My husband and I (we were high school sweethearts) passed up MIT and Hopkins respectively because although we both got in, we couldn't afford. And you know who told us we couldn't afford it? Our respective parents. Because they realized Univ. of State and State Tech would still get us where we wanted to go in life and would do so debt free. Best decisions we ever made.
I place a lot of blame on the parents for raising their children's expectations and letting them get into this mess in the first place. Probably the same people who bought a $500,000 house with an exotic mortgage that's now in default.
Live within your means people!
While I generally agree with the sentiment that college students should pick colleges with an eye on future economic goals (i.e don't attend an expensive college for social work). I should point out that there are a few things that an undergrad degree from a top notch university is very helpful.
MIT sends about a quarter of their students to Wall Street (before the crash), UofPenn undergrad business grads also has a high percentage of people entering hedge fund companies etc upon graduation. These are difficult to attain jobs that few college grads will be able to get, especially if they attend a less well stellar program. My school had a visit from McKinsey consulting, evidently an elite consulting company and they took one applicant, out of probably 80-100 people interviewed. They were pretty snooty too, only attending a handful of undergrads (although I think they only came to visit, not really to hire, our bschool is good, not great).
Our school has a top notch premed program and I was told by friends that while interviewing at other top med schools, they noticed the students came from the same schools. The consensus seems to be that it helps to have a Harvard degree when applying to Harvard/Yale/Stanford med school.
So while students who have definitive plans may want to avoid certain schools for cost reasons, others may want to leave doors open and attend a more expensive school because that "fancy pants" school may open some doors that would otherwise be harder to pry open. Not to say that most people want to attend expensive graduate schools or work for Wall Street, but money doesn't have to be the sole factor preventing students from doing such things. A family friend's child wanted to attend Harvard very badly. Her parents asked her to find a way to chip in. They figured if she was smart enough to get into Harvard, she'll be smart enough to find other scholarships to pay for it.....and they were right. She found scholarship to cover 1/3rd of the cost, Harvard chipped in, and her family chipped in some. It was still more expensive to send her to Harvard than the local state school, but they figured they could afford the smaller increase in cost for Harvard vs. State U.
What students should do (especially now), is to carefully weigh out the cost of the school they're attending. Students should not blindly take the loans given and pay the full price. Scholarships, work study programs, and negotiating with school financial aid office should all be used to minimize debt----well, unless you attend med school, our options are much more limited.
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