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Big name colleges worth the $$$

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Expensive Date

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My son 16 scored very high on his first shot at the SATs is in honors classes and straight A's. He is looking a few schools Harvard, Princeton plus a few local like Monmouth university that have an excellent business program.
He could pretty much get out of Monmouth with no debt with the other two he will have some student loans.Is it worth it,and is there any Harvard or Princeton alumni on this board? Thanks
 
Go for the Ivy league stuff..... My neighbor's kid is a sophmore at MIT on a 50% scholarship. Passed on California IT (Caltech) even though it was a 100% scholarship and he had a good offer from another IVY league school. My neighbor builds cabinetry and thought he would rather pay for the best than get 2nd best for free, pretty simple thinking from a very simple guy.......

There is only one Harvard/Princeton.......Never heard of Monmouth U.....
 
I think a lot of an education is what you put into it yourself and how hard you're willing to work. I have friends who graduated owing $60k that are still trying to pay it off 6 years later. That isn't worth it to me at all. I graduated owing nothing and had a fresh start.

When all's said and done, it's a piece of paper saying that you put your time in. But then I'm also not aiming to be CEO or any job like that. I just do custom software design.
 
From a student's prospective...
Save the money on undergrad and spend on grad school. However, make sure the undergrad program sends enough people to the desired grad program. And yes, it a graduate degree is more or less required, especially in a business-based concentration. A well respected grad program, ie. Ivy League, will help with the connections for the first job. It's not what you know, it's who you know.
 
Agree that it will open more doors but you have to keep them open.Adam is not afraid to work he is 16 and put 7k of his own money (he works)into his college account this year.We will probably take a look at a few schools before spring some of them have a program were you can spend the day sitting in on classes and spend the night in a dorm.
 
Go Ivy league. Monmouth University offered me a full scholarship back in the day, but I passed it up for my #1 pick where I received ~50% scholarship. Student loans are worth it with the right school on your resume. Good Luck to your son!
 
I picked up a nice partial scholarship on accident. I was diagnosed with adult ADHD (go figure), told my college and they offered all kinds of 'accomadations' and automatically gave me the partial scholarship for being a 'disadvantaged' student. if you read up on it, it's easy to bs the Dr. into making a diagnosis....
 
phragle said:
I picked up a nice partial scholarship on accident. I was diagnosed with adult ADHD (go figure), told my college and they offered all kinds of 'accomadations' and automatically gave me the partial scholarship for being a 'disadvantaged' student. if you read up on it, it's easy to bs the Dr. into making a diagnosis....
Click to expand...

But in your case.............it may not be BS! Sniper.gif
 
It depends on the degree. But when it comes to business degrees and business colleges, they're a dime a dozen these days....you don't want to be the guy with the cookie-cutter business degree from Podunk College. It'll pay off to have the ivy league backing when it comes interview time. I don't care how good the Monmouth program is, to a person in another state, it's just another no-name college.....everyone knows Harvard/Yale/Princeton.
 
One of my former partner's wives was class president at Harvard in the 70's. She does screening for applicants regionally and I've been at their home on those Saturday afternoons in the spring when she's got an hourly stream of 17-year-olds coming by. We've talked before and I can tell you it's a very special kid that gets in. It's so much more than GPA and test scores, although those are minimum requirements. They have to be very well-read and very civically/socially involved. You have to have a thick record of achievments inside and outside of school.

My former neighbor was a Yale grad. Played ball for them. He had the golden ticket but did absolutely nothing with it. His wife is a senior litigator at DoJ and he's got a part-time job in a government office. At the same time one of my other neighbors took a part-time job with an electric utility to put him self through the local college. A few years later he went back to night law school while working full time. He has a degree from Nothing University and he's CEO of a Fortune 100 corporation.

It's not the college, it's the person. But the college can open the doors more easily. but you gotta' play the game- from day one.
 
Congrats on raising a good kid, you must be proud. I also think that a major and idea of what type of work one wants to do should be a determination factor of where he should go. To me if you want to teach or major in something like history going IVY league is not necessary, but if you want to be on the fast track in business then like others said having Princeton or Harvard on you resume will make you stand out from the crowd. BTW what is his area of interest.

A lot of my friends are doing the college rounds with their kids now and Chris is right the good schools are expecting kids to be very involved in organizations and charity work. With grade scores and SAT scores being so equal among a lot of their applicants this type of stuff is what sets the kids apart from one another. Is he involved in a lot of other things?

When I went to high school, other then sports and the clubs the school had, hardly anyone got involved, boy has that changed. A few years back I attended a graduation at a fairly exclusive private school and was amazed at list of civic and charitable organizations most of these kids were involved with.
 
It will depend on where they want to work. For yourself or a small company, I won't, In a large corporation that you want to climb the ladder it's a bigger deal IMOH.
 
As far as the best schools in the world, I'd put one of the service academies far above any of the Ivy League schools.
 
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