12 comments

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  Patrick

  1 year ago

  Not many people can say they profited by going to school - that's a very cool thing. It sounds like you made the best selection for you and your personality, which is much more important than going to school to get a certain school's "name" on your degree. I look forward to reading the second installment!
  
  (oh, and I think I broke the rules too... I wrote several different good choices, when I could have boiled it down to - "I let someone else pay for it."). ;)
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  Dorian Wales - The Personal Fi

  1 year ago

  Can you honestly say it was a sound *financial* move? I think the concept of utility would better describe your decision.
  
  All the numbers indicate your chances of becoming more successful, financially wise, were much greater attending an Ivy League university. You might have gained more speaking in whole terms (like utility) but as financials go I don’t agree with the bottom line (just my personal point of view of course).
  
  It does sound like it was the right decision for you to make.
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  Steve (Brip Blap)

  1 year ago

  @Dorian: I suppose it depends on how you want to look at your finances. My way of looking at it is that my net worth is probably further along at this point in my life than it might have been had I attended an Ivy and entered the same profession that I did (accounting). Now, if I had gone into investment banking or something of that sort, my net worth might be significantly higher, of course. But I took the question to be 'what decision made in college was the smartest one that had the best impact on my finances assuming everything else had gone the same.'
  
  So in other words, I avoided incurring debt, still received a degree that paved the way for PhD and MBA school, etc. I did not emerge from college deeply in debt. The long-term question of whether I would have received a better job, had a different career, etc. is a separate one in my mind.
  
  My (somewhat rambling) point is just that it made good financial sense to graduate debt-free from college. You could argue that now I might be better off in terms of gross income had I gone to Harvard, but then again I would also have been better off had I attended Hometown State's medical school, too. So that's just a different question. But given what I wanted to do, where I wanted to do it, etc., it was the best decision for me.
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  Mrs. Micah

  1 year ago

  I remember how much cheaper hometown state would have been for me. And if I'd been interested in engineering, agriculture, computer science, chemistry, etc, it would have been a good move. However their English undergrad program was crap (grad is supposed to be better) and I was going to study English, so it seemed like a bad move.
  
  I say going to a school you can afford, including scholarships, is an excellent financial move. I did pick the school which cost the least when you subtracted the scholarship they offered me from tuition. (A school with higher tuition offered me a scholarship which brought them below cheaper school + its scholarship).
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  Steve (Brip Blap)

  1 year ago

  @Mrs. Micah: I couldn't agree more that if you want to study a particular subject and you feel that one school is significantly better than another for that subject, you should go there. It's a good clarification that you make: the number you look at should be net cost, not just raw tuition. I'm not sure anyone in this country pays list price tuition. Almost everyone I've known had some kind of combination of scholarships/grants/aid/loans/etc. that brought that number down a bit.
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  Trent Hamm

  1 year ago

  I think the number one best financial move you can make in college is to make sure you're studying the right thing/figuring out who you are. It took me about two and a half years in college to figure out that I wasn't majoring in the right thing for me - if I had spent some time sampling more areas early on and thinking about my moves more carefully, I would have seen this much sooner and saved myself about $15K in student loans.
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  Megan

  1 year ago

  I got a shock when I saw this photo--I walk by that building every day! I'm about to graduate, and yes, I've making a profit, too--not to mention they've paid for me to study abroad five times over my college career. I originally wanted to get out of this state and head to a private school in CA, but now I don't regret my choice at all.
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  Dorian Wales - The Personal Fi

  1 year ago

  @Trent - I guess you're one of the lucky ones than. You figured it out pretty soon and acted on it. I think the majority of people wish they had taken different majors....
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  plonkee

  1 year ago

  I reckon this anecdotally proves that it's true what they say about people that reject Harvard - they'll do at least as well as those who actually attend.
  
  Me, I couldn't have stayed at home for Uni, and moving 100 or so miles away (hey, that's a long way in England) is one of the best things that I did. Not as cheap as staying at home though.
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  Steve (Brip Blap)

  1 year ago

  @Megan: Funny that you recognized it! I spent most of my time in school just around the corner :) I guess at least one person knows where I went to school, then! My secret bat-identity is at risk!
  
  Just kidding. That's a neat building although it really sticks out a bit, doesn't it?
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  MITBeta @ Don't Feed The Allig

  1 year ago

  I applied to and go into 5 schools. The cheapest school for me to attend after all the financial aid packages were presented also happened to be my first choice: MIT. Good choice on not going to Harvard... everyone knows the hardest part about it is getting in ;D
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  Bri

  1 year ago

  This was such a good article not many people can profit by going to a good school. A great tool out there to draw in people to what you are trying to promote sell etc. is Glyphius. It's a copywriters dream :)
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