*scratches head*
Ivy League schools generally don't grant scholarships based on academics, only "need". There idea of need is not my (or likely most peoples) idea of need, so I walked away with quite a lot of debt actually. For one example, the idea of considering my parent's income when calculating my grad school scholarship - when I had been out of school and on my own for a few years - was ridiculous, as was their refusal to consider expenses of a business (they just looked at income).
I think the top schools provide a better caliber education. While some rare few are able to get just as good an education attending the local college as compared to a top school, most people will do better (considering they are challenged by peers, have better networking opportunities, more companies recruiting, top notch professors, etc.) at the top school. The question just remains for everyone to answer whether it's worth the extra cost. For some it is, for others it's not.
That all said, my state school refused to give me in state tuition (going against their own published rules for military dependents) so it was no hardship to go to the Ivy instead.
Grad school is a bit different than undergrad. For undergrad for the average family (makes less 100k, has <200k in taxable,...) the amount of scholarships that schools like stanford and Harvard hand out is enough to drop the price below most state schools. And those are grants not loans. The middle upper class (call it 100-300k) has it a bit rough (the rich just write a check) but they also have the income to save for college. Obvously you need to run your numbers.
I went to Ivy undergrad and Ivy grad, so I was actually referring to both, I just have less knowledge of how I ended up with the package I did at college and didn't have a conversation with the Finance Dean on it. Not sure on Stanford (and it's technically not an Ivy, but I get we're talking top schools and not just the football conference), but Harvard is in a league of their own. At $37+ billion, they have an endowment large enough to support paying the full ride of every student. They're really not comparable to the other top schools.
My folks earned at the very bottom of upper middle class (living in a HCOL location), and I didn't overlap much time with my siblings while at college. When I did, I received a few thousand in grants - not nearly enough to drop it to a state level, or to the places where I had academic scholarships.
Again, I think it's worthwhile, it's just that the middle class has it tough - not enough money to write the check, and not enough in need to get scholarships so you walk away with a lot of debt when you go to these places. I don't mind paying for my education (and it was me paying - my folks gave me a set amount for college,
well below the amount the college deemed "their" responsibility), but I just wanted to correct the idea that "
you're essentially guaranteed to graduate without debt". (I DID mind having a job lined that disappeared 10 days before I was to start because I graduated into a recession both times.)
And it's not just me. My friends who weren't well off had the same issue. Some like my college boyfriend (dad was a full prof at Harvard) had no issues - rather they even gave him $50k nest egg when he graduated from college - but others were "middle class" and graduated with debt ranging from large to huge.