Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids

[Warpy]

3. Depends.

Bill Gates wouldn't be where he is if he had gone to some unremarkable state school. Harvard didn't just get him access to the knowledge about an obscure company producing a small computer, it also gave him the contacts he needed to scrape up the money to buy DOS from a guy who didn't know he was sitting on a potential gold mine.

He didn't finish college. He didn't have to, Harvard had already given him a lifetime of business contacts. In that way, the big name schools are important.

However, for pure academics, I honestly don't think I'd go to any of them as an undergrad. It's better to go to Cowtown Polytechnic Institute, graduate with a 4.0, and then go on to MIT. The same goes for Harvard and the rest of the Ivies.

Still, it's no guarantee unless one goes into law, hard sciences or business.