<prompt> Human: Evening everyone,I thought I would share an excerpt from a book that Im currently reading, Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. This is mainly a post to share my own anecdotal advice in context of an excerpt from the book.I had the choice of attending a top 20 university in the US, or a solid public school. Financially speaking, the public school wouldve been a clear choice. I faced a lot of pressure from family, school counselors, and other adults to attend the better university, in spite of the fact that it would cost me many, many thousands more in eventual student debt. I could happily tell more of my story over PM for those interested, but attending that top 20 university might have been one of my biggest regrets. Obviously, I cant know how life would be different if I had gone to the public school, but I can guarantee that I wouldnt be as deeply indebted as I am after graduating from that top 20 university.This excerpt might have changed my mind, had I been able to read it before making that decision. Im hoping that itll reach someone out there that will be making the choice within the next few years.Take college. Does it matter if you go to one of the best universities in the world, such as Harvard, or a solid school such as Penn State?Once again, there is a clear correlation between the ranking of ones school and how much money people make. Ten years into their careers, the average graduate of Harvard makes 123,000. The average graduate of Penn State makes 87,800.But this correlation does not imply causation.Two economists, Stacy Dale and Alan B. Krueger, thought of an ingenious way to test the causal role of elite universities on the future earning potential of their graduates. They had a large dataset that tracked a whole host of information on high school students, including where they applied to college, where they were accepted to college, where they attended college, their family background, and their income as adults.To get a treatment and control group, Dale and Krueger compared students with similar backgrounds who were accepted by the same schools but chose different ones. Some students who got into Harvard attended Penn Stateperhaps to be nearer to a girlfriend or boyfriend or because there was a professor they wanted to study under. These students, in other words, were just as talented, according to admissions committees, as those who went to Harvard. But they had different educational experiences.So when two students, from similar backgrounds, both got into Harvard but one chose Penn State, what happened? The researchers results were just as stunning as those on Stuyvesant High School. Those students ended up with more or less the same incomes in their careers. If future salary is the measure, similar students accepted to similarly prestigious schools who choose to attend different schools end up in about the same place.Our newspapers are peppered with articles about hugely successful people who attended Ivy League schools: people like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, all of whom attended Harvard. Granted, they all dropped out, raising additional questions about the value of an Ivy League education.There are also stories of people who were talented enough to get accepted to an Ivy League school, chose to attend a less prestigious school, and had extremely successful lives: people like Warren Buffett, who started at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League business school, but transferred to the University of NebraskaLincoln because it was cheaper, he hated Philadelphia, and he thought the Wharton classes were boring. The data suggests, earnings-wise at least, that choosing to attend a less prestigious school is a fine decision, for Buffett and others. -Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-DavidowitzAssistant: As someone who also attended a top 20 university over a public school, I am routinely puzzled by anecdotes suggesting that the latter is substantially less expensive for a student who has to worry about money.In my experience and my parents were not poor or working class, indeed my father was a late-career professional at the time, the cost difference was a total wash. The private school offered need-based financial aid in the amount of tuition plus a few hundred dollars annually, and the public school offered a merit scholarship in the amount of tuition. The cost of room and board did not substantially differ between the two. For more on this beyond my own anecdote, look up the list of schools that have need-blind admissions for domestic students and meet full-demonstrated need.Now, I dont say the above to dispute the experience of others. Rather, I believe it important that students from low- and middle-income households understand that top universities are not prohibitively expensive for them. Even if we believe that the outcomes will be the same regardless of the institution attended, no good can come from arbitrarily limiting a students choices based on bad information.Human: I would respectfully disagree with your assessment regarding middle-income households. Although private schools are need-based, FAFSA determines what you have to pay and a lot of middle-class families simply cant put up what is demanded of them. Although it may not be prohibitively expensive, if your family isnt helping you based on what the FAFSA says, its not worth the cost of admission.Again, my 0.02 as someone on the other side of the coin.  <response>: I dont think there is a single Ivy that uses the FAFSA primarily. I think all of them use CSS which is a much kinder measuring stick and comes up with much smaller parental contribution numbers. 