Should you incur substantial debt for dream school or even pay the "dream" tuition?

[ctyankee]

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@noimagination

Since you brought up Fulbright students, this might be a good time to highlight psych_'s point in post #335. Many top Fulbright producers are not necessarily highly selective or highly expensive. The same goes for other major scholarships.

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<p>Great! Which gets back to the point it’s far more important what you do in college then WHERE you go to college. </p>

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@EricLG

“Pointedly put, if the kid is considering a top LAC and finds out he or she needs to be in the 33 percent of the class to reasonably be considered for a Fulbright, then their odds (with no other data) are one in three of making that happen.”</p>

<p>It’s that “other data” that cannot in practice be ignored. Like, how strong a student are we talking about ? Personally, I find all these discussions trying to quantify the ‘value’ of a selective LAC based on performance metrics rather useless, since we know that the student bodys are different.

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<p>I view it as very important (with the caveat we are still only talking about the ‘paper chase’ and getting into the top grad school). Candidly put, the bottom half of the graduating class at a top LAC is undoubtedly stronger than the bottom half of the graduating class at a state’s flagship university. So what (in this context)? Neither segment at EITHER school is going to have great grad school options coming out of school. </p>

<p>This is what students and parents spending money chasing dreams need to know. It’s still gets down to what you achieve at a school and NOT where you went being the biggest factor.</p>