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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How much is the different? 300k?

If you have it saved up for college, yes Harvard is worth the difference given your kid is a go-getter and takes advantage of the opportunities presented by Harvard.

If its loans, how much loan? $100k may be reasonable if your child is majoring in CS, but not reasonable at all if wanting to go to graduate school or majoring in the humanities with no interest in consulting or finance.

And by opportunities presented at Harvard, I don't mean networking with future politicians or titans of industry. Those doors are generally entirely closed to anyone other than the wealthy and already well-connected. I'm talking about practical benefits like recruitment from elite finance/consulting/tech firms. Tech is more meritocratic but Harvard brand still holds quite a sway, especially in algorithmic trading firms.

[b]A student at Harvard with a 3.0 in History with no impressive extracurriculars would get invited for elite consulting/finance firms while the same student at UVA would need a 3.8+ GPA from McIntire to even get a preliminary interview. Many elite firms don't even recruit at UVA. 
[/b][/quote]

This is so, so true. All the finance guys I know from Harvard studied Government, History, and even Art History. One was busted cheating on a test and Harvard put him on probation for a year and made him graduate one year late. All of them went on to very well-paid careers in finance, no need to take a break for an MBA. They made partner at Goldman, became lead traders, went into buy-side, or private equity. They are now starting to retire in their mid-40s.

It's a f#cking racket.[/quote]

It's a racket because high finance and consulting is a racket. What these firms do is not easily differentiable (or, they don't do anything of substance), but they need to convince clients to invest their money with them or sell clients services. Clients are more at ease seeing those from top undergrads working on their cases and handling their investments.

Imagine a corporation is looking for consulting firms to do some study on some industry subject. The work itself is trivial, but it's much easier to convince the company to hire McKinsey and charge a high billing rate when the McKinsey team handling the case is entirely composed of Ivy grads. Throw in students from Case Western, Boston College, Northeastern and the case to go with McKinsey just isn't quite as strong. The latter group very well could do as good of a job as the Ivy grads, but clients are swayed by degrees.

This is also true for the elite law firms. Telling clients that your firm has the best attorneys to handle a case with millions on the line because your firm only hires from Yale and Harvard is a great pitch. Now throw [b]UVA[/b], UNC, UT-Austin, Boston University etc. into the mix and the pitch isn't as great.

Same for tech startups. There's not much to go by when raising money and ergo VCs will go with educational background of the founders. MIT, Stanford are obviously the gold standard but a school Harvard is always a safe bet for investors. [/quote]

UVA is the #8 law school, Harvard #4.  Clients are credentialist, too.  They know the rankings.
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