Anonymous wrote:Top 20 no.
Top 10 yes.
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford
MIT
UPenn
Columbia
Caltech
Duke
John Hopkins

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Anonymous wrote:Do elite schools actually matter? Besides prestige and connections, what are the pros?

I have heard from parents of MIT kids of them getting summer research internship and earning 50K over 3 months which pretty much covers the difference between in-state and out of state tuition (MIT does not give any merit based scholarship since it is pretty much the whole school; only need based scholarship). After graduation I have seen them earning twice more than my salary after 20 years of exp in IT. Lot of T20 school kids end up starting their own startups as well with their classmates. There is a reason why students and parents (like us) crave for top schools.

How do you know it’s the institution and not the kid?

It is definitelyv primarily the kid. No question about it.

I went to a state flagship. Killed it by taking advantage of lots of opportunities. My kid is going to a T10. The opportunities are different - but I wouldn't say necessarily better. You had to look for the opportunities but if you were the elite in a public, your professors would give you a lot of assistance. The thing that is different is the peer group. I was routinely one of the top performers at my school. My kid can see that there are a ton of kids around her that she can learn from. Also that can create things (companies, for one) that she would then have access to. Its a different world.

Anonymous wrote:Successful people who went to T20 schools say they would have never gotten where they are without it. So yes, totally worth it.

Successful people who didn’t go to T20 say they didn’t need it. So no, not worth it.

Anonymous wrote:A common factor of elite schools in the T20 other than the Publics is the really low student to faculty ratio ( of 6 to 7), on par with the Top LACs or even better (MIT is 3). The Publics like UCLA, UCB are at 19.

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Anonymous wrote:Do elite schools actually matter? Besides prestige and connections, what are the pros?

I have heard from parents of MIT kids of them getting summer research internship and earning 50K over 3 months which pretty much covers the difference between in-state and out of state tuition (MIT does not give any merit based scholarship since it is pretty much the whole school; only need based scholarship). After graduation I have seen them earning twice more than my salary after 20 years of exp in IT. Lot of T20 school kids end up starting their own startups as well with their classmates. There is a reason why students and parents (like us) crave for top schools.

How do you know it’s the institution and not the kid?

It is definitelyv primarily the kid. No question about it.

I went to a state flagship. Killed it by taking advantage of lots of opportunities. My kid is going to a T10. The opportunities are different - but I wouldn't say necessarily better. You had to look for the opportunities but if you were the elite in a public, your professors would give you a lot of assistance. The thing that is different is the peer group. I was routinely one of the top performers at my school. My kid can see that there are a ton of kids around her that she can learn from. Also that can create things (companies, for one) that she would then have access to. Its a different world.

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Anonymous wrote:Quality of the peer group is vastly different vs. non T20 IMO.

With holistic admissions and current preferences for athletes, first gen and pell grant eligible, this is not true, Lots if kids at T50 or even T75 who have stats for T20 but didn’t get in due to the aforementioned preferences, were hurt by average ecs, or college’s desire for geographical diversity.

The issue is do these kids ever get the jobs at Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, McKinsey, Bain in the numbers - on a per capita basis - compared to the top 25 schools?
The answer is they don’t. At least not yet. Maybe that will change in the next decade.

I would be extremely disappointed if my kids ended up at a Goldman or a Blackstone, etc., so I'd say opinions differ about the "quality" of a peer group that is gunning in that direction.

Agree 100%. I want my kids to have an impact on the world/others. And not an impact like the big corporations.

To each his own, I guess.

Big corporations literally impact the world you rube. That's the reason they exist. My God you people are dumb.

DP. Before you call someone dumb look at yourself. Corporations do not exist "to impact the world". They exist to make a profit fir their shareholders, which is why you invest in them via individual purchases of stock or mutual funds

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Anonymous wrote:Do elite schools actually matter? Besides prestige and connections, what are the pros?

I have heard from parents of MIT kids of them getting summer research internship and earning 50K over 3 months which pretty much covers the difference between in-state and out of state tuition (MIT does not give any merit based scholarship since it is pretty much the whole school; only need based scholarship). After graduation I have seen them earning twice more than my salary after 20 years of exp in IT. Lot of T20 school kids end up starting their own startups as well with their classmates. There is a reason why students and parents (like us) crave for top schools.

How do you know it’s the institution and not the kid?

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Anonymous wrote:Quality of the peer group is vastly different vs. non T20 IMO.

With holistic admissions and current preferences for athletes, first gen and pell grant eligible, this is not true, Lots if kids at T50 or even T75 who have stats for T20 but didn’t get in due to the aforementioned preferences, were hurt by average ecs, or college’s desire for geographical diversity.

The issue is do these kids ever get the jobs at Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, McKinsey, Bain in the numbers - on a per capita basis - compared to the top 25 schools?
The answer is they don’t. At least not yet. Maybe that will change in the next decade.

I would be extremely disappointed if my kids ended up at a Goldman or a Blackstone, etc., so I'd say opinions differ about the "quality" of a peer group that is gunning in that direction.

Agree 100%. I want my kids to have an impact on the world/others. And not an impact like the big corporations.

To each his own, I guess.

Big corporations literally impact the world you rube. That's the reason they exist. My God you people are dumb.

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Anonymous wrote:Quality of the peer group is vastly different vs. non T20 IMO.

This.
The networking. The connections. The opportunities.

I went to a T-20 in the 90s and my siblings did not. There’s a huge divergence in earnings and peer group (my college friends and their outcomes compared to theirs)….

Agree with this. I went to a top Ivy, sibling did not. We both did fine in our careers and lives, but we went on to very different paths. And the people we associate with now are very, very different.

Three decades ago is very different from now. More poor kids can attend top schools. More international students, many of whom will never work in the U.S.n More high stats kids are attending publics due to doughnut hole.

Anonymous wrote:Kids starting companies are already connected and have money.