[quote=deadzone]What’s so great about Harvard? I wouldn’t want my kid going to school with all those spoiled, wealthy, elitist little pricks. (oh wait, that statement could apply to most colleges)

I’m curious what college did you graduate from FlyerInHi?[/quote]

I think if a kid can get in for something like business or law or medicine, then there might be some useful aspects to it. UPenn has a great undergrad business program and placement to Wharton MBA is pretty high, not to mention connections to wall street. Ditto for Harvard biz and law.

There are a bunch more specialities, but to me it seems like it *might* only make financial sense if you pick one of the professions that eventually could lead to bigger $$$$. For example, if going to Harvard/UPenn increases your chances of going to wall street or work for a hedge fund, then it might make sense, or a top rank high paid legal profession. And if someone wants to stay in academia and become a professor, well then I can understand that too.

I guess where I don’t see it making sense is all the unemployable majors that one can pick. Granted a lot of these kids with these majors end up going to med school or dental school or law school, it seems to be pretty risky if your kid ends up picking a major like “Communications”, has no interest/desire to b-school, law-school, med school, etc…Then what you end up with a shelling out $380k for a degree that lands no better job prospects other than something only requiring your kid to say “you want fries with that?”….Well, at least that’s for the majority of kids. I guess if the kid is a 1%er kid with a trust fund, it doesn’t really matter what they do/study.

That said, even if you’re the smartest kid and goes to the Ivy’s doesn’t mean you’ll be able to make big $$$$. And as a corollary, I’ve seen plenty of pretty stupid people make big $$$$ on pretty stupid ideas. And by “stupid ideas” I don’t mean it in a negative way…Just emphasizing that the ideas were exactly rocket science.