I’m a state school undergrad with private school law degree. Sis is Ivy undergrad with state school grad degree.
I had scholarships for both schools. Sis got financial aid at the Ivy and stipend for a PhD. It was a wash for our parents.
My best friends at my state school got a Stanford MBA, a Yale PhD, a Yale JD. Her roommates her frosh year got 2 MDs and a PhD.
The biggest difference is I had to work at finding smart friends and a good thesis mentor at my 50k plus university. Classes were hard to schedule. Add/drop policy sucked. She was always surrounded by smart folks and had really liberal add/drop policies to keep up her already Ivy inflated GPA. She dropped one class after the final exam.
What’s harder? A 3.5 state school GPA with a double major in Engineering/History or a 3.7 GPA in biology at an Ivy. I’d argue my coursework was more stressful and harder to accomplish but….
What’s more impressive to grad schools and hiring committees? The 3.7 at an Ivy.
What happens when google is flooded with resumes that it imposes a 3.7 undergrad GPA cap even on experienced attorneys? You don’t get your foot in the door.
When I was doing hiring at my law firm, here was the criteria. Top 5 students at the University of Houston, top 5% at SMU, top 15% at UT, top 33% at Duke, anybody breathing at Harvard Law.
And in this day and age, it’s the affluent and well-educated marrying among themselves. Latest weddings I went to JD/JD, MBA/MD, MBA/MD, Phd/MD, Phd/MD. I know a few couples with a MD wife and a BA/BS husband (but all the guys were swimming in tech options). Hate to say that marriage has a business like transaction aspect to it but let’s not pretend that it doesn’t.
