S3E23: Is an Ivy League Education Worth It?
Today's question of the week: "Is an Ivy League Education Worth It?”
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Today's question of the week: “Is an Ivy League Education Worth It?"
SHOW NOTES
Episode Summary:
In this episode of The Admittedly Podcast, Thomas Caleel delves into the ongoing debate surrounding Ivy League education. He explores the allure, benefits, and potential drawbacks of attending an Ivy or Ivy Plus school. Thomas emphasizes that while these schools can offer transformative opportunities, they are not the singular path to success. He breaks down the reputational effect, alumni networks, financial considerations, and career impact of an Ivy League education while encouraging families to make thoughtful, individualized decisions.
Key Takeaways:
What is the Ivy League?
The Ivy League started an athletic conference comprising eight schools: Penn, Dartmouth, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Cornell.
Ivy Plus schools like MIT, Stanford, and UChicago expand the list of prestigious institutions but are not part of the original Ivy League.
Benefits of Ivy League Education:
Access to world-class professors and intellectually stimulating peers.
Deep, powerful alumni networks that can enhance career opportunities and personal connections.
A strong reputational effect that can open doors in competitive industries or regions.
Financial Considerations:
Many Ivy League schools offer generous grants to families earning less than $200,000 annually, but those in higher income brackets may face steep costs.
For families in the middle, the decision to take on significant debt for an Ivy degree requires careful evaluation of potential career returns and long-term goals.
Regional and Career Fit:
Alumni networks often have stronger influence in certain regions (e.g., USC for Southern California vs. Dartmouth for New England).
Consider your intended career path—certain degrees (like law or medicine) might make Ivy tuition less justifiable at the undergrad level.
Plan Strategically:
Ivy League admissions require thoughtful planning and foresight, starting as early as freshman or sophomore year.
Understand your goals, strengths, and passions early to align your high school experience with Ivy League expectations.
Conclusion:
An Ivy League education can be transformational for the right student, offering unique opportunities and networks that last a lifetime. However, it’s not the only path to success, and families should weigh financial, career, and personal factors when making this decision. Thoughtful planning and self-awareness are key to determining whether the Ivy League is the right fit. For more tips and guidance, follow Thomas on Instagram and TikTok at @admittedlyco.
Have your own question you want answered? Leave us a comment on social media for a chance to be featured.
About Thomas Caleel:
Thomas is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School of Business in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at Wharton. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to curate the best possible MBA class. Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities LLC, he works as a high-level admissions advisor to help families and students achieve their education goals. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for all parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
Follow Admittedly on Social Media
TikTok: @admittedlypodcast
Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Hello and welcome to the Admittedly podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Caleel, and today I want to talk to you about a topic that's been burning up the comments in my videos on social media for the past year, and that's whether or not an Ivy League education is worth it, and whether you should pursue one. And also, what is the frenzy around the Ivy League?
This is a great question and something I want to kind of break down a little bit. Now, before everybody gets all worked up, I do want to say the following: an Ivy League education is the right education for some people, and there are a lot of great options and alternatives. There's the Ivy Plus, there are many, many, many hundreds, if not thousands, of excellent institutes of higher education in the United States. There are community colleges, trade schools, state schools, and a lot of different options. There are also great schools outside of the United States in Canada, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
So, I am by no means saying that an Ivy League education is the be-all and end-all of colleges. But I do think that there are some advantages and potential disadvantages, and I want to talk through those today to get everybody on the same page.
First of all, I think it's important to define what the Ivy League is because I'm seeing a lot of creep in this definition now on social media and in print. I want to just clarify: the Ivy League was originally started as a league of athletic competition. That’s it—it was eight schools playing each other a long time ago in all the good Ivy League sports.
What are the Ivy League schools? Well, the "Elite Eight," as some people like to call them, are the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Cornell. That's it. That's the Ivy League. Some people will include in the Ivy Plus schools like MIT, Stanford, and the University of Chicago. Then you have kind of the Ivy Plus Plus that might include Duke, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, maybe USC, or even NYU. You can define that list however you want, but at the end of the day, there are only eight schools in the Ivy League.
Now, there's been a bit of mythology around the Ivy League—this aura of invincibility. And I want to say, quite frankly—look, I know that I'm biased. I attended the University of Pennsylvania for my bachelor's degree, went back to Wharton, and got my MBA there. So, I understand that I come at this from a very particular perspective. But I do know that the Ivy League is not the right answer for every family, and we're going to break this down a little bit.
First of all, what is the big frenzy around attending an Ivy? One of the great things about the Ivy League is that they do draw really some of the best and brightest students from around the world. If you are looking to study in an environment where you will be constantly challenged and surrounded by students who are immensely thoughtful, challenging the status quo, and doing really cool things, you're going to find a lot of that in the Ivy League.
Obviously, we know this: entrance standards are incredibly high. The classes are incredibly diverse on every single metric you want to look at, in terms of international distribution, geographic distribution within the United States, socioeconomic background, and interest background. You’re going to be surrounded by people that are thinking differently, challenging things, and pushing you to challenge your own beliefs.
You also have professors who, in many cases, are at the peak of their careers. They are doing amazing research and are at the top of their fields. A large part of your time at university should be spent getting to know your professors and really leveraging that resource because they can provide an enormously powerful experience for you while you're at school.
One of the things about the Ivy League, too, is that they have very deep and powerful alumni networks. For those of you writing essays right now, please don’t mention that, right? That’s one of those things you don’t really talk about, per se. However, the power of an alumni network for a school like Princeton or Harvard is going to be very, very important to you as you go on and out into your career and your life, no matter what you do.
This is not just about going to Wall Street, the entertainment sector, or anything else. The point is that your classmates and friends, when you are there, are going to go out and do very different things over the course of their lives. As I look at my friends from Penn and Wharton, I see how they’ve gone out and done amazing things in government, nonprofits, business, the arts, corporate America, entrepreneurship—really changing things and pushing boundaries.
Now, I am not by any means saying that going to an Ivy League guarantees success. There are immensely successful people who didn’t come within a mile of an Ivy, and there are people who went to the very best Ivies and are not doing what they should be doing with their lives. I get that. You can always find an exception to every rule. But what I can tell you is that especially if you are looking to live and work in certain regions or professions, there can be a very strong bias toward Ivy League graduates and very strong alumni networks in certain cities that can help you tremendously.
For example, if you attend Harvard and want to live and work in Boston, you’ve got a very powerful network there. If you go to Columbia or Penn and want to live and work in New York City, again, there’s a robust and powerful network. It’s great for making friends, networking for jobs, finding business relationships, or even just moving to a new city and connecting with people with whom you share a commonality.
One thing I will tell you—and I’ve talked about this before—is that you do want to think about what your career is and where you’re going to live. The example I use a lot is this: if you want to live and work in Southern California, for example, going to Dartmouth or Brown—yes, of course, there’s an alumni network out there, and people will know and respect the name. However, a degree from, for example, USC is going to get you much farther in Southern California in many cases because the alumni network here is extremely powerful and robust. These are things you really, really want to take into consideration.
The other thing you want to look at, I think, is return on investment. The Ivies are very expensive. What’s happened—and I understand a lot of the frustration coming from the comments—is that you have, for example, upper-upper-class families, wealthy students, who can afford to pay the $80,000-plus per year list price for their education. Then, you have families earning less than $200,000 a year, in many cases (depending on the school), who are getting full grants. This is a great thing that the Ivies are doing.
It’s a little bit disingenuous because a lot of them came out with those programs initially when Congress started looking at whether or not their endowments should be taxed. So, it was a little bit of self-preservation, but it was self-preservation in a way that did a lot of good. It’s really opened the door now for socioeconomic diversity in the class because it allows students who otherwise couldn’t possibly afford an Ivy League education to receive grants that cover a large part, if not all, of their cost of attending.
What you have in the middle, though—this is where people really get jammed up. You have families that are making more than $200,000 a year. These days, with two parents working in many cases, you can cross that threshold and still not have a lot of disposable income to spend on school. Then what happens is, you’re looking at a very large student loan bill.
The question becomes: if I get into Cornell or Yale, is it worth taking on that much debt? That’s something you really have to look at carefully. You need to examine your intended major. You need to look at your career prospects after college and be very clear-eyed about what that journey looks like.
For example, if you plan to go to medical school, you’ll already have a lot of debt and then many years of work after that where you’re not making much money. So, you really want to map that out carefully. In some cases, the better financial decision might be to go to the University of Illinois, UT Austin, or one of the UCs because you’re in-state and can get a great break on tuition. That might save you a lot of money and still set you up well for a top medical school.
This is where you might decide that your money is better spent on medical school rather than undergrad because attending Yale School of Medicine or Harvard Med, for example, can be a game-changing experience for your career. That’s the degree that people are going to judge you on when they’re considering you for internships, residencies, and other opportunities.
So, I think there’s a lot to consider here. There’s no one right answer. When families come to me saying, "I don’t get it. I don’t understand all this frenzy around the Ivies," I tell them it’s a very specific and individual choice. There is no universal answer where I can say, "Absolutely, in every case, you should go to an Ivy or Ivy Plus."
That said, whether we like it or not, there is a reputational effect. Schools like Stanford or MIT—part of the Ivy Plus—are institutions that people know and respect. This reputation can pay dividends in your career. That may be an unpopular take, but it’s the reality. It matters on your résumé. It makes people sit up and pay attention.
For those who say, "Once you get your first job, it doesn’t matter," I understand that point. But we’re skipping over the importance of landing that first job. The reputational effect of an Ivy League or Ivy Plus degree, combined with their networks, can help you start at a level of prestige, position, and salary that might not otherwise be attainable. This sets you on a different trajectory in your career.
Whether it’s fair or not, if you’re in Silicon Valley trying to raise money for your startup and you have Stanford or MIT on your résumé, it’s going to open doors. No one will fund you just because you went to Stanford, but it might get you the meeting. The network and the reputational effect are powerful tools, and they can make a big difference.
That said, the Ivies and Ivy Plus schools are actively trying to address issues of access and fairness. They’re expanding their pool of students and the breadth of diversity to give more people a fair chance. As we think about the Ivy League, it is an exceptional opportunity, but it requires planning and foresight.
One of the things we’re seeing now with the Early Edge program is families coming to us earlier in the process—before sophomore or junior year—because they are focused on Ivy League admissions. Maybe one or both parents attended and feel strongly about it, so they’re planning ahead. And I won’t mislead you: you can’t just decide junior year to aim for an Ivy. There are very few people in the world who can do that. It requires strategy and forethought.
That doesn’t mean you have to become a robot. But it does mean you need to think ahead. Start asking yourself questions as you begin your high school career: "Who am I? What matters to me? What do I do well? Who do I want to be?" You don’t need definitive answers, but you do need to think and plan.
I recently talked about how heartbreaking it is when a student realizes that a program at Yale or Princeton is perfect for them, but they’re not competitive because they failed to plan ahead. That’s hard news for the student and their parents because they might thrive in that environment but won’t get the chance.
The bottom line is that an Ivy League education can be transformational, whether undergrad or grad. But it’s not the right path for everyone, and it’s not necessary for success. However, for those who want it, take it seriously, plan ahead, and aim for it.
I wish you all the best in the process. Thank you for listening. Please follow us on TikTok and Instagram at @admittedlyco. I welcome your comments and look forward to continuing this conversation.
