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It sounds a lot from your post as if you have a very particular set of expectations, which may or may not be realistic, and are overall not particularly generalizable to prospective college students in general.
Meh, the importance of a name college goes away as you establish your professional resume. So by the 10 year experience level, you could quite possibly pulling even with them. OTOH, if you have to sacrifice everything finncially for the ivy, you may be still deep in debt at that point.
I call BS on the whole thing. UGA may not be Ivy, but it is far from a worthless college. Even assuming the statement about others from your school going to Harvard, etc, they had to have the grades and ability to get in to start with. If they had gone t UGA, they would still be doing alright because that's the way the approach things. Stop blaming your college name.
exactly. Don't bother to major in something like that a mediocre ranked school like UGA (it's like 60 in the US News rankings) regardless of the pricetag (It's around 10k/year in state with Hope/Zell). Only at a top 10. Otherwise really get into healthcare. You'll easily break 6 figures after graduate school. I'll never reach that amount even with "good" major.
I don't know about Atlanta, but in the northeast or west coast, you could definitely hit six figures in a few years as a software developer.
60-10 = 50 school difference. that's around a tier. Not exactly multitude. I didn't go to the lowest of the low school (though it honestly wouldn't have mattered).
it also matters a great deal to employers (which is why you are going to college). I've been browsing average salaries and employers for most the the liberal arts majors at UGA. I can't find any that are breaking 100k/year in the software field without any experience in it like my ivy friends have.
You are right, if you are go to an elite school the chances of career "success" (different definition for everyone) is higher. There is a prestige that comes with an elite degree.
If you go to a state school you can still be very successful. However, as you point out the choice of major is important and the individual can count less on the cachet of their degree.
As for Georgia, you are overestimating it. Might be a satisfactory school but not a top 60 overall. I assume you are basing that off the ranking from US News and World Report, where UGA is listed as the 61st best of "National Universities" but when you add in Liberal Arts colleges UGA probably drops below 100 in terms of a generic degree. For some areas UGA may well be top tier in some areas but you are right, choice of major matters.
It depends on your major. This is especially true in business and law. If you're not going to an elite school majoring in one of those you are wasting your time
The Ivies have a lot of money to give as financial aid and most, if not all (can't remember if they've all changed to that now), have loan-free financial aid packages, so unless you take private loans, you don't get out deep in debt.
You are right, if you are go to an elite school the chances of career "success" (different definition for everyone) is higher. There is a prestige that comes with an elite degree.
Not much different than picking any other "elite" things. Even the worst performing professional athlete are still more athletic than the general population. Going to elite country clubs, the overall person generally have more wealth than the general population.
Why are schools any different? Elite schools pick students who statistically do better in high school, and are more likely to succeed. So when they later become successful in life, why is this a surprise?
Everyone places too much significance in the "where" and not the "who attends" in college. The "who" also makes a big deal in "networking" as well. Which the elite schools hold an advantage but it is this and not what is "taught" through book material. Things outside of the book that are taught, social skills, personalities, teamwork that colleges teach that isn't "documented" on any paper is important. "who" applies to professors as well as the students. Having the experts in the field means you can dig their brains/experience.
It's about what you can do in software dev, and whether you can pass an algorithms interview. Honestly you don't need that deep of a CS education to get a basic job. Programming101+data structures is good enough to get in. Plus doing some personal projects on the side. You don't need to be an expert on OS or AI or anything crazy like that unless you want to work at Google or similar. It may be easier to get an interview coming from Harvard, but those kids can still get laughed out the door.
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