Hi, All-
Not a Harvard grad here, but a grad of the Connecticut Ivy institution that Harvard mostly beats in football.
There are a LOT of misconceptions about the ivy league, price, and classes in general, and I want to add my two cents. (only two, I'm frugal.)
(I did a double BS/BA in Mechanical Engineering (practical, employable), and political science (world-class school for it, loved it, got to go to fancy things/write papers.))
* VERY important to note - the trio (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) of schools have tens of billions of endowment. They also have a very inflated/high-brow sense of what income classifies as "very poor" and needing of aid. (My mother still cackles gleefully saying "yale thinks we're poor!" as she sits in our comfortable house surrounded by nice things...) For me, and my middle-class (teacher, law enforcement) parents, and many others with low-six figure incomes, the school was less than half the cost of Cal Berkeley, UCLA, San Jose State, etc. - local state schools where I was a resident. I paid $3500/year for four years (student income contribution per financial aid) and my parents paid about $10k average per year. This woman may have done similarly.
* The trio mentioned above (HYP) - does not accept ANY AP/"college dual credit" credits or "college" credits from places it deems "lesser than" (anywhere but themselves, unfortunately.) I took 10 or so AP courses in high school - did well on the junior year exams, and got absolutely nothing to show for it except admission to the college in the first place. I didn't even pay to take the exams senior spring (already accepted - why pay $500 to sit for exams - for FUN? maybe my first mustachian moment...)
* You can graduate in three years, but they do not recommend it per the typical "college experience" blahblahthing - (more realistically, it's "wait, we want four years of your money"/indoctrination so when you become high powered CEOs, you donate a lot.) there's also a lot of hype around which "class year" you are at these old-school places.
Overall, the opportunities at these schools revolve around the super difficult coursework but also the myriad connections/employers who recruit directly at the school for high-paying jobs, and the alumni base. Also, the cost if your parents make less than $250k/year. I highly recommend the schools as a whole, and am not surprised at this woman's ambition- runs rampant at these schools. That was the best part to me - the conglomeration of amazing people at high density.
Cheers to mustachianism and this gal!
*modified for embarrassing punctuation errors - I left in 50% or so due to laziness/"punctuation frugality?")