I’m printing this and putting on my fridge!!
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Too nice… All the best to you and your daughter!
I’ve read two viewpoints (echoed by WashP, WSJ, NYT, etc):
- It is a wash. Some will shy away some will gravitate.
- It will attract more students. Just look at the number of applications southern universities have received this year. The numbers don’t like.
If your son is interested in consulting (e.g. McKinsey, BCG, Bain), then Ross is the way to go. If on the other hand he is looking into a Finance degree, then either one would work. Ross students are heavily recruited by NY firms/offices, while Kelley is heavily recruited by Chicago firms/offices.
For an accounting degree, then any good top nearby school would be fine: IU, Purdue, MSU, UofM. It comes down to campus vibe, class size, instructors, and getting students ready for life in the real world. It comes down to personal preference and of course cost.
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You asked…
I’m a former corp finance guy who went to a T-30 MBA program and retired at 47, in Silicon Valley.
Even if my child had her heart set on the Consulting lifestyle, mentioned above, my advice would be to take the Kelley offer, invest the $200K savings.
The difference in programs won’t be big enough to affect her future prospects, if she wanted it bad enough. And, if she didn’t want it bad enough, she wouldn’t last in it.
I started out in Financial Planning & Analysis at a Fortune 500 corp in St. Paul, worked for large and small companies in Europe, Asia, and the US… didn’t hold me back.
Your son sounds like a few rungs above where I was at his age.
Attitude is everything!
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Financial aid reports for RD (at least for much of OOS) are coming out now. I got an amount of financial aid just slightly higher than the NPC, which obviously isn’t pleasantly surprising, but also wasn’t the 80k middle-class full-pay result I was catastrophizing about.
Now just waiting for CS advance selection results (seems very likely if you demonstrate CS interest in your essays from what I have been reading) and will probably commit to UMich by the end of next week.
The problem IME is that most people do not, in fact, do this. Which doesn’t moot the larger point of course. But, yeah.
Yep, most people bank that savings in their head, a lot could not have come up with the $s in the first place.
Just for grins: if you put that 200k into an investment yielding on average 10%/yr it would double about every 7 yrs…. A kid graduating at 21-22 yrs would have 6-7 doublings before retirement age, on top of whatever they earned themselves.
Of course, taxes would impact this, depending on investment changes, but the compounding effect would be very significant.
Congratulations hopefully.
The thing that is always humorous to me it’s the business students asking the question. Now for some families that can afford it sure. But we made this deal with our daughter and the numbers were not as high. She went to her number 2 and on a nice merit. She is a very happy camper in graduate school with no undergraduate loans and will have almost none after graduate school but I would save the parents money and put away $50,000 if they can cleanly afford it. That’s plenty for a student. 
… If the student is going into business start the negotiation lessons now. Lol
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Yep. “Time in market” beats just about everything.
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Yep. Lol
Unfortunately most kids at this age do not understand the value of money and lifestyle costs, and can’t make an informed judgement about dream school value.
Sounds like your daughter wasn’t one of these.
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Much to consider in this debate. My biggest piece of advice is that your path does not have to be and will likely not be linear but don’t lose hope. Yes, I know many people that went from Ivy undergrad to investment banking to private equity or asset management. It’s great when it works out like a hallmark movie. But I know many that had a more windy path.
I met my husband as an investment banking analyst (he also went to a non target state school). He went from that to a hedge fund. That blew up in ‘08. Bought and ran a local small business but wasn’t ready to settle into that so he hired a ceo and went back to banking. Did not like being an associate so he raised a search fund. Not easy to do without an mba but he had prior connections from the hedge fund community. Did that for a few years and it went bankrupt. Fun times. Interestingly, Stanford business school wrote a business case about the failure and he guest lectured that class for a few years. Then he got a full tuition offer for Columbia MBA (passed up Wharton for the scholarship). So we took three kids to nyc so he could be a full time student again. Then he went back to a hedge fund. That fund blew up. Also not fun. Took a job at BCG and is still there today. Not an easy transition but he has a unique expert set up there and really likes it. Not bad for a kid from rural Alabama. It’s not always pretty but it works out if you keep at it.
Also, I’ll be here for a while as I have kids graduating in ‘26 and ‘29. DM me once your kids are older and if they are interested in BCG. Connections are everything!!
Final thought, always try to give yourself the financial freedom to leave a job that makes you unhappy.
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I love it. My zig-zag started before college, i wasn’t even planning to go, and when I did, at the last minute (was possible back in the day). I switched majors multiple times, quit & went to work for 2 years, came back with a new attitude & clear direction, graduated with honors, went on to get MS & MBA at 2 diff schools.
Back then they said by the time my gen retired we’d have 3 different careers. Later, after what I consider to be my main career, I went back to school again. To prepare for my 4th - the one that I don’t consider to be work…. Been doing it for almost 20 years.
At a school we were at last week, the admissions person said their university was preparing kids for 13 career changes over their working lifetimes. Hard for me to believe, but life is full of changes, expected and unexpected….look for the opportunity in each one.
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Yes!!! Good for you! Love these stories!
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Great lessons in those stories. My son was very engineering linear. My daughter was not. .. We expected stop starting from taking a gap year after being abroad in Indonesia going to school for bfa theater /costume design to changing schools on large merit (
) to Cultural anthropology with polisci minor to now ending her first year in speech pathology after working a few years since the pandemic graduation year’s. All her experiences she has used to her benefit with the work she has done.
Both kids strangely are the kids that would pick the lessor traveled road.
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Great story, the story of many kids, college or not.
Can bring on much parental anxiety.
At some point we have to all live life our own way. Hopefully we are sufficiently resilient, motivated, and lucky enough to find a fulfilling path.
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I’m on either my 5th or 6th career, depending on how you count 
Ivy ->T10 MBA. But otherwise extremely meandering path. Didn’t figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up until I was in my 40s. 
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Love all these stories, I don’t feel like a unicorn anymore. I was a U of M psych major >>>> PhD in psychology student, terminated at my masters, went on to law school, then my LLM in tax, and am now a tax lawyer. This is why I cringe that our high school students are expected to pick a major when in high school for college applications. I tell my kids all the time, you don’t know what you don’t know and you can end up taking an unexpected class in college, fall in love with the subject and switch gears.
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Agreed, though far better that than what exists in many European nations in which you have to declare at/around age 15/16 and switching is mostly not possible.
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