<p>1) MIT doesn’t cost $55k a year for everyone. It costs that if you are paying full freight. Well, actually, MIT costs ~$80k a year, but we only price “full freight” at ~$55k a year. And if you are paying full freight, it is because you can afford to do so, because of our full need tuition. </p>
<p>2) Depending on your graduate program and competitiveness as an applicant, you may not need to pay for grad school. Outside of Sloan, almost all graduate students at MIT, for example, are fully funded. </p>
<p>3) If you are not a good match at a school, it doesn’t matter if you will be paying less, you will not enjoy it. Here I speak from experience at my alma mater, which was not MIT. It does not mean you can’t “get anything out of it” - you can. And I enjoyed some parts of college. But not nearly as much as I would have if I had been a good match. </p>
<p>4) If you are a good match at a school, whatever money you do pay will be worth it in many cases. It’s like buying a house. Most people go into debt (take out a mortgage) to buy a home. They do so because (presumably) they like the home and think it is a good investment. If you buy a home that you do not like, it does not matter if it is cheap, you will not like it, and that degrades the quality of your not insubstantial investment. </p>
<p>Those are some of the reasons off the top of my head. </p>
<p>Now of course there are many reasons <em>not</em> to attend an elite (read: expensive) school. If you don’t like it, for one (and hint: match always, ALWAYS outweighs prestige. or should anyway). If you have two schools which you like but one is much cheaper, for another. It’s a complex calculus and different for everyone.</p>