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If you can get in and can easily afford whatever cost you have to pay, they'll unlikely do any harm, and there's some reason to believe they'll help. High quality data on this is hard to come by, but what data I am aware of is inconclusive, and that if there is an effect of going to an elite university, it's not that large at the median. https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322

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Thanks, that's an interesting paper:

> We find that students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges. However, the average tuition charged by the school is significantly related to the students’ subsequent earnings. Indeed, we find a substantial internal rate of return from attending a more costly college. Lastly, the payoff to attending an elite college appears to be greater for students from more disadvantaged family backgrounds.

Wow its a 1999 paper on 1976 grads, not sure how well the lessons continue.

As I mentioned in my original comment, solid information on this question is hard to come by. I think someone could reasonably believe a number of different things about the effects of elite colleges. But what one cannot reasonably do is be confident in those beliefs, especially a belief that the elite colleges have a strong, positive, causal effect at the median.

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