@Eeyore123 : My now deceased relative by marriage was a very well known and accomplished surgeon who was head of a medical school. He very clearly stated that he did care about applicants’ undergraduate school as a factor in medical school admissions. GPA, MCAT & interview were the most significant factors according to him, while undergraduate school attended was a non-factor in the admissions process to that particular medical school.
Nevertheless, for certain professions such as investment banking, a prestigious undergraduate school often gives a significant boost in the screening & interviewing process by the most prestigious employers in the IB field.
For T14 law schools, state flagships are fine. Period, end of story. I had classmates who attended undergrad at UW, UIUC, Kansas, Kentucky, and on and on. Plenty of elite undergrads and plenty of random ones. Any top 100+ will do. This is repetitive of posts above, but admission to T14s really is all about GPA and LSAT.
“If the author raves about these schools, then it seems that it’s his opinion that where you go might shape who you will be.”
That’s not the point of his book, raving about schools, it’s to show that when you talk about outcomes, undergrad university doesn’t matter, at least for most professions. He brings up Delaware because that’s where Joe Biden and Chris Christie went and and Condoleeza Rice who wen to University of Denver and had good political careers.
His message is to reduce the stress around college admissions that actually starts with parents when they’re kids are 3, applying to expensive pre-schools.
“Worth it” is different for every person. For me, attending a top small liberal arts college was such a wonderful learning experience, being surrounded entirely by peers who loved the life of the mind as much as I did and interacting closely with top professors. It was a magical four years.
As I chose to become an elementary school teacher (after getting my MA from Columbia University Teachers College— my undergrad college thankfully did not offer any pre-professional courses, but was purely about thinking), some might consider my expensive BA not “worth it” from a strictly financial standpoint.
But I never wanted to make a lot of money. I wanted fulfillment— an intellectually exciting four years of college followed by a career where I feel I am making an important difference in the lives of others.
And hey, my spouse earns less than I do, yet despite both of us choosing careers we believed in above ones with high income, we still were able to save enough money to send our kid to a top liberal arts college without needing financial aid, giving him the type of experience we both had loved.
I think attending such a college is “worth it” from an experiential standpoint.
I feel so even more strongly after hearing a group of friends from our local high school comparing their experiences at a range of colleges. That does not mean you can’t get a good education at another sort of college. Of course you can. It’s just a qualitatively different experience.
Is attending such a college necessary for financial success? No. Or for getting into law school? No. Individuals can create their own futures, with or without the “leg up” of alumni connections or impressive sounding degrees.
Is everyone who goes to such a college choosing it for career connections and money? No. There is so much more to college.
Only you, OP, can decide what is “worth it” to you, given your goals for college and for life.
@Eeyore123 : I have served on the admission committee for my state flagship medical school. And as I have posted multiple times before, the name and/or prestige of candidates’ undergrad institution was NOWHERE on the list of criteria by which we ranked our applicants.
I suspect that your BIL was affiliated with a private or maybe a T10 public med school, which indeed may have different admission criteria than do most state medical schools. That’s fine, but please be precise and refrain from implying that his experience is generalizable to the admissions process at all med schools.
And as I have also posted elsewhere, I have always believed that my Ivy league undergrad actually made it harder, rather than easier, for me to get into medical school. Many, many of my very bright classmates who got weeded out of pre-med at our Ivy would like have fared better at a less prestigious school in which they have been more likely to get the necessary As in all their pre-med (and most other) courses.
The one time head of Lockheed Martin(Robert J. Stevens) went to…Slippery Rock University. Original Dream Team Head Cach (Chuck Daly) went to…Bloomsburg University. Inventor of YouTube(Chad Hurley)went to…IUP or Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The beat goes on and on…John Glenn, American Hero and Astronaut went to…little, tiny Muskingum University in Ohio.
The cream will rise to the top no matter how much mommy and daddy are willing to pay or not pay.
More appropriate question might be “Is a any undergraduate degree worth it?” I believe that for any given student, family, and financial situation there exists several schools that would be “worth it”. The challenge is in finding that school because you won’t find out if it is “worth it” for a while. If, after a few years, you can sit back and say “money well spent” then congrats! You’ve done well.
Not sure I can add substantively to the thoughtful replies. I recognize Wisconsin is not generally considered in the same tier as Georgetown or Chicago, but it is definitely highly regarded with some great programs. If you were comparing Georgetown against other less “elite” institutions, I would say the price differential could be worth it based on your interests. But Wisconsin is a very solid choice–I don’t think you’re giving up much (if anything) if you get really good grades and take advantage of some of the outstanding programs it has available.
Correct. You’re giving up $200,000 more of cash by going to Georgetown. With no financial aid, it’s $110K vs $325K for 4 years.
If someone said the following to you, then what would your reaction be?:
“I will give you $325,000, you can attend undergraduate at Wisconsin, earn top grades, and do very well on the LSAT, and then you can go to Harvard for law school and pay no more money.”
OR
“I will give you $325,000, you can attend undergraduate at Georgetown, you earn top grades, and do very well on the LSAT, and then you can go to Harvard for law school. And you STILL will pay another $200,000, for a total of $525,000”
Which option would you take? Wouldn’t the extra $200,000 in your pocket be better, no matter how good of a school Georgetown is? I could have a lot of fun with $200K! Travel around the world, buy a Tesla 3, and put a down payment on a house, with 4 months of emergency fund, to start.
You have a better chance of getting into Harvard Law with a high GPA and LSAT from Wisconsin then mediocre grades and LSAT from Georgetown. And maybe a slightly better chance if you had high scores from Georgetown. Even if you don’t get into Harvard Law with good grades and LSAT score from Wisconsin, you will get into somewhere else very good. There won’t be a whole slew of law schools turning their noses down at someone from Wisconsin who has both qualifications.
If OP’s goal is law school then getting a high GPA is indeed essential. State flagship schools like UW are notorious for grade deflation, as the professors and schools don’t care much about students’ experience as customers. According to gradeinflation.com UW has an average GPA of 3.25 vs GT’s 3.54 and that’s a big difference—a transcript with mostly Bs at UW vs As at GT. UChicago doesn’t have anything newer than 2006, but it had an official policy of curving the classes at 3.33 then.
As somebody with direct experience, that is waaaayyyyy to broad a brush to be slamming state flagships with. Although, tbf, I thought of students in terms of learning outcomes, not “customer experience”
We asked ourselves this question a lot as my daughter applied to schools. We are also in Wisconsin and I can tell you that you will see a LOT of your classmates chose Madison (and Minnesota since we have reciprocity) over other “top” schools due to cost. It’s a relative bargain for a great education.
That said, my daughter did not choose Madison, mainly because she was worried that a school that size would not be a good fit for her personality. She felt that many schools she was accepted at would offer her a great education and opportunities, but she needed to be in an environment where she could feel comfortable taking advantage of the opportunities offered. For her that was something smaller with a very collaborative, supportive environment. But that’s just her. Most of her friends at Madison are super happy with their choice.
“Wisconsin is not generally considered in the same tier as Georgetown”
Here’s the thing with this particular comparison, which is that if the OP decides to change majors, maybe even a STEM one, then UW is even a clearer choice. The drawback for UW is that the grading system in the first couple of years may not be great for a high GPA down the road.
There are 31,000 undergraduates in 200+ majors at U Wisconsin. The term “average student at Wisconsin” is a meaningless term. I mean, you can calculate the average for any variable you want, but it will provide no meaningful information whatsoever.
The author’s intent is clear, but readers must decide for themselves whether it withstands analysis. For example, why should the same author write enthusiastically about a student’s acceptance at an “Ivy League” school (quotations used to indicate inclusion in the headline of the article linked below) if he believes there’s little difference in general opportunities and educational outcomes across colleges? And why single out “Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, the University of Chicago, Duke [and] Pomona” for special mention in the same article? He seems to have used these names as a type of currency that undermines the title of his often-referenced book.
Bet we come to a definitive and objective answer to the question. 