First, I assume you’re interested in some hard science or engineering as a major, hence MIT and Caltech. I further assume you’re a rising senior applying this fall, and have good reason to believe you would get admitted to these top institutions. (Presumably you know how competitive they all are.) Finally, I assume you’ve discussed the financial implications with your family. At least MIT, Caltech, and Harvard are going to cost $200k unless you are good enough to earn a scholarship. (It would help us to help you better if you provided some of this background info.) If any of that is not true, then well it’s not exactly my fault for misleading you. 🙂

The first and most important question is, what do you want to get out of these schools? A top notch education is a given. Beyond that, do you know enough about your specific major to want to target a special area of study? For example, if you want to do astronomy or astrophysics, the Caltech program is probably unparalleled. If you want a little more breadth, or say you’re torn between engineering and premed, then Harvard/MIT have a joint program in health sciences technology. I could keep going on like this, but I would really need to know what your interests are.

Second, do you realize you have picked 5 clones? These are awesome schools, but they are awfully similar in competitiveness, size, cost, resources, etc. For example, you have picked 5 of the most cut-throat schools in the country. Some people thrive under pressure, but have you considered some of the many others where you can have a great education, possibly not cost so much, and perhaps actually come out with more of your sanity? 🙂 Put another way, you haven’t given yourself a lot of choices. I could name many other schools (esp. if I knew what your interests were) where you would get the same top notch education, but where you might have a very different and probably better 4 year experience, and come out with more career options.

Third, speaking of options, what are your post-college plans? You realize presumably that the military schools are meant for people with that kind of interest. Quoting Westpoint’s website, their goal is to prepare you “for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army”. They pay your way, and in return you pay with several years of service (and more potentially in these times of war). So it’s really apples and oranges to even put them in the same group as the other 3. Even if you’re interested in military service, there’s always ROTC at other schools which would potentially give you more options. If you plan to go on to graduate or professional school instead, then frankly the school that you go to as an undergrad is not as important as how well you do at wherever you go. Sure, at my top university, when we look at PhD program applicants we can’t help but notice when we see they’re from one of these top schools, but that’s hardly the whole picture. We’re just as interested in the candidate from a slightly less famous school who took advantage of the resources at that school to get a lot of research done, who got strong letters of recommendation, who seemed to have a life outside the lab, etc.

Sounds like I’ve been asking you more questions rather than answering yours, but that’s how this works. I encourage you to talk to your school’s guidance counsellors, visit these schools (and others!), and ask to talk to alumni who are in your area. In the end, you aren’t going to make such a huge decision based on some internet stranger’s opinion.

At the end I provided just 1 of many internet links that show you all the important factors when picking colleges. As you can see, there are many more factors than the ones I’ve listed above. Good luck.

Jolo