Is there a difference on whether I choose to go to a public lower tier school such as a cal state than to go to USC? I am wondering if the debt after graduating from USC would be worth it rather than going to a CAL STATE and coming out pretty much debt free. Will USC’s name be worth it to go into about $35,000 debt?
I personally don’t think so. After college I went to work for a large, prestigious consulting firm (Andersen Consulting, now Accenture). The group that I started with had newly minted graduates of Cal Poly SLO, Cal State Northridge, Stanford, UCLA (me), USC, and UC Irvine. The graduate of CSU Northridge is the only one who made it to partner; the school did not matter in her career trajectory, only her performance on the job. In my current role, the VP I report to graduated from CSU LB. My husband also went to UCLA and attended medical school at UC Irvine. In his medical school class there were many CSU grads; the top student in his class attended Cal Poly SLO and has a thriving practice. Our younger son is a stellar student, with a 4.6 GPA (all A grades, with many AP/honors classes, including AP Calc in 9th grade) and near-perfect PSAT score (taking SAT next month) who is seriously considering Cal Poly, because he believes that it is a fantastic value. Graduating debt-free is HUGE, and will give you the flexibility to pursue a variety of career options and to take risks early in your career. I would only advocate an expensive school if you can obtain a merit scholarship that would make it a reasonably priced alternative to a public university.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn’t affect you as far as nearly everyone else is concerned, but if you think it does, then it will be with you the rest of your life.