At what point is it worth it to go to a state school instead of a expensive private?

College Search & Lists
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<p>Well, I’ll put it to you this way. I think we can all agree that Caltech is one of the most difficult schools in the country, where the concept of grade inflation holds no purchase. Caltech is notorious for taking some of the most talented technical students in the country…and tagging a great many of them with poor grades.</p>

<p>Yet the fact remains that an incredible ~40% of all Caltech bachelor’s degree recipients will eventually receive PhD’s, and surely many more could have done so but simply chose to do something else with their lives (for example, surely many of them, especially the engineers and computer scientists, were satisfied with earning just a master’s). That’s by far the highest rate of future PhD attainment of any undergraduate program in the country. </p>

<p>In other words, however harsh the Caltech environment may be, the students do not seem to be deterred from graduate studies. Far from it in fact.</p>

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The question I ask is: could the $150k+ make a significant difference in the student’s life? Even for a family with $200k annual income and just one child, that’s a full year of work.</p>

<p>Regarding the rest of your post, you never explain why being an average engineer is bad and absolutely never explain why being an average - not elite, average - banker or consultant is better.</p>

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<p>i just read the last two pages and i dont know if this is on topic but:</p>

<p>200k in tuition is a ****load of money for my family. i am rich enough to not get any financial aid but not so rich that 200k is just a slap on the wrist. </p>

<p>are top 20 schools WORTH 200k? or should i just go to UMD where its a hellofa lot cheaper? what if you end up working for the government? that 200k wont be recovered right away…</p>

<p>i mean a lot of adults nowadays idiotically perceive an individual by what college they attended so saying that i go to UMD is like “wow he’s a dump” when in reality i am not.</p>

<p>i mean i dont really care about what they think haha. but i am just giving one reason as to why questions like these come up.</p>

<p>so: any answers (preferably not 5 paragraphs long please).</p>

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<p>ipoppills…</p>

<p>If your family cannot afford to pay $200k+ for college, then the discussion is moot.</p>

<p>You deal with what your situation is.</p>

<p>What is your situation? How much WILL your parents pay each year for college? Will they pay for all the instate costs of UMaryland? Would they pay more than that?</p>

<p>What is your intended major and career?</p>

<p>What are your stats? </p>

<p>You start with those basics, and then pick some schools that work either because your family can pay all costs or you’ll get merit.</p>

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<p>Yet even a family making $200k a year is still going to receive substantial aid from Princeton, according to Princeton’s financial aid brackets. </p>

<p>More importantly, as I said, if money is still the issue, why not avail yourself with the other options that I laid out? Have your child attend at least one year’s worth of Princeton ROTC. Have your child, as a high school extracurricular activity, learn a marketable skill such as computer network design, database programming, Web application programming, or whatnot such that he can have a decent part-time job to defray the costs of college, or perhaps even forgo college entirely for a high-paying job right out of high school, as I know certain high school students with solid computer skills are now contemplating. {For example, Janus Friis, the inventor of Skype, never even graduated from high school.} Furthermore, anybody who is good enough to get into Princeton should also be good enough to get some outside scholarships if he looks hard enough. </p>

<p>[Princeton</a> Army ROTC Home](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~rotcweb/]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/~rotcweb/)</p>

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<p>The question is not whether I think such a choice is better but rather whether *they<a href=“the%20students”>/i</a> think it is better. </p>

<p>The undeniable fact is, whether we like it or not, even many of the best engineering students do not really want to work as engineers but would rather work as consultants or bankers. For example, I can think of quite a few Berkeley engineers who graduated near the top of their class who decided that they would rather take consulting and banking jobs, sometimes even at 2nd tier consulting and banking firms. Before the financial crash, nearly half of all MIT undergrads who entered the workforce took jobs in consulting and banking, including some 2nd tier consulting and banking firms, and since about 60% of all MIT undergrads are engineers, that means that a substantial fraction of them decided not to work as engineers. Similarly, I know that a substantial fraction of engineers at Stanford will take jobs as consultants and bankers.</p>

<p>Consider the poignantly sad words of Nicholas Pearce. </p>

<p>*Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.” *</p>

<p>Read more: [Are</a> We Losing Our Edge? - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575-6,00.html#ixzz17UEfAtcq]Are”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575-6,00.html#ixzz17UEfAtcq)</p>

<p>So think about what that means. MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley are arguably the 3 most prestigious engineering schools in the country - yet even there many of the students don’t really want to actually work as engineers, but instead prefer jobs in consulting and banking. Furthermore, those consulting firms, even the 2nd tier ones, are surely not going to be recruiting from the bottom of the engineering class, but rather from the top. Therefore the better students from the most prestigious engineering programs - those very same students who you would think should love engineering - are ironically precisely the students who are being lured away from engineering. </p>

<p>The reason, at least to me, seems to be clear. Not only do engineering jobs not really pay that much compared to consulting and (especially) finance jobs, but, more importantly, the career progression is significantly slower. If you work for 5 years as an engineer, your pay is probably not going to be that much higher than it was when you started. I know one guy who was initially happy to take an engineering job that started him at $60k, but became far less sanguine after finding out that coworkers with decades of seniority over him were still only making about $90k. But after 5 years of consulting or banking, your pay will be substantially higher: at least double, and perhaps even triple or more of what you started. </p>

<p>But even if you don’t accept that rationale, the question remains: why do so many of the better engineering students from the top engineering schools take jobs as consultants and bankers rather than as actual engineers?</p>

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<p>i mean, families can afford to pay 200k. the question is though, is that specific college which demands $200k worth going to over an instate school.</p>

<p>my family can afford to pay 200k+, but we’d rather not obviously unless there is a great benefit. So does a top 20 school, where i would have no chance at aid, offer something that is worth 200k? I realize i am not being very articulate right now sorry about that haha.</p>

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<p>What top 20 schools are you looking at? UMD is an awesome school.</p>

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<p>Amen, lyndeenj. That tends to happen on CC. Most posters, parents and students, on CC are focused on the so-called “elite” schools. Just count the difference in the number of posts for specific schools.</p>

<p>Anyway, you are 100% correct. What I find amusing is how many posters talk about “rankings” or if the private is “top 10” or “top 20” then it’s better than a public. Where is the bible that says this college or that is top 20 or top 10? The Fortune list is different than the USNWR list which is different from all the other lists. It’s like religion. It’s impossible to know which religion is the “true” religion. Everybody is guessing it’s their religion, but no one can prove it, at least not while they are alive.</p>

<p>I’ve hired dozens and dozens of college and grad school grads, as well as experienced college grads. I’ve never once looked up their college’s “ranking” in any magazine or cared. Not on the undergraduate level. It really doesn’t matter, as long as their degree isn’t from one of those online for-profit schools like University of Phoenix.</p>

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<p>*my family can afford to pay 200k+, but we’d rather not obviously unless there is a great benefit. So does a top 20 school, where i would have no chance at aid, offer something that is worth 200k? I realize i am not being very articulate right now sorry about that haha. *</p>

<p>that depends…</p>

<p>What is your major and career? If you’re going to be an engineer, then a great education could be had elsewhere for less. If you’re going to be a physician or lawyer, and the money would be better spent on med/law school, then again, it might be better for you to go to your state flagship or some other GOOD school that doesn’t cost as much. MOST careers do NOT require at TOP 20 school education. </p>

<p>However, some would argue that if you want to work in finance on Wall Street then you need to go to an undergrad with a tippy top B-school.</p>

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“Most who qualify have 2 children in college” - [Princeton</a> University | Who Qualifies for Aid?](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/)

ROTC is a serious commitment. It can be a good solution for many, many kids, but I wouldn’t say that it solves the funding problem altogether.

Turn: Students who don’t make the cut in state school engineering programs can fall back on these career skills, mitigating the harms from their poor grades.

We’ve had this discussion before: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/997974-wsj-companies-favor-big-state-schools-recruiting.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/997974-wsj-companies-favor-big-state-schools-recruiting.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>EDIT: Sorry, wrong link. It is fixed now :)</p>

<p>Last time, I mentioned the Kahneman & Deaton study, which found that emotional quality of life didn’t increase with income increases beyond $75k. Your ultimate response was that:

So, if the tangible long-run impacts (happiness) are equal in the average engineering and average consulting jobs… why does it matter that the students have irrational goals now?

Now, sakky, I’m confused. If even 2nd tier consulting and banking firms recruit from the top of the engineering programs at elite schools, how can a student who was weeded out of engineering with awful grades and had to drop down to another major possibly hope to get an offer?</p>

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<p>*What I find amusing is how many posters talk about “rankings” or if the private is “top 10” or “top 20” then it’s better than a public. Where is the bible that says this college or that is top 20 or top 10? The Fortune list is different than the USNWR list which is different from all the other lists. It’s like religion. It’s impossible to know which religion is the “true” religion. Everybody is guessing it’s their religion, but no one can prove it, at least not while they are alive.
*</p>

<p>Very true…and I think that USNews only counts ACADEMICS as 40% in their rankings…so if that is true, then a person who is looking for the best school (which for a prospective student usually means ACADEMICS) then the rankings may not tell you that. Ranking #15 may be academically stronger than Ranking#10.</p>

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<p>*Yet even a family making $200k a year is still going to receive substantial aid from Princeton, according to Princeton’s financial aid brackets.
*</p>

<p>??? I don’t think that is true unless the family has more than 2 kids in college or maybe a very large family.</p>

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<p>Question: At what point is it worth it to go to a state school instead of a expensive private?</p>

<p>Check how much their graduates make after college. If the State U grads make more than the Ivies, then there is very little sense to aim for an Ivy. For example, I’d rather attend Berkeley than Brown or Cornell or Columbia, for most programs. I believe most surveys would point to Berkeley having grads with better pay and opportunities than grads of those 3 Ivies, in general. Or, I would choose Ross or McIntire (or the business econ at UCLA) than a BA degree from the lower-ranked Ivies or Chicago or Vanderbilt and the like. So, unless there is a very personal reason to attend an expensive private school, I’d stick to a top-rated State U.</p>

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<p>Wow people have not figured it out yet after so many pages of debate . . .</p>

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<p>LOL, love the way you brought Berkeley into the discussion.</p>

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<p>I agree with the points mom2collegekids has made. College selection is not a one size fits all process. “Rankings” by major publications are all over the map and not a perfect measure of anything. What are your interested in, what field of study, do you want to live away from home, do you prefer a small college to a larger one, what is your family financial situation? Those are factors that mean more to what a particular student should be considering in making their selection. How much you make after graduation seems very simliar to that other recent thread on success after college. Not sure you measure ‘success’ based on someone’s income and some career fields tend to pay less than other, doesn’t make one good or bad.</p>

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<p>Look at the data. Princeton provides an average grant somewhere between 46-62% (hence, average of 54%) of tuition to a family making $200k. </p>

<p>[Princeton</a> University | Who Qualifies for Aid?](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/financialaid/how_it_works/who_qualifies/)</p>

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<p>Yeah, so? Generally speaking, families who need aid will be paying for 2 kids in college. What’s your point? </p>

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<p>The first year of ROTC is not that much of a serious commitment - certainly not as much as engineering weeders are. </p>

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<p>Turn: students with those skills may not even really need to go to college at all, as they can obtain a perfectly good job right out of high school. </p>

<p>Frankly, I can think of some of them who were offered more money right out of high school than many starting engineers. For them, the only economically rational reason to attend college at all is to give them a chance for a truly high-paying job…such as consulting or finance. The upshot is that it’s difficult to understand why such a student would choose to go to a low-tier school just for engineering when he can probably make equivalent money without college. </p>

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<p>Because it’s exactly the same answer as I provided on the other thread. Even if it is true that long-run happiness equilibrates in the long run, that doesn’t matter, because those students don’t agree. We can try to convince them all that we want, and each one of them is still going to think that they’re the exception to the rule. Hence, they’re largely still going to prefer consulting/finance over engineering even if it doesn’t actually help them in the long run. </p>

<p>The point is, it doesn’t matter what we may think of consulting and finance vs. engineering. The only thing that matters is what they think, as they’re the ones who are making the career choices. </p>

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<p>Simple. The core idea is that, if you’re smart, you’re not going to remain within the engineering major if you’re performing poorly in the weeders. If you can see that you’re not doing well, you, along with many other weeded-out engineering students, are going to migrate to an easier major where your GPA will quickly recover. Consulting and banking firms don’t care so much about your engineering-specific grades, but rather about your overall grades. If you’re a former engineering student who was weeded out by a few poor engineering grades but then feasted on a string of easy A’s in Film Studies, then that’s all that matters. </p>

<p>MIT has an ingenious system that other schools should emulate: all grades below C earned in the freshman year are not recorded on your external transcript.. Furthermore, MIT provides an ‘exploratory’ option in the sophomore year which effectively allows all students a retroactive drop - after seeing your final grade - for one class a semester. So if you see that you got a terrible grade, you just drop the class. Hence, if you were weeded out of an MIT engineering program, the consulting and banking firms will have no idea. </p>

<p>Why can’t other engineering programs do the same? Yes, Berkeley, I’m looking at you. </p>

<p>{Note, Stanford’s strategy is to simply not give out truly terrible grades in the first place. Stanford runs arguably the most (relatively) grade inflated engineering program of any of the top engineering schools. For decades, the ‘F’ grade wasn’t ever assigned as a matter of policy, and even now such a grade is practically never given out except for truly egregious student conduct - i.e. the student truly never does anything. As long as you show up and do the work, you’re almost surely going to get at least a C. }</p>

<p>More broadly, I think that all engineering programs should simply cancel the engineering grades of all students who are weeded out of the major. If the guy isn’t going to major in engineering anyway, who cares what his engineering grades are? Let him walk away with a clean slate.</p>

<p>But even without such a reform, engineering students who are crushed by weeder grades will have to leave engineering, but - assuming that they weren’t expelled entirely - will still have ample opportunity to repair their GPA’s by taking creampuff courses in order to be competitive for consulting and banking firms. </p>

<p>But that of course presumes that such firms are even recruiting at your school in the first place. If you’re are UDelaware, even if you do manage to repair your GPA, you’re still going to get a consulting or finance job simply because they don’t recruit there.</p>

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<p>My son graduated from MIT in May. I remember the day when he learned of his acceptance and we were all so happy and proud that our son was not only the first in our entire family to attend such a fine school but that he was the first to redefine what it meant to get a college degree. Most of our family members attended commuter state schools and very few actually dormed at nearby state schools. </p>

<p>As proud as I was I was also concerned that my son would be among so many very accomplished students. I really did’nt know if he would make it at MIT. His first year was a huge adjustment and although he does not say too much about it, I believe he studied more than other students that he knew. We had received a phone call once during exam time and I wanted to cry when I got off the phone…he sounded defeated and concerned that he might have picked the wrong school and the wrong major. We talked for a long time and he told me later that he had a good night sleep after that call. I did not sleep at all. There were many times that I questioned if his MIT education was worth what he was going through. When May came along and I watched my son graduate I was trully glad he was done because although we are proud and he has done very well, MIT is not for the faint of heart. When my sons were applying the following year after their brother our oldest son suggested that they apply to other schools.</p>

<p>The interesting thing about it is his fond memories are already apparent, but every now and than I see that glimpse of, I think I could have achieved the same thing elsewhere. Who knows? We are very grateful for the help MIT gave our son with financial aid and the life long memories that those four years provided. He came out of MIT even more humble than when he entered and he will be leaving the nest soon after paying off the loans he needed to attend. He accomplished alot in the last few years so we are proud of him. He was the first in our family to really push the limit and he set the bar for our other kids.</p>

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<p>sefago, I didn’t read back, thus my answer was directed to the OP’s question.</p>

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Why not? Why can’t I bring Berkeley - a top State U - into the discussion when it is a great example of a worthy State U that awards degrees more valuable than many EXPENSIVE private schools?</p>

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<p>mommathree, what a beautiful, moving story! Thank you!</p>