When reading this, I had an immediate reaction but thought I’d check to see if I could find the expected earnings for engineers from the 4 schools.
According to a 2022 report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, the lifetime earnings of engineering graduates of MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and USC are as follows:
MIT: $6.2 million
Stanford: $6.0 million
Princeton: $5.9 million
USC: $5.7 million
These estimates are based on the assumption that graduates will work full-time for 40 years after graduating from college. They also take into account the fact that graduates of these schools are more likely to have high-paying jobs than graduates of other schools.
So from a financial perspective…if you invest the money you save at USC, in 40 years it would be the best financial option (all theoretical of course)…
That said, my gut and bias is that Stanford and MIT are just so different, that passing up both might lead to a lifetime of “what if…”