However, some of that could be due to Wall Street and management consulting employment. Indeed, some of the schools where that is common may not be targets for typical computing companies, due to competition from Wall Street and consulting.
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Thatâs not true. It would also not include students who received any merit aid (at schools that offer that) but not federal financial aid.
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Wouldnât full pay and high merit students presumably do even better than loan recipients? Which schools have the highest percentages of loan recipients? Isnât that on the CDS? If Ivy attracts high paying Wall Street jobs, isnât that a good thing?
Maybe some go entrepreneurial and donât have huge payoffs in the first five years. That could also correlate with wealth and access to powerful alumni networks.
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Itâs really Ivy engineering, save Cornell, that gets maligned as opposed to CS.
Beyond that, as much as I like College Scorecard, the data for CS isnât as useful as it is for some other majors because CS can also be listed under other categories, Computer and Information Sciences, General, for example.
Caltech, Cal Poly, Hopkins, and Texas list their data that way, all but the last easily making this list.
Some, list their data under both. For some schools like Rice it matches, but for Penn it doesnât. They are at $298k making them king of the hill.
@Data10 is quite adept at manipulating College Scorecard data. Maybe they can post a ranking that aggregates all the places CS is listed in College Scorecard.
Trying to follow the âprestige doesnât matterâ comments on CC is like playing Wack A Mole.
Sometimes the example is; âmy kid went to a no name school but did wellâ, other times itâs âI looked on LinkedIn, andâŠâ other times it is a media hit piece that suggest itâs a waste of money to seek prestige. Any evidence to the contrary suggesting elite schools contribute to yielding enhanced results is met with some isolated counter narrative or data massage to prove the contrary.
What you rarely read on CC are the countless stories of kids that attended elite schools and had amazing outcomes that were a result of the individual student, institutional resources and advantages of alumni networks and pathways. The simple reason for this is that these kids arenât aberrations nor do the parents want to be seen as bragging.
Seemingly it is acceptable to repeatedly (not eluding to any one specifically) state how their kid rose above kids from better ranked schools. I suspect it would not be as well received (or allowed) if the narrative were pivoted to discuss landscapers who in hindsight received degrees from low ranked schools that proved worthless.
Both scenarios exist but only one is often repeated.
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And of course " my company just hired a Rhodes scholar from Princeton who is reporting to a guy from Southern Connecticut State" or âeveryone knows that a degree in chemistry from Yale isnât worth a bucket of spit unless the kid goes straight to a hedge fund 'cause the chemistry professors at Yale are know -nothings. If they knew anything about chemistry they could have gotten a job at University of Tulsa which has more National Merit Scholars than Yaleâ.
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The amount of people who get into a 5% or less acceptance school is tiny vs the overall.
The amount who can afford to pay for it or who want to pay for it, if not assisted is even smaller.
Said schools have so many that donât even bother applying because they donât want to pay or simply wonât get in.
Anyone can apply to and attend anywhere they want.
Many schools have advantages, some more than over. No one has ever disputed that.
Why one needs to continue disparage other posterâs thoughts is beyond me.
For the vast majority of kids, knowing they can reach success (whatever that means to them) from anywhere in my mind is an important point. And itâs true.
I donât begrudge thoughts and opinions of others. Why must others continue to begrudge the thoughts and opinions of those who think there are many ways to success ?
Students are entitled to hear a variety of opinions, whether one agrees with them or not. Thatâs why itâs a community of posters, from various backgrounds, wealth levels, ethnicities, genders and more.
If we all thought similarly, weâd have group think and students would be disserviced.
Thereâs not only one wayâŠ.
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Like with so many things, the nuance is often lost.
For some career paths thereâs no doubt that prestige of the institution might not only be important, but might be the number one thing. Elite level law is a good example. The sorting takes place before hiring and thereâs a tight correlation to institution.
For others like technical engineering, companies have pet schools, but the real sorting takes place after the first job. There isnât a tight correlation to institution.
In healthcare thereâs no correlation to undergraduate institution. I worked among graduates from all sorts of schools. The sorting there takes place on admission to the professional school, with no real admission advantage conferred to any schools.
Certainly there are anecdotes that defy both of those assertions.
Back to the topic at hand, Iâm not surprised at all to see Ivy League schools in this list. CS is not heavily equipment and lab space dependent, and those schools, for the most part, only bring in very qualified students to matriculate.
Whatâs more surprising is the absence of Princeton. I think itâs probably a volume issue where there arenât enough grads to meet the data reporting threshold.
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Agreed!
I should have mentioned above how I enjoy the fact that CC offers a diversity of opinions.
What I donât agree with is the frequent approach of, âcheapest is best and one school is the cheapest therefore you should attend school X.â My opinion is if all chance me questions are answered with the same conclusion, the advice is biased. Fit is bigger than cost alone and sometimes prestige is worth the incremental cost for some families. As you say the ârealâ answer is often nuanced not solving in advance for an answer you predetermine and seek.
Lastly I donât view myself as a victim or disparaged when others disagree with me, in my opinion that comes with expressing an opinion.
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I agree 100%!
I do like to mention opportunity cost when posters say price is not an issue, simply because it could be something they havenât considered. Itâs natural to look at just the differential and not that value over time. That has been misconstrued as advocating for the cheap route, but thatâs never been my intention.
We certainly didnât send our son to the cheapest school. When he made his decision though it was knowing that weâd give him half of what we saved if he wanted to choose a cheaper school, and I did the net present value calculation for him. I thought it was mind expanding for him to make that part of his calculus, and the cheapest option (Utah) was one of his final three.
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Iâll admit I have a real bias to inclusive and conditional thinkingâeither X or Y or both could work out well under the right circumstancesârather than exclusive and unconditional thinking (X is always better than Y so donât bother with Y). Of course sometimes kids specify conditions that rule out schools, but otherwise more rather than fewer promising options to consider that fit their hard requirements seems good to me.
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I think itâs great that this strategy worked so well for your family.
But do you honestly think that parents who can write a check for $400k over four years (assuming costs go up, travel, etc) are so naive financially that they donât understand opportunity costs, how to calculate compound interest etc?
This is what I find irritating. Someone asks âwe can pay full freightâŠis it crazy to do that?â And will get a range of opinions. Well and good. I have been âmansplainedâ more times than I can count that I am the words biggest financial idiot, been told that if i had left the money in Microsoft stock or bought a no fee index fund I could have paid for weddings, funerals, bought condos galore.
Do you think that people with the financial discipline to earn, save and invest are too stupid to calculate âalternativeâ uses for their cash? Seriously? I had someone pester me on private messages that I needed an adult ed class in financial planning if I was stupid enough to be full pay. I shut him up⊠finally.
Why assume that someone who says they can afford X is too naive to know what that means???
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I donât make any assumptions. Posters can run the gamut from complete financial independence where writing a half million dollar check is not a problem in the least, to those whose parents have told them that they can go anywhere, but it will take heavy leverage on their part to do so. It usually isnât apparent from the first post. We also see a reasonable number of âis it worth it?â posts from parents whose students got into schools beyond the budget they were hoping to pay. My intention is simply to clarify, at the outset.
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Many posters on this very website, constantly and consistently, dispute that.
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I disagree.
Some say at many, you can get to a similar place. And thatâs factually correct unless people lie on their linkedins or schools lying on placements. And in some fields, itâs pretty accurate - the where may matter less.
Having âadvantagesâ doesnât mean you get a gimme and coming from a non target for whatever field you are inferring doesnât mean a 10 foot, impossible to climb wall has been placed in front of you. It may have a 6 foot wall that is possible to climb.
I think some that have experience with elite schools might mis interpret what others are saying.
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You have to contextualize that statement. For what major? At what price differential, and leveraged or not? As I mentioned earlier, every situation has itâs own nuance.
I think people who have direct first hand experience with elite schools are the best positioned to offer an informed opinion on the experience, advantages and or disadvantages of attending elite schools. Similarly, I think people who are experienced in certain professions can provide greater insights than those with no direct experience or context.
Thatâs my opinion.
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Post of the night!!!
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