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kaseda t1_iu32obx wrote

An average of $12,700 leaves you with $50k total debt after 4 years. Even if you assume most of that is outliers who receive no aid, leaving with $25k can still be tough. The reason why "breaking the cycle" is such a myth is because getting an education leaves you in debt, so you spend time paying that off. Once you do, the money that you might spend investing or saving often ends up going towards your parents, who couldn't save for themselves. Once you are ready to send your own child to college, the money that you would have saved for them has gone to your parents, and so they end up going with no savings - but now you make money so need-based scholarships are hard to get. Unless you are getting your education completely free, you'll probably have less debt somewhere else and after a few years experience nobody will care that you went to an Ivy school.

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Outrageous-Duck9695 t1_iu3apb0 wrote

For 90% of American families Harvard is more affordable than their local state school.

The median annual earnings for an Ivy League graduate 10 years after starting amount to well over $70,000 a year. For graduates of all other schools, the median is around $34,000.

I went to a state school for two years after attending CC for my first two and still came out with a debt of ~30k. I would have zero debt had I been accepted and attended Harvard.

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