Avg. Salary of Wharton Grad debate

[thedarknight]

metamath, are you a douche?

[metamath]

ask me again when you're working for me

[Evan]

meta, I just want to thank you for being really entertaining in this thread.

[metamath]

the competitive advantage gained from going to a top school (Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Yale, and even Stanford/CalTech) is worth far more than the tuition at these schools. hell, the professional hookups alone are worth it.

of course the value of a degree from a top school is obscured by the fact that the students coming out of these schools are (generally) the best and brightest and would succeed in any environment.

that being said, i'm hopeful that in 10 years i'll be making at least 100k more per year than if i'd graduated from umass with the same degree / credentials (this is a very, very conservative guess)...

[metamath]

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meta, I just want to thank you for being really entertaining in this thread.

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it's all tongue-in-cheek, obviously...

[Evan]

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meta, I just want to thank you for being really entertaining in this thread.

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it's all tongue-in-cheek, obviously...

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I know a lot of people who make "tounge-in-cheek" comments like yours. For the most part they actually believe the things they say, because no one that didn't really feel that way would say it. Whether or not they chose to say it's the truth or tounge-in-cheek is up to them.

Now go ahead and tell me how hot your girlfriend is or how sweet your Ferragamo loafers are.

[Thremp]

Evan,

Coming from the other side (getting rejected in a very tough year at all my Ivy and just making top notch Liberal Arts skizzles). I would probably take on 200k in debt easily over 4 years to attend a Princeton level school mostly just for the hookups. I'll probably make more than almost everyone who graduates from there this year, but my options aren't the same as theirs.

[Evan]

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the competitive advantage gained from going to a top school (Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Yale, and even Stanford/CalTech) is worth far more than the tuition at these schools. hell, the professional hookups alone are worth it.

of course the value of a degree from a top school is obscured by the fact that the students coming out of these schools are (generally) the best and brightest and would succeed in any environment.

that being said, i'm hopeful that in 10 years i'll be making at least 100k more per year than if i'd graduated from umass with the same degree / credentials (this is a very, very conservative guess)...

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This is really getting off topic, but for the sake of maybe giving you a springboard to write a more thoughtful reply to my post, I'll say this:

1) 100k more in 10 years isn't really "100k more" as I'm sure you know. Let's say your hurdle rate for that moeny is 8%, which is probably a fair "market" return estimate. So a 100k difference 10 years after graduation (which is 14 years after you start paying the increased tuition) is (or was) a present value of about 34k. That is getting much closer to the range of differences between in state public school tuition and top private school tuition. I know you said this was a conservative estimate, so there's no need to repeat that or tell me it SHOULD be 200k or whatever. I just want to point out that the difference is probably smaller than most people realize.

2) For many families the difference in tuition goes beyond simple EV and the effective rate to consider is actually higher than market return, because instead of giving up potential investment income they're incurring excess debt that they may end up paying even higher rates on. So in this case you need to make even more excess to make up for the increased cost of the upfront investment.

[Evan]

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Evan,

Coming from the other side (getting rejected in a very tough year at all my Ivy and just making top notch Liberal Arts skizzles). I would probably take on 200k in debt easily over 4 years to attend a Princeton level school mostly just for the hookups. I'll probably make more than almost everyone who graduates from there this year, but my options aren't the same as theirs.

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Yea, just to be clear I'm not really saying "going to top tier schools is bad" at all. I personally tend to always have a bit of a "the grass is greener on the other side" mentality. I also feel like a lot of people are too shortsighted in their opinion on this issue.

One more point to make is that although your option this year (or whenever you graduate/graduated) might not be the same, (1) the difference will likely shrink over time (2) I believe your immediate post college activities have a lot less to do with your long term success then most people seem to think.

[catalyst]

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meta, I just want to thank you for being really entertaining in this thread.

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it's all tongue-in-cheek, obviously...

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I doubt this to a certain degree