Say you get into an ivy, or a school like u of chicago- is the price worth it?

You don't understand how hiring works at the top schools. The best companies come precisely to these schools to recruit an English major who can think and write clearly (and also happened like most classmates to have a 750+ math SAT) in order to train them for a future in sr management.

Sure a bright kid can work the system to get better career prospects; usually by attending a top grad school.

The pipeline coming out of the ivy+ schools just gives you a much easier start.

Similarly if you aspire to academics, Ivy+ undergrad gives you best access to top 5 grad schools and chance to be at top of your profession. The kids who go the state school might find themselves at grad schools 6-10 instead. Certainly not impossible to be a "star" from there, just less likely.

This 'AI means college is dead' is just a story. The same top companies recruiting at ivy+ exactly now as we speak.

you have it backwards to argue STEM is the path to ivy riches. the ivies create well compensated lawyers, finance geeks, consultants, entrepreneurs, CEOs, etc. in bulk. in that context, a mere phd lab rat or engineer is not the rich kid in the room. not unless they start a computer company or science business.

the idea to chase wealth by majoring in STEM is more of a State school middle class kid notion. i want a solid job with above average compensation that gets me in the suburbs. yes, they are doing better than a bunch of HS teachers some mediocre school produces.

In my experience, like half of the American kids at top grad schools come out of ivies (and Stanford, Caltech, MIT) and half come out of everywhere else - from giant state schools to tiny liberal arts schools.

So schools that 1% (at most) of students attend make up 50% of American students at top grad schools?

At Princeton ~83% of seniors graduate with no debt, for those who do borrow the average debt at graduation is ~$9,500.

What would "justify" it for you? As others have pointed out you'll probably get significant financial aid. A friend of my son's with a single mom who was a school teacher only paid $1,000 a year to go to Harvard a few years ago and a cousin of mine paid about the same but in the 70s when $1,000 was more money than now but still much less than I paid to go to a Pa. state school.

But can you justify it if you don't get nearly that big a package or even have to pay full fare? It's up to you and if you're asking if your income will justify the cost it's hard to say. Ivy grads make higher salaries than most others do but it's no guarantee. I know six Harvard grads and one Princeton one and none of them are doing or did anything in terms of jobs or making more money that they couldn't have done with a degree from Salem State.

True things that have been said so far:

1) Ivy's have great financial aid (for non-wealthy kids).

2) Ivy's can provide great networking opportunities.

So...

The Ivy's are a bad investment for rich kids who will not benefit from great networking opportunities.

Yup. That about sums it up.

Our daughter ran for an Ivy and our son ran for our state school. We paid full price at the Ivy and about $5K per year at our state school. Our son is earning $125K and our daughter is earning $80K. He had an easy time finding internships while she did not. We earned $140K per year when they were in college but we saved a lot for their educations which turned out to be a terrible decision. I would absolutely save the $400K that an Ivy costs and give it to your child after college.

Not saying you are making this up...

But...

It is going to be very difficult to save for retirement, pay a mortgage and pay (or save) $400k for college

Most people making 140k will get great financial aid from Ivies.

On the other hand there is a good point here.

If you do have lots of assets (outside of retirement and home equity) and also a low income- Ivies will be a very expensive.

dude where did you go to college? you talk A LOT!

Lol "buns"

If you earn $140k per year, your daughter would now attend Yale for free (regardless of how much you saved).

news.yale.edu

Yale to offer free tuition to families with incomes below $200,000

An expansion of Yale’s financial aid program will also cover all costs of attendance for families with incomes below $100,000.

Open link

Degree = toilet paper.

At least in the UK.

Blows my mind that some Americans spend 6 figures on a piece of paper.

It was for my daughter

Again, it depends on YOUR circumstances. I make 200k a year. My wife is retired and her pension is 70k a year. She has 300k + in a 401k and I have 700k + in a 401k and will have a pension when i retire too. We have a rental property worth 400k with 143k left on it and rental income is more than the mortgage and insurance. Our primary residence is worth 800k and we owe 430k on it. And guess what, when i went through the application process with my oldest who is currently a college freshman, the private schools required us to put all that information and more into the CSS Profile. More specifically, He applied to Hopkins and American among others. He got into American but not Hopkins but we were FULL pay for both.

Instead he went to an in state HBCU and guess what we pay? Not a dime. Zero. Literally nothing. He got a full ride academically and now he can continue to thrive and position himself for grad school at perhaps a more prestigious institution. In fact I know a young lady who first went to an HBCU then to Stanford for grad school.

You have to see what makes sense for YOU. Don’t go following other people and stop trying to live up to what other people standards are. There are many ways to go about it. There is no one answer.

Even this makes no sense. I worked 5 years in London. About 2/3 of the Brits in the office were from Oxford and Cambridge.

Europe has a different system, but there still is a pecking order of 'best schools', with top students aspiring to attend, and grad schools/recruiters seeking candidates.

my kid had d3 offers of admit support from arguably 2 of the top 3 academic liberal arts schools in the country - one widely considered the peer of HYPSM. We chose the 50% athletic scholarship to a lesser ranked - but still incredibly strong academically - D1 school. To me the outcomes seemed comparable to the D3 schools. Had it been HYP - one of which he was in talks with - probably would have went that route, which would’ve been impossible to pass up - but only at the tippy top

I went to a top schol in Europe, but it was stupid. In Norway education is free, no people would ask me why I decided to pay for something I could get for free. Most hadn't even heard about the school. In Norway private schools are ranked lower than public, so they apply the same logic to other countries