I agree that if you had to pay your whole way to a private ivy or out of state school, then the choice to go is much lower. The hope is that your kid is desired by the school (the only reason for them to go I suppose) and they will offer some type of reduced cost or at least some lower cost aid based on income…With how much these schools cost, I’d assume most normal, non 1% will qualify for some decent aid. I think the percentages are very high for ivys as to who needs/gets aid.

There are various news articles of that happening to some people where the private school is less or similar to a public UC school.

One thing to also consider as mentioned is that I’m assuming private schools don’t have as much issues with getting your classes vs. UC (we had this problem 20+ years ago seriously so it’s not anything surprising now).

The lack of classes alone will most likely force some kids to stay an extra year. Kids may not want to stay or retake classes, but when midterms or final exams in engr avg say 20% out of 100, 1/3 of the class will simply fail. It’s unavoidable… just hope it’s not you. I remember when going there, there was talk that the UC sorta wants to kick kids out so that’s why they make it hard to drop classes (get stuck with bad grades if falling behind, etc…).

Of course, my opinion is all based on the fact that I wasn’t the top top student in my class and was also just dumb/stupid and goofed off way too much. At least I graduated. Also, maybe if I started some awesome company and sold it for millions, my views would be different too.

GoPro CEO/founder is a UCSD grad so some make it big…Of course, if you read his bio, his parents are very wealthy or pretty well off and had money to invest in his companies, etc…so I’d assume they/he also had a lot of connections. Connections are worth a lot more than people like to admit to themselves and more obvious when you feel you are hitting a glass ceiling.