Ask HN: I got into MIT. Should I go? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I got into MIT. Should I go?

83 pointsthrowaway7819176 comments

This is a really big decision that has been weighing a lot on my mind recently, and I would appreciate any candid advice that you may have.

Here’s the skinny:

I applied to two schools: MIT, and a bigger-but-less-prestigious school we'll call Z. Growing up, I always wanted to go to Z: my parents met there, my extended family lives in the area, and I have friends and cousins there. But MIT has also always been a dream (and I have friends there too). My original plan was to go to Z for my undergrad, then go to another school like MIT for grad school. I applied to MIT for the sake of completeness, and honestly didn't expect to get in. For that reason, it’s pretty easy to see how getting into MIT has thrown a big wrench in my plans.

To make matters worse, MIT hasn’t offered me any financial aid. My parents have saved enough money to help me pay for some of the tuition costs of Z (which I’m immensely grateful for). But other than that, it is clear that I’m fully responsible for paying for the rest of college on my own. (To contextualize how expensive MIT is: the college savings I have now are barely enough to cover one semester at MIT.)

On top of that, Z has offered me what essentially amounts to a full-ride scholarship. If I went to Z, I could realistically finish my undergrad in two to three years (from the college credit I’ve accumulated in high school) without going into debt. If I went to MIT, I’d be paying sticker price for a full 4-year degree: even with well-paying internships/work-study, I’d still be close to $180k in debt. (I realize that to some in the tech industry $180k may seem like nothing, but for an 18-year-old right out of high school, it may as well be like asking a dolphin to swim to the moon.)

After my undergrad, I want to pursue a Master’s/PhD in Machine Learning or Symbolic Reasoning. The problem with getting into MIT now is that I feel like I have a proverbial ‘foot in the door’: MIT has a lot of undergrad programs that feed directly into their graduate programs, which are top-notch for these areas of research. If I decided to go to Z, I’d have no guarantee that I’d be accepted to MIT’s (or a similar school’s) graduate program, even though I was accepted to their undergraduate program previously. (Of course, I have no guarantee that I’d get into grad school at MIT even coming out of MIT’s undergraduate program, but the chances are significantly higher.)

Additionally, just because I have no financial aid from MIT now doesn’t mean that I won’t have financial aid in the future. My siblings will be starting college in a couple of years; there are a lot of changing factors to consider.

Regardless of whichever path I take, I want to work for a larger tech company to gain experience before I bootstrap a sustainable startup (I mean, that's the dream, isn't it?). I would like to weave together some of the disparate threads I’ve started with my open source work to pursue an idea I think could have a really long-term impact on the way we communicate and collaborate.

So here’s my question: Although I know they’re both really good paths, how would you weigh this choice? I’d love to hear about your experience with college (especially if you went to MIT), your career path, and any advice you’d have for someone in my situation. Thank you!

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I strongly encourage you to contact MIT about your situation and family’s situation and try to negotiate out more financial aid.

As someone who went to a flagship state school for undergrad and ivy for phd…

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.

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.

D) On the other hand, I think the differences in career outcomes on average 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/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/median isn’t that much.

E) For careers like management consulting or investment banking, some top firms only recruit at top-n schools. However, 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.

In my opinion, the lifetime of friends and network effects is most of the benefit, and not to be underestimated. You only live once.

> Most of the people I know who turned down higher-ranked schools for lower-ranked ones because of money regret it.

What do you base this on? What about people who went to higher-ranked schools that regret having 100k+ in debt when they graduate. College helps you get your first job, but after that I don't think anyone cares in most fields (true in engineering from my experience, as long as you have a technical degree and even then you can get by). A lot of the difference in outcomes is selection bias. You should look to see how someone who got in a selective school but didn't go compares to someone who got in and went. I've read that the differences are not that stark.

> 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.

I don't know. I went to a mid-tier state school and my friends were just people I happened to be lumped together in housing. Is it "optimal"? No, but I enjoyed it. My friend crew consisted of a stoner, a very religious dude, a meat head and a Brooklyn hipster. I don't know, I liked it like that. None of them really taught me anything (wtf does an 18 year old know), but it might be different in technical fields. Both have trade offs.

> On the other hand, I think the differences in career outcomes on average 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

It'll probably help you raise money, but I think being ex-[FAANG] would be better at least now. And raising money is not the same as starting and running a successful business. FAANG has considerably broadened their outreach and hire outside of top schools. I have a non-technical degree from a mid-tier state school and interviewed with a few FAANGs, more than once.

> In my opinion, the lifetime of friends and network effects is most of the benefit, and not to be underestimated. You only live once.

From what the author stated, I think he would have more experiences from going to school Z with his friends and family. Unless he really wants to get away from everyone, which doesn't sound like the case.

> College helps you get your first job, but after that I don't think anyone cares in most fields

If you have a degree from Harvard/Stanford/MIT/etc, this is not true. Those name brands will help you for decades after. Plus they will also help your college friends, so your network will be much better than if you went to a state school.

When we hired, we were not interested in brand names of schools applicants went to as long as they were out of school a few years and had a few jobs. In fact, I think that would be a red-flag for places I don't want to work. For instance, I remember filling out a job app at DE Shaw that asked for school and SAT and LSAT/GMAT scores along with GPA. It sounded like a terrible place to work.

In regards to a network, unfortunately 10 years out of school I don't keep in touch with many people I went to college with. We just went in different directions and many of my relationships were relationships out of convenience. Maybe others had different experiences.

I know people who went to caltech and Stanford in the 90s. They’re still in touch with a lot of people from then.

These schools generally are different.

> I went to a mid-tier state school and my friends were just people I happened to be lumped together in housing. Is it "optimal"? No, but I enjoyed it. My friend crew consisted of a stoner, a very religious dude, a meat head and a Brooklyn hipster. I don't know, I liked it like that. None of them really taught me anything (wtf does an 18 year old know), but it might be different in technical fields. Both have trade offs.

Yeah, my ug friend group was similar. It’s completely valid to have different preferences in what one wants out of life. However, I personally did feel much happier / interested later on in life being in friendgroups where everyone had some kind of serious career aspiration.

I agree, but college just wasn't that for me and I don't think it could have been. It was more about exploration. I didn't have the drive and focus I have now. I didn't really get that until mid 20s, about 5 years after I graduated.

Anecdotally, in the last recession the difference in starting wages between an MIT alum and a state school alum were nearly 3x. When company hiring gets tight the brand name degree makes a big difference.

I sort of doubt that will make enough of a difference in this case. If they plan to go to MIT or similar for grad school, they might as well take the free undergrad. The opportunity cost of spending $100k vs free is pretty big in my view when the horizon to the graduate degree is short.

That’s not really the situation. I’d be surprised if the wage difference between MIT alums and state school alums who declined MIT is that large

Your reply is something a lot of people will only realise its wisdom in hindsight. Like how Job Titles actually matter, most don't realise companies will use any excuse to justify why you don't deserve your asking rate. Never give them the opportunity.

> exposed to a different caliber of person

There are many reasons to choose MIT, but I don't think this qualifies.

I studied at one of Canada's top schools, and also have the qualified experience of a drop-out.

Some of the people who impacted my worldview, and also earned the most respect I have for anyone, were a selection of Vietnamese refugees† I worked for in a warehouse after dropping out. At U of T I met some smart people, but also some of the thinnest people in terms of personality, worldliness, and compassion (worse, many of them thought they were already the tops in all of those categories simply because they were where they found themselves in life—often because of where they were born).

No matter where you are, if you go looking for people who will influence your life in an expansive, positive way, you will find them. You don't need to go to school for that. There are countless other reasons to choose one school over another.

Don't quantize your life, kids. It doesn't work that way. It's only you who has to live with yourself your entire life. You've got a heart—use it.

† turned out these brothers I ended up working with were bloody genius-level electrical engineers who designed and resolved bugs in high-powered lighting systems in their sleep. And some of the kindest souls I've ever had the pleasure of knowing

> No matter where you are, if you go looking for people who will influence your life in an expansive, positive way, you will find them. You don't need to go to school for that. There are countless other reasons to choose one school over another.

I agree with this. Also less prestigious universities can have better people to influence the OP right now, even if the end goal is to do a PhD at MIT.

For example, take a look at how some great football (soccer) talents are managing their careers. Many deliberately decline offers from top teams in order to keep growing organically. Knowing when to get into a top team (or university) without getting burnt out is an important aspect in managing your career.

Depending on the OP's personality, getting into MIT too early might be detrimental. Lots of students might not enjoy an excessively competitive place for an undergrad for instance.

In my case, if I was going to college again, I would probably consider small liberal arts programs and some ivies (with access to great CS coursework, e.g. Dartmouth) rather than MIT, if both admitted me of course. That's just me, as I value more that kind of academic lifestyle.

Being exposed to really bright people at a early age is a double edged sword, you have the potential to learn a lot from them but if your competitive drive kicks in and overrides your curiosity and independence, you will turn into a lesser version of yourself.

Definitely go to MIT. You'll hear a lot of advice about not paying a fortune for private universities when affordable state schools are just as good. This advice makes really good sense for most people, but MIT and Ivies are clear exceptions. Where cost ends up being the right thing to consider is at schools that don't make US News top 20, or in fields where you'll never expect much career income.

So long as you don't get distracted by the freedoms of university, MIT will pay for itself many times over. It's an unfortunate reality that there are prestige doors everywhere and merit only gets people so far. MIT will blast those doors wide open in fields like VC, consulting, and academia.

My MIT friends seem to largely have been underwhelmed by the quality of instruction (as with students at any university), but the career opportunities the brand and connections have opened for them have been enormous.

One caveat I'll give here is to be honest about your academic ability. The worst ROI by far is flunking out of MIT and other $$$ elite universities. MIT is actually pretty generous about how they treat freshmen, but you should 100% focus on ensuring that you can pass (or ideally excel at) your classes. Depending on your educational background, you may never have been properly challenged before and it can be a bit of an adjustment. In my experience the easiest techniques for doing well at top universities are sobriety, 8+ hours of sleep, strategic course selection, and tutoring at the first sign of trouble.

> My MIT friends seem to largely have been underwhelmed by the quality of instruction (as with students at any university)

While it of course doesn't always get it right, MIT is very serious about undergraduate education. For example, with 1-2 exceptions that prove the rule like SF author Joe Haldeman, all classes are taught by tenured or tenure track professors, and you don't get tenure at MIT without being a adequate teacher.

Professors who break the rules about the work they assign can have their class taken away from them, and many if not departments also closely monitor student assessed quality of instruction.

I've witnessed first hand from the administration.staff viewpoint a well known professor who is very serious about teaching royally screw up a class on a subject he's not so good at, every student evaluation except for one special case was negative (I and another staff member read all of them). The department head sat him down and made him read every one of them, and then told him he'd never be allowed to teach that course again (which we could overhear because of how our offices were laid out).

You can also be reasonably assured courses won't be cargo culted as I've seen in lower rank schools, and that the Institute will move heaven and earth to make sure you can graduate in four years, unlike some state schools which aren't quite the bargain they appear because they ration spaces in required classes.

Pay close attention to academia_hack's last paragraph: work hard on academics until you get them under control then you can commit to doing other things like the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) which incentivizes professors to hire students during summer and the January "Independent Activities Period" by not "taxing" them with the overhead they have to pay on all other types of people they might hire. And there are of course many student groups, many quite hard core.

As far as succeeding in any given class, if you diligently do the "problem sets" (homework) and picked the right major, you can expect to make As and Bs and have a good outcome. Note grading is by mastery, would be unfair to the student body to grade on the curve, nor does it follow the model of some state schools and I've heard also some European ones of allowing people it doesn't think can succeed and weeding them out in early required courses.

UROP can be an amazing opportunity. Professors are looking for freshman (and older) to participate in real research opportunities. For many graduating MIT, they describe it as the most impactful aspect of their time at MIT.

While I'd already done real research in high school in a NSF Summer Science Training Program, the UROP work I did was as you describe. We didn't actually solve the problem, it was hard enough it took academia and industry another half a decade, but the process under the direct face to face supervision and participation of a professor was fantastic. The background to the specific problems I learned in both research experiences help me to this day.

Most people are recommending you go so I'd like to offer a different perspective. I was in almost exactly the situation you are in 40 years ago. Got into MIT, Stanford and Caltech. I ended up going to Virginia Tech on a full scholarship. My plan was to do my undergrad there and then go to a more prestigious grad school, but I was rejected from MIT and Stanford for grad school so I ended up staying at Virginia Tech and doing a masters and Ph.D. there. I do not regret any of it, though I do sometimes wonder what might have been if I'd gone to Stanford because I love the Bay Area (I now live 20 minutes from Stanford). I have never for a moment regretted not going to MIT. (I did spend three months there in the summer of 1990 as a "visiting grad student" so I got a little taste of what that life would have been like.)

The real question you need to ask yourself is: what do you really want out of life? You say you want to get a Ph.D. and do a startup. But why do you want to do these things? Is it because you really want to do these things, or is it because you see this as a path to financial independence? If it's the former, then by all means, go to MIT. But if it's the latter, if what you really want is the freedom that (you think) money can buy, then you should think twice. For myself, my personal goal was to live a life where I was not beholden to anyone, and I accomplished that by going to a less rigorous school, staying out of debt, and having more than my share of good luck. So that worked for me. YMMV.

One thing I've learned: the hardest part of getting what you want is figuring out what it is. Figure that our first. Don't spend four or six or ten of your best years chasing someone else's dream.

> I ended up going to Virginia Tech on a full scholarship.

I think compared to Boston, Pasadena or Stanford, Blacksburg is far more conducive to mental and physical health. And even without your scholarship, VA Tech is cheap, and absurdly cheap compared to you backup schools. Well done. Go Hokies.

FWIW my first choice was CMU, got in early acceptance, but my father's income prevented financial aide. It has increased since, but at the time CMU was $22K/semester while VA Tech in state tuition was $2500/semester. Rents are also much more affordable in SW Virginia than they are in Pgh (or Boston, Pasadena or Stanford). I looked at MIT, but I could not identify the campus; it was just city buildings. To me, Harvard reminded me of a penitentiary.

> I think compared to Boston, Pasadena or Stanford, Blacksburg is far more conducive to mental and physical health.

And I agree. Blacksburg was certainly better for my mental health than Boston. But again, this all turns on what you want out of life. Mental and physical health are not the only things a person could possibly desire. If what you really want is to be on the bleeding edge of something like science and technology, and you're willing to endure some stress and physical discomfort in order to achieve that, then Boston is probably a better place to be. This is why figuring out what you really want is really important and really hard.

Case in point for me: what I really want out of life is freedom: not being beholden to anyone, being able to do whatever I want whenever I want to. I've more or less achieved that, but it comes at a cost: I have no children because if you have children then you are beholden to them (or at least you should be). I have absolutely no regrets about this, but obviously many people want children more than they want freedom, and that's probably a good thing or we'd go extinct. Different strokes for different folks. That plus a free market is what makes technological civilization work.

> If what you really want is to be on the bleeding edge of something

Sure, but I don't think undergraduates are really bleeding edge participants, more like a necessary evil for bleeding edge participants.

If your goal is to be on the bleeding edge, the best way to get there is to forge relationships with people who are already there. There are many more opportunities to do that at MIT or Stanford than Virginia Tech. The actual education you get is very much a secondary consideration.

I just disagree fundamentally with what you are floating. Undergraduate educations (meaning where the degree is awarded) could not matter less if continuing to graduate level education, and yet what is learned during undergraduate studies is pretty important. If you don't learn Calculus, and get decent grades doing so, you're not going to be able to get a Masters in Math or CS because you won't get accepted into the program. Though I know of seniors planning on graduate education becoming more active in a department, maybe getting an internship to make photo copies and coffee, I've never really heard of undergraduates "forging relationships" with faculty, at least not beyond a particular semester course. Take two students, all things being equal, but one goes to MIT and learns a lot and ingratiates themselves to faculty, but gets B grades, while the other goes to NC State, ignores faculty, parties for 4 years, but gets straight A's... guess which will be accepted into an MIT graduate program? Grad schools are not political. Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity. Unfortunately, academic merit is based on grades, which are evil, and not based on whether you graduated from Yale or Mountain Springs Community College.

> If you don't learn Calculus, and get decent grades doing so, you're not going to be able to get a Masters in Math or CS because you won't get accepted into the program.

> Grad schools are not political. Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity.

I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly naive.

I entered Virginia Tech with enough AP credit to enter as a sophomore, and within one quarter I was a Junior. I finished my B.S.E.E. in 8 quarters with a 3.9+ GPA (I don't remember exactly what it was, but my diploma says Summa Cum Laude.) It took three calendar years because I did two six-month co-op stints at IBM during that time (this was back in the early 80s when IBM was still a cool place to be.) All that was not enough to get me in to MIT or Stanford as a grad student despite the fact that both had accepted me as an undergrad.

Then, when I was a masters student (at Virginia Tech) I served as the student representative on the admissions committee. I went on to a 13-year-long research career at JPL in what was essentially an academic position without teaching responsibilities. I made my living publishing papers, and by the numbers I was very good at it. At one point I was the most referenced CS researcher in all of NASA, and I held that title for many years after I stopped publishing. I've seen first-hand how the sausage is made. So I can tell you from first hand experience it is intensely political. That is one of the reasons that I quit. I realized that I was getting a lot more leverage out of playing politics than I was out of actually doing good technical work. I got very, very good at gaming the system, and I hated it, so I quit.

I got very, very good grades in all my math classes. In my entire career I have never once had to do an integral or solve a differential equation. By way of very stark contrast, I use my social skills every single day. Those were a lot harder to develop because there wasn't a class I could take. But they have proven vastly more useful in day to day life than math.

The biggest mistake I have ever made in my life is taking much too long to realize that the aphorism that "who you know is more important than what you know" is actually true.

> All that was not enough to get me in to MIT or Stanford as a grad student despite the fact that both had accepted me as an undergrad.

Maybe it was just that year you applied there was stiff competition. That's called a counter-example and it negates your anecdotally supported argument that, paraphrasing, "good scholastic performance is not sufficient to make graduate acceptance," because maybe that year, every acceptant had better grades.

> The biggest mistake I have ever made in my life is taking much too long to realize that the aphorism that "who you know is more important than what you know" is actually true.

I think your biggest mistake may be believing in false things when I can tell you know better. Paranoia may be symptomatic. Your career sounds pretty amazing, so if that just isn't enough for you, that would make two symptoms of something. The most difficult thing one can do is humbling oneself for professional evaluation. If this suggestion is offensive, that's three symptoms.

To avoid mincing words, who you know does not matter. What you say also does not matter. All that matters is what you do, the choices you make, the actions you take, the work you do. You can not know someone by who they know. You only know someone if you know what they have done.

> Maybe it was just that year you applied there was stiff competition.

Yes, that's possible. It's also possible that all of the other experiences that I have had during my decades-long career, all of which have supported my conclusion, have all been aberrations or part of an elaborate conspiracy.

But I'll give you long odds against.

> All that matters is what you do, the choices you make, the actions you take, the work you do.

OK, I'm not going to try to dissuade you from this. If that approach works for you, then more power to you.

> If that approach works for you

I'll admit I'm speaking more broadly than graduate acceptance when I say what matters is what you do, not who you know, because in the grand scheme of things, who you know is incidental, but what you do is foundational and defines who you are. So it is not a matter or whether it works for me, this is instead just how it is. If we knew you murdered someone, we'd know you were a murderer. If we knew you built rockets, we'd know you were a rocket scientist. It all we knew about you was that you were a friend of a professor that got you into your graduate program, we could not possible think much at all of you. I choose to believe you are a rocket scientist.

But none of these things are true. You are wrong about all of it.

> If we knew you murdered someone, we'd know you were a murderer.

That's a tautology. Imagine if I were accused of murder. Do you not think that you would be more inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt that I might be innocent if you knew me than if I were a stranger?

> It all we knew about you was that you were a friend of a professor that got you into your graduate program, we could not possible think much at all of you.

What if the professor told you that I was worth admitting? Would you not lend credence to their assessment?

> I choose to believe you are a rocket scientist.

Why? Because I said I worked at NASA? How do you know I'm telling you the truth? Even if I am telling you the truth, how do you know that I got my position at NASA on my merits? For the record, I did not. I got it because I knew someone. And the person I knew got their position because they knew someone.

This is not to say that I was unqualified, or that my boss was unqualified, or that we got our jobs purely because of nepotism (though that does happen as well). The situation was that JPL was actively recruiting people, and one of the department heads recruited my boss because they were grad students together at Yale, i.e. they knew each other, and my boss was my Ph.D. advisor, and so he recruited me because he knew me.

Personal connections give you access to opportunities that you would not otherwise have had (might not have even been aware existed) and the benefit of the doubt if you screw up. It's not like you can just go have a beer with a professor and get in to Stanford without doing anything else. But personal connections tilt the scales very heavily in your favor, and vice versa.

If you just want to skate through life on the coattails of doers, that's up to you. But I think the time is long overdue that you hunkered down and grew up. Hope you can appreciate inappropriate sarcasm.

You've reminded me of an anecdote told to me by a relative from a previous generation. He said a friend bragged to him he could get 250 people on the street just by making 10 phone calls. The relative told him he could do the same with just one call. His friend asked him how. He told him, "I'll call you."

We're not actually in the same argument. Who you are has very little to do with who you know. Who you are is what you have done. Hopefully in the distant future, your obituary will give a summary of what you have done, then list your surviving immediate relatives. It may detail an occasion of you meeting someone notable, like a President. But an obituary will rarely if ever list the people you know because who you know is incidental and an accident of fate. And chances are pretty good if these influential people you know have advanced your career, it is probably because of what you have already done and not because you incidentally are acquainted with them.

And what have you done?

[crickets]

Yeah, that's what I thought.

> I've never really heard of undergraduates "forging relationships" with faculty, at least not beyond a particular semester course.

Which means you never did any research for a professor, or know anyone who did. At MIT there's no less than official two programs for that, the main one with very substantial financial incentives.

There's an old saying about MIT that's relevant, "Undergraduates are treated like graduate students, graduate students like junior faculty, and tenured professors like gods." It exaggerates some but it most certainly gets the first bit right, undergraduates are assumed to be capable of graduate level research. "seniors planning on graduate education becoming more active in a department, maybe getting an internship to make photo copies and coffee" is just not how it works at MIT, that's work for MIT's generally very capable office staff.

And thus if you use the research method in "'forging relationships' with faculty" perhaps after acing a course they taught, and you do well, you'll get the inherently political but not in a really bad way "in" to graduate programs when your professor tells a professor who knows your professor that you can do research, as discussed elsewhere.

What you're claiming makes it sound like seeking graduate acceptance requires manipulation and only nepotism guarantees acceptance. Other people are not a means to an end but instead the ends themselves. I don't see anything wrong with a friendship with a faculty member, but you make it sound as though the right way to do things is to have an agenda for getting a faculty member's attention so that they might "put in a good word" with their faculty friend at some graduate department to grease the tracks of acceptance.

Certainly, relationships are important, but they're only valuable if they're genuine, a two-way street, and not one-sided. What possible incentive would a faculty member have to invalidly get an undergrad accepted to some grad program? Just because they like them? What do they get out of it? This all brushes very close to psychological egoism and narcissism.

Of the 20M or so undergrads at any one time, what percentage of them are doing graduate level work? Some... I took graduate seminars as an undergrad. It's not all that unusual, but whatever an undergrad does, even at MIT, is for the exercise, the experience of doing it, and not for pushing the state of the art and publishing articles. Even if an undergrad does publish in a journal, it is going to be clear the purpose of the exercise was the experience of doing that work, and not advancing the field. Undergrads think they know everything. Grad students know they know nothing. PhD's know everyone else knows nothing.

> but whatever an undergrad does, even at MIT, is for the exercise, the experience of doing it, and not for pushing the state of the art and publishing articles.

I'm sorry, but we're running into a brick wall of your viewpoint of the capabilities of all undergraduates which does not match what happens at MIT or any other research university which also formally or informally has undergraduates or even high school students perform grad student level research.

I was in a NSF Summer Science Training Program in the 1970s and real research was an integral part of it, I did grunt labor a lab tech or beginning grad student would do, but learned a great deal about the general field from the Principle Investigator (PI, the professor who ran the lab) and the senior grad student who I directly worked under. In return they got free labor and payed their debts forward to the people who originally mentored them.

Move from eight man weeks in that program to what can be done at MIT in up to four months a year full time for pay, plus whatever can be squeezed in when classes are in session and you get paid in credit, and the system can easily turn out a mid-level or higher grad student equivalent with enough work under his belt to be in real papers published by legitimate journals that wouldn't be what you describe above. And be the basis of a very legitimate recommendation, grad students who turn out not to be able to do research are a messy loss to a department and the professor who finds this out the hard way.

We have no basis for discussion so this will be the end of my replies, but there's at least one other discussion on this system in this topic, and it's common enough knowledge in academia.

> In return they got free labor

For one, it sounds like you might be placing undo value on your grunt labor. But more importantly, it sounds like you don't see that you made out on the deal, and they got the short stick of your grunt labor.

> We have no basis for discussion so this will be the end of my replies,

It would have been more honest of you to admit you're annoyed at dissent, and don't wish to discuss further, but instead, passive-aggressiveness.

Be well.

Please don't selectively quote, the full sentence is "In return they got free labor and payed their debts forward to the people who originally mentored them."

> Graduate acceptance is based on merit, not popularity.

For common people, yes. I know first-hand people who are very politically connected who went into and graduated from MIT, who are dumb as a rock. With enough money and connections, nothing else matters.

> I know first-hand people who are very politically connected who went into and graduated from MIT, who are dumb as a rock. With enough money and connections, nothing else matters.

I've watched how MIT "processes" undergraduate students all the way through graduation, and this would require corrupting the Registrar's office to create a fake transcript and adding names to the list of graduates after the departments and that office submit their perfected lists to the people who handle the details of graduation.

It's theoretically possible, but strikes me as unlikely unless those rocks can do and apply the calculus; are you really sure that's beyond them?

As an alum of MIT, I highly recommend attending, if you are going to put in the work to be successful there. The fact that you have been admitted means you probably will.

In 30 years of working after college, with numerous job interviews along the way, the item most discussed in every single interview was that I went to MIT. Right or wrong, that is what has happened. To be clear, MIT teaches you how to think and that is what employers are looking for.

As for the cost, I agree with those above who stated that you should attempt to negotiate more financial aid from MIT. I also agree that MIT is one of the few (with the Ivy League schools, Stanford, and CaltTech) that are worth the cost. You will more than recover it over your career.

Finally, you can learn as much going to other schools such as Z. But, you will have to push yourself much harder whereas at MIT, the school will push you. It can make a big difference.

BTW, Boston is an amazing city in which to go to school. So much to do. So many other college age people there.

All I'll say is some of the smartest people I know went to MIT but also some of the VERY, VERY DUMBEST also went to MIT. The swath is so wide that I no longer automatically assume "Good Brand" when I see someone went to MIT - it's actually a red flag.

The latter group tend to be people who are "book smart" but otherwise out of touch with reality. For example: can't design or compute themselves out of a paper bag yet have disproportionate egos as if they could and well. Practicality isn't in their toolbag.

The out of touch is sometimes "in their own world" but it has also included "mentally ill" and "idiot savant smart in only one narrow area; utterly dumb in ALL others".

I've seen these also with other "elite" schools including East Coast Ivies as well as the West Coast equivalents; Stanford comes to mind, for instance.

On the other hand, when you get someone who is in the other group: actually able, it's a dream to work with them as long as their are low key about things. Truly smart people never have to "prove" or "brag" about their bono fides. They show by doing and being cool.

Numerically/Statistically I've found more people in this group will come lesser schools that value the process of teaching and students actually learning over pumping up their endowments or bleating about their pedigree or prestige.

As someone who went to undergrad for EECS at MIT, it’s interesting to see that everyone who didn’t go to MIT say to go there!

I’m not recommending against it, but it’s not all sunshine and roses. People there are not all “a different caliber of person”. Also being involved heavily in hiring, we don’t give that much weight to MIT just because it’s a top school. That being said, I did learn a lot, and some of the classes are taught with a level of completeness and internal consistency that for me lead to a deeper understanding and intuition for many concepts that is rare in other people. However I can’t say this is only MIT.

If you’re interested interested in talking privately, let me know and we can find a way to connect.

I wrote one of those “caliber” things, with the acknowledgement that it require the alumni to make the most out of it and that it isnt about being hired at a better salary.

Accessing capital, board seats, “being picked” to be part of those teams, impressing people that wont scrutinize further just because MIT alumni? Absolutely worlds beyond what the plebs can do, and that requires an ambition unrelated to being an employee.

The education experience is irrelevant. Just twiddle your thumbs for 4 years for all I care. Good practice for “rest and vest”.

You have a point. As a hiring manager I pay NO attention to where someone graduated from. I'm more interested in the way they think and I have found no correlation between quality of thought and alleged quality of school.

As you haven't listed an email address in your profile, would you mind sending an email to mit-dilemma@pm.me? I'd love to get in touch, thank you for your thoughtful response.

Some postscripts:

P.S. — I started programming when I was fairly young (about 10 years ago), and I've spent hours each day since then programming, reading blogs, and poring over books (SICP, Let Over Lambda, etc.). I'm especially passionate about OSS, and I've contributed to a number of projects of varying ilk over the years. Academically, I've worked really hard in school (while maintaining a balanced social life, of course). I particularly enjoy mathematics (I’ve taken up through Linear Algebra) and the sciences (I'm taking AP Physics II, AP Bio, and AP Chem this year). I understand that I’ve been very lucky, and want to make the most of my situation so that I may one day make the opportunities I’ve had access to more readily accessible

P.P.S. — I’m using a throwaway because, aside from this being a fairly personal matter, I've been active on HN for quite a while. A couple years ago, an open source project I started got a lot of traction on HN. Through HN, I have learned a lot from the blogs, books, and projects that have surfaced over the years. Needless to say, I wouldn't be in the position that I am today without your support, so thank you!

P.P.P.S — If you’d like to reach out privately, feel free to email

    mit-dilemma@pm.me

as I realize your replies may be, well, a bit personal.

I'd also cast my vote for MIT. If you're reading SICP and LOL then you're not going to have any problem paying off the student loans. So don't let worrying about money hold you back. Choose the school with the lower acceptance rate. Some knowledge can only be learned by socialization with smart successful people. If being a big fish in a small pond is what you want, then you'll be an even bigger fish if you do that after you graduate the best possible school.

You have an impressive resume. Kudos!

You've studied hard - but what do you want to do? What do you want to do with your life once you're done with school?

School isn't end-all, be-all of life. I'm a martial artist. Many people look at the martial arts and think obtaining black belt is the goal. Here's the secret - obtaining black belt is the start. Now you're ready to study the art!

It's the same with school. Getting degrees isn't the goal, it's the beginning. The beginning of what? That's up to you!

You already know you can learn on your own, so you should have learned by now you don't need school to learn. Your internships are going to be the most important thing you do - that's where the doors are going to be opened.

I would love to read your take after few years. Maybe you can do a Tell HN after 10 years.

I'm not from the US, so I cannot give any direct practical advice. But, all I can say is, if you choose to go to MIT, just make sure that it is not the only worthy accomplishment in your whole life. Most people from prestigious institutions tend to say they they graduated from XXX/YYY as the only thing worth mentioning about them. While not bad, if that is the only worthy thing to share, then those prestigious schools are not great after all ...

Whatever you decide, all the best.

> I would love to read your take after few years. Maybe you can do a Tell HN after 10 years.

That's a great idea. I'll reveal the contents of this hash to prove that the person who posts in 10 years is indeed who I am:

    af6fd692d9f831fe08801a24db27137edf2fd12ce9a6cbe62a23b0696b077dcb

> But, all I can say is, if you choose to go to MIT, just make sure that it is not the only worthy accomplishment in your whole life.

Even if I decided to go to MIT today, I'd still probably say that some of the OSS work I've done is something I'm more proud of than having gotten into MIT. That said, I hope that in 10 years neither of those things is what I'm most proud of.

I'm an MIT alum. I see nearly everyone advising you to go. I'm not sure. Even apart from the potential debt, it's not for everyone. I can't tell from your summary above whether it's a good fit for you.

There is no question that the MIT brand carries enormous prestige, and very likely if you don't go, there will be a part of your brain that forever feels regret from having turned down an opportunity to be "in a club." That regret can be a powerful emotional force. But it is orthogonal to the actual decisions and behaviors that matter to your life- like debt. You have control over and can work through emotional burdens of your past decisions on your own time and in your own way. Debt IS YOUR BOSS. It MUST be repaid on the lender's schedule.

I was a relatively high performer at MIT, had a few classes where I tested above the second std dev on a final. But my experience after MIT, and from having worked with and at a lot of organizations- there are smart people everywhere. What matters more in the broad sense are relationships and capacities to understand and communicate and work with a variety of people.

From "a club" perspective- the world is actually smaller now than it ever has been before, and there are many more post-college clubs- like YCombinator- that allow for relationship-building and creative problem solving with a like-minded cohort. What is most important is to be in a place and in a mind that allows YOU to succeed, to be YOUR authentic and most capable self. THAT person will be able to get into the clubs that are of interest.

Maybe MIT is slightly better of a place like that than Z for you. But $180k of principal to return is an extreme constraint on the dimensions of that authenticity.

I would second some specific points of advice:

* reach out to MIT again about financial aid

* try to have conversations with your candidate cohort in both places

* try to have conversations with people who rather than advocate, offer contrary advice, and look for what rings true to you. People who have experienced both MIT and Z can be especially helpful here

* work out an academic plan at both places

* work out a financial plan to understand the impact of having to return that quantity of principal

* work really hard at visualizing both pathways

Best wishes!

My son was just declined for MIT so good for you.

Advice I got from another person that went to MIT was to make sure you know what you want to do. He said that a lot of the faculty are world-class (not as big as Cal tech of course :-).

This person told me that if you’re simply going for a general education there are much better places to get that. But if you know what you want to do and you can carpe diem the opportunity to work with world-class experts, you can make things very good.

Don’t worry about your ability to succeed, you will. You’ll also fail a lot. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall down it matters how many times you get back up.

I applied but didn't get in to MIT undergrad for computer engineering. I ended up attending a good state school instead. Years later, I attended MIT for grad school.

With that context, my advice is twofold:

1. Surround yourself with people who will challenge you

2. Make financial decisions using net present value (NPV)

I've taken classes on four campuses over the years and found the quality of the instruction in the classroom was universally high and uncorrelated with the prestige of the institution. However, I found that I learned more deeply and tackled more ambitious goals when I was surrounded by other students in the most challenging programs. Furthermore, I continue to observe stark difference in the post-college opportunities for graduates that are highly correlated with each institution's reputation.

As for NPV, your chosen field means that the money you save or spend in the next few years will be swamped by your income later in life. Make a spreadsheet that stretches out over your working life and calculate the NPV of both paths.

TLDR: Go to MIT.

Thank you for taking the time to write a thoughtful reply. I've made a fairly large and comprehensive spreadsheet that takes a lot of factors into account. The TLDR is that if I went to MIT, I'd see a massive initial dip in NPV, but then out of MIT I'd be making more that I would out of Z. So over 20 years, MIT would definitely have a higher NPV (by about a factor of 1.3x) but 15 years out it's about the same. Going to MIT has larger up-front commitment and more initial risk for the reward of more earnings later on. But of course, there's always more to consider than money, and who knows what things will look like 20 years from now?

Spreadsheets are great, but I'll bet you 5 years of NPV that you're underestimating the non-financial (or even indirectly-financial) benefits of MIT by a significant factor. The name and network open more doors than you can imagine today.

I struggle with this (kiddo is at the stage will be applying in a few years, so have thought about it), as it essentially relies on network effects with a large/unknown variance. (Is the MBA network comparable to OPs path?)

What do people peg the OPs chances of following the stated career path at State vs MIT?

(Disclaimer, have gotten a terrific education at state schools and have what I take to be a reasonably successful career from that starting point. So default bias to choose state over more expensive alternatives.)

This really depends on what Z is.

I wound up going to a different private engineering school, with some discounts applied, and I regret making my parents pay much of that tuition instead of going to our state’s good state university.

You’ll be fine if your pick MIT. $180k at 5% interest is $9k a year. It’s less than a mortgage. It’ll be a fraction of rent in most places you’d consider working at later. You’ll want to pay it off as slowly as possible as long as the inflation rate is higher.

This is a tricky choice. I think deep inside, you know the answer because the choice is deeply personal.

I faced a similar situation years ago. Go into debt with a much higher ranked school or exit debt free from a lower ranked state school. I chose the latter, because deep inside I liked the idea of being debt free. I didn't regret it.

I went to grad school at a higher ranked school with financial aid.

Here are my notes:

- Opportunities in research, and employment are better at higher ranked schools. So going to a better school gives you an edge initially.

- You will have motivated students in all the schools. It's your choice to build your circle.

- I did find the quality of instruction better in my grad school, but it highly depends on the course/Prof. you take.

- the location of the school does matter as well in terms of opportunity and cost of living.

I think some criteria you can think about:

- long term potential of yourself

- would you regret not taking MIT

- how much debt can you endure, would it affect you?

One piece of advice (take or leave). Whatever choice you make, make it a point to not regret it in the future.

Good luck!!

Nobody seems to have mentioned that you can probably learn as much in 4 years at MIT as in 5-6 years at Z. The courses at MIT are going to be more rigorous and likely cover more stuff, and the ancillary learning / problem set sessions / dining halls will have a core of really committed students, so you'll absorb a lot of stuff that you haven't formally studied.

The result is that you'll be highly qualified to work after 4 years, and you'll save two years of studying -- the economics of that are extremely positive, not to mention you get two more years in your twenties.

Yes. My wife got the opportunity to go there for grad school and the year I spent on campus with her was one of the highlights of my life. It’s an amazing place, and it will give you as much as you put into it.

You go. Full stop. Do not pass it up. The connections you will meet will put your life on a totally different path.

If after one year you totally hate it, you can transfer to the other school. But going the other way may not be an option.

You should go. I was all set to go to Caltech or the Ivies and turned them down for mostly, though not entirely, financial reasons and went to a state school instead. Worked out mostly fine but much harder to get foot in the door and the opportunities and experiences you get in a place like MIT last a lifetime.

If you don't go, many doors will become closed or so much harder to get into that it's basically equivalent. Want to join a think tank, become a quant on Wallstreet, easily raise VC money at 23? These are all much easier with the credibility a MIT degree brings.

"Normal" degreed people essentially live a life where everybody assumes you are stupid until proven otherwise. MIT people are assumed to be smart until proven otherwise. That is a tremendous advantage in almost all contexts.

Not to mention the quality of your peers and the education itself. Don't pass up the opportunity to really challenge yourself and see what you can do. Sure, it's just undergrad and you aren't really solving anything of note but just being surrounded by the leaders of your field is inspiring and will push you to be your best.

Sample size 1 over here but especially MIT I would go. MIT is big and diverse enough that you can go as technical as you want, or study business, or…?

Anyway my 2 cents from a 30 something that has been around the block.

Congrats and good luck!

> Want to ... become a quant on Wallstreet...? These are all much easier with the credibility a MIT degree brings.

Do enough hard math EE at MIT and becoming a quant as your first job is a common initial career step. The money you'll make will then help you do whatever you want going forward.

Not sure how this would fit in with the OP's desire to get a CS Ph.D.; on the science track it's very easy to fall off, I'd expect CS to have more flexibility but I don't know.

I toured MIT and didn't apply because I got the distinct sense my tour guide was miserable there. I didn't really know the importance attached to elite schools at the time, and ended up going to a top 25 school that I considered my top choice.

However, one of my siblings ended up going to MIT, and I can safely say had access to a variety of career opportunities that just weren't on the table at the school I attended - not because the students were smarter (I know several of my classmates and I had better test scores than my sibling), but MIT has a tremendous brand. Part of that is likely due to the rigor - I will admit, my sibling got challenged more and had to work a lot harder in college than I did. At my school, it was very possible to excel academically and still have a very active social life.

I knew several people who completed the author's plan, going to an elite school for grad studies. In liberal arts, I've seen it work reasonably well to be top of the class at a good but not Ivy League school, rather than middle of the pack at an Ivy. For engineering, it seems like it's more about working with well connected professors to get into competitive grad programs, and that is more likely to happen at MIT than other schools. As a reference, my top 25 CS program had 1 professor whose resume matches anyone in the business, but that was it, whereas at MIT you would have many more potential recommenders with a ton of pull.

It's hard for me to say what I would have done in retrospect, but those 4 years of undergrad can certainly alter the trajectory of the next 40 years of a career.

> As a reference, my top 25 CS program had 1 professor whose resume matches anyone in the business, but that was it, whereas at MIT you would have many more potential recommenders with a ton of pull.

MIT's policy for granting tenure which is enforced in part by the relevant Visiting Committee, is that you don't get it unless you're #1 or #2 in your subfield, and sometimes #3.

Which brings up that part of MIT governance, a variety of areas beyond departments and special institutions like the Media Lab have a Visiting Committee that regularly physically visits and talks to the stakeholders, including students for what was once one office for them. It's a critical part of maintaining the overall quality of the Institute, is by no means unique to the Institute although I don't know if it's used as widely in a lot of other universities.

Per https://corporation.mit.edu/committees/visiting-committees they were established 10 years after the real start of MIT (the Civil War broke out two days after it got chartered), there are 30 including for "the Libraries, the offices of the Dean for Student Life and the Dean for Undergraduate Education, and Sponsored Research."

OK, MIT's general library is small and thus subpar, and in the 1980s MIT paid Harvard a million dollars a year to give the humanities professors access to its stacks, but I'll comment the one for "Management & Social Sciences" was excellent back then for the latter topic.

BUT, the OP is an enterprising fellow, he could make a point of befriending one or more Harvard students, plenty are good people and interested in STEM, and you can help him do some research in their huge libraries and get some of this in return, or as I did do this on topics we were both interested in. I can attest that Harvard's general, law, and medical libraries are every bit as good as advertised. Which brings up the general advantage of the Boston area, it's "the Athens of America," there's real advantages to that.

i mean do you think over the course of your life, your sibling had better outcomes because of going to mit?

I graduated with honors from a state school, then I later went back to attend a PhD program (ultimately leaving before finishing even a masters). Overall, my experiences left me bitter and cynical about the entire system. With that perspective and hindsight, I think the most important things to consider are:

1) Do not go to any school that will leave you in debt. The education and experience is simply not worth it.

2) Do not choose a school based on its perceived reputation. There are just as many people that would avoid hiring Ivy League graduates as there are that would choose to hire them.

I know these are both unpopular opinions here, but consider that just might be due to the demographics here on HN.

It seems to me that you are looking for permission to turn down MIT. You don’t need permission. It’s your life, and you only get one.

Have you visited either school? Try to visit both if you can. I thought that a comparable institute-of-technology was my dream school. After visiting, it fell down to my last choice, in part because I couldn’t understand a word the lecturer said (thick accent) in the sample class and in part because of the unusual social scene.

If you are sure you want to work for big tech, people here are right that the debt will not be a big problem for you. But if you choose any other path, it might be an issue.

For what it’s worth, I wish I hadn’t worked so hard in undergrad. It did me little good. And my credential from [fancy school] doesn’t stop me from getting rejected plenty. The social network didn’t help me much because I am not very outgoing.

You will have to pass leetcode interviews to work at FAANG no matter which school you attend. Perhaps go to Z and use the time and money saved to practice leetcode. It sounds ridiculous, but maybe it isn’t!

I concede that meeting potential strong cofounders will be easier at MIT, though I wonder how many students want to start companies in a time when FAANG is the easier path to wealth.

I've visited Z a lot growing up, but I've never been to MIT. I am certain that I want to go into computer science, though, and it's been my passion since before I was fully aware of what MIT even was.

+1, visit MIT. They have/(had?) campus preview weekend. Definitely kick the tires to help decide

I graduated with approx $200k of student loan debt. It took me ten years to pay it off. While I learned a lot about personal finance in those ten years, that's ten years that could have gone towards literally anything else.

I don't regret going to the school I went to (Stevens; not an Ivy) but I would never wish student debt on anyone.

That said, there are job opportunities that present themselves much more easily for people coming from Ivy Leagues and if you do well. So there's that to consider.

(Also, I thought I'd get my PhD when I started college...I didn't do that, and I don't regret it.)

I believe you should first think about your future work-life balance.

You'll only be a young student once and university is the best time to party, do sports, and work on your social and relationship skills. Many people also meet their spouse during university. Once university is over, or once you're too old to blend in, you will never again in your life have an equally easy time meeting new people.

If you go to MIT, there's a good chance you'll be working super hard and you'll have a lot of incentives to put in some extra work to truly excel and become financially successful. You will most likely also be able to meet and become friends with people who will become influential in the future. But you won't have as much time to goof around with others, especially not if you need to work on the side to finance your university time.

So it's also a trade-off between "social skills" and "work skills".

The gap between these is so immense, using the same word “college” masks the difference.

For all that is holy, go to MIT. This is from someone who went to a larger school and dropped out, with zero regrets.

The top 3-5 schools put you on a different plane of existence. The people you meet will be in the elite, you’ll be surrounded with the future top people in your field.

The academics don’t remotely matter. College is all about network. By being surrounded by elites, you are friends with elites, and you’ll live a different life.

I have a lot of friends who went to top schools, especially MIT. Much of their success and their network, into their 40’s, is still interconnected with their MIT network.

You will be treated differently. You’ll get a glow on your life from the status.

Life is a relay race between generations. By choosing MIT you drastically increase the chance of elevating your blood line into the upper class. That’s no small thing.

I’d strongly urge you to take the long view here.

Preface: I was a graduate student at MIT (within the last decade) and was a resident tutor for the undergraduates in student housing (yay free rent!).

I would frame the following advice as: know thy self.

If you want to go into the engineering/sciences and eventually get a PhD, do not go to MIT (wait until grad school). ~$200k debt is not worth it since you will likely end up in a similar type of job.

If you want to start a company related to CS and make that a focus of your life for the next decade or so, go to MIT, but realize that most fail at this and end up at regular tech jobs. (I am now in the midwest because cost of living is incredibly low for people with >2 kids).

If you struggle with mental health, be weary of MIT, as course 6 is incredibly intense.

You will have classmates at MIT who will already have started one or more tech companies while in high school. Your international classmates will be in the top-10 of intellectual achievements in their respective countries. My undergrad math students from China were publishing papers with professors as co-authors.

Some people get depressed with the big fish > small fish transition, but if that’s not you, enjoy the ride!

Here are undergrad hacks: get more sleep than your classmates, do socialize even if you aren’t comfortable socializing lest there be no advantage to going to MIT when compared to their free online courses, if you don’t enjoy drinking (like me) - hold a red cup with water, be an ideal friend

Take the full ride to the place that has meaning to you, Z. If you end up enjoying academia, MIT has graduate programs, as you mentioned. And that way, if you find that academia wasn't for you, you aren't holding on to loans. Z is the path that is more adaptable as you walk into your future.

If you intend to get a graduate degree, you should go to Z for undergrad. If you have a PhD etc all that matters is the graduate institution associated with it. You will also be much better equipping to benefit from the opportunities at a research university as a grad student.

There is a good chance that the quality of instruction you will actually receive as a student will be better at Z. MIT professors have to split their time a dozen ways, and much of it isn't directed toward undergrads. Look into the actual professors you might be taking at both schools. Do they involve undergrads in their research? Are classes taught with pedagogy that appeals to you?

- put side the pure money question

- are you ready to sacrifice your near future, because of some possible far-future? weight possibilities / quality of life

- are you one that will use hir liasons to propel hirself, or one that will just work & live forward? weight your morals

- which one is easier to finish successfuly?

be honest to yourself. IT industry might be this or that, but does not hire just because of $(birth or education attributes). Doers succeed.

on the money - $180k might be a quarterly earning in USA/silicon valley, but outside of there, heh... i'm making software for 35y and still has not reached such yearly salary. and no need probably..

ah yes.. almost forgot: Have fun

> ...Z has offered... full-ride scholarship.

> If I went to MIT... $180k in debt.

Non bankrupt-able student loans are the modern day indentured servitude. At least in the early days of America you were free after 7 years, now days it's lifetime bondage.

These prices are fake. The money is fake, conjured up by a thought. But the indentured servitude is real.

This might be true in general, but MIT degree enables one to make at least several million dollars in post-graduation life.

At MIT you're not just paying for the education, but you're paying for the network of current students, professors, and alumni. You're paying for name-brand recognition and an easier way to get into grad schools and the job market.

I would look into financial aid at MIT and speak to financial aid advisors who work there, to see if you can get some sort of help.

If I were in your shoes I'd go to MIT, but then again I don't know what School Z is (i.e. if it's Carnegie Mellon or the University of Richmond, to name two very different schools).

180k is almost a house. If you graduate from Z you can take on a mortgage instead of paying off your debt living in an apartment. I'm sure you'll do extremely well at Z too, and you can go to fully funded grad programs if you want. I went to a public university for free and don't have any regrets really. If I could do anything differently, I'd go to a small liberal arts college for undergrad. Only reason I can see for going to MIT is for the prestige and the elite connections. But that life is not for everyone.

You should absolutely go to MIT. Consider negotiating more aid as someone else suggested, but even if that doesn't work, this is the best investment you'll ever make. If you want to do research, MIT's UROP program is amazing, and you'll be able to do whatever research you want as an undergrad. I really value my time at MIT - not only from an academic point of view, but also socially. Boston is full of college students, and believe it or not, MIT is actually probably the most socially active school there.

I went to a state school, going to an Ivy was never in the realm of possibility for me. But I do have friends from said state school that went on to grad school programs at MIT.

From my perspective they seemed to have gotten the best of both worlds.

A cheap but solid education and network at a very good state school where they could be top of the class among small fish rather than middle of the pack among big fish, and then a world class 4-6 year grad school research program that launched them into the upper echelons of the tech industry. They essentially beat the game.

A lot of good advice ITT already, so I'll just deposit my 2c:

1. If you're good enough to get accepted, you're probably going to be successful regardless of the path you choose.

2. If you go grad school route, that $180k is going to hang over you for the next 10 years, have a plan to service the interest.

3. You can probably enter the industry making $200k/yr minimum.

4. FOMO and regret are powerful but not fatal, status games entails their own burdens too.

5. It's really really hard to plan years in advance, especially when you're young. The thing you want today, you might not want tomorrow. The world will change and you will change, thus altering the calculus of desire. The advice I was given that served me well was make plans that maximize opportunity, rather than only focusing on creating linear paths to singular opportunities themselves. For ex. if MIT opens 10x more doors than Z, I'd opt for MIT, but if it's only say 2x I may lean towards Z.

6. Follow your heart, and good luck :)

Fascinating Q :) MIT compared to 'Z' doesn't sound good value to me! $180k debt you wouldn't have otherwise had, on top of having to do extra internships / work-study that presumably otherwise wouldn't have been required, which take away time that could've been used for studying better and having more social life / broader experiences. Sounds to me like an offer that's not an offer - "Congrats, we've deemed you clever enough to attend our prestigious institution, now pay us a s** load of money". If it were me, I'd do the calcs, what salary might you get, how long would that enable you to clear your debt in, what things in life does having to service the debt prevent or delay you from doing. If you really still want to go despite that, maybe its worth it.. but then perhaps request deferred entry for a year and try to get a very well-paid internship beforehand, to lower the up-front debt perhaps. Or... if it has to be a top tier school, consider another country! Even foreign student fees in other countries top universities would seem unlikely to produce that much debt... 1/3 to 1/2 maybe....

> If it were me, I'd do the calcs, what salary might you get

It's very very hard to calc what an identical person would get Salary wise with MIT vs Z.

Very likely the average MIT grade makes 2-3M more during their lifetime than the average Z grad, for a tech-y degree. Which is why they can charge 180k.

FWIW I went to state school and did fine, but I know many people at big name schools did better. But now I run my own startup, so my degree doesn't even matter.

I faced a somewhat similar choice when I was accepted to colleges about 20 years ago. I was waitlisted at the most prestigious one (The other "institute of technology"), and thought I might have some chance of getting in, yet it would have been very expensive and I was offered a full ride at one of my lower choices (a good UC but not Berkeley or LA). I took the full ride and had a great time and learned a huge amount. I was one stronger students there so I took lots and lots of interesting classes, didn't stress too much, got two majors and a minor, met lots of people (including my life partner), had no problem getting whatever research experience I wanted. I ended up getting my PhD from that prestigious school I was waitlisted at. Many of the other students in my full ride program did similarly. So, if Z has good faculty/research (and many big US schools do) that will let you get the research experience and letters of rec to give you a shot of getting into MIT as a grad student, seems like a reasonable strategy. Another observation I had when I saw the undergrads at the prestigious school, and met a lot of grad students who had come from MIT, is that there is very specific culture associated with undergrads from those places. That is on the one hand a huge bonus - you're in an exclusive club with brilliant people, and they did some super fun hacks. On the other hand, if for whatever reason you don't fit into that culture (and its toxic elements like "overloading" on courses), then there aren't as many other options - at the big school, you can pick and choose from a much wider range of identities and groups of friends. Good luck! Don't stress too much - those are both great options and either way you will grow a lot from the experience.

If it were me I'd go to Z, and then apply to MIT for grad school. Your undergrad school doesn't matter as much as some people like to think it does.

Why? Cost is a factor, but there are other things to consider:

Will your professors actually be interested in teaching undergrad, or is it something they do because they have to? For undergrad, favor the school where the professors will be more interested in you. (Unless you're planning on getting involved in graduate-level projects as an undergrad.)

What kind of reputation do undergrad graduates of the schools have? My first internship was very close to MIT, and I didn't hear very nice things about their BS graduates. (But that was one datapoint.)

A few other things:

UMass Amherst has an awesome CS program. It's ranked close to MIT and costs a lot less. It's also about 90 minutes from Boston.

I learned so much more about tech outside of school than inside school. Yes, you can meet some truly awesome people at MIT. You can also meet truly awesome people anywhere, it all comes down to your ability to judge others' character and motivations.

> UMass Amherst has an awesome CS program. It's ranked close to MIT and costs a lot less.

Maybe it's program is awesome, but per it's own page on the subject it ranks #31st (https://www.cics.umass.edu/news/computer-science-undergradua...). Note there are plenty of ties in the US News and World Report system, so for example Stanford, UC Berkeley, CMU and MIT are in a tie for #1 which is correct.

I went to ETH Zurich and while I can't speak about the US, compared to peers that went to no name schools, it seems I have it a lot easier getting interviews and getting through them. I'm barely one year into my career and get interviews at more than 3 out of 5 places I apply, including direct contact with a lot of FAANG companies + recently received an offer from Adobe, which I declined as I value unconditional full remote atm more than a 30%~50% higher salary.

Point being, I can't regret going to ETH, even though it got really stressful sometimes and I have 50k debt to pay off - school just cost about 15k total for BSc & MSc, but you still have to pay for living - because at some point I will inevitably end up at a FAANG(-like) company as I too want to be able to afford a decent house and retirement.

I now know enough people that just coast by in (below) average jobs making (below) average money that have a hard time teaching themselves relevant skills and struggle getting interviews for well-paid positions.

Are you swiss or were you an international student?

Swiss. It was easy to get in for me as a Swiss, but they filtered heavily during the first couple years.

Got with your gut. You can always go to MIT later. They have good postgrad, right? ;) Try the Jeff Bezos "regret minimization framework", see if that helps your thinking. Picture yourself in the future, down each of the chosen paths, and see which one you prefer, which one has more regret? Helps to take a perspective outside of yourself, outside of time.

I’ve just gone through the ringer with Unis here in Australia. Similar situation, except tuition fees are deferred for any uni until I’m working. The best advice is to choose the most enthusiastic teachers. Can you check who will teach you? It may sound silly, but dull teachers have nearly sapped my will to live, let alone complete my engineering degree. I ask them questions, they say ‘look at the lecture slides’. I attend their lectures, they drag it out and obviously don’t want to be there. The assessments are gruelling, cheating is widespread due to poor teaching. It’s an all-round depressing experience.

I attended a ‘lower-tier’ university for a year and the teachers there were great. They would be engaging for their whole lecture, enthusiastically answer questions and they imbued me with their passion for their subjects. Never underestimate how much a teacher can help you.

(When I say teacher you can just substitute ‘professor’)

MIT.

You are being objective about the cost dilemma, and attending the school is really more about what you make of it, there is no guarantee of any kind of compensation benefit after graduating, BUT if you remain as objective (and unencumbered) in your 20s as you are at 18 right now, you will be fine in the money-making sector.

Ivy League-adjacent schools are not the same as other schools, when it comes to both perception and access to the upper echelon of society.

If you were talking about state schools and Tier 1, 2 3 schools or even community college, then I would say just go to the one thats free. Because all you need is the paper that said you went there, or the database entry when some journalist checks 25 years from now. The education and networking benefit differences are nonexistent.

But with Ivy League-adjacent schools, its very different. This is a totally different America and world.

Never had the opportunity for someplace like MIT, I was restricted to state schools by a few factors mostly financially. Look at the size and depth of faculty in the departments of interest at school Z. We had a bummer of a faculty who got fired (he sucked) at a small school which meant that a lot of electives were not available because that small CS department was down a person. Granted this was the 90's and CS was just a few years removed from being part of the Math department.

Go to MIT and network with others (I've often heard that is the value of Ivy and top tier schools). When you land your first job, use 50% of your salary to pay off loans and you'll have that 180k wiped out in no time. I was going to joke that a college education set of loans is like a mortgage but mortgages are outpacing a lot of things these days.

I applied to MIT for undergrad (didn't get in, and this was with have worked for 3 years at the Naval Research Lab and winning awards). Did get into CMU, but they didn't offer me any money. U of MD offered me a full ride (+ stipend, would have been in the inaugural class of the gemstone honors program) and almost went there, but ended up going to a small liberal arts college for social reasons (who also made it financially worthwhile). Don't regret that decision.

I then applied to MIT again for grad school. Again didn't get in (kept working at NRL until I got into IBM's Extreme Blue internship program in its 2nd year (I've been lucky with opportunities, but MIT must really not like me :) ). Ended up going to Columbia. Had other opportunities as well (almost chose NYU and the person who was recruiting me then hopped to Stanford, so I probably would have followed him). But, again, don't regret that decision. At Columbia, I was given freedom to work on what interested me and ended up arguably creating something that is integral to how computers are managed today.

With all that said, I would strongly recommend you consider MIT, you will be pushed by your peers (if you so desire) to be better than you ever thought you could be. When I compare my small liberal arts college where I was a big fish computer science wise to Columbia, it was a world of difference. There are just more opportunities available at the "better schools" from peer projects to research opportunities.

On the flip side, I'm unsure its worth spending $200K (or even going into debt over), as you do want to go to grad school. But as others have said, 1) explore financial aid opportunities with them 2) explore external funding sources, there are many. yes, if option is big state school and zero debt for MIT and $200K debt, the calculus might lead one way, but that doesn't have to be the only scenario.

And even if you don't get into MIT for grad school if, you'll most likely get into a program that is a good fit for you.

MIT has a graduation rate of about 85%, which means that if you get in then you'll likely graduate. So it's like Stanford or med school: the real barrier is entry - once you're in they'll do all they can to get you to graduation.

I don't agree with this philosophy b/c it means an MIT education adds no more value than any other university. MIT, as well as many other schools, would improve their reputation by culling more students out in the 4 years.

So congrats: you've made the cut(in life)! You'll never have to worry again unless you really screw up (drugs, criminal behavior, etc). Hmmm, IIRC MAD MAGAZINE once published an issue that parodied this "med-school" situation.

> MIT has a graduation rate of about 85%, which means that if you get in then you'll likely graduate.

And my observed data on a number who didn't graduate or had trouble doing so was that came from external factors having nothing to do with the school itself—make very sure your parents won't sabotage you for not going to "their" school Z, or going to a much better one than they did—or personal factors that would have made it hard to graduate, at least for a while, at any school with some rigor.

ADDED: This is probably the best reply to answer your specific questions that I haven't already: I did go to MIT, but on the science track so that's not as relevant for you. The quality of education and peers was outstanding.

Contrary to what some people are claiming getting a lot of very smart people together makes a big difference, from what I've heard it's one of the biggest values from the Indian ITTs vs. the instruction and equipment, which while still world class wasn't so great. Especially in a place like the Boston metro area you'll have all the opportunities you could want to hang out with other types of people, might even want to make a point of doing that to decompress.

I'm one of the "didn't graduate due to external factors" exceptions to the above 85% statistic, but just getting into MIT opened more than a few doors including through networking.

There's something both ugly and perhaps good for you to factor in: we're clearly going back to harder economic times in general, "history doesn't repeat but it rhymes" and it's rhyming strongly with the 1970s.

This may result in tuition increases before you graduate but that will probably take a while, but it will also likely substantially decrease the real, inflation adjusted principal of your loans. Of course make sure their interest rates have some sort of cap, you don't want to be paying 20-22% like the prime rate got to in the US before inflation was tamed in the early 1980s. Also factor in all of the above for school Z.

In the above light, a perceived higher quality undergraduate degree might make a much more substantial difference than it does today.

It's weird that MIT is not offering more financial aid. I thought they were the same as the Ivies, i.e. "need blind" which means they'll offer you whatever you need to "afford" the school (YMMV based on parents' income, but if they're making < $150k a year, you should be getting _way_ more than 1 semester worth of tuition). I would recommend following-up on that – get in contact with the MIT admissions office and make sure you've filled out all the FAFSA paperwork correctly. Even if you have, tell them everything you said here. If they gave you the offer want you to accept and will work with you to make sure you can afford it.

Definitely choose MIT.

MIT as a brand name will open many doors, the debt you'd incur may close some of those doors.

If your intention is to go to grad school, consider what compound interest on whatever debt you need to take out for MIT undergrad will do over 8 years of undergrad. If your intention is to go into academic research, consider how a 60k/yr job will pay for that debt. If your intention is to start a startup, consider what your minimum costs will look like given the extra debt load.

A grad degree in ML from MIT will certainly net you a lucrative job in industry, but you maybe stuck taking the lucrative job out of fear of default rather than desire. Career freedom is important too many.

The reputation of Z (whatever that is) may actually have an effect on whether you get into a top grad school.

I knew a professor who said if they knew nothing about or had never heard professionally about any work done by the professors or graduates of the applicant's undergraduate department, they would usually reject that applicant, marking it, "insufficient preparation."

That sounds harsh, but he also said, "Every so often we'd make an exception, and it always turned out to be a mistake."

(Also, if you write the sentences like, "I applied to MIT for the sake of completeness," it does sound like MIT would be a good cultural fit.)

I have two pieces of advice.

1. One thing I learned after becoming an adult is that debt is a normal part of life. You'll have a mortgage. You'll have a car loan. And you'll have student debt. You quickly become used to debt, and you don't need to be afraid of it, especially if you will have a pedigree from MIT.

2. Your decision will ultimately be based on what kind of life you want for yourself. Do you want a comfortable life or an ultra-successful but challenging one? If it's the former, then a less prestigious school will do you fine. If it's the latter, then go to MIT.

I commend you on your careful consideration of the costs and potential benefits of various college choices. I didn't think that far ahead when I was 18 and unfortunately for many high school students, that choice can have a pretty significant impact on the trajectory of, at the very least, your early adult years.

That said, I did my undergrad at MIT about 25 yrs ago. I met my best friends there who, along with a lot of other students there, expanded my horizons in terms of ambition and possibilities in a good way. 20 years later, having MIT on my resume (along with a track record of solid tech work) still gets me a pretty incredible hit rate on job applications. I was offered a decent amount of financial aid but still came out with ~$80k in student loan debt which was a lot 25 years ago. Even in the early 2000s, I was able to pay that off pretty easily. I think that in the case of many career choices, the cost of a degree from an elite university is not worth it, but in the case of tech, I think the MIT degree is clearly worth it.

The one minor proviso I would add since you mentioned graduate work is that doing doctoral work at MIT is typically more difficult if you've done your undergrad there. On the other hand, doing an M.Eng. at MIT is quite easy if you have reasonable grades. The one-year M.Eng. _might_ be worth the extra year, but outside of narrow specialties, the opportunity cost of doctoral work relative to 3-5 years building experience and earning money in tech tends to favor the latter.

Go to MIT. If you don’t like it after a semester you can always transfer to Z.

You can get student loans and pay them off later with the inflated salary you will get as a result of having an MIT degree.

Transferring out is a good point; it'd be much harder to transfer in. People talk about people coming out of MIT having 'inflated salaries', but are there any sites that quantify the value of a MIT degree for the path I hope to pursue (CS)?

https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166683-Massachusetts...

This is based on IRS earnings data, not surveys. The median salary of a CS grad 3 years after graduation is $163,496, I assume Z is also represented (though if Z is notably less selective than MIT, your place in the salary distribution might also be quite different)

Transfers into MIT were nearly non-existent as of the 1980s. To do so, I'd think you'd first have to have done half of the core math and science curriculum because lots of classes beyond them start from one or more of them as common base as you can probably guess from studying SICP.

So AP BC calculus and calculus based classical mechanics and E&M. The biology and chemistry requirements can be satisfied with sufficiently disparate courses they can't be assumed as base knowledge, there are now five different options for Introductory Biology (http://catalog.mit.edu/mit/undergraduate-education/general-i...) and you can do wet or solid state chemistry.

Just a message from someone who faced a nearly identical choice 20 years ago: 1) Whatever you choose, you will likely have a good education and a great career. Celebrate this. 2) You are much more likely to regret turning down MIT than taking on the extra debt.

I opted for the full ride at State U and had a very good education and a great career graduating with zero debt along with meeting the wonderful woman who became my wife. I owe a lot to State U who in my view invested way more in me than I ever invested back in them.

But State U's credibility only extended within the borders of the state and I ended up, like you described, going out of state to Prestigious U for my PhD. And there was definitely a cost - I did not have the peer education, easily open doors, etc. that would have been there had I turned down State U. I've definitely had moments in my career where doors were closed that would not have been had I opted for the heavier debt, better option.

Whatever you choose if you feel it would help for someone a little closer to your parent's age to make the case for your choice, I'd be happy to do that. I felt no one was able to talk sense to my parents and they were absolutely not listening to me at the time. I've got a lot more notches on my belt and can usually be persuasive however you think the decision should go.

Let me know.

There are several interesting studies on colleges, their ranking, and the outcomes of individuals. It's really well outlined in the book "David and Goliath" by Malcom Gladwell. Top schools don't necessarily increase your chances of getting and advanced degree or being successful. In fact, it can do the opposite. I recommend reading what he has to say and the studies, and let that help you determine if it's worth going.

I think it really depends on school Z. If it's a flagship, top in-state school (Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, Virginia come to mind but aren't the only ones), you may have a better social experience and still have the ability to meet top talent. If it's one level below that, I'd consider MIT.

E.g. In CA I'd put Berkeley/UCLA at close to MIT for undergrad and a more fun place, but I'd choose MIT over UCSB or UCSD for academics and future career options. Not that there aren't smart, driven students at those schools, resumes speak for you to some extent and will open more doors.

You're not the only one making this decision, other smart kids are making the same choice. I chose a large state school over smaller, "higher ranked" private schools and regret nothing. I had a much more "fun" experience than any of my friends who went to those other schools, and I find most of their friends pretty unlikable (douchey rich kids).

Wow. This is tough. It all depends on your long term goals and who the hell knows those well when they are 18? I certainly didn't and I doubt you do either. (Your goal is pretty squishy, no offense.) If I were you, rather than pick a career goal, I'd like a few things that are important in your life and structure your career around them.

So then the question is what gives you the most optionality towards what may be your goal?

As others have said, the PhD may or may not be a goal after a few years of college (or, haha, a few years of PhD studies).

So I'd focus on the bachelor's. Then the question is, what do you gain from Z vs MIT.

On the Z side:

* Financial freedom (bc full ride)

* Some opportunities

On the MIT side:

* Higher caliber acquaintances and friends

* Pedigree

I am here to tell you that you can have a successful career (in terms of money) without any pedigree at all. But on the other hand I had one high school acquaintance with the exact same gpa and she went to MIT and has had a far more illustrious career than I (was also more ambitious too).

The question then becomes what do you value the most: the connections and pedigree and career achievements or the financial freedom and the chance to make your own way?

I have chosen the latter through most of my life and been pretty happy, but that's me.

What about you?

PS the comment to ask MIT for more money are spot on; it never hurts to ask.

This is actually kind of funny. I would say go where it's more passionate for you, not where more status is.

I made this mistake. I was going to go to UTS and do computer science. I loved programming as a hobby since a teenager, and I loved the "highrise" skyscraper campus of UTS. But I also applied to Sydney for Science, when I got accepted into both, I think I chose the "prestige" and "classic campus" of Sydney, over doing what was really passionate for me.

I wouldn't say that much that I regret it, I make the most of it, you know? But I know that had I got to study what and where I wanted just for me, my path would have been a lot more direct (as I ended up going into CS later anyway, but without the degree for it).

Sydney was good, and I enjoyed it and got a lot out of it, but it wasn't really "me" as much as the other place was. I do regret it a bit actually. The people I would have met there (and ended up meeting some later through friends), the different life I would have had a focus on. I think I would have enjoyed it, actually, it was for me. I think I should have chosen the other one :)

You have the option of a "full ride" and you're wondering if it's good enough to take?

TAKE THE MONEY. Take the tangible up front benefit over hypothetical benefits that might, or might not, come later. Do not discount the value of keeping your debt low. Debt is a life changed. It is like wearing a strait jacket for every other decision you will make for decades to come.

You have the chance to avoid this. Take it!

TAKE THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Debt is a very useful financial tool that's misunderstood by a lot of people. These kinds of "TAKE THE MONEY" comments conflate credit cards used to buy a TV with a student loan to go to MIT. This "TAKE THE MONEY" will be almost worthless compared with the enormous returns that you get from an MIT education.

If you have sound mental health and are extremely driven, are able to focus despite the courseload and competition, and you are confident you'll graduate on time, then pick MIT. You minimize debt by graduating as soon as possible.

Average folk may take 5-6 years to graduate with an engineering degree because it's that difficult. Gotta retake classes and work part time, haha.

Regardless of college, what you do outside of classes is more important (networking). There are smart people everywhere, so you're not missing much if you skip MIT.

I will say though, the MIT campus is right by the river and has a serene feeling. Are you able to visit the place, and do you like the idea of being there for the next 4 years? If you have a mental health issue like seasonal affective disorder, you'll be miserable at MIT due to the geography, and no amount of justifying a bad location will save you.

Having some extra money means you can afford to study abroad. Picking up a new language may become your passion.

Either way, I don't think there's a wrong choice. You'll have to weigh and rank your desires accordingly.

"...MIT hasn’t offered me any financial aid."

"... Z has offered me what essentially amounts to a full-ride scholarship."

I would go to Z. Free college? Why not.

"Free college? Why not."

"Why not." suggests why this can be a very bad attitude trap, you don't value so much what you don't sweat for. If the OP attends MIT he'll sweat more than he would at Z for academics and money, and that will likely make a profound difference in the person he becomes by graduation.

Maybe it will make a difference, maybe not. But the large debt will certainly have a negative impact on his post grad life. You might also be too worried about money to focus on the academics.

What profound differences do you see occurring?

> What profound differences do you see occurring?

You believe "the large debt will certainly have a negative impact on his post grad life." and you don't see that as a forging a profound different in the person he becomes?

Possibly not. Just because it's a negative impact doesn't mean the person makes a change.

Then I submit it's not very negative, it's a part of normal American life, except it's a true investment not so subject to depreciation like a vehicle which is consumption unless it's a means to the end of earning money, or a house which is also consumption with a lot of assumptions it might turn out to be a worthwhile investment.

The same assumption exists for college degrees. Just because you get one doesn't mean you will make money with it, or even that you are better off than if you hadn't gone.

"Then I submit it's not very negative,"

How do you get that from my comment? Just because something is negative doesn't mean someone will change.

FWIW I was given new unanticipated financial aid during freshman orientation. IMO a large student debt is terrible if you come out of college with a major that doesn't immediately lead to a lucrative career, but in any sort of STEM major I wouldn't worry about it. You'll pay it off in no time. Just make sure a STEM career is what you actually want, and don't flunk!

I have no guarantee that I’d get into grad school at MIT even coming out of MIT’s undergraduate program, but the chances are significantly higher.

are you sure about that? Multiple tier 1 schools have a semi-official policy against reacceptance of undergrads into grad; idea being that it’s better for your development to get exposed to different university cultures.

Can you provide any citations for this? I don't think it's the case for MIT

you won't find it written down anywhere. It's part of the culture in more than a few places, though.

You'll find it "written down" in Feynman's autobiographies, he did MIT then Princeton, but that's for physics were there was much more agreement in what physics was. I was informally told the same is true for MIT's chemistry department.

Computer science has not been the subject of thousands of years of study and there's much less agreement on a great deal of it, so there's a higher chance a department will accept its own. But a MIT degree, especially if you do some research, will put you in a good position to get into a very good graduate school. And that should be no problem given what a self-starter the OP is.

ADDED: Also just notices MIT now has a "SuperUROP" program: https://www.eecs.mit.edu/academics/undergraduate-programs/op...

"The Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, better known as SuperUROP, is designed for MIT juniors and seniors seeking an advanced research experience working closely with a faculty advisor and producing publication-worthy results. Since 2017, the yearlong program has also been open to students in the School of Engineering and the School of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences (SHASS)."

Back to getting into a good graduate school, the single best way to get admitted is for a professor at the other school to be told by a professor at your school who he personally knows that you can do research; success in the SuperUROP program would also help demonstrate that, especially if you can get a paper in the process of publication. The other big issue of proving general mastery of the field would be pretty well assumed if you graduated with good marks from MIT.

> Back to getting into a good graduate school, the single best way to get admitted is for a professor at the other school to be told by a professor at your school who he personally knows that you can do research;

that is 100% the correct answer. “hey alice, it’s bob. undergraduate charlie just applied to your department; he’s in my lab now and kicking ass” will trump nearly every other consideration, if alice has funding and tenure.

Ignore the money and go to the better place.

You're here. You're going to make millions over your career.

If I could give any advice to 20-year-old me, it'd be to stop being such a miser and just work hard instead.

Consider the counterfactual: let's say you can't make back that $180K. Say you're 40 years old and $180K is still unfathomable. What happened?

> What happened?

They might get into college and hate it. Might get into the industry and hate it. Might get hit on the head while doing intramurals and suffer a brain injury and never get to their full potential. Life is full of good and bad events, and banking on everything going well, including that their inklings at 18 are actually what they end up enjoying in life is a non-trivial gamble.

I give my own kids the advice to make choices that do not limit future options. MIT is a good school, but the expenses are not something to be dismissed.

Well, sure, I pretty much hate programming now.

It took less than five years of it to essentially retire though, we print money. As far as I can tell salaries are now generally higher than they were for me plus there are more jobs about.

Compare against the opportunity cost. I don't really know anyone in a career that hasn't had to put in the same effort (e.g. dollar for law/medical school) that isn't just completely screwed with 0 money and no hope of ever owning anything.

I've taken for granted the fact that OP wants to like, have a decent life at some point rather than being a wage slave forever.

That experience, of retiring in 5 years, is not the norm. At all. It does happen, and it makes good stories to tell, and people in SV get it often enough that it can seem common. But it is not the typical story of a coder in the rest of the USA.

I have no idea where OP lives, or where they intend to live, but banking on hitting that story is exactly what I am arguing against. Because there is zero guarantee for any specific person to live that path.

Sure, and someone who's going to MIT is not a "typical coder in the rest of the USA".

It's like life expectancy. A 20 year old in a developed country has a far higher life expectancy than a child at birth in Somalia. You can completely discount the vast majority of the group.

I think you should go to MIT.

That being said I can’t help but laugh at the people saying MIT will open many doors etc. fact of the matter is - MIT and it’s ilk are simply good at identifying who we’re going to succeed anyway.

I’d be very surprised if there’s a huge difference in success between someone who got it and didn’t go vs someone who attended.

As someone outside of America - it seems insane you would go into private debt for over a decade just to have MIT written on a piece of paper. I am sure the instruction is good and you will meet some great people but after you have been in the industry for a while it won't matter one bit where you went to tertiary education or even if you went to tertiary education. For technical subjects, in the modern Internet era, University is just a foot in the door and MIT is a very expensive foot in the door.

I work in cyber security and also sit on recruitment for our org. I barely care what the undergrad education history is on an application - especially if they have 1+ jobs since graduation. The applicant's ability to know what they are talking about and problem solve, plus their cultural fit, is much more important.

We all have many paths we could take through life, but have to select one. You never will know how your life would have turned out on a path you didn't choose, and neither do any of the people giving advice. You choose, do your best, and adjust if things aren't going the way you want. Good luck with your decision!

For the record, I love computers, hated school, and only went to get the piece of paper. I went to Indiana University, Purdue, Oakland (in MI) and finally graduated from U of L's Speed engineering school. I never used anything I learned in school: the computer classes were lame, but I do think the piece of paper kept me from getting rejected for large independent contracting jobs (I've mostly worked independently my whole life), so I'm very glad I went. You're welcome to contact me.

> Regardless of whichever path I take, I want to work for a larger tech company to gain experience before I bootstrap a sustainable startup (I mean, that's the dream, isn't it?).

Don't wait. Go to MIT for undergrad. Meet some like-minded people there. Start something while you're an undergrad.

If they are seriously concerned about the debt of MIT undergrad I don't think suggesting they go into further debt on a risky venture like a startup while still an undergrad is brilliant advice.

Taking on personal debt is by no means a required part of starting a startup in the US, and one of the points people have been implicitly making is that the connections you can make, the entrepreneurial activities at, in and around MIT will make taking on debt even less necessary.

Although this is not the OP's planned career path, he's planning on a startup after getting a Ph.D. and working a normal job for a while, which will also allow him to pay down the debt incurred in getting his undergraduate degree before the startup.

Another detail about MIT not yet mentioned: professors are formally allowed to work one day a week on things like their own startups. So "making a connection with a professor" includes the possibility of getting paid to work at such a startup which of course can be very educational about startups. And also get a different type of recommendation from "a MIT professor" that could also be useful in getting into a grad school.

>MIT hasn’t offered me any financial aid

>Z has offered me what essentially amounts to a full-ride scholarship.

The answer is clear, and you can always do a masters degree at MIT if you just really want to have that on your resume. Burying yourself in unnecessary debt is a stupid decision that millions of people regret.

Is there a good reason for not mentioning what school Z is? It makes a big difference if we're talking UCLA versus GW.

If you go to MIT, you will be a smaller fish in a more prestigious pond. If you go to UCLA, you would be a bigger fish in a less prestigious pond. If you go to GW, you would be a bigger fish in a not very prestigious pond.

If you excel at a school like UCLA, you should still be able to get into a good grad program, assuming you have taken classes or shown interest in the relevant area. But if we're talking a school like GW (no offense to anyone here who went there!), it would be more difficult. Most people would assume that students who went to GW would not have been admitted to MIT, partly because GW's much lower in the rankings, and partly because it's private (and therefore not cheaper).

I know lots of people who got into great grad programs who went to 'lesser' undergrad schools, especially public schools. It would be easier to get into grad programs if you did awesome and went to MIT. But consider that you might not stand out so much at MIT as you would elsewhere. Recommendation letters from professors will be more glowing if you are at a less competitive institution.

One last thing: realize that different schools calculate financial aid differently when siblings are in the picture. Carleton College, where my older brother went to school, knew that I was going to be attending college soon and gave him an aid package that did not change over the 4 years, including when I was in school. We assumed that Swarthmore College, where I went, would do the same. I was wrong. After my brother graduated, my aid package was cut dramatically. We had to plead with them to keep it steady, which ultimately they did.

You should check with MIT's financial aid office to see how they do things. If you're the oldest, they're probably hoping to suck out some cash before other siblings are in college. You might be able to convince them to give you a package across all 4 years that remains steady, or commit to offering a package when your siblings are in school.

Highly advise going to MIT despite a lot of suggestions otherwise. You might not get any different education, but It is absolutely going to open doors that'll either allow you to do exactly what you want to do, or make a lot more money then otherwise possible.

Hey, let me throw option 3 into the mix: don't go to either and apply to work for us. We are building an AI research lab that we fund by applying ML techniques to trading. On the trading side, we offer large bonuses if you do well (1-10M is realistic and has happened), On the research side, high fixed pay (competitive with brain or deepmind). We require that you know how to program, are curious and learn fast. Myself I'm into symbolic reasoning and probabilistic programming. DM me at not_a_cat at fastmail dot com if interested, at the very least it will provide a 3rd data point with which to compare your two other options.

It’s an interesting dilemma. How we complicate our lives by having so many options. The overthinking and the hedging we do. And turn one goal into many. One direction into many.

You want to bootstrap a small company. By working for a large company. By getting a graduate degree. By getting $180k in debt.

Just take out the $180K loan and start your business. This is what Peter Thiel fellowship would have you do.

This long path of avoidance and preparation to work on what you want to work on…. life is too short.

Smart enough to get into MIT is smart enough to succeed whatever path you choose.

The point is. Be clear of your end goal. The path will then be obvious.

Go to Z. I had the same thing. I dropped out of an expensive school and just followed my interests, later returning to the school I liked that was nearly free. Zero debt beats any reason. Plus.. MIT students. Shudder.

It's not clear why Z needs to be undisclosed and it makes it harder to give you advice.

I second people talking about the 'regret minimization framework'. It sounds like you will be studying something technical. Look up big tech salaries on levels.fyi, there's no guarantee those numbers will be there but, 5-10 years into your career, you might be able to save your MIT tuition easily with a tech salary. If you got to that point, would you regret not going to MIT? On the other hand, if bootstrapping a start-up is important to you, it might be difficult to do that when you have college debt.

It's good that you're seeking advice. Writing down your thoughts clears the head too, and makes you notice spots where you're pushing to convince yourself. For big decisions like this, I write all my thoughts as I do my research. As I get closer to the decision, I make a list of pros, cons, known unknowns / risks, then sleep on it. I never regretted a decision I made in that way.

Hard choice man. I went to a private engineering school and graduated with ~80k of debt. Paid it off in 4 years after graduation - no regrets about going there. I was not highly motivated or focused on what I wanted to do when I was 18 so I didn't try to really do more than what came easy. If I had to do it again with what I know now and I had the choice to go to MIT, I 100% would. You can also work/find scholarships/etc. during your studies to finance it. I would have been in over 140k if I didn't do anything on the side.

Given your aspirations, the choice is MIT. The connections and pedigree will matter when you go to try to start a company. Also clear that you are entering a field where the cost of eduction is not really going to matter that much. You are going to make plenty of money to pay back student loans.

The one proviso: you gotta love the field. A worst case pass is to get the expensive education and to learn that you don't love it. That's a bad outcome. But assuming that you've had enough experience with open source that you feel the calling: MIT.

Don't. Source: class of '01. Was miserable there. Took years to mentally recover. It's a very high stress undergrad environment. Grad students mostly seem to do OK.

> I realize that to some in the tech industry $180k may seem like nothing

But once you have a degree on MIT, you'll be one of those people in the tech industry to whom $180k may seem like nothing. You will be able to pay those loans off after graduation. By the time you're 40, you'll be kicking yourself for not taking advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity if you don't take it.

Go to MIT

Path : Ivy > big tech > ivy > research lab > startup

Thanks for recommending this path. Would the second 'ivy' refer to returning for a graduate degree? As in 'undergrad > big tech > grad > lab > startup'? What would recommend the timeframes be at each stage?

We non-Americans are continually stunned at how you Americans fetishize brand name universities. You don't become a better engineer by going to MIT instead of University of Kuala Lumpur. Everyone knows it's bs but everyone believes everyone else believes in this bs so everyone has to spend $$$ to go to a brand name university. A self-perpetuating cycle of bs.

> you Americans fetishize brand name universities

I'm sure some people do this (American and non-American).

But whether you like it or not, attending a brand name university has advantages. I went to a mediocre state school for undergrad and a "brand name" university for PhD. 2 + 2 = 4 in both locations. But if you compare their respective alumni networks, they are LIGHT YEARS apart.

On the "fancy" alumni network, I routinely see posts like, "I'm trying to get an interview with Jeff Bezos/Bill Gates/<famous person>. Anyone have any contacts?" And they will get contacts! Or... "My Greenwich hedge fund is looking for a <blahblahblah>..."

On my undergrad network, it's middle-managers as far as the eye can see, each trying to sell "volume discounts" to the other.

Is that 'fair'? I have no idea.

Is it self-perpetuating? Absolutely.

But the "reverence" that people hold for name schools is because those schools wield considerable power.

I have a friend who had the exact same circumstances you describe. He decided to go to the local state school which gave him a full scholarship. Graduated with zero debt and now has a successful career as an electrical engineer working at a Silicon Valley startup. He told me everything he needed to know to do his job well, he learned from his dad (electronics, UNIX, C, etc.).

I find this off-the-wall article is worth reading from Moxie.

"Do whatever — but make it uncomfortable (like leaving prison!) and make it count."

https://moxie.org/2013/01/07/career-advice.html

I think without knowing Z, it’s hard to give advice.

I assume Z is a public school that’s at least decent in Computer Science? If Z was on the level of UT Austin or University of Maryland, College Park, then going to MIT is a no brainer.

However, if Z is Berkeley, then that’s a much tougher decision and I might lean towards Berkeley.

I was in the same boat, and not choosing MIT took many years to overcome. One thing I was not aware of at the time, is that MIT will make sure you have the tuition assistance necessary to make it through. As _wallscratch_ mentions, it is in your best interest to contact them immediately.

How do you weight the choice?

- MIT is $180K and Z is free. Don't underestimate the stress those finances put on you - now and realistically for the remainder of your working life. These stresses will make you more likely to dropout of MIT than college Z.

- At MIT you have the opportunity to be surrounded by really smart people, however you don't appear to be one of them. Why? They didn't offer you any scholarship. That means you're the person paying for all the smart people's scholarship. I know that stings, but that's a truth of higher-education that isn't discussed enough. Just because you got in doesn't really mean they want you. If they actually want you then they'll pay for you - like college Z is. Also, don't underestimate attending a college that actually wants you to be there.

- Matriculating from MIT definitely improves the odds of your being accepted into their graduate school. However, keep in mind that right now they don't see you as one of their best students. Hopefully that would change in 4 years!

- What do you want to do after college? Do you want to remain in Academia or do research in industry? MIT credentials look really good for academia, not as much for industry (not that they look bad for industry!)

- While having MIT credentials may look good for academia the pay isn't typically as good compared to industry and you'll be graduating with a humongous debt.

- You should also talk this through with a financial advisor. This is a stupendous financial decision that will have ramifications for the next several decades of your life. Don't make this decision on emotion or well wishes of friends and family. You need someone to lay out the facts.

- I've known several MIT graduates who are quite mediocre. MIT won't make you great, you still have to do the work.

- There are lots of people working at larger tech companies who did not graduate from MIT. If you're not planning on going into academia then I would place more emphasis on your internships and your contacts there than the college you attend.

You have a lot to think about!

What would I do? I'd go to college Z. You'll be in a much better financial position for doing entrepreneurial work because it's hard to start a business when you yourself are financially strapped. They want you, and you have family in the area to help you out (even if it's just a good home-cooked meal once a month - it helps). Focus on your internships. Plus, who knows? You may change your area of focus by the time you graduate! Then you can assess your next steps.

MIT doesn't offer scholarships to anyone. It only offers need-based aid.

Ah, right - I remember that now. Their thinking is everybody who gets offers are top-tier and all worthy of scholarships. Now it's a matter of the disconnect between what MIT thinks you can afford and what you actually can afford.

$180K for an undergraduate education, for someone wanting to be an entrepreneur? They're going to have to do a full analysis of how MIT can further them along with that goal and whether it's worth it.

Go to MIT. Definitely contact their office.

Congratulations- this is no small feat. I hope you feel very proud of yourself.

You will be fine either way, but you only get to do your undergrad at MIT once in your life :)

Go to MIT and make sure you seize that opportunity every day. Work hard, get into a research lab early, and don’t forget to enjoy yourself too!

Not sure if this is still the case, but at least before MIT didn't accept people outside MIT to their Master's programs for some majors, instead you would have had to apply directly to a PhD program

MIT - you'll meet way more people that will challenge/inspire you.

MIT.

If money is the only issue not to go to MIT, that's a solvable problem (debt, future scholarship etc). A higher ranked prestigious school will help you throughout your life. Go for it.

If you're going to ask for peoples advice, you should probably make it a lot easier for them by referring to Z by it's real name.

I went to MIT for undergrad in EECS and am currently in the MEng program here.

I think the education you get at MIT is well executed (although I took a kind of weird path) with a lot of great classes. On average, I would say they're reasonably well taught. However, one thing to keep in mind is that EECS is a huge department--intro CS classes will have hundreds of people. (I happen to currently be TAing one of those giant classes now haha.) They will be a well oiled machine generally taught by good lecturers with a lot of staff, but you probably won't get personal attention from professors in your intro algorithms or programming courses.

Regarding grad school specifically: as others have pointed out, doing undergrad at MIT can actually hurt your chances of doing a PhD here, but it varies by my department. Looking at my lab group (which is part of CSAIL), I think only one of the PhD students did undergrad here. However, if you're interested in a masters (specifically a two to three semester long MEng), it's a completely different story. The bar is actually kind of low for getting in, but it's only available for MIT undergrads. (Because it's so easy to get in, getting funding for your MEng is more stressful, but that's a whole other can of worms.) Some insane portion (like a third or something) of EECS undergrads stick around for the MEng.

I think when I was considering undergrad schools, I didn't really internalize the connections aspect of college. I kind of assumed that the benefit of MIT for jobs would just be resume clout (which I'm sure is there) but in terms of finding jobs, the real benefit is the connections you make. I got the interviews for my current job offer and my last internship because I knew people already at those companies. The network effects of just knowing a lot of people who are smart and have similar-ish life goals are very powerful.

This one is the most fuzzy, but I do think that the culture stuff should also weigh into your decision. For whatever reason, I have found it way easier to make friends and interact with others at MIT than I ever did in high school, and it's made a huge difference in my life. If you haven't already, read the MIT admissions blogs--obviously a specific sort of student signs up to write those, but they can be a helpful guide.

Also, FWIW: I don't know your gender or anything else about your background, but I am female and the almost even gender ratio at MIT was a big deciding factor for me. I know female students in STEM classes experience a lot of difficulties at other schools, but based on my experiences (and the experiences of my female friends), it's much less of an issue here.

Last thing I'll say: unless you are a once in a generation genius, MIT will kick your ass. It will suck. But it happens to everyone, and it will make you a better person to get knocked off of whatever pedestal you occupied in high school.

Hope that is helpful!

There's a reason all the FAANGO companies are are in Cambridge and that's because of MIT.

FAANGO? Who's "o"?

Stanford has better weather :)

I was in a near exact situation when I was going to college:

1. I was accepted into MIT 2. I was also accepted into my hometown college (Texas Tech University) with a near-full ride scholarship.

My parents could help with the rest of the TTU tuition, but wouldn't be able to even cover ONE semester of MIT. MIT is VERY expensive and the only option would've been to take out tons of student loans.

As others have suggested, you need to be scrambling for financial aid. I wish I'd looked harder, but to be honest, it's going to be tough. Even the most wealthy cannot really afford MIT. And to get an academic scholarship at MIT?! That's going to be very very tough. Then again, these are all the things I told myself. So maybe try what I didn't.

I ended up attending TTU. To make the most of it, I did a dual-degree program (Electrical Engineer & Computer Science dual-degree 5 year program). It was intense, but in the end, I have two B.S. on my wall. I put my everything into college and kept my GPA up. I consistently held myself to the standard that MIT would've expected. I ended up not going to grad school because it would've also required student loans. I also got a job out of college. So making money made way more sense than pilling on debt.

So by going to the small college, I ended up coming out with a paltry $10k in student loans. I paid that off fairly quickly. Thereafter, once I had my first job under my belt, what college I went to literally didn't matter one bit. I now work at FAANG alongside people from other no-name colleges as well as the Big Names. No one cares after you're 25-30 and have a couple of years under your belt. I could go work for a startup now, but literally only because I have no student loans (hell, I even paid off my wife's grad school loans).

In hindsight, it actually worked out super great that I didn't go into MIT. Not having student loans meant that I could focus on getting ahead in wealth and in life. Again, all said, focus on giving yourself as many opportunities and options, that's the primary advantage of your age.

(On a personal note, I made my best friends and met my wife at TTU, so even with a time machine I wouldn't risk it).

I know people talk a lot about the network effect, but TTU also had a network, and any college will as well. Maybe not as top-tier as MIT (by definition) but it was also more friendly. When I visited MIT campus-preview weekend, it was greatly divided by houses, which were divided by a class/wealth hierarchy. The "good" houses were even more expensive (don't forget to account for room and board!), so everything is continuously gated by money. At TTU, all the dorms were just dorms. There was some greek life but anyone could join the professional orgs and that's what really mattered.

But from a purely objective financial perspective, not going to MIT didn't hold me back one bit as I still hit all the goals I set out anyway. And now I make $300k+ a year and it's all mine (debt-free except for a mortgage).

EDIT: Also, Congratulations! Getting accepted is great and you should take the moment to be proud. It's also a strong indication that you're going to do very well either way. Z is low-risk, moderate-reward. MIT is higher-risk but also upmost-reward.

Go to MIT

Z might be bigger, but are the CS class sizes larger? I went to a fairly large university but it had a small CS department and most classes had <25 students which meant you got a lot of attention from your professors. Also keep in mind that CS curricula are more or less standardized by ACM/ABET so the largest differences will be in electives/research projects.

Arguably the most important part is social. You've read SICP and already contribute to OSS so I'll assume you already know you can teach yourself. Understand that modern university is mostly a social thing and less of an educational thing. Look at the clubs on campus and see if you think you'll enjoy them. Most of my friends and a couple people I dated came from the robotics club for example.

Don't underestimate the value of the financial aid. Not having everything paid for can add a lot of stress and once you start getting internships you'll probably want to use the money for side projects/investments/dates etc.

I've talked to people at Z, and it seems like the CS program is fairly standard and on the whole pretty good.

I think that, given that I have a lot of family and friends in the area, I might have an easier time getting started socially at Z. But at the same time, I grew up out of state and have never lived there so I can't be sure for sure.

Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful reply!

One thing I'd like to point out - carefully consider whether having friends and family in the area is actually what you want.

Going to university should be all about new experiences, and those can often be quite limited by your previous connections. Meeting an entirely new group of people, having to be more independent (in terms of living, socially and work), and a "blank slate" are all really important for growing as a person.

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