Not all of the "name" schools are expensive. For example, the University of Cincinnati holds its own among the Ivy League schools in terms of its reputation, and offers in-state tuition after your first year. The co-op program is another big plus.

Other public universities such as UCLA and Michigan have a strong reputation, and some private schools such as Rice and Princeton are known for being pretty generous with their financial aid awards, so don't rule them out either.

Whatever you do, I'd strongly recommend going to a different school for your graduate degree than where you got your undergrad, and don't pick a program based solely on its price tag. Get out and expand your horizons a bit.

Many schools offer tuition waivers for TA's, and some offer research assistantships.   The initial price is rarely what you actually pay, unless your parents are loaded. 

higher pedigree schools only give you a competitive advantage if you network well. 

the top of the class in both higher pedigree and lower pedigree schools tend to end up at the same level job when they graduate. I work with cornell, harvard, and columbia grads... as well as people who graduated from LSU, UF, etc. there is actually one LSU grad that has frog hopped most of his ivy league counterparts because he's a better designer, and connects with clients better. 

the post graduate world isnt dictated by pedigree, it's much more holistic-  unless you're in academia. then it matters, a lot.

you know what does matter? your portfolio.

Did the Ivy thing.

I get a lot of questions about education just because I'm relatively young and run a practice that takes on pretty large work (without asking for an architect of record, doing it all in-house). Being able to back it up with a good pedigree rounds up the image of young overachiever.

So it helps. A lot. If you're a risk-taker.

If you live in America - Brand matters (unfortunately).

You are your own brand ( fortunately).

Right, that is why architects should think of their career choices as a sort of brand design. I hide jobs from my linkedin profile because they don't fit into the neat narrative that I want to portray to clients.

^^ Perhaps, but if you were to historically trace the schools that the best went to, they went to name schools…maybe it’s because the schools glean for the best, maybe their programs are better, but the brand is a factor in their success. It doesn’t preclude success, but contributes to it.

at the office, I'm @ its Coumbia and Berkeley - perception is 99% reality

networking. go ivy.

If you were to borrow $200,000 to go to an expensive school for three years the payments over 30 years at a 7 percent rate would be $1,331 a month or $479,016 total. If you had put that same monthly payment into an IRA paying 5% per year you would have $1,112,017 at the end of 30 years.

The emergence of the federal student loan program has enabled schools, especially 'elite' schools at the graduate level, to raise prices beyond all reason. It is time they were called out on it.

the top of the class in both higher pedigree and lower pedigree schools tend to end up at the same level job when they graduate. I work with cornell, harvard, and columbia grads... as well as people who graduated from LSU, UF, etc. there is actually one LSU grad that has frog hopped most of his ivy league counterparts because he's a better designer, and connects with clients better. 

This is true where I work.  Also, I've noticed that some of the name-brand grads resent working under people who went to "lesser" programs - they usually quit after a while and no one ever hears from them again.

No one cares where you went to school. Clients certainly don't care and any firm that pigeon-holes you because you went to State instead of Yale isn't worth your time. 

Pedigree means nothing. 

Lits: Bullshit. Clients care a lot. Especially early on in your career.

to nulls point....i went to a school with the best business school in the country, one of my Chinese clients introduced me that way and i kept correcting him - no i was in the architecture school. either way every intro was followed by a jaw drop, so i quit correcting him - technically was same university (ivy) so yes clients care a lot.

I don't think there is any difference and if there is it is not worth the lifetime debt differential that the student incurs. The debt difference for students graduating today with these extremely high Ivy debt loads and paying them back over a working career means not having a nice home, not providing college for their kids, not taking vacations, and basically living paycheck to paycheck. And there is nothing more insufferable or disruptive of a well-functioning office than someone who thinks they are a special snowflake because of where they went to school.

Right, so when your project is behind schedule and grossly over budget the owner can console themselves knowing that someone from the GSD designed their building while they're losing money and dealing with leaks.

No one cares where you went to school if you can't deliver. And those with fancy pieces of paper wont be that much more proficient at bathroom details. 

list you miss the point. its about client perception and first impressions. and yes generally speaking school that have higher requirements accept smarter people. i did state and ivy, so i know what you are saying but this doesnt answer the OP's question.

Lits: You're talking about competency, not marketability. You aren't going to get that shiny "design architect" role 5 years out of NJIT. You are way more likely to get it 5 years out GSD/Penn/Columbia/Yale.

Volunteer: just remember that the orders of magnitude in revenue terms when you're running your own firm eclipse typical "salary" comparisons. 2 or 3 years early into the "running your own firm" might actually net a win with 200k of debt. Especially in urban areas.

An Ivy degree opens doors, but it's up to you to walk through them.

The only areas where Ivy matters has historically been in law and academia. Both areas are are train wrecks for recent graduates, Ivy or not. The literature is replete with people who spent upwards of $200,000 for an Ivy law degree and can't get anything more than temporary document review jobs in a basement somewhere. I did state and 'public ivy' and the state school was actually better with the professors being a lot more engaged and helpful. My wife went to a state school and then did her graduate work at a school with a much better reputation in her field than the Ivys, Johns Hopkins, and she also feels her state school professors were a lot more professional. You and the odd Chinese may think you are special; whether or not that is worth $200,000 ($480,000 in loan repayment costs) is the question for the OP to answer.

volunteer, i am not disagreeing, but the 1% send their kids to the ivies, they become you clients or links to clients. has nothing to do with anything else.

If we get back to the OP’s primary question: “Does it really matter in the long run?” What does “matter” mean?

My partner was Harvard/FAIA, I hardly went to school, he died almost broke, I (not dead yet) the opposite…he was famous, I was not, he sailed to the top of the profession, while I struggled terribly…the question is: What “matters”?

I would change schooling with my partner in a heartbeat, because everything came easier to him; he had more fun doing it as a result…I bet he had regrets about trading places with me too in some ways, but I don’t think schooling is “long run” it’s “short run”, it helps the start more than the finish, because after the start it’s up to you how you finish, which is all that “matters” in “the long run”.

Doesn't look like there is much disagreement. only question is, can you swing the price tag? Can you go to a great public school? (In state would be great)

It can help you, but it means being able to be part of that school and alumni culture - did you go to the same events and have the same memories to be able to chat up a potential client who went to the same school (I would argue many arch grads can't)?  The reason why name brand schools are nice is that they are (sometimes) respected by the bosses (some are loathed, so it goes both ways) and can open opportunities where there may not have been one.  This most true early in your career.  Cutthroat programs help foster a sense of ambition, which is part of it (but other schools can help you be a good professional employee too)

The cost is a relatively important one now - as with college, if you get the scholarship offers, it is more likely to mean that they see you have the potential to do well at a school.  Ultimately, you want to build confidence in school, so that matters.  Struggling to pay for school upfront will end up making a lot of choices for you when you graduate.
 

3tk, bingo re: common ground and social events. I didn't go to architecture school as an undergrad. That's my ivy, the grad one is just "a really goods school with a really good name". Most of my "connections" come from undergrad where having a slack major meant I could socialize A LOT.

http://archinect.com/forum/thread/146590153/any-chance-of-being-an-architect

Carrera's question "What does “matter” mean?" is (in my mind) the real question here.

These degrees clearly "matter" to some and not at all to others. Some find success and give credit to their university choice, others find success and point out that it was without an ivy league degree. 

I may have missed it, but I haven't seen anyone on here say that they didn't go to an ivy league school and their lives are unbearable off because of it. Seems to me that people find their owns ways to success, regardless of any number of smaller factors that might have held them back, university choice being one of many.

Funny how the OP didn't mention jack shit about the Ivy League, but everybody conflates Ivy with "pedigree" anyway. It happens every time this topic comes up, and people throw around the phrase "Ivy League" without any clue what it actually means. The Ivy League is an athletic conference consisting of eight specific universities in the Northeast:

Penn
Princeton
Columbia
Harvard
Yale
Cornell
Brown
Dartmouth

And the last two don't even have architecture programs. Talking about going to an Ivy League university for architecture is about as stupid as picking a medical school based on whether it's in the Big East conference or not. 

Granted, most of the Ivy League architecture programs have a good reputation (for varying reasons specific to each school), but there are also lots of well-regarded "pedigree" architecture schools outside the Ivy League, and several of them happen to be at public universities with relatively affordable tuition.

Well thanks everyone for all of the responses. It seems that while more established schools open doors and allow networking, it comes down to I guess how much is that worth financially and is it worth taking on so much debt if you can do the same thing somewhere else for much less money and just about the same education. I know that ultimately what you learn comes down to how hard you invest into your work or craft. The other will come with time I guess. T

David Cole:
 

It's true Ivy League schools are only bound to each other through being in the same athletic conference. It's also true that there are many other universities that are on par academically (e.g. Stanford, MIT, University of Chicago, Duke, etc.). The difference between the Ivy League and other athletic conferences, however, is that all of the schools within the Ivy league are, generally speaking, held in very high regard from an academic standpoint.

Fuck these answers. You will be struggling to make ends in this business for time immemorial anyways. So just choose the cheaper route.

not time immemorial, time eternal.

Burying yourself in a mountain of debt is foolish, but if you can afford it, why wouldn't you go to the best program/school you can get into? There is plenty of grant and scholarship money available, especially at the undergraduate level. Cornell, for example, gives very generous financial aid to students in need.

It's not that graduating from a mediocre program is a roadblock to someone's career; it's that graduating from a top program or a school with a respectable name (Ivy or otherwise) has its advantages. I wonder how many times going to Harvard or Yale has been the sole reason someone's career never got off the ground...

^My partner’s instructor at Harvard was Walter Gropius and was recruited at graduation by Minoru Yamasaki…not a bad way to start out.

iff you can afford it - its the surest way to first violin - e.g., designer in 5 years - I worked in an ivy patch(SOM) and saw who made it and who did'nt - Ball State is a good choice too - USC and Berk

If you're in NYC most of the Ivies have their clubs and they are nice...

Say, y'all, the OP is talking about grad school - let's face it grad school isn't as integral a part of a school's culture as undergrad; though some of the academics does carry over.

my impression is that undergrad at the ivies is fairly affordable, and that grad. level is crazy expensive... Anyone know for sure?  My "Ivy" friends all had full rides

What state is the OP in?  there are highly ranked state schools.... 

F__k Name brand schools means nothing, costs more ( a lot more ) and doesn't mean anything if you can't design your way out of a paper bag.

However the more famous a school is the more contacts you are likely to have compared to lower end schools. I'm not dismissing lowers schools, I went to one but compared to others I know who went to world renown architecture schools, they had a lot more help in getting to know people and other benefits.

.