<p>My daughter was accepted for electrical engineering at Stanford and Berkeley (Regents). She is thinking of going to Berkeley. The difference between the two colleges for an upper middle class family (such as ours) is ~$100k over four years. Stanford has a big name/reputation, but is it so much bigger (than Berkeley) to balance this amount of money over the course of her life-I doubt the name will give her a commensurate increase in income. I guess each family must come to a decision on this. For us, I am sure she will do well at both schools; and the difference in acceptance to grad school in the future will probably be minimal if any (and that is where the “name” becomes important for jobs–once you finish grad school no one really cares if you went to UCLA or UCB or Stanford or Princeton–they care where you got your grad degree). There may be some increased satisfaction in going to a bigger name school over the course of her life, but doubt she will recoup it financially. My older son was not accepted to Stanford and instead graduated from Berkeley mechE/materials in 4 years, no problem, and was accepted to MIT for grad school-so we didn’t have the Stanford vs Berkeley choice for her, but her outcome is great out of Berkeley. And she has no debt from undergrad.</p>