College Debt
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chaosiscash
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RIP - VTEnviro
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My wife went to a school like that for undergrad. This private liberal arts school with affiliations with the Presbyterian church. Not extremely pricey but a lot more than a public school. She basically went because she got a half scholarship, they had a good science school, and it was 10 minutes from home.
She said a lot of the girls there were MRS students. They'd get married as sophomores or juniors so they could have sex with the guy they were dating. Apparently she sees folks from time to time when she visits her parents. Most of them are pouring coffee or checking groceries and miserable in their marriage but too pious to get divorced.
Sure, I'll go with you there, depending on the field you're going in to. Ask my coworker in the tiny cubicle downstairs if he thinks his Princeton degree got him any sort of leg up as a design engineer in this office.
maryannette
Wise One
RIP - VTEnviro
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I donno, I prefer a little less permanent solution to get a girl to loosen up her...morals. Like a bottle of tequila.
chaosiscash
Subcontractor
VT, I know you are up in Boston, but did your wife happen to go to Presbyterian College in South Carolina? They have a lot of students there from the Northeast. I ask b/c thats where my wife went on her first trip through college. She was, in her words, the "token poor girl at a rich kids school."
Capt Worley PE
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benbo
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I'm not sure if you're agreeing or being sarcastic.
Everybody can pull up one anecdotal example. You seriously aren't claiming that proves anything? Because I have a bunch of Ivy Leaguers working at my place, except they generally leave after a few years for jobs that make at least$200K. But I wouldn't count that as proof of anything either.
I would be willing to bet that if you looked statistically at the salaries of people graduating from Ivy League schools (especially if you include Law and Business schools) they would be ahead of the normal college grad by a good deal.
Engineering school - I don't know. If you are going to be a technical engineering type and not a manager it probably doesn't matter financially.
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RIP - VTEnviro
His Memory Eternal
Coming from the northeast (where we have a gazillion colleges/universities (good, bad, and ugly) it's both my observation and opinion that a highly rated school (ivy league if you will) is definitelty a leg up.
Further, if you can get in but don't have sufficient funds I believe that there's a heck of a lot of scholarship money available to you. The hard part is getting in, because I believe that there are a lot of mediocre students with enough funds available to attend that get turned down because the school does't want to lose face/credibitlity. They don't immediately giove seats to the people with cash. It also helps thier reputation by taking a really good student and funding them through.
I guess my point is that if you are of the caliber to get into an ivy league school, money isn't necessarily the biggest obstacle and loans likely aren't the biggest concern. You need to get accepted first.
Having a degree from a prestigious university is always a resume booster.
chaosiscash
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squishles10
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Both, actually. I'm not an Ivy League grad, but I imagine that having an Ivy League education in fields like law or business is a bigger leg up than having that same Ivy League name with a field like engineering, where it still may be a boost, but not as much. I mention my coworker because even he questions the benefit of having gone to Princeton (and we like to give him grief that he can't even read his diploma - it's in Latin). Now, if I forward him your note about Ivy Leaguers at your place leaving for 200K jobs, I think it'll give him ideas, especially if they're engineering types.
benbo
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You can be successful from any state school, or flop from an Ivy. And it all depends on what your idea of success is.
The people I am talking about are from various educational backgrounds, but most of them are in some sort of managment or high level analyst type position. I work in a govt. agency where these types of people move back and forth from private to public sector - work in private sector for a while making big bucks, move back to public sector for a while for "public service". The people who do this type of thing are invariably (but not always) graduates of some sort of Ivy League school.
I can't disagree entirely with your other statements. I'm sure it matters more in some fields than others. However, I am not an Ivy grad either, but common sense tells me people would not be busting their hump to get in if there was no benefit. It makes no sense.
frazil
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Over the years I have taken courses at 6 different colleges/universities at all levels - from Ivy League to community college. In my experience there is a definite difference in the education received. Ivy League courses are more rigorous and theoretical-based. At the state university level the coursework is more applied. Both can produce excellent engineers and not-so-good engineers.
I read this article just recently: Ivy League's Big Edge: starting pay
I think graduates from top schools have an edge that isn't solely due to the name of the school or networking, but I'm not sure how the differences in education would make them better engineers. I think the theoretical and applied are both important. Maybe it's because people going to those schools have to be fairly intelligent to begin with, and an intelligent engineer from any school could do just as well.
anyway, just my :2cents:
I read this article just recently: Ivy League's Big Edge: starting pay
I think graduates from top schools have an edge that isn't solely due to the name of the school or networking, but I'm not sure how the differences in education would make them better engineers. I think the theoretical and applied are both important. Maybe it's because people going to those schools have to be fairly intelligent to begin with, and an intelligent engineer from any school could do just as well.
anyway, just my :2cents:
Katiebug
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I suspect the Ivy League designation matters less in engineering than in finance, law, medicine, etc. To my knowledge the only two Ivies which have really good engineering programs are Cornell and Columbia, maybe Princeton as well. I don't have many colleagues in engineering who went to an Ivy League school. We have a lot of state university grads (like me), and a good number from private schools like RPI, WPI, Rose-Hulman, etc.
I looked at Columbia's undergrad ME curriculum and was surprised to see that it only requires 1 semester of chemistry (and one semester of lab). I had to take two semesters each of chem and chem lab. There is NO required materials science/engineering course for ME majors at Columbia - at my state school MEs were required to take two semesters of materials, plus a materials lab. Otherwise the ME core curriculum seems to be OK.
I am starting a master's at Columbia via distance ed and was required to take an undergrad course in materials science & engineering before starting graduate classes (despite having minored in materials as an undergrad) - the claim made was that as someone who went to a state university and didn't major in MSAE, I would need a "refresher" course. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am bored out of my mind! The pace is quite slow and is very focused on theory with little practical application of said theory. It's all well and good to be able to derive equations, but if you can't apply them, what's the point? I'm seriously considering switching back to RPI or UConn for this master's degree because thus far I'm not impressed by Columbia.
Heck, I have a high school friend who went to MIT and majored in mechanical engineering. He graduated with more than $100K in student loan debt. I went to UConn and majored in ME, and graduated with $21K in student loan debt. He was shocked to discover that our salaries are basically equivalent (within $1000 of each other) - plus I work for a company that has an unparalleled employee education program. while he's footing the bill for his master's degree. MIT is an awesome school, don't get me wrong - but personally I'm glad I went to a state school and didn't incur all that debt for essentially the same salary!
benbo
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I will have to agree, on review, that it doesn't seem to matter as much for Engineering school. However, I will point out that among the top rated schools more than half are expensive private schools, though not necessarily Ivy (Stanford, MIT, Caltech, USC, etc.) But it appears that a lot of public schools or less expensive private schools rank up there as well (U of I, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, a few other UCs, etc.). So for our particular career it doesn't seem to matter as much. To anticipate the response, I know people will say rankings don't matter, I know Joe Blow who graduated from blah blah Ivy and he's an idiot and makes $3.00 an hour. Rankings are not the be all and end all but assuming they include peer assessment I think they are more objective.
However, in most every other careers I still contend you have a leg up if you graduate from an Ivy.
Maybe I have a bone to pick on this one because I have a co-worker who graduated from a state school who always used to call our boss an idiot. My boss is a Harvard educated economist and I would point out that in general, if you get in on merit which he did, you can't be a complete idiot and graduate from Harvard. My co-worker would go on to explain why San Jose State (a fine school by the way) was equivalent to Harvard. Sorry, I don't buy it. And I also have my own beefs with my boss, but I don't think he's an idiot.
However, in most every other careers I still contend you have a leg up if you graduate from an Ivy.
Maybe I have a bone to pick on this one because I have a co-worker who graduated from a state school who always used to call our boss an idiot. My boss is a Harvard educated economist and I would point out that in general, if you get in on merit which he did, you can't be a complete idiot and graduate from Harvard. My co-worker would go on to explain why San Jose State (a fine school by the way) was equivalent to Harvard. Sorry, I don't buy it. And I also have my own beefs with my boss, but I don't think he's an idiot.
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