Reply to Is Brown worth the premium over William & Mary in-state?

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[quote=Anonymous]From the perspective of this "top" Ivy graduate there are two ways of looking at it:

1. Brown versus W&M prestige - Brown wins, hands down. W&M has a good reputation locally and some repute beyond the region but Brown is much stronger nationwide, very strong in New England/ New York and DC itself and among the "establishment" - law, finance, consulting, media and even Hollywood (lots of Brown alum in Hollywood) the Brown name stands out more. High quality student body, lovely campus, stellar faculty.

2. Is Brown worth the extra tuition over W&M in-state? Truth be told, outside the following top colleges: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Caltech and Stanford, it really is almost pointless nitpicking among the remaining upper tier colleges. Agonizing over Penn versus Northwestern, or Chicago versus Columbia or Brown versus Hopkins, or Dartmouth versus UVA, sure, one school can be more easily "proven" to be better than the other but in the general scheme of things a bright, capable student will do just as well out of life and her college experience out of any of these schools, and this includes admissions to graduate/professional schools. There's a slightly bigger gap between Brown and W&M than the examples I listed but even that doesn't mean much. Leaving aside the issue of money, it's the soft factors that differentiate those colleges (smaller versus bigger, urban versus suburban versus rural, and so forth).If the money is an issue, and the financial gap between two given schools is significant enough, go to the cheaper one. If money is of concern and the choice is between full freight at Penn/Columbia/Brown/Duke versus instate at UVA or W&M, go instate. Only at HYPS/MIT/Caltech would I attempt to justify the extra tuition when money is clearly an issue for the family. [/quote]

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