Here, you are talking about an undergraduate degree in civil engineering. I wouldn't call that a meal ticket, just the first step in earning a meal ticket.
Do you think an engineering company will be more impressed with an undergrad engineer degree from Harvard or one from MIT right up the street? Or GA Tech? Or Carnegie? or one of the military academies?
Look at the ranking of civil engineering schools- where does Harvard rank?
Harvard connotes prestigious degrees in poli sci/int’l relations, law, medicine and rich legacies majoring in liberal arts. Is your son going to enjoy socially keeping up with the Harvard elites? Clam bakes at the Cape during weekend breaks?
AS for the snob factor,those employers who are impressed with the snob factor of a Harvard undergrad degree may look at his total family pedigree ...does yours measure up? Who do yo know? And then they hire some kid whose family they know, or know of, or whose Dad they went to Harvard with ..
In civil engineering, doesn't a meal ticket for life require a masters degree or more? Perhaps even a dual major
on the other hand, if he is or becomes hooked on “the classics”, then he'll need a PhD to teach and a rich sponsor to fund and “endowed” chair for job security
I had a boyfriend who graduated Penn State and went on to Harvard for his Masters in Middle East studies- great prestige. He ended up managing a Sears store in his hometown on Long Island. But he had some great professors at Harvard and got good grades in arabic!
Baltimore's not a great place, but if you stay on campus, Hopkins is very safe. As well, even off campus, if you know where to venture and where not to venture, I don't think it's worse than other big cities. I live in Anne Arundel County, and have been in and out of Baltimore countless times in my life (not to say I particularly enjoyed it).
MIT, Georgia Tech and Carnegie have no classics programs. That's a deal-breaker.
The schools to which my son applied all had to meet certain criteria. Two of those criteria were that they had to each have a decent engineering program and a decent classics program.
Hopkins is one of the best compromises between the two - very good classics, very good engineering. Harvard falls down a bit on the engineering, but one of the saving graces is that Harvard students may take courses at MIT. And their classics program is better than Hopkins.
Maryland has really great engineering (probably not quite as good as Hopkins, though, at least not overall), but doesn't have anywhere near the classics program of the other two, but DOES have a fairly competent program. We know folks who have graduated from the program at undergrad and graduate levels.
Each school of the original eight to which he applied had both programs.
The school which was probably the best, with regard to these two specific criteria, was Princeton. But, they didn't accept him, so that's not a choice to be made.
“Is your son going to enjoy socially keeping up with the Harvard elites? Clam bakes at the Cape during weekend breaks?”
Sure. He's pretty flexible, cleans up well, and really likes clams.
“AS for the snob factor,...”
There is some certain amount of “snob factor” to which you're referring. But the majority of folks who go to Harvard are from more modest backgrounds. They're there because they scored really, really high on bunches of standardized tests, got really great grades in high school, and did a bunch of cool things outside the classroom.
To be sure, legacies and rich kids are overrepresented, when compared to the general population. But legacies are still limited to 10% of the incoming freshmen class (70% of legacies are rejected for admission), and the very well-off are less than a third.
“In civil engineering, doesn't a meal ticket for life require a masters degree or more?”
I don't think so. My brother did fine in his engineering career with a bachelors. My cousin became president of a large civil engineering firm in a large southern city with only a bachelors degree.
But not to worry, a masters degree is part of the plan, anyway.
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