Ask HN: I got into MIT. Should I go?
I strongly encourage you to contact MIT about your situation and family’s situation and try to negotiate out more financial aid.<p>As someone who went to a flagship state school for undergrad and ivy for phd…<p>A) Most of the people I know who turned down higher-ranked schools for lower-ranked ones because of money regret it. You will make a lot of life-long friends in college, and you will just be exposed to a different caliber of person on average at mit. Random people you meet through friends of friends at brunches or happy hours will be weirdly accomplished and teach you things.<p>B) Your analysis seems to hinge on doing a phd at a top-n school. What if it turns out after a few years of college that you don’t want to do a phd after all? Then instead of being either mit phd, or mit bs, you are z school bs. This may not be terrible, but not optimal.<p>D) On the other hand, I think the differences in career outcomes <i>on average</i> are small, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the probability of starting a company with any given level of success x is 10 times higher for mit alum than Z school alums. Anyway, median mit cs alum has some faang-y job throughout their careers, and these companies all know&#x2F;understand that many top students can’t all afford top colleges, and so they recruit from state schools as well. So the tail outcomes can be quite different, mean&#x2F;median isn’t that much.<p>E) For careers like management consulting or investment banking, some top firms only recruit at top-n schools. <i>However,</i> eg mckinsey even does on-campus recruiting at places like ut austin or georgia tech now, so then it doesn’t matter. You just need yo be at an on-campus recruitment target school.<p>In my opinion, the lifetime of friends and network effects is most of the benefit, and not to be underestimated. You only live once.