[jyl]

This is an interesting thread, thanks for starting it. My kids are much younger than yours but this is something I will have to wrestle with eventually.

My two cents - more like random thoughts and I don't know what conclusion they lead to:

1. For some jobs, a top university pedigree is required. Fair or not, that's life. So if your kids wants to work on Sandhill Road in private equity, he better have Harvard or Stanford or similar on his CV, or be something quite unusual. But that is probably <1% (just a WAG) of all jobs in this country.

2. For other jobs, a graduate degree is required. In these cases, the focus is more on the graduate degree than on the under graduate degree. So better to be a Local U. undergrad and then a Top U. grad, than vice versa.

3. I speculate - not sure, really - that getting into a graduate program might be a little more rational than getting into an undergrad program.

4. International schools are an interesting option. I am not sure how people react to an international college versus Local U., but I'm guessing it could open more doors simply by being unusual and interesting. Need to look into this. I'm assuming it is a good international school not some flakey party school.

So, my daughter wants to go to Harvard. Gulp! Well, she's only 10 y/o so I have some time to either change her mind or help make it happen. I'm hoping the former, since I'm not personally a fan of the Ivy league mystique (Univ of Calif all the way, here). At some point I will probably sit down w/ her and explain there's is a certain amount of help I can give her and she needs to think about whether to blow it all on undergrad at some Ivy or some on a good undergrad school and some on a really good graduate school. But who knows, I might not have any money so the choice might be moot.