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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It sucks except if you win. Then it’s great. There is nothing globally that is like the education, connections and level of services of all kinds available at the tippy-top of American higher education.[/quote]

No, it sucks period. The reason that it sucks is the supply/demand imbalance and the simple fact that there are some whom believe that there are only a small number of schools which "matter" and everything else is a failure. That entire mental model is ridiculous with anything deeper than a surface evaluation because you will quickly realize that this is a demand/ego driven belief rather than any actual difference in quality.
 [/quote]

There is a difference in quality. Stanford is better than Arizona State. This is true even though you can succeed in spite of attending Arizona State and even though you may not succeed in spite of attending Stanford.[/quote]

That is true, Stanford is measurably better than Arizona State. But, Stanford isn't measurably better than Santa Clara especially for undergraduate education.[/quote]

My suspicion is that Santa Clara is just as good as Stanford for tech majors but wouldn't be as good for other majors.

The quality of the professors and of the other students is certainly going to be higher at any elite school than the majority of state schools.[/quote]

The real point is that schools are better grouped into buckets, you cannot really stack rank them in any manner that is definitive. And, the top bucket is much larger than many people believe.[/quote]

In terms of educational quality it may be true that the top bucket is really 100 colleges rather than 20. But in terms of bang for the buck, I certainly made distinctions between top 10 and 50-100. I was prepared to pay full price for top 10, but full price for private or out of state public ranked 11-100, forget it.[/quote]

And that is your choice.  But I personally think it's a ridiculous choice.  If you have the $$$, most in the T100 are still worth it if it's the right fit for your kid.  
But you are stating you wouldn't pay $90K for a school ranked 15 or 25?  That's BS and I feel for your kid.

[/quote]

No I absolutely would not pay full price for Rice, WUSL, Emory, or Notre Dame, let alone Boston College, NYU, or Villanova.

Don't feel bad for my kid, he did better than any of the above.[/quote]

That is your choice.  But imo seems a bit strange if you can afford it (and if you can't afford it well then it's not worth it for t10 either)

My kid is actually happier (I think) at their t40 than they would have been at the pressure cooker if a t10 they wanted.  They are successful and will do great things--because of their work not because of the school [/quote]

I can afford it. I don't think it's strange at all to consider bang for the buck. Yeah there are people who are so rich they don't have to care at all about bang for the buck, but I'm not that wealthy. I can pay for a T10 but I'd "notice" paying that amount of money. It didn't come to that because DS got in ED at UVA. In my view paying in-state at UVA is a no-brainer compared to full pay at BC or Villanova (which we actually looked at, they were nice, but not $250,000 nicer than UVA in my opinion [i]and[/i] in my son's opinion). [/quote]

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