I am also an engineer (and hire engineers) and I would hire an MIT/Cornell/Cal grad over ANY mid tier school. They just get better offers, so I totally disagree with @thumper1. Sounds like her husband is in the civil engineering world where ABET and PE are much more important, but that is not the question. An education at a top private school approaches 300K, that is a lot of money to “make up” in salary, even if you get a 30K bump from graduating from MIT (it will take more than 10 years to make it up plus interest). The other issue is that the more time that passes between your graduation from a top tier school the less it matters, at that point experience becomes more important. The best route IMO for engineering specifically is to go to a top public school (CAL/GT/etc.) with IN STATE tuition. Of course if you live in a state without a top school your out of luck. At the end of the day most top private schools meet FN so you shouldn’t have to take out 300K in loans to attend, so if you only have to take out 50K in loans to attend a school like MIT I would definitely go for it, you’ll make that up in just a couple of years.