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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]The reality is that a wonderful college education is available in the United States at reasonable prices to most students, our university system is the envy of the world. Some of the options are very high cost, but not all.[/quote]

NP.  I agree, but here is my frustration:  when you are on a hiring panel, will you fairly consider someone who spent the first two years at NOVA and then graduated from Mason because that was all she could afford without debt?  Or will you pick the Harvard/Yale/Wellesley grad who had the option to go to Harvard/Yale/Wellesley without debt because her parents were high earners?  Be honest.  We all know how this goes.  I practice law, and I absolutely know the real answer to this one.

That is why OP is upset.[/quote]

Seems like nearly everyone misses the primary differences between the "elite" schools and all the other schools.  This is not a screed arguing in favor of an elite college, nor is it saying that kids cannot have good to great outcomes at T100 or T200, simply the real and tangible benefits of the T10 or T20:

1.  The most important aspect of college is your kid creating their own personal network, not really anything they tangibly learn;
2.  No surprise here, but the elite schools tend to attract wealthy and very wealthy domestic and international students, who many times are legacy...the average/median income of these students' families are much higher even if you adjust for school sizes;
3.  If you look at the 100 richest people in this country, you will see an absolute skew of people that either matriculated (but dropped out) or graduated from Top 10 schools.  Where do you think the children of Gates (Harvard), Bezos (Princeton), Zuckerberg (Harvard), Musk (Penn), Larry Page (Michigan and Stanford), Sergey Brin (UMD and Stanford), Steve Ballmer (Harvard), Michael Bloomberg (Hopkins), etc. are going to college...I purposely left out Larry Ellison because he funnily enough has the most refreshing view for his own kids (said why should they go college at all or at least pick a school that is fun because they will never want for anything in their life);
4.  The alumni network of these schools is international and in every field and profession you can imagine...if a kid reaches out, most alumni are more than willing to have coffee and help out one of their own;
5.  There are certain professions that are massively skewed to graduates of these top schools...venture capital, private equity, MBB...they do hire outside of this clique, but it is absolutely easier to get the interview and the job if you are in it.

Many may counter that you can live a great life and have a great career and never have gone to any of these schools.  Absolutely correct.  You will also probably have a friend or two (or three) that graduate Top10 and have crappy jobs and lives, and of course that happens quite a bit too.  You can't just attend and expect these amazing things to fall in your lap.

However, there is no denying the massively skewed phenomenal outcomes that accrue to graduates of these schools.  It is the collective network effect of the reputation, the already elevated wealth and connections of the student body, the alumni, etc.[/quote]

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