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Comment by pnathan | Hacker News Reader

I wish I had had the cojones to apply to MIT when I was looking at undergraduate schools. I was afraid I was too fail, and I was terrified of the debt I'd accrue. Today, I think I could have made a competitive attempt to get in.

If you're a nerdy high schooler: Don't let that be you.

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Not that state schools are much cheaper these days, but do you really think it's good advice to suggest accumulating 200K+ in debt to get an undergrad degree?

If its an MIT degree, it might very well be worth it. For better or worse, its easier to get a job if the company you're applying to has a lot of alumni from the same university. Given the high placement of MIT alumni in Silicon Valley, getting the MIT brand on your resume might very well be worth the debt you accrue.

People need to understand that MIT and most other top tier schools have insanely amazing need-based financial aid programs. If you really can't afford it, don't worry, you won't have to. Yes, you'll accumulate some debt, but it's more like 16,000 instead of 200,000 (at least in my case). Plus, again in my case, it's interest-free for as long as you're in school and 9 months after you leave.

So yes, I strongly advice any high school student from any economic background to apply.

Edit: changed "keeled" to "need" in first sentence; damn phone auto-complete!

This is also true for middle income students. I qualified for $1,000 of aid at my local state school, and enough aid at a high caliber liberal arts school to make the difference on the order of hundreds, not thousands of dollars.

I went with the liberal arts school, and haven't been disappointed. I'll have debt, but I've have a job lined up to pay it off.

This. So much this. After I had graduated, I had the chance to read some discussion from people who went to private schools, and ipince is 100% right.

Same here - I had about 20k of debt (low interest, deferred, and tax-deductible interest) when I graduated from MIT. You'll find that MIT, Harvard, etc. all tend to match or charge less than what FAFSA says you should be able to comfortably pay.

MIT makes it clear that they want you there regardless of whether you can pay. I definitely recommend that any high school student who's interested and passionate about technology apply, and not weigh the cost too heavily in considering where to go.

When it came down to everything, the amount of aid I got from MIT made it cheeper than going to my state university. I paid it off over the course of 6 or 7 years, with a payment that was less than a car payment.

It really doesn't hurt to apply - I got my aid package before I had to decided to commit to any school.

I am eternally grateful that MIT has provided me unbelievable aid which without it would've been extremely difficult on my family to send me to college. Hopefully one day when I'm making money in the work force, I'll be sending money back to my school and paying it forward.

On the other hand do not worry too much if you do not get in MITas an undergraduate.

A friend of mine did 4 years at a state school of little note, but absolutely did excel at it. He also paid almost no tuition. He now has a full ride at the graduate school at MIT.

This "first in village" hack can save you hundreds of thousands. Obviously, you have to put in the work in any case.

Indeed, and it should be noted that if MIT judges that you can do the work (survive/thrive the environment and curriculum) your odds of getting in are 1 in 3: 13,000 applicants per year last time I checked with around 3,000 making that cut.

Although if their rejection letter is like CalTech's (roughly "We receive many more qualified applications than we have slots for", Heinlein even commented on the letter's quality in his "what you have to do to get into a good university" book, Have Space Suit, Will Travel), if you don't get in you won't know where they judged you to be.

One last bit of info: MIT really likes evidence that you can projects. Beside geographic diversity it's pretty clear that's what made the difference for me in 1979.

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