For those that spent a lot of money on an elite college, do you ever regret your decision?

I didn’t know what I was doing when I went to college. I didn’t know what I wanted. And I didn’t know anything about life. If only I had worked about ten years before I had gone to college I would have been better off.

I didn’t accrue much debt going to undergrad or grad school, so I don’t regret either.

I’m currently attending the university that ranks 6th nationwide and I don’t think I’m going to regret it, because the money is ample. Even so, it’s not easy to regret a good education unless you’re really in trouble. However, I do agree that it is hammered into kids to go to the best school without regards to how much it costs and I think something could be done to fix that.

yep, the college I went to was quite expensive, and although a decent educational institution it was not nearly worth the ridiculous cost.

had I been less naive years ago looking at colleges, I would have gone overseas somewhere where college is realistically affordable.

But now I am stuck with a lot of debt and just go day by day and deal with it. Even though i have to put my hopes and dreams on hold for a long while, i am jsut trying to deal with it.

I am still in college, so perhaps I am not qualified to answer . . . but I am 99% sure that I would have regretted not going to the more expensive college I am at right now. Although scholarships and my major (animation) definitely came into play – I couldn’t have gotten the kind of education anywhere else, definitely not at a public university.

Going to Brown was the best thing that ever happened in my life. Priceless. Nearly all of my successes are directly related to some aspect of Brown.

That said, it’s been really difficult having nearly all of my friends scattered across the country and world, but I thank the lord that I got into that school. I don’t think my life would be the same had I not gone there.

I am totally in this demographic. My parents paid through the nose, (and I more or less maxed out my financial aid) so that I could go to Notre Dame (which offers nearly zero academic scholarships). It was a miserable, depressing experience for a number of reasons (most not to do with the school itself), but it wasn’t fun to be “school rich and cash poor” compared to my peers. As something of a southerner, I had a difficult time melding with the affluent Chicagoans and Jerseyites who seemed
to comprise the bulk of the student body, and I grew alienated from Catholicism
and college football (the two official religions) during my time there. Also, when I got to the point that I could no longer stand it there, leaving didn’t seem to be a viable option because of the cash we’d already sunk into the venture.

Notre Dame is known for its strong alumni network and alumni donors, but I have always felt alien to ND alumni groups and have to laugh at the solicitations I receive when I still owe about 5–8 years worth of undergrad loan payments.

While I consider myself more well educated than many of
my work colleagues, it is painfully obvious how advantageous it is to attend school in-state or regionally, especially when you live somewhere not so cosmopolitan.

I’m sure that sounds like a lot of whining, and I accept that criticism as well as failures on my part to make better with advantages I’ve been given, but this is a gigantic sore spot for me. Answering this Q is actually good motivation to do something about it.

It can be such a crapshoot. Like @wenn, the debt can really hem you in if you don’t springboard into something that is your calling, but obviously it was a much better story for @andrew.

The saving grace at this point, though, is that I can sell my house, pay everything off and start over.

I think the more important question is a matter of fit, whether the school you’re paying for is a good fit for you and what you need. Because if it is, it’s absolutely worth it. I was lucky that I found and got into the two best schools for me and wouldn’t trade my experiences there for the world. But unfortunately, they also happen to be two of the most expensive schools you can go to. So I have a lot of debt which is scary, but I can deal with it because the experience made it worth it.

I started out at an Ivy League where I had a free ride, but I ended up leaving because my major wasn’t a good fit for me. I ended up graduating from local city school with a major that plays much more to my strengths. I’m broke and unemployed now, though it brings me some measure of relief knowing I would be in the same situation had I finished at my original school.

In my opinion, most colleges are more or less at the same level when it comes to how well they teach and the knowledge you gain from it, some college may have areas they specialize in but in general they are all the same.
The top-tier comes into play if your wanting to go to grad school, building connections, and getting a jon (important things for sure). It’s as simple as this, since long ago the brightest (or best connected) have been going to the top-tier schools so they keep doing so and because of that they are the best breeding grounds for networking and jobs.

I went to Bowdoin, and it was worth every penny. Not so much for the academics—which were top notch—but because I managed to find my tribe there. People with brains and heart, people who really cared about things like Irish poetry and Gothic romances and whether Homer was one person or a literary tradition. And people who could drink like fishes.

Like Andrew, I can say that all of my major personal successes have roots at Bowdoin—as do all of my personal catastrophes. As vocational preparation it was pretty pathetic, but as education for life and éducation sentimentale it was unmatched. It didn’t give me useful stuff for dealing with my current work life, but it prepared me to have a rich life outside of work.

(And I have Brunonian friends. We get together and look down our noses at that young upstart Wesleyan.)

@MuffinMonarch: that is emphatically not the case. Elite schools wind up dealing with more motivated and better prepared students, and so they can accomplish considerably more in four years than the average university. The work I was doing as a junior and a senior undergraduate was considered graduate-level work at the state university where I went to graduate school.

not yet but I’m sure if I don’t get a high quality position when I graduate I’m going to…..

I enjoyed Swarthmore, and financially speaking, I felt that I really got a good deal from it (it helps that I got a scholarship). Practically every summer I was on some project funded by the school; and I even got funding after I graduated for post-graduate study in London. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure that my pedigree from Swarthmore got me the job at the elite tutorial center I’m working at, which basically makes it financially viable to support more theatre work (relatively speaking: high pay, few hours).

I found my love of dance at Swarthmore; and that has pretty much defined my life my life as it has now. They invited a visiting professor from Poland, and I went there in exchange, fell in love with dancing, and am in professionally now. I keep in touch with many of the teachers I met there; and while I wasn’t particularly attached socially to the community as a whole, those I do keep in touch with, I do keep in touch with and are important to me.

Having said that, I’ve never really cared for rankings. if I did I would have gone to Oxford (UK), which has more currency over here in Hong Kong (where they have no idea what Swarthmore is, let alone pronounce it); and that would have been disastrous. So I do think there is an overemphasis on rankings; it is a matter of finding a good fit with yourself and the school.