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A good leader leads by example; Donald Trump fires people who follow his example.A good leader takes responsibility for both his and his people’s actions; Donald Trump has never taken responsibility for anything in his life.A good leader inspires loyalty and respect from his troops; Donald Trump’s troops badmouth him behind his back at every turn.A good leader inspires with positivity; Donald Trump employs fear, hostility, and divisiveness.A good leader is a good judge of character; 40% of Trump’s cabinet have had ethics scandals, with no fewer than 11 open ethics investigations on his EPA administrator alone.A good leader demonstrates loyalty to his people; Donald Trump is loyal to no one, publicly attacking or firing the moment someone displeases him.A good leader empowers his people, delegating authority and supporting their decisions; Donald Trump routinely undercuts his people, criticizing, over-ruling, and publicly contradicting them.A good leader praises in public and criticizes in private; Donald Trump savagely criticizes, publicly berates, and revels in their humiliation.A good leader encourages cooperation and teamwork; Donald Trump foments rivalries and back-stabbing. His administration has been described as “a circular firing squad.”A good leader listens to his team’s advice and makes them feel heard; Donald Trump is notorious for ignoring his team’s advice. His team leaks to the media just to get his attention and feel heard.A good leader shares credit with his team; Donald Tump bristles at others sharing credit and fires those who dare to diminish his share of it.A good leader values honest feedback; Donald Trump demands sycophancy and punishes truth-telling.A good leader learns from his mistakes; Donald Trump makes the same mistakes again and again.A good leader puts the country ahead of himself; Donald Trump is profiting off the presidency.A good leader models strong work ethic for his employees; Donald Trump spends most mornings watching TV at home and has spent a third of his term at resorts, three times as many vacation days as his predecessor.A good leader communicates his positions clearly; Donald Trump regularly contradicts his own statements seconds after making them.President Eisenhower said, “The supreme quality of leadership is unquestionably integrity”; Donald Trump has told more than 3,000 documented lies since taking office, averaging about 6.5 public lies per day.A good leader consults key stakeholders before announcing big decisions; Donald Trump typically blindsides his own staff and allies with major changes in policy.A good leader is a reliable partner their allies can count on; Donald Trump constantly surprises and undercuts his own allies, even those carrying out his previous wishes.A good leader has the humility to admit they aren’t perfect; Donald Trump is incapable of admitting fault.A good leader has the humility to admit when they’re wrong; Donald Trump never admits when he’s wrong. Perhaps the only regret he admits is hiring Jeff Sessions.A good leader plans well into the future, even sacrificing short term gains to do so; Donald Trump lives entirely for the short term and is utterly beholden to his whims, a slave to impulse and emotion.A good leader hires in large part based on competence and integrity; Donald Trump hires based on nepotism and personal loyalty.A good leader avoids setting up his subordinates for failure; Donald Trump tasked his inexperienced son-in-law with government reform, fixing the opioid crisis, criminal justice reform, Muslim outreach, diplomacy with Mexico, diplomacy with China…and Middle East peace.A good leader holds themselves to a higher standard; Donald Trump explicitly holds himself to lower ethical standards than his employees have to, and brags about it.A good leader is engaged, focused on the problem at hand; Donald Trump can’t stay on topic, his meetings and calls with staff and allies meander far afield from topic, he interrupts conversations to bring up his electoral vote or the Russia investigation, his intelligence briefers make heavy use of pictures and his name to keep his attention.A good leader has the character to give close associates bad news personally; Donald Trump fires people via Tweet, via letter, via TV, or via delegate, never personally.A good leader abhors and avoids yes-men; Donald Trump surrounds himself with them, basking in their fawning obsequiousness.A good leader is in control of their emotions; Donald Trump is controlled by his emotions.A good leader considers their words carefully; Donald Trump…is Donald Trump.A good leader exhibits maturity and an ability to be the bigger person in difficult situations; Donald Trump is never the bigger person (figuratively speaking).A good leader brings out the best in people; Donald Trump brings out the worst.A good leader wants the best for his people; Donald Trump damages the futures of all who work for him.A good leader treats people with respect; Donald Trump insults people’s wives, parents, appearance, etc.A good leader adapts well to new information; Donald Trump resists it, ignoring inconvenient facts, findings, data, developments, etc.A good leader does not have their mental fitness questioned; Donald Trump’s has been called into serious question by dozens of mental health professionals.A good leader leaves the bragging about their personal qualities to others most of the time; Donald Trump calls himself the best everything and a “stable genius”.A good leader lets his doctor speak truthfully on his behalf; Donald Trump dictated his own medical report.A good leader’s lawyer does not need to pronounce he can’t be indicted; Donald Trump’s lawyer just did.A good leader’s speeches to civic groups are never a bad idea; Donald Trump’s led to an apology from the Boy Scouts for inviting him.A good leader’s publicly stated policy positions are not reversed lightly; Donald Trump’s positions are often reversed within days or hours.A good leader has few run-ins with the law, if any; Donald Trump has had many.A good leader has few criminal associates; Donald Trump has many.A good leader has no mob connections; Donald Trump has quite a few.A good leader has no need to praise murderous dictators; Donald Trump praises basically all of them.We could do this all day…Suffice to say, the distance between Donald Trump and admirable leadership is astronomical.

Queen Victoria famously dreaded the prospect of childbearing, but nevertheless had nine children with her husband, Prince Albert – five girls and four boys.When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha on 10 February 1840, she wanted at least one year of “happy enjoyment” before starting a family. She hated and dreaded the thought of childbearing, and yet within a few weeks of her wedding she was pregnant. On 21 November that year, a child – the first of nine – was born. When the doctor informed Victoria that she had a princess, she answered firmly that “the next will be a prince”.Despite any initial disappointment at not immediately presenting her husband and kingdom with a son and heir, Victoria was delighted to have a daughter. Later she would tell this princess – who was by then a mother herself – that “sometimes one buys experience with one’s first child and therefore a girl is sometimes better”. Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, Princess Royal – briefly nicknamed ‘Pussy’ and then a few years later ‘Vicky’ – was the delight of her parents, and would always remain her father’s favourite child.The queen did not intend to fulfil her promise of a prince so quickly, and was furious to discover soon after the first was christened that she was expecting again. Within less than a year, on 9 November 1841, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, joined the nursery. This time, Victoria suffered from severe postnatal depression, and many months elapsed before she became pregnant with her next child. Alice Maud Mary was born on 25 April 1843, and Alfred Ernest Albert on 6 August 1844. Two daughters followed: Helena Augusta Victoria on 25 May 1846, and Louise Caroline Alberta on 18 March 1848. The two youngest sons were Arthur William Patrick Albert, born on 1 May 1850, and Leopold George Duncan Albert, on 7 April 1853. The baby of the family was Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore, born on 14 April 1857.Despite their differences in personality and occasional sibling jealousy, the children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert remained close. They were always mutually supportive – even after marriages to European princes and princesses sometimes led to differing national loyalties.1 Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, Princess Royal Born: 21 November 1840Died: 5 August 1901 (aged 60)Victoria and Albert’s first born, Victoria, or ‘Vicky’, was a precocious child with a passion for learning and a mischievous sense of humour – although she could also be emotional and highly-strung. She inherited her father’s analytical mind and love of reading, and always remained the apple of his eye. Although Queen Victoria was very fond of her, with characteristic honesty she admitted that her first born was sometimes a difficult daughter: “A more insubordinate and unequal-tempered child and girl I think I never saw!” the queen once wrote to a 17-year-old Vicky.In 1858 the young Victoria married Prince Frederick William of Prussia, later German Emperor Frederick III. The marriage brought her into conflict with two of her siblings – the Prince of Wales and Alice – whose marriages into the royal and ducal families of Denmark and Hesse respectively placed them on the losing side during the wars of conquest of the Prussian minister-president and later German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Although the bonds between brother and sisters always remained strong, the division of national loyalties resulted in some painful moments during family visits when all three were staying at Windsor at the same time, to the extent that Queen Victoria sometimes had to forbid any conversation about contentious issues in her presence.Some 30 years after marrying Victoria, Frederick would ascend the throne while dying from throat cancer, no longer able to speak above a whisper. He died following a reign of just three months, taking with him hopes of a united liberal Germany that would be a staunch ally of Britain. In Frederik’s place came William II, Europe’s unstable bête noire, who professed to admire Britain while secretly regarding her as a rival for German supremacy in Europe. It would later be the fate of another grandson of Queen Victoria, King George V, to witness Britain and Germany declare war on each other in 1914.When Queen Victoria died at Osborne House in January 1901, she was surrounded by most of her surviving children and several grandchildren. However, Vicky – now the widowed Empress Frederick – was notably absent from her mother’s deathbed. Suffering from cancer of the spine and too ill to travel back to England from Germany, she died seven months after her mother, on 5 August 1901.2 Albert Edward, Prince of Wales Born: 9 November 1841Died: 6 May 1910 (aged 68)Victoria and Albert named their second child Albert Edward, although he was known as ‘Bertie’ and then Edward VII after he succeeded the throne. As a child, Bertie was an outgoing prince who did not respond well to his lessons – much to the disappointment of his parents, who wanted him to be just like his studious, well-read father. In personality Bertie resembled his mother more, and she would lament that he was her “caricature”.As heir to the throne, Bertie was not allowed to pursue an active career in the army, although he was granted honorary appointments and briefly attended manoeuvres in Ireland at the age of 20. While there he had a brief liaison with an actress, Nellie Clifden. When the relationship came to the notice of his parents, Prince Albert – whose morals were always above reproach –took the transgression very much to heart. Already seriously ill at the time, Prince Albert died on 14 December 1861, probably from typhoid fever. At first Victoria hysterically blamed their son for breaking his father’s heart, and relations between the pair were distant for a while. Victoria never ceased to bemoan his love of society and ‘good living’, but in time she readily admitted that he was “so full of good and amiable qualities that it makes one forget and overlook much that one would wish different”.Following the death of his mother in 1901, Bertie – now King Edward VII – defied expectations by proving himself to be a very successful and well-loved monarch, paving the way for an alliance with France. The French had been wholeheartedly on the side of the Boers during their war with Britain at the turn of the century, but the king charmed president, ministers and citizens alike on a goodwill visit to Paris in 1903.Notorious for his hearty appetite, King Edward was in increasingly poor health during his later years – he suffered in particular from a chronic bronchial condition – and died from heart problems in May 1910, at the age of 68.3 Princess Alice Maud Mary, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine Born: 25 April 1843Died: 14 December 1878 (aged 35)From an early age, Alice was an exceptionally caring individual, always keen to help others less fortunate than herself. When the family stayed at Balmoral, their private home in the Scottish Highlands, she would sometimes visit the local cottagers, taking them food and clothing. Later, when her father, Prince Albert, was clearly dying, she spent much of her time looking after him and trying to make his last days comfortable. After his death, she provided unstinting moral support to her grief-stricken mother.Alice married Prince Louis of Hesse and the Rhine in 1862, and in 1866 and 1870 Alice’s nursing skills were put to good use during Germany’s wars against Austria and France. A thoughtful, ever-questioning personality, she became friends with the theologian David Friedrich Strauss. His unorthodox views on Christianity made him a controversial figure, and Alice’s association with him led to her being dismissed by some as an atheist.A combination of overwork and profound depression after the death of her young son Frederick – a haemophiliac who died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of two – left Alice world-weary and in poor health. In 1878, at the age of 35, she succumbed to diphtheria – on the anniversary of her father’s death. She was the first of Victoria and Albert’s children to die.4 Alfred Ernest Albert, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Born: 6 August 1844Died: 30 July 1900 (aged 55)Victoria and Albert’s second son, Alfred – or ‘Affie’ – was a cheerful, industrious boy; a keen learner who particularly liked geography and the sciences, experimenting with toys and later building his own. In letters to close family and confidantes, Prince Albert occasionally remarked with regret that this second son would never inherit the crown, unless anything happened to his elder brother. Alfred was made Duke of Edinburgh in 1866.Having joined the navy at the age of 14 in 1858, Alfred steadily rose through the ranks to become an admiral of the fleet. In 1862, after the Greeks deposed their unpopular and childless king Otho, Alfred was overwhelmingly elected in a plebiscite to succeed him, but political considerations ruled out the possibility of a British prince accepting such a position.Alfred shared Bertie’s taste for society life: in 1867, partly to keep him out of mischief, he was sent on an extensive round-the-world voyage during which he visited several countries as the queen’s representative. At an official function in Sydney, Australia, he almost fell victim to an assassination plot. Henry James O’Farrell – an Irishman seeking vengeance after the execution of three members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood for their role in a terrorist explosion in London – shot and wounded him. Although Alfred recovered quickly, he nonetheless curtailed his world trip and was sent back to England to recover. He resumed his travels in 1868, visiting Australia again; Fiji; Japan; India and South America, returning to England nearly three years later.Alfred played the violin throughout his life (having taught himself as a child) – although he reputedly sometimes played “with exuberant originality, but with little regard for the score”. The first member of the royal family to take an interest in postage stamps, he laid the foundations for the Royal Philatelic Collection. Having been chosen as heir to his childless uncle Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Alfred succeeded to the duchy on the latter’s death in 1893.Alfred’s marriage to Grand Duchess Marie of Russia (whom he married in 1874) proved unhappy, and in his later life he suffered from alcoholism. He died from cancer in July 1900, predeceasing his mother by six months.5 Princess Helena Augusta Victoria Born: 25 May 1846Died: 9 June 1923 (aged 77)Helena, described as the plainest of Victoria and Albert’s five daughters, was a level-headed, relatively unemotional child; a tomboy who preferred outdoor life, long walks and rides, and cared little for her personal appearance. In 1866 she wed the impoverished German Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, who was content to make his home in England with her under the ever-watchful eye of Queen Victoria. As a result, Helena was spared the sadness that her sister Alice had known of living in a small defeated German state.Helena worked extensively with a number of charities – including the Ladies’ Committee of the newly-founded British Red Cross; the Royal British Nurses’ Association; and the Royal School of Needlework – and helped to provide free dinners for children and the unemployed in the Windsor area. She also helped to write a biography of Prince Albert, translating letters from German to English for the author Charles Grey, and published an English translation of The Memoirs of Wilhelmine, Margravine of Bayreuth, a distant relative.After a severe bout of influenza and several heart attacks, she died in June 1923.6 Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, Duchess of Argyll Born: 18 March 1848Died: 3 December 1939 (aged 91)In contrast to Helena, Louise was considered the prettiest of Victoria’s daughters. She was always lively – sometimes sharp-tongued and moody – and was a skilled artist who excelled at drawing, painting and sculpture. She was a fervent supporter of the arts and higher education, and was in some ways the most forward-looking of the family, supporting female equality in education and employment.Determined to pursue an artistic career (as much as her royal status would allow), Louise was the first member of the family to attend a public education institution – the National Art Training School. Among her greatest works are a statue of Queen Victoria in her coronation robes, erected in Kensington Gardens; a memorial on the Isle of Wight to her brother-in-law Prince Henry of Battenberg, who died from malaria in January 1896; and memorials to colonial soldiers killed in the Boer War, which can be found in St Paul’s Cathedral in London.Louise married John Campbell, later the 9th Duke of Argyll, on 21 March 1871. Campbell sat at Westminster as a Liberal MP and later as a Liberal Unionist, and also served as governor general of Canada. It was a childless marriage in which they spent much time apart – although they seemed to remain good friends. Campbell was reputed to be gay, and Louise’s occasional flirtations with other men at court sometimes prompted innuendo and gossip from those who suspected she was indulging in clandestine affairs.Louise, like her sister Helena, remained busy throughout her life with charity work. She died in 1939 at the age of 91.7 Arthur William Patrick Albert Born: 1 May 1850Died: 16 January 1942 (aged 91)Arthur, who later became Duke of Connaught and of Strathearn in 1874, was a strong, healthy baby who had an even temper without the irritability or tantrums of some of his siblings, and was courageous without being reckless. Always good-mannered and obedient, Arthur was said to be the queen’s favourite; when he was aged eight, Victoria wrote to her husband that Arthur was “dear, dearer than any of the others put together, thus after you he is the dearest and most precious object to me on Earth”.As a child, Arthur said that he was going to be a soldier when he grew up – a dream that he fulfilled. He joined the army at the age of 16 and went on to have a distinguished career that included military service in South Africa, Egypt and India. He eventually became inspector-general of the British forces and finally governor general of Canada.Throughout his life, as during childhood, Arthur rarely caused the queen any trouble or anxiety. He had a rare gift for getting on well with all members of the family, not least his nephew William, the last German Emperor, who often irritated the rest of his relations. Alfred was in Berlin in January 1901 when he learned that his mother was seriously ill, and the emperor insisted on travelling back to England with him, reportedly full of jokes and good humour, telling his suite that “Uncle Arthur is so downhearted we must cheer him up”.Even in old age Arthur continued to serve in a military capacity, although he had largely withdrawn from public life by the time of his 80th birthday. Outliving his wife (Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia) and two of their three children, he died in 1942 at the age of 91.8 Leopold George Duncan Albert Born: 7 April 1853Died: 28 March 1884 (aged 30)Leopold, created Duke of Albany in 1881, was a clever, amusing child who learned to read quickly and adored music and the arts. Sadly, he was also his parents’ “child of anxiety”. At first he suffered from weak digestion and was very thin; bruised easily and suffered greatly whenever he fell over. It was later discovered that he had haemophilia, a condition that prevents blood from clotting properly, which meant that any accident could for Leopold prove fatal.Because of his poor health, Leopold was prevented from following a service career. He was, however, allowed to study at Oxford University, later becoming a patron of the arts and literature and, for a while, unofficial secretary to his mother. Victoria always remained protective of Leopold, much to his irritation, and sometimes he openly defied her out of sheer devilry. Once, for example, he refused to accompany her on her annual visit to Balmoral, on the grounds that he was always “bored” there. His mother reluctantly allowed him to spend a few days in Paris instead, and on arrival there he announced that he would stay for a full fortnight.Leopold surprised his mother by not only living to maturity but also marrying, his bride being Princess Helena of Waldeck-Pyrmont. The couple married in 1882 and had two children: Alice, later Countess of Athlone; and Charles, later Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Sadly, Leopold never lived to see the birth of his son, as he died suddenly at the age of 30 after a fall and subsequent brain haemorrhage.9 Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore Born: 14 April 1857Died: 26 October 1944 (aged 87)Beatrice, who was called ‘Baby’ by her mother well into adult life, was always treated indulgently. She was inclined to be mildly impertinent – but with a charm that allowed her to get away with it without fear of scolding. When told at the dinner table that she was not allowed certain foods, for example, she helped herself regardless, mimicking her mother’s voice as she insisted, “but she likes it, my dear”.At the age of five, Beatrice announced that she did not like weddings and would never be married herself but would instead stay with Victoria. For the next 20 years it looked as if she might keep her promise, until in 1884 she fell in love with Prince Henry of Battenberg (whose elder brother Louis had recently married one of her nieces) and insisted she would become his wife. Queen Victoria was astonished, and for a number of weeks relations between mother and daughter were strained.However, when the rest of the family supported their sister – and told their mother that Beatrice had every right to lead her own life – Victoria relented. Beatrice was permitted to marry on condition that she and Henry lived with the queen. He agreed with good grace, but after a few years he became restless, bored with his uneventful domestic family life at court, and longed to serve his country in a more active capacity. Having joined a military expedition to Africa in 1895, he caught malaria and was sent back to England – but to the family’s devastation he died on the journey home.Following the death of Prince Albert in 1861, Beatrice remained for a long time her widowed mother’s constant companion. Beatrice’s final years were clouded by ill-health, but she lived a long life and died in 1944 at the age of 87.

2021 answer (based on knowing many of them and integrating many of them into my network): It depends on which industry you want to crack into. Some industries (like finance and VC, are often hard to access unless you enter an Ivy League school, or at least a school in the northeast where many of these connections start off [eg Will Manidis went to Olin rather than an Ivy])You can get *so* many of the social benefits of an Ivy League school by just living next to the school and joining in on student organizations/sitting on classes/hanging out with undergrads at the schools. Many students at Ivies have less “tunnel vision” than students at state schools simply because they’re exposed to people from all over the world and have richer life experiences.I updated this after I finally ended up surfing Ivy League schools, living next to Harvard, and watching as many Harvard and Princeton students changed my internal psyche from within (in *really really* good ways). They often had the highest amount of insights on my psyche that people from elsewhere did not have, and smart undergrads are often the best people to “develop” with because they have insane amounts of fluid intelligence, are not super-attached, and are more likely to find you fascinating than older professors are. [the story of this, btw, will take pages and pages to really write up, but it needs to be written]. Many of the “best” (or “most compatible”) students at top universities, incidentally, end up disappointed with most of the other students at their own university (or only end up discovering the “good ones” in their last year, when it’s almost too late), but discovering the “good ones” is not always difficult when there are certain routes of finding them (it sometimes depends on luck, but they sometimes also gravitate towards certain organizations, and they are easier to find over social media than before).The level of resourcefulness students have with navigating their own school is also *much* higher for students at Ivies than students at most “state universities”.Being “good at the Internet” can make you more impressive than the vast majority of students at top schools, but if you want to *truly* make the most out of every minute of your life to make the most optimized and fulfilled life ever, you *own* the internet *and* spend your IRL surrounded by some of the smartest most neuroplastic people you can ever meet in your formative years (there are now a few other alternatives, such as Thiel Fellow, Interact Fellowship, and Mercatos Center networks, and you can get far more out of hanging out with Thiel Fellows than students at top universities, but there aren’t that many Thiel Fellows so it may be easier for many just to hang with students at top schools.)Old answers: It depends.There is a fairly well-known 1999 study (by Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger) [1] that basically shows that students who apply to Ivies but ultimately don't attend Ivies just do as well as students who ultimately attend Ivy League schools, income-wise. Most students who apply to Ivies usually have certain characteristics (along with academic qualifications) that tend to be quite beneficial to them no matter where they end up.Below is a summary of the study: (another summary at How much does where you go to college affect earnings? )Who Needs Harvard?But maybe the kids who got into Yale were simply more talented or hardworking than those who got into Tulane. To adjust for this, Krueger and Dale studied what happened to students who were accepted at an Ivy or a similar institution, but chose instead to attend a less sexy, "moderately selective" school. It turned out that such students had, on average, the same income twenty years later as graduates of the elite colleges. Krueger and Dale found that for students bright enough to win admission to a top school, later income "varied little, no matter which type of college they attended." In other words, the student, not the school, was responsible for the success.Keep in mind, though, that this original study tracked students who graduated in 1976, and tracked their incomes by 1995. So it may not necessarily be as applicable today (as top colleges have become even more competitive today, and the applicant pool is most likely stronger).There is one newer study (http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/51889/1/664668143.pdf ) that tracks students who were freshman in 1989 and which tracks their incomes through the mid-2000s, and which comes to fundamentally similar conclusions.As you can see from the link below, however, some students benefit more from attending top colleges than other students.Revisiting the Value of Elite CollegesIt’s important to note, though, that a few major groups did not fit the pattern: black students, Latino students, low-income students and students whose parents did not graduate from college. “For them, attending a more selective school increased earnings significantly,” Mr. Krueger has written. Why? Perhaps they benefit from professional connections they would not otherwise have. Perhaps they acquire habits or skills that middle-class and affluent students have already acquired in high school or at home.There should be a number of other important points to make (regarding whether or not going to an Ivy is worth it).(1) Harvard, Yale, and Princeton generally offer generous financial aid to most students. So going to those places generally shouldn't break a student financially. This could be different for other Ivy League schools, which don't necessarily have that level of financial aid.(2) A lot of it depends on what you ultimately want to do. Going to an Ivy League school definitely helps if you want to, say, become an investment banker. There are a number of other types of careers that hire very heavily from Ivy League schools, and where having an Ivy League degree can literally mean the difference between whether or not your resume gets read or not. Also, the Ivy League connections matter more for some fields than for others (and can be quite big if you go to, say, UPenn's Wharton).That said, 1st-year college students often change their idea of what they want to do in college (as horrible as it sometimes sounds).(3) Location. Much of it could also depend on resources available at the school that you can't necessarily get in your home state. Many Ivy League schools are in the Northeast, and if you're interested in fields like journalism or finance, it's much easier to get opportunities in the Northeast than it is to get in one's home state (of course, this also applies for universities like NYU and Boston University). And also since (somehow) the Northeast urban corridor doesn't have any particularly strong public universities at the level of Berkeley/Michigan/Washington.(4) Risk. If you're not the most conscientious person (and aren't prone to getting the highest grades - or if you want to spend significant time on extracurriculars), it may actually be safer to go to an Ivy League school than a state school. There is more grade inflation at Ivy League schools (see National Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities ) even when you control for student quality. Furthermore, people will at least be somewhat more likely to look at your resume/application if you came from an Ivy.Some schools (like the University of Washington) also don't seem to treat all their undergrads equally, in that admissions to some of their departments (like Computer Science) is competitive even once you're in. You don't see these types of hurdles at most Ivies (UPenn being a possible exception).(5) If you simply need more time to graduate, it may be easier to stay longer than 4 years to graduate at a state school than at an Ivy. Also, if for some reason you can't find a job/position post-graduation and have to live with your parents, it may be much easier to do this by attending the local state university (though this depends on the strength and opportunities of the local state university).This could be especially relevant if you have student debt left. If you couldn't secure a position post-graduation, the debt could be especially harsh on you (though most Ivy students eventually find some form of employment).(6) I think it would be especially informative if these studies tracked broke down post-graduation earnings by specific field. All of these studies are fairly old, and the job market could have changed since then (for example - computer science has definitely exploded in popularity since then). I'd be especially curious to see if Humanities students at Ivy League universities enjoyed an advantage in finding positions compared with Humanities students at state universities.Most Ivy League schools (other than Columbia and Cornell) also tend to be comparatively weak at engineering, which is one of the higher-paying fields. It's possible that in terms of average salaries, better engineering opportunities at some state universities could partially compensate for weaker opportunities in finance, journalism, and other fields.(7) It may be easier to make friends at Ivy League schools (especially for students who are smart enough to get into Ivy League schools to begin with). As Sean Carroll says in an article quoted below, the best part about Ivies is your fellow students. The students who you will be friends with are more likely to be the world-changers of the future (though many Ivy students I know don't seem to have those connections). And perhaps most importantly, they're more likely to be the people who will push/nudge you to be at your very best (both inside and outside the classroom). It takes a certain type of pressure to do that, and it's hard to find that at state schools.Many state universities are commuter schools, and it's generally much harder to closely bond with other students when you're not living with them all the time (though this probably doesn't apply as much for isolated schools like UIUC and Penn State). Furthermore, many in state universities remain in the same friend groups as the ones they had back with their high school friends (though not all of them), and it's often harder to make friends in the larger 1st-2nd year introductory courses offered in state universities. By the time class sizes get smaller in people's 3rd-4th years, most students are already somewhat more established and harder to become friends with.Many Ivy League students seem to bond particularly well with their peers and with their alma mater. But this does not happen with all Ivy League students - I know several who pretty much felt lonely and isolated in their own school. One advantage of state schools is that they have so many students compared with Ivies, which also means that there's often a wider diversity of student organizations and clubs at them.(8) As I've hinted several times before, much of it really depends on the opportunities that exist within your state (and your local university). If you lived in California, for example, then there's a much weaker argument for going into debt just to go to an Ivy because there are so many amazing opportunities at the UC schools. But if you live in a state that doesn't have especially strong public universities (which tends to be true for New England, for some reason), then you may benefit a lot from going to an Ivy, even if it meant taking out student loans.If you want to go to grad school, then it the relative strengths of state university vs Ivy also must be taken into account. If you come from California, for example, you can get amazing research opportunities within the University of California system - opportunities that may even beat those that you get at most Ivy schools. On the other hand, you may be interested in a specific field that your local university may be weak at. When it comes to graduate admissions in some programs, letters of recommendation and research are often the most important factor. In that case, the strength of a program (or the professor you work under) can be an extremely important factor, especially if things don't go perfectly for you and you're unable to get stellar grades in undergrad.Unsolicited Advice, Part Three: Choosing an Undergraduate School gives some amazing advice on choosing an undergrad school (from an astrophysicist's point of view). As Sean Carroll says, the best part of an elite private university is the other students.The best thing about an EPU is the other students. So much so, that at a place like Harvard it’s generally acknowledged that a large fraction of your education comes from extracurricular activities. You’ll meet people, in your field and out, who will be running the world a few years down the line. The professors will be great researchers who may or may not be interested in teaching; there will likely be some opportunities for research and individual contact, but not all that much.The college years are a very formative period of one's life, and they can really change someone. I believe that one of the most important things that students can do is to try to do things that can expand their imagination of what's possible. Some of the experiences that people have from fantastic college experiences are impossible to quantify in terms of dollars or debt - they're worth it despite all the debt. Some students are better at getting these experiences than others - they're not guaranteed at either an Ivy or a state school. But for many students, they might be somewhat more likely at an Ivy.[1] Page on Nber. Also see 2002 paper at http://faculty.smu.edu/millimet/classes/eco7321/papers/dale%20krueger.pdf