OP, I was thinking about this lately too. A family we’ve known since elementary pushed their kid in a certain sport, unabashedly for college admissions. They sold the family business, sold their house for a loss, moved to a much smaller place in a less competitive area to redshirt the kid before high school and go all in for this kid’s sport. The dad even got himself hired as a coach at the HS to be in all the practices lol. But they did it! Kid is a recruited athlete. Was it worth all that sacrifice to land at ivy? Although the sport isn’t really one people do professionally, I think they are playing the long game for the types of things PPs are mentioning here - access to power, enhanced opportunities and dating pool, starting a legacy, etc.

I work with people regularly who went to tippy top schools and not elite schools.

My job is like a top 25% outcome for my top school. Nice but not uncommon. Just sort of an ordinary outcome for someone who works diligently and has average luck and doesn’t take a big risk or have an unusual connection.

It’s a top 1-5% outcome for many other schools.

So of course I ended up in the same place as my coworkers, but they faced much higher odds to get here.

What’s the point of driving a Mercedes when the Hyundai gets you the same place?

I really enjoyed the Ivy experience but that was because I was extremely analytical and wanted to be around others like me after public high school. I think it made my colleges classes and friendships more interesting but I would have had to go into a different field to make it worth the extra money. At the time it was much cheaper than it is now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many students attend these so-called "no name schools in India," and what percentage of them actually end up making it big in the US?

Some of our parents attended “no name” colleges in India, did well in the US, and were to send us to elite colleges in the US.

Undoubtedly true, but how is that relevant to the question above?

Anonymous wrote:What is point of living a life if we all end up in graves?

lol

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you go to the ER you will see car crash survivors who wore a seat belt and, also, some who did not. Does it matter whether you wear a seat belt if you end up in the same place?

Not a good analogy. You can end up with the ER with permanent life-threatening injuries, or ones that are serious but fully recoverable. Wearing seat belts has a causal effect on the relatively likelihood of each.,

Going to a better school puts you in the company of people who understand analogies.

The SAT stopped testing analogies in 2005.

Anonymous wrote:How many students attend these so-called "no name schools in India," and what percentage of them actually end up making it big in the US?

Some of our parents attended “no name” colleges in India, did well in the US, and were to send us to elite colleges in the US.

How many students attend these so-called "no name schools in India," and what percentage of them actually end up making it big in the US?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you go to the ER you will see car crash survivors who wore a seat belt and, also, some who did not. Does it matter whether you wear a seat belt if you end up in the same place?

Not a good analogy. You can end up with the ER with permanent life-threatening injuries, or ones that are serious but fully recoverable. Wearing seat belts has a causal effect on the relatively likelihood of each.,

Going to a better school puts you in the company of people who understand analogies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your alumni network is different. Your potential pool of SOs/life partners is different. Your enjoyment of the learning may be different.

I never understand this comment. The median age for college educated people to get married these days is 30 (and even higher among those with advanced degrees). The odds these days that you are meeting a life partner in college are low.

I met my BigLaw ex-husband in college.

Anonymous wrote:I am not a troll. I’m the parent of a HS sophomore who is killing themselves excelling in school and participating in extracurriculars to be competitive for T20.

At the same time, I see parents on here posting how their kid went to Cornell and ended up in the same place as someone who went to Pitt or another similarly ranked school.

At the same time, in my job I work alongside people who have gone to ivies and schools I’ve never heard of. I went to Michigan, btw.

My sister did her undergraduate at Oxford, stayed in the UK and is now partner at a well respected consulting firm alongside other partners that went to no name schools from India.

So seeing the stress my kid goes through, I am honestly asking what is the point of a Yale or Princeton if they take you to the same place that a school like Rutgers and Radford can take you?!

Most of Indian Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers - who are succeeding BIGLY in the US, have gone to the so called "no name schools in India". If it is so easy to succeed in the US after going to no-name 3rd world colleges, I wonder why OP is such a BIGLY LOSER and why is his EQUALLY BIGLY LOSER KID killing himself just to get good grades? Isn't grade inflation also so rampant in the US that anyone can have a 4.0 gpa and 1600 in SAT?

Anonymous wrote:For the ambitious, the school credentials fast-track them to better career and graduate schools opportunities. It’s not that kids from other schools can’t get to the same place as kids from prestigious colleges, but it may take longer (smart and ambitious kids go to a variety of schools).

For those of us who value time above all else, this is priceless.

If it's possible to reach the same destination in 5 years via a top school vs. 10 years via a non-top school (and obviously I'm just throwing out random numbers for illustrative effect), the choice is obvious for me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your alumni network is different. Your potential pool of SOs/life partners is different. Your enjoyment of the learning may be different.

I never understand this comment. The median age for college educated people to get married these days is 30 (and even higher among those with advanced degrees). The odds these days that you are meeting a life partner in college are low.

Princeton is like 60% interamarry

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your alumni network is different. Your potential pool of SOs/life partners is different. Your enjoyment of the learning may be different.

I never understand this comment. The median age for college educated people to get married these days is 30 (and even higher among those with advanced degrees). The odds these days that you are meeting a life partner in college are low.

That's why I said SOs and not just life partners. Most of us may not have married someone from college, but are nonetheless shaped by relationships that we had during that time. For me personally, they helped much more than they hurt on balance.