You probably can't pay off a 160k debt (average cost of a private undergrad) with a liberal arts degree. On average, liberal arts majors from every school make low salaries, especially after the i-banking/consulting bust. More doors open for you at a prestigious undergrad if you major in something legit, but otherwise, you're about as unemployable as a liberal arts grad from a low-ranked school.ahduth wrote:Yeah, debt you can pay off. That degree/prestige thing is permanent.Ship87 wrote:I come from a small state school and I'm currently applying to almost all of the T14. This article and the abstract for the paper cited brings to the forefront a depressing truth about mobility in America. I attended the college I did because I wouldn't have to pay tuition, but I think I made the wrong choice over the long term, and that prestige is worth the debt you accumulate. Hopefully I can graduate from a good law school with good grades and attain a decent job, but it does feel like the game is rigged against you. Sadly, I didn't have the money to go to build huts in Latin America over the summer.
Undergrad prestige is really overrated. Maybe I'm disenchanted, but I've known plenty of not-so-smart people who have graduated from good universities, and plenty of really intelligent people who went to regular undergrads. The smartest person I know went to a Tier-2 undergrad.