I don't know if $100,000+ is worth it for an undergraduate education.

My cheapest options right now are public schools- Georgia Tech and UGA. Good schools but I do have acceptances to UNC-Chapel Hill, Case Western, UCLA, and Carnegie Mellon. However they will cost at least $100,000 from the pocket of my parents (I have financial aid, well, except from UCLA, in the form of grants, scholarships, and the lovable fake money called loans). I think that no matter what major/careers I end up choosing, graduate school is a must. But that means more money.

Education is expensive. Well I know that having no education will ultimately make people poorer. Do I just have a too-narrow-minded viewpoint on this?

I hear about the Chinese kids in my community who were here 10 years ago. Not many of them stayed instate. A lot of them (including my own boyfriend) went to prestigious schools like UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, Berkeley, etc. for their undergraduate educations. Then you focus on today's community (the one I grew up with) - they're brilliant yes but they all seemed to have stayed here in Georgia. Interesting trend... I don't know, sometimes I feel like I should break the mold. I also feel like I didn't work my butt off only to end up at UGA. UGA is not a bad school, especially with Honors program and so on, but it seems like everyone ends up there. If I knew I was going to end up going there, I probably wouldn't have lost all those hours of sleep.