a college degree is very hard to justify, especially if they have more than one child.</p>
<p>I also met several students who actually turned down HYP schools to attend Michigan (I am sure there are several at UVa too) for non-financial reasons. Some prefered the atmosphere at Michigan much better than the one at HYP because they found the students more down to earth and approachable or the town of Ann Arbor and the campus are more welcoming. Others wanted to stay close to home (if they come from the Midwest) or experience a completely different environment by leaving home (if they come from tri-state area). Yet some others wanted the school spirit that one gets at a school like Michigan and that is not as pronounced at a school like HYP. Those are all personal reasons that will apply to some but not most students. I would say the % of students who are chose Michigan (or UVa) over HYP is well under 10%…possibly under 5%.</p>
<p>^^^^That is the real reason he doesn’t want to go to Princeton he wants to enjoy his 4 years and party with good looking girls, play competitive intramural sports, and get good grades but not at the cost of having fun, which doesn’t think he could do and he doesn’t want to be with stuck up kids who think they are better than everyone else because they are smart because he knows that there are more to people than just their Gpa.</p>
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<p>Actually, Williams (along with Dartmouth) went back to offering loans. Budget cuts. Sucks to be over-leveraged, don’t it…</p>
<p>Why Ivy League ?</p>
<p>Hmmmm…why would anyone want to attend one of the most prestigious and strongest academic universities in the world?</p>
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<p>I’m not surprised his parents are making him go to Princeton, because these are all terrible reasons to choose UVA.</p>