Go to a college that is affordable. College "prestige" doesn't matter.

f33d wrote:

You can read the textbooks and study anything without even going to any college.

College is not about learning per se. College is about achieving a status.

f33d wrote:

C.O. Jones wrote:

The textbooks are the same wherever you go. This advice applies for the vast majority of college students.

You can read the textbooks and study anything without even going to any college.

College is not about learning per se. College is about achieving a status.

If you are Will Hunting, then you don't need to go to college. Most people (as in the vast majority) are not going to read and study as much as they would if they went to college. A college degree proves that you at least did enough reading and studying to get the degree. There is value in that.

A reasoned response.

mypredictor wrote:

For most business and law jobs, the extreme cost of a prestigious university is well worth it. Lets say a guy gets a degree from a good but not renown school and tops out (in today's dollars) at 125k. Lets say the same guy pushed his financial limits and got a degree from Princeton -- his opportunities become limitless and the same guy conceivably makes 200k+ even in the same podunk small city. 75k a year for decades is well worth the extra 150k the top school cost him. Now imagine you're in the NYC, chicago or boston metro area -- your potential salary + bonus is 1m+, and with tough competition for those jobs every advantage helps. It a a risk but well worth it.

Kinda lose some credibility when you mention Princeton, an institution with neither a law school nor a business school

Mr. Doritos wrote:

Prestige does matter. You are paying for access, not education. You can have a terrible personality, but I guarantee you will get way more interviews and offers from top companies with "Harvard" at the top of your resume when compared to an institution such as Dave Ramsey's alma mater, the University of Tennessee.

I got a 2.97 GPA at UoT and I was a millionaire by age 30. You know how? I worked my butt off selling real estate 40-60 hrs/week during college and didn't spend money I didn't have to impress people I don't like.

Dennis T Reynolds wrote:

Look up ROI metrics. Some of the best schools are also quite expensive, you pay for future earning potential and the doors that can be opened up having a degree from an elite university.

Good point, but I believe the list of expensive schools that is "ROI Positive" is pretty short. Said another way, there are tons of expensive schools that don't give you the incremental benefit that would offset going to a solid in-state school for much less. Most/many states have at least one solid flagship state school: Texas, Michigan, NC, Florida, Colorado, California, Washington, Illinois, Utah, etc.

takk for the moose wrote:

f33d wrote:

You can read the textbooks and study anything without even going to any college.

College is not about learning per se. College is about achieving a status.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsHLkB8u3s

Post of the day right here!!

I can say with confidence that the professors at one of my schools were far superior to the professors at another. It impacted the quality of education available. This is especially humorous/sad to me when kids from expensive private schools talk about how their school is as good or better than some cheaper higher tier public schools. Wrong. Flat out wrong. Those schools have nobodies for professors while the higher tier schools have people who are top in their field.

DO NOT forget

The top top top (mit stanford harvard yale, for example) of the elite schools have much better financial aid than other "presitge" wannabe schools

so for MOST people these schools are in fact very affordable!

EDUCATION is the only brand name that matters.

Law is a separate animal, but you don't need an MBA to go into finance, and an undergrad degree from Princeton will get you better access to elite east coast business/finance jobs than an MBA from roughly 95% of business schools in the US would.

Dave Ramsey, CFA wrote:

When you visit a doctor, do you care which college he went to or what his GPA was? Of course not.

Recruiting cry of mid-low tier d1s, d2s, naia, and juco coaches.

I know many top executives at Fortune 500 companies here in the Bay Area that went to state schools. I know many more successful engineers that didn't even go to school in America. I know successful people from Stanford & the Ivy's.

One thing I have also noticed is the "better" the school the less the students can handle a job. They are excellent academics but are unemoyable because they can't handle real work. They go into PhD programs and stay for 4-10 years and then get a job and end up back at home. Plenty of those at all levels, I guess I just notice more coming from a prestigious university.

Truth is there are very few jobs the place you got your education matters. Doctor, lawyer, are some that come to mind that initially get you in the door. But after that it's what you've done and who you know that matters in 95% of jobs that need a degree.

When you go to a "prestige" school you go to school with the children of successful people, so you get social capital and the value of a well connected social network. Over 20% of the students at top schools come from top 1% income families.

If you learn to mimic the behavior of better off people you increase the probability that you will become one of them.

People hold themselves in their socio-economic class because they embody the vales and behaviors of their social class.

90% of universities create no socio-economic mobility, but the good schools do create it.