<p>“most surveys would point to Berkeley having grads with better pay and opportunities than grads of those 3 Ivies, in general”</p>
<p>What surveys of “opportunities” are you talking about? or “pay”?</p>
<p>The one survey I’ve seen trotted out here, by Lehigh boosters, is that Payscale thing which showed that degrees from: Bucknell, Colgate, Colorado School of Mines, Lehigh and RPI are more “valuable” than degrees from Berkeley, by that measure. Using that same data, someone concluded that attending Union College in Schenectady, or Worcestor Polytechnic Institute, will provide a higher Return On Investment than attending Berkeley. Is that the survey you’re talking about?</p>
<p>That one doesn’t take into account:
Anyone with a graduate degree (ie the majority of graduates of some of these schools)
-Occupation (engineers do relatively well with just a bachelors, big whoop)
Chosen college major
-Anything, essentially</p>
<p>Clearly engineers and business majors make relatively a lot for terminal undergrad degree holders, and in high cost areas of the country nominal salaries of these people will be relatively high. There are too many variables unaccounted for -especially exclusion of advanced degree holders, ie the majority of grads- to make more of this survey than what it is, IMO. They are not comparing apples to apples, (or, more to point, philosophy majors to philosophy majors). And they are excluding all the people who go on to medical school, law school, veterinary school, MBAs, etc These are monumental omissions.</p>
<p>This discussion mirrors the internal debate I’ve been having with myself in the course of advising my oldest daughter on which schools to apply to. Coming from the Northeast, my ingrained assumption was that she would head off to Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Harvard or BC like her aunts and uncles did - just a question of whether you wanted a city or country, big or small. </p>
<p>Never did it occur to me that a state school would be an option. But 18yo’s have minds of their own. First on her list is Penn State. Then Virginia Tech and Illinois. My head was spinning. She did her research, figured which schools were best for her two possible majors and fit her criteria (big school, excellent engineering or architecture). She could care less about private vs state. Its all the same to her.</p>
<p>So we took the college trip and visited Penn State first - wow - was my mind changed and fast. Virginia Tech too - beautiful campuses, great facilities, nice towns, tons of activities, strong alumni connections. Sure there are going to be downsides, bigger classes and so on. But I’m confident that my daughter has made the right choices for her and will succeed at whichever program she attends. </p>
<p>No one size fits all solution for everyone. Its up to the individual to make the most of what’s available to them.</p>
<p>Now I just have to deal with the naysayers in my family and community …</p>
<p>Personally I think it’s worth it if you will be over around ~$40,000 in debt at the expensive private. I don’t see the point of going into more debt than that, especially if you have designs on graduate school.</p>
<p>Disagree! Same old threads where people who went or wished they’d went to ivies pontificate about their superiority to state schools. Get off of the high horse and be grateful or hopeful that you have a child smart enough to get into an ivy or state school and that you’ve given them the necessary tools to succeed in life. The most important lesson a parent can teach their child is to live and love life!! Not to make sure you get into the school I want you to get into.
To the poster who discussed kids and video games, etc. HUH?? My kids were taught computer skills in grade school, and my son is taking accounting, graphic communications, etc. as electives in high school. And yes, he even plays video games and dj’s on the side, plus he’s a nationally ranked athlete and more importantly, he’s a great kid. I do believe I’m already blessed without the “ivy”!</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>
<p>Ranking of #29 might be stronger academically than a ranking of #15 too. ;-)</p>
<p>Momma-three I experienced the same thing your son did. It’s really hard to appreciate just how valuable the MIT experience is until you’ve been out a few years and see how well you can execute compared to your peers who didn’t face quite the intensity that you did. Many years later I can assure you that few other schools offer anything quite as intense as an MIT undergraduate education, and while he may not cherish the years spent getting it, I hope that he will eventually discover that it was worth every minute of the pain and agony he (and you ) endured to get it.</p>
I’m not talking about people who are deemed to have financial aid. They get a good deal at most elite private schools. I’m talking about the opportunity cost of substantial savings and zero debt (the latter is important if the family has not managed their money well or has illiquid assets, in which case loans might be used).
The opportunity cost of a year at a state school with merit aid is probably low enough to be worthwhile simply because it allows the student to get a feel for engineering and decide if they would prefer it to their other marketable skill. If they get weeded out, the harms are minimal because they can fall back on a job.
Our whole discussion was based on the assumption that the student actually wants to be an engineer at this time. While I realize that this might change if they went to an elite school and were recruited by elite IB firms, if they are aiming for engineering now they don’t need any convincing. At this point, the only relevant question is whether they would actually receive tangible benefits from going to the elite school and having their mind changed.</p>
<p>So, still no negative impacts on average engineering jobs.
I understand your position now. But if I win on the long run benefits of average engineering vs. elite consulting then your only remaining advantage for the elite school is insurance against the low possibility that a student will underperform among peers of a lower academic caliber, which they have not done during four years of high school.</p>
<p>Hard for me to sympathize with such rich people, for they had something that I never did. </p>
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</p>
<p>Sure it does. Let’s say that you go to a lower-end school intending to become an engineer…and then don’t actually do all that well. Note, that may not necessarily mean failing. It may simply mean not really succeeding at the level that you expected. A superstar in high school is probably not going to be satisfied with earning just B’s at a lower-tier engineering program, but would probably take that as a strong sign that he is better off doing something else in which he can actually excel. </p>
<p>But that begs the question - what would that something else be? He’s at a lower-end school so there will relatively few high-ranked departments or high-end recruiting opportunities. </p>
<p>
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<p>You don’t win, because, as I said, what matters is not what the truth is, but rather what people think the truth is. As long as people think that consulting and finance will provide them with greater longer-term happiness than engineering will, then they will continue to prefer consulting and finance. Whether their beliefs are justified in the long-run is unimportant. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I disagree with the basic premise. Even if it’s true that ‘in the long run’, your happiness is not determined by what career you have, well, as Keynes once said: “In the long run, we’re all dead.” That’s like arguing that there is no point in bathing because ‘in the long run’ you just get dirty again. </p>
<p>The fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, we have to live in the here-and-now. What matters in the long run doesn’t really matter that much. What matters is what makes you happy right now and in the medium-term. </p>
<p>Many studies have purported to show that your long-term happiness is not strongly correlated with your career - in essence, you become accustomed to whatever career you have (as long as it is not penurious). But many of those same studies have found that your short to medium term happiness is definitely correlated with your career. In fact, I suspect that if you integrate the function representing ‘happiness per unit time’ over your whole lifetime, you would probably find that people with certain careers enjoy far higher happiness than those with others, simply because they enjoyed those short-term boosts of happiness that the others never enjoyed at all. </p>
<p>And besides, if in the long-run, being an average engineer vs. finance/consulting is an uninteresting long-run comparison, then why do so many engineers in average positions head for top MBA programs for the express purpose of switching careers to finance or consulting? </p>
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<p>Wrong. I didn’t say only underperformance amongst lower-caliber peers. It also includes underperformance relative to your own expectations. </p>
<p>My prior example showed that clearly. Let’s say you turn down an Ivy for Delaware ChemE, where you receive a 3.0 GPA in your weeder engineering courses. You are actually probably outperforming your peers, who are probably earning somewhere around a 2.7 GPA. {Recall that Berkeley lower-division EECS courses - not all of which are weeders - ‘typically’ assign around a 2.7 GPA). But let’s face it: earning a 3.0 GPA isn’t exactly anything to brag about, especially when you were a high school superstar who had been admitted to an elite private college. It certainly doesn’t (seemingly) compare to other UDelware students in creampuff majors who are studying far less than you, but are earning far higher grades. </p>
<p>And that gets to my core question: why exactly are engineering courses - especially weeders - require so much work and are graded so much more harshly than are courses in other majors? An ancillary question is, why does engineering need to weed at all? What we should have is grading equity. If engineering needs to weed people, then so should all of the other majors. Otherwise, engineering shouldn’t weed people. </p>
<p>But since that probably won’t change in my lifetime, we have to live with the fact that even a high school superstar can choose a lower-tier school for its engineering program and be stuck with a GPA that - while still higher than the average engineering student - is still rather unimpressive. For example, that UDelaware ChemE student, after finishing all of the weeders and heading to the upper division, might eventually pull his GPA to a 3.2-3.3 That GPA is clearly above average for an engineer, but, let’s face it, it still isn’t that great. You’re not really going to get the truly elite engineering jobs. You’re probably not going to get into a strong graduate program - whether engineering or MBA. </p>
<p>Hence, you’re probably stuck with an average or perhaps slightly above-average, but certainly not elite, engineering job. To that I would ask: as a high school superstar student, was that really your dream? Was that your great purpose in life? Is that why you worked so hard in high school? To just end up as an average to above-average engineer? </p>
<p>Like I said, I know a guy who was happy to earn his initial engineering starting salary of $60k - only to be deeply shocked and disillusioned when he found that coworkers with decades of experience still only made about $90k. That’s not where he wants to be in future decades, so now he’s diligently studying for the GMAT to attend a top B-school so that he can have a different future.</p>
<p>You know, the percentage of Olympic swimmers who ever drown is practically nil as well. Clearly, they must be placing some kind of buoyant chemicals in pools at Olympic venues! :)</p>
<p>Last spring, I was accepted to top 20 schools (true, I wasn’t accepted at Harvard, but Northwestern, U of Chicago, Notre Dame, Duke, Johns Hopkins level) and instead decided to go to state U (Ohio) for for free. Those top 20 schools were each going to cost my family over $44,000 per year (that is after my Northwestern national merit scholarship).</p>
<p>What is too expensive is a matter of personal choice. I do NOT, however, believe you will be less successful in life because you chose to save money. I found these top schools to be over-priced. What put me off was how these schools constantly harped on having an “experience” and making you a “better” person. There was no mention of graduates making more money on average, or even of self-rating themselves as happier after five years.</p>
<p>I only wish someone would actually do an epidemiological/correlational study seeing if students who got accepted to top 20 schools but instead chose to go a more affordable alternative had lower incomes or self-reported “life satisfaction” 10 years after graduation.</p>
<p>Perhaps, though, top 20 graduates will claim it was worthwhile. It would be an example of the effort-justification effect: people are more likely to think a decision was good or worthwhile if they made sacrifices for it. If you are spending 44k a year, cognitive dissonance will work to make you see your college experience more positively, lest you wake up to find you wasted the cost of a good sized house. It’s the same reason why hazing leads to higher self-reported rates of satisfaction.</p>
<p>I my personal opinion (and I do not insist you agree with me) going to a top college is buying a brand name on your diploma. It will make you feel cool and superior, even though it’s the same quality as anything else. If you’re a businessman, it might help you get clients, but if you’re an engineer it won’t matter.</p>
<p>^^^^It will make you feel cool and superior, even though it’s the same quality as anything else^^^^^^^^^</p>
<p>That is ridiculous…I won’t disagree that within the top 50 schools,education is similar,but you can’t possibly believe that going to a state school(not flagship perhaps) vs a top school is the same…Kinda like comparing a Hyundai and a Lexus…</p>
<p>“Kinda like comparing a Hyundai to a Lexus”</p>
<p>That’s exactly the point I wanted to make! Choosing a top college is like getting a Lexus vs a Hyundai. Both will get you to work and back, and indeed, the reliability is not all that different. The difference is in the external design and branding. You can choose to drive a Lexus if you want to drive in style or impress potential business contacts, but you will do just as well driving a Hyundai and save some money while you’re at it.</p>
<p>Also, I was talking about flagship state Us</p>
<p>@3117, I could not agree more, and I think you have put it very well. </p>
<p>I liked your brand-name analogy. As I work for a humongous apparel company (which owns several business lines), I can relate. One of our brand names is “premium.” Another is mass-market. Yet the men’s T-shirts from the premium brand are made of open-end cotton, while the men’s tees from the mass-market brand are made of ring-spun cotton (better quality). Customers are paying a premium for a logo. </p>
<p>LadyDi, hoping that this post cannot be traced by her boss, LOL</p>
I agree, but our sympathy (or lack thereof) isn’t the point. It simply isn’t a good deal for those families to pay rack rate tuition.
I still don’t buy that the probability of doing poorly is much more than negligible. The “superstar” is near the very top of the bell curve compared to their peers.</p>
<p>Further, the fact that the student was a “superstar” in high school indicates a predisposition to confront less-than-satisfactory academic performance with harder work.</p>
<p>Also, a potential turn: the rigor of engineering programs can build a somewhat self-deprecating sense of academic pride.</p>
<p>Finally, making decent but not remarkable grades won’t necessarily warrant leaving a field that you find interesting.
The kind of dreams that I would expect to be most common - astronaut, NBA star, Nobel Prize winner, pro poker player, etc. - are all extremely far-fetched and require a huge helping of luck. Given that, they can all be achieved from any school (arguably somewhat less true in politics). The probabilistic boost from an elite school is proportionately small.</p>
<ol>
<li>Is becoming being a relatively average banker or consultant your dream? Was that your great purpose in life? Is that why you worked so hard in high school?</li>
</ol>
<p>2a. On the other hand, if you find engineering more interesting or engaging that might make the job more livable.</p>
<ol>
<li>Work is a part of life. A large and important part, to be sure, but still not the totality - except perhaps in a sweatshop-like environment, which is what many IB and consulting firms are known to offer to new employees.
You’ll have to keep us posted on his success. If it works out, that would imply that the state school student could always take that path if they no longer like engineering.</li>
</ol>
<p>I think it depends on how the state school ranks and how the private school ranks and whether you have to go into debt to finance the private school.</p>
<p>If you live in a state where the flagship state university ranks so low it is unranked, I think Mississippi is one of those states, and your kid can get into a top 100 private school, then I think it is worth it even if you have to go into debt. Some states have absolutely abysmal state schools and I question the quality of the education you receive at these schools. </p>
<p>But if your state, like Florida, has a state school ranked 53, I don’t think it is worth the extra money sending your child to U of Miami at 47.</p>
<p>And if your state, like Virginia, has a state school ranked 25, I am not sure it is worth the extra money to send your child to 13th ranked Johns Hopkins if you or your child have to go into debt to do it. If you can pay cash, then the difference would be worth it.</p>
<p>So it all depends on the rank of the state school vs. the rank of private school and whether or not you or your child would have to go into debt to finance the private school.</p>
<p>My wife and oldest son went to “fancy” schools… I went to a state school. I joke that it makes no difference in the end but the experience is different. When I went to UMass my friends and I drank beer and talked about the Red Sox and Celtics… my wife and son drank beer and talked about Milton and Shakespeare.</p>
<p>Conclusion for me: if you have the money go to the fancy school - its like flying first class… if not go to a state school. All end up at the same destination (bachelors degrees) in 4 years or so.</p>
<p>This can happen, but generally it does not. If a student wants to do a job that they can easily get coming out of a state school, I’d advise that student to go to the public school because they’ll have a better undergraduate experience. The state schools have more than enough intellectual students, but they also have way more high quality social events and extracurricular niches.</p>
<p>I attended a top 10 LAC and graduate school. Did my postdoctoral research and at a research intensive state university that is consistently ranked in the top 50. I think Staple’s description summarizes the situation accurately.</p>