Cornell Cost? Is it worth it?

monydad
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 17:05:59 +0000

This is kind a generic question, and it’s also an unanswerable question.
There is always a cheaper option, and there is always a more expensive option.
My own D1 passed up a free ride at our state U to attend an expensive private college.
My son passed up a private university to attend a much cheaper state university.
My D2 graduated from Cornell.

Of these three, D2 “launched” most successfully after college, and is doing the best to date. The measure I am using here is ease of successfully entering, and thriving in, the workplace. Though a liberal arts grad, she has been continuously employed since shortly after graduation, and has successfully made several job moves that have enhanced her position.
She made the most of her college life there, successful academically and with extensive extracurricular involvements that help paved the way for her current life.

Would she have been doing just as well coming from one of the other two schools?
Actually in her case I dont think so. There were a few Cornell and Ithaca-specific things she wound up in that would not have been the same elsewhere. Undoubtedly elsewhere there may have been other things for her. Her capabilities were her own, but Cornell helped her showcase and develop them.

But there are no doubt other people there who don’t do well, don’t thrive there, don’t seek or get the opportunities for self-development. Perhaps some of them would be better off someplace else, the place that better helps them develop.
For whatever reason of fit.
.
Some of this is unknowable at the outset, in some cases one can at least make an educated guess.

It’s even unknowable in retrospect. However you are dong 20 years after graduation, there is no way to know how you would be doing if you had instead attended someplace else.

You just make your best guess, based on what you know at the time, and hope for the best.