<p>I was just looking at some average salaries for Rice and Stanford grads (starting median, mid-career median and mid-career 90th percentile).</p>
<p>Rice was 64, 110, 216
Stanford was 70, 129, 257</p>
<p>Seems like a big difference, right? Not really. You will probably be a relatively better student at Rice than at Stanford. So, where at Stanford you may be in the 60th percentile and earn say 140k a year, at Rice you may be in the 70th percentile (which is a conservative difference on my part) and earn about 140k a year. So, the extra 200,000 dollars you spend now on Stanford would most likely not be made up later in life (studies have shown that students who turn down ivy-leagues to attend state schools end up being just as succesful as similar students who went to ivies- I know Stanford’s not an ivy and Rice isn’t a state school, but you catch my drift). </p>
<p>This whole argument would likely be irrelevant if you were thinking of attending a large public school where the quality of life would be way different. But, Rice has similar weather, size, students (not insanely smart like Stanfords, but they are still very intelligent) and probably class-size and such. People who attend Rice love it there, and they consistently (with Stanford) rate as some of the happiest students. And at Rice, you will probably stand out more, meaning more research opportunities and such that you wouldn’t be able to recieve at Stanford. </p>
<p>If you are well off, ask your parents to put the 200,000 that they would have spent in some sort of fund that gains interest. Then, when you’re forty or something, or even after you graduate, you have a huge sum of cash to fall back on.</p>