<p>In contrast, if my choice is Conn College or Trinity (full pay) vs Wooster with 20-25K in merit, I’m going with Wooster and I’m thrilled because I know it is a wonderful school.</p>
<p>OK again. there is not an $80-100K reason to pick the first 2 over the third.</p>
<p>Final, my apologies, it was Rip who discussed abortion. Carry on.</p>
<p>Yes, I believe the question about aborting a potentially low IQ child followed the hypotheticals in post#364.</p>
<p>Jym626, yes that was Rip. Sorry, I keep getting Rip and Final confused…</p>
<p>And, if able to make it work, I will take the 80-100K hit for Harvard (and similar) without blinking. If we’re talking 250K or more, that’s different. Not sure there, beyond admitting I’d still have a hard time going the other way.</p>
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<p>Such people can exist at non-elite schools as well.</p>
<p>Understandable, Kennedy. Honest mistake.</p>
<p>Many posters here struggle to determine if they can scrape up the extra few thousand to cover their school’s gap, whether it is Utah State or Bowling Green. To others, deciding if they can/will pay $100K or 250K for a tippy top school is a decision in an entirely different league.</p>
<p>I like where jym is going.
So, the question should be “going to a ‘fit’ university worth the premium?”
I suspect that for most people, the answer is yes (unless you go into some unreasonable debt to do this).</p>
<p>Our family wrestled with this question just a few weeks ago.
Daughter was accepted to some flagship state universities where some of them offer her decent merit scholarships. However, she visited some podunk LAS (slight exaggeration) and fell in love with it. The difference is about $60K-$90K for 4 years compared to the state schools. We could afford this difference (we think). Daughter felt that the LAS is a better fit for her (which my wife and I agree). So, wife and I bit the bullet and sent in the deposit for the LAS. Ask me four years later to see how this works out. :)</p>
<p>Yes indeed they can, ucbalumnus, but no one bothers trying to malign them in the abstract, like people do Ivy Leaguers. People love to imply all kinds of things about those who attend elite schools and they do it without even thinking. Like they’ll make a joke about the guy in front of them at the drive-through who almost drove away without his coffee and ha ha, he has a Harvard decal on the car. Here’s a text conversation a friend initiated with me this week:</p>
<p>Friend: So we fly girl in from Brown for an interview. She shows up with pen and pad from hotel. I hear HR manager ask if they lost her luggage. She looks puzzled and says no y do u ask. He says I noticed u didn’t have any papers or portfolio and ur pad is from the hotel. Lmao</p>
<p>Me: Well, at least she thought to bring paper and pen. (This I said because the day before she texted me that a UPenn kid came with nothing either, as if that actually meant much.)</p>
<p>Friend: HR guy told branch manager his is so done with Ivy Leaguers lol. Said they are really smart but no common sense and that he would rather take someone with common sense and train them.</p>
<p>Me: Yeah but on average less academic kids will have even less common sense. It’s not like there’s an inverse relationship between intelligence and common sense. I’m sure if you looked around you’d find plenty of stupidity at X non-competitive private nearby, Y flagship, and Z local community college. </p>
<p>Friend: At least the Y flagship kid came with pen, resumes, references, and folder with pad. HR’s point is that the Ivy kids come in thinking they know it all and want to do everything their way and that so doesn’t fly around here. Our most productive management trainees aren’t from the Ivies. Those trainees seem to take the most common sense approach, lol. Kids from the Ivies have what they think are great ideas but can not implement ways to achieve those results.</p>
<p>Me: (said nothing)</p>
<p>Friend: Brown kids are always weird, lol. Girl asked why she had to take a test and if it was gonna be graded. Didn’t do well. We’re thinking family donated a library lol.</p>
<p>That conversation is pretty typical of the kind of things people say. Consider all the stereotypes she managed to squeeze in: people who go to top schools have no common sense or practicality; their ideas are too up in the Ivy tower to be relevant to how things work in the real world; they think they know it all and are too full of themselves to take direction on the job; they’re weird somehow; they’re hyper focused on grades to the extent they miss the point, which is the actual learning; or they only got in to the school because Daddy donated millions.</p>
<p>You gotta wonder why that company keeps bringing in those stupid Ivy Leaguers for interviews then.</p>
<p>Oh, Jesus. People tell those sorts of jokes about EVERY school. Try spending some time on a college football message board (if that’s not intellectually beneath you). Every rivalry in the country has some version of the following joke:</p>
<p>“How do you get a [RIVAL U] grad off your porch?”</p>
<p>“Pay him for the pizza.”</p>
<p>And that’s just the most printable one. Ask anyone here who went to an ag school about sheep jokes or alums of the “University for Spoiled Children” about what Domers say to them every day. Most of what I hear about elite schools is pretty mild by comparison – except for Yale jokes. Because Yale sucks at football and is STILL in New Haven.</p>
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<p>No. Not really. I don’t know anybody who sends texts that long. ;)</p>
<p>SOG, you have become my favorite poster, and I may have an identity crises over this. 
</p>
<p>Good luck to all the kids on the English AP today.</p>
<p>I could say something nasty about Carolina right now, if that would help restore your equilibrium. 'Cause, really, I’m here to help.</p>
<p>… :p</p>
<p>Point taken, but sports joking is different. When it comes to the Ivies you hear this stuff a lot and completely outside the realm of sports. Of course, that could be because the Ivies aren’t good at football. Regardless, this person didn’t really mean any of it as joke.</p>
<p>they don’t actually play football in the Ivy league. Sheesh, everyone knows that. There are high school teams in Texas that could beat Yale.</p>
<p>I have seen the Harvard-Yale game with my own eyes and can report two things:</p>
<p>(1) It’s the only place I’ve ever been in my life where there was a separate area of the tailgate parking lot for the catering trucks; and </p>
<p>(2) Yale would struggle to go .500 in the greater Cincinnati catholic league. </p>
<p>OTOH, the Elis just won a national title in hockey, and I think they brought out the inner sports fan in a lot of their students and alums. Good on 'em.</p>
<p>Well, it’s still in New Haven. Nothing can change that fact.</p>
<p>adding more fuel to the fire…</p>
<p>[Former</a> Ed Secretary: Only 4 Percent of Colleges Worth the Money](<a href=“http://soa.li/QguD7vP]Former”>http://soa.li/QguD7vP)</p>
<p>on cnbc.com</p>
<p>Actually they’re one of the few places with an endowment big enough to pick up and move the entire campus some place nicer. Like Detroit.</p>